Boomers Live!

By Eliot Gabriel Graham

Million Dollar Babies

“Let’s get a rock n’ roll band together and make a million bucks”. In Oliver Stone’s biopic, The Doors, this is how Ray Manzarek reacts to Jim Morrison upon hearing some of his lyrics, a cappella, during a chance reencounter on Venice Beach. The bounded dichotomy of art and greed in this notion is a trademark of the 1960s counterculture generation, as anyone with a Baby Boom parent can recite anecdotally. Their trope of “making a million dollars” remains a sign of intelligence, irrespective of social affiliation. Such individualist conceit undergirds the zeitgeist as a generational constant of the group. As with most children of wealthy parents, their perception of expected environment is a granted, distorted one. It’s set on a milkshaky foundation of entitlement piers, an admixture of historical fortuity and familial bequest. So as to get any kind of purchase on the next four years of American political reality, it’s imperative to understand, holistically, the provenance of the Trump spirit. He’s the quintessential baby boomer. He’s the vanguard of a peerage that represents the most expectant voting horde in American politics in the last half century. More specifically, he’s the figurehead of the enfant terrible wing of this demographic, the ones who remained civilian through the conflicts of the Cold War, pursued the Hippie Trail, and/or indulged in the baroque 1980s. Hopefully Trump’s second term is the death rattle for boomer hyperactivity, the hippie, the corporate disco freak, the solipsistic megalo: a crop of atomic humans one would rather not see leave as bombastically as they arrived.

Cold War Kids

America, through the eyes of an Eisenhower toddler, would have appeared to blink warmly back at them. The big bang from which these golden children issued muted into softness, suburbs stretching out before them, consumer goods, the automobile, television, limitless foodstuffs, toys, recreation, time. Welfare goods as well, healthcare, education, public services all at their beck and call. As the Second Great War shaved off most of the industrialized world’s production capacity, the American homeland stood relatively unmolested, with a ballooned factory stock carried over from its formidable war effort (half of the world’s wartime industrial production). Seventy eight national companies were launched in 1946, the most hitherto in American history (1899 had 76), a number not surpassed until the highly commercialized end of the 1960s (100 in 1969).

As the victors, the United States authored the framework of the developed world’s post World War II economic recovery. The studiously crafted Marshall Plan directly tied the reconstruction of the decimated states of Western Europe to American business. An estimated 70 percent of issued funds were spent on goods from the United States, facilitated by the softening of import restrictions. The Keynesian-inspired New Deal recovery was now able to catapult even further ahead with guaranteed markets for its manufactures and surplus agriculture, moving beyond the military kit needed for the Allied war effort. Such was the state of this bonanza that the era of Truman-Eisenhower was able to maintain income taxes at rates that would take the modern reader’s breath away (total top rate of 91%), in the spirit of the so-called “Conscription of Wealth”. The resultant welfare state feathered a cushy crèche for the first generation born into a United States as nascent superpower.

The welfare state of the northwestern world, it must be understood, is a post-modern phenomenon. Bismarckian Germany is often credited as its pioneer, with the social security reforms of 1889. In the United States, the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt is its starting point for federalized welfare. Prior to this, welfare of citizens was generally considered to be the responsibility of decentralized levels of government -- states, counties, municipalities, non-profit orgs, religious institutions, inter alia. As a benchmark for state-building, then, establishing federal reach into localities requires a level of unified coordination, which denotes a maturity of governance. So, the promulgation of a viable suite of welfare initiatives also doubles as the coming out party for a postmodern nation state. In 1929, for example, whereas federal funds only constituted 20 percent of government welfare outlays, in 1950 that number was 45 percent, and by 1970 had overtaken state and local funds for the majority with a 53 percent share. (In 2021 that number stood at 67%.)

Every welfare state requires a seed of startup capital. For the vaunted Nordic model of social corporatism, that seed comes in the form of commodities. Norway, its crown jewel, for example, directs the world’s top sovereign wealth fund and quietly maintains its position as Europe’s largest energy provider, oil and gas from the beginning. That of the United States is based on the World War II reconstruction discussed above, a source one could characterize as the post-bellum market capture dividend. As a result the baby boomers were the first crop of Americans to grow up with a federal government that had sufficient economic and political capital to provide for their social welfare. The sense of normal this care engenders is significant. Regardless of political admission or consciousness, a boomer will expect the government to do what it has always done for them, which is a lot. Echoes of this cognitive entitlement can be sussed out of the highly publicized moments of Trump supporter belligerence. (And why it’s not difficult to see Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as obverse sides of the same coin.) The almighty paradox of boomers being cynically entitled vis-à-vis all things government is unriddled with this simple root understanding of their psychological formation.

An element of historical fortune is missing from the first-person boomer narrative. The good ole days of postwar largesse were, to a certain extent, a serendipity of the times, not a standard by which all future success ought to be measured, net of any qualifications. The parents of the boomers, to be sure, were a magnanimous lot, appropriately referred as the “Greatest Generation”, mopping up fascism the world over with matériel a protected home field provided. The peace dividend and aggrandized global market share they bequeathed to their progeny was epochal, the understanding of which is required if that elevated standard is to be expected. In other words: one can’t maintain what one doesn’t understand. Birthright greatness smacks of decadence and decay, and it’s been all over American politics the last ten years. What makes the United States great is the ability of every generation to update the concept of “American” in response to a changing world. The baby boomers have crowded out all other generations since their arrival, converging life and expectancy.

The Hippie Hegira Trail

In the second half of the 20th century, the American Dream was equated with suburban life. The affluent ribbon rail communities of Westchester, NY, or Metroland, London, were democratized and streamlined for the triumphant return of the GIs. Lemon orchards replaced by housing tracts. Mass produced mini manors where one could rear children and manage family in a well-delineated, detached plot of land. An idealized country estate in all but farmland, Levittown fiefdoms were made possible by the rising automobile super industry. By 1950 the United States was producing 75 percent of the world’s automobiles. Interstate freeways, expressways, turnpikes, etc. allowed access to and from the employment centers of the matronly downtowns. Shopping malls sprouted up in support of early McMansion lifestyles. Garden city elements were replaced by strip malls of eye rolling predictability, brewing a dull comfort that constituted the new socio-economic contract of a burgeoning middle class. Seventy percent of the population growth of the 1960s occurred in suburbs.

Boredom is a luxury. The dichotomy between it and suffering, as the cliché assumes, is a bourgeois conceit, only afforded to those not preoccupied with basic survival. From the hearth of suburban exuberance the hippie shrub grew. A 1967 Time Magazine profile of the foliating subculture sourced it as “…a bizarre permutation of the middle-class American ethos of which it evolved…They are predominantly white, middleclass, educated youths, ranging in age from 17-25…” A subclass of the baby boomers with fierce status anxiety stemming from their flaccid upbringing out in the burbs, they forced themselves into, as Devon V. H. Maldonado puts it, “…imaginary bohemia, creating an artificial marginality, which they saw as ethically righteous”.

The effect television had on the boomer psyche cannot be overestimated. In 1950 five million households owned a television; by 1970 that number mushroomed to 60 million, or 95 percent of households. What could be trippier than visually experiencing noumena in motion for the first time? (It’s no wonder LSD was a staple hippy activity.) The late ‘60s and early ‘70s, then, experienced a swollen, psychologically mediated demographic bulge burst out of their incubators on the metropolitan edge, hunting town and country for self-actualization and identity, continuing the human history trend of zooming in on the individual further and further until here a postmodern metaphysics of presence is reached, and any ecumenical attempt at objectivism loses its value. A decadence of ambiguity follows, where the individual’s feelings (and by extension, ego) hold epistemological primacy. One got a strong whiff of solipsism in any substantive interaction with a hippie then, surely, as they do now with a boomer.

Authenticity is a universal desire, a pursuit common to all who have ascended past Maslow’s bottom rungs. The hippies were the upper class baby boomers, those with the means for military deferment and long periods of “dropping out” from a society that supported and privileged them, freeing up time and space for them to comb the earth’s surface seeking an experience beyond their televised memory. Indeed, it’s easy to take a callous approach to the poor hippies, for they make for a fairly easy target. With nothing appreciably at stake for them, their self-promoting activities must be taken in context of a longitudinal arc of boomer decadence, a demographic swell pushing through history kicking up deep seabed detritus every decade or so.

The median age at the start of the last six decades reflects the boomer skew: in 1960 it was 29.5 and then dropped to 28.1 in 1970. For the first time in census history, a demographic was large enough to offset, and counter, the improving life expectancy reflected in that number. As the boomers caught up with the mean age of the country, the median age continued its upward trend. In 1980 it was 30; 2020, 38.8. The hippie trail, the prowl for self-discovery, ended in the mid ‘70s with cults and commerce: they either sold out or spun out. (Thomas Pynchon and Quentin Tarantino cover this terrain well.) As the writ of 30th birthday was reached, a socioeconomic about-face ensued. Mark Rudd, one of the stars of the Weather Underground extremist group of this period, turned himself in after seven years of evading authorities. When asked why he chose to give himself up, his father replied: “He’s 30 years old; you get to be too old to be a revolutionary, you have to start something else.” The sought after art and authenticity were found in the explicit quest for million-dollar riches in the next episode of boomer history.

Corporate Moon and Spoon

Sumptuous is the irony of a highly protested governor of free-love California landsliding into the nation’s presidency in 1981, ushering in epic levels of boomer decadence, solipsism and gaudiness. Even former hippies couldn’t resist the nostalgia of “Let’s Make America Great, Again”, a slogan that preyed on their childhood suburban wistfulness, whilst representing their transition to market-oriented priorities. In the 1980 election Ronald Reagan captured 55 percent of 30-44 year-olds’ votes , and even 44 percent (tying with Carter) of 22-29 year olds. Twenty seven percent of registered Democrats (43 percent of registered voters) and 55 percent of Independents voted for him. An impressive feat considering the ignominious nature in which his Republican predecessor ended his tenure. Indeed, Reagan’s victory required a significant percentage of electorate capture. In a 1981 article for the Washington Post titled "Reagan’s Hippies", Lewis Lapham editorializes, “The manners of dress have changed, and so has the age of malcontents, but the habits of mind remain similar.” Reagan Democrats weren’t all hippies, to be sure, but this habit of mind Lapham refers to is a trademark of the baby boomer through the decades.

Counterculture metamorphosized into a level of materialism that matched the bulk and amplitude of this generation aging into adult responsibility. The spirit of individualist revolution grooved on into the corporate orgy of the late ‘70s through the ‘80s. Disco saturnalia of this period continued the flower power of the previous decade. Hedonism matured. The elements of hippie counterculture ended up as marketing gimmicks. Advertising itself evolved over the coming decades into an apotheosized line item activity, a celebrated artform even, money and dealmaking celebrated genres. The decade of the 1980s experienced the largest increase of the Down Jones Industrial Average since the 1950s. Gordon Gekko, the fictional antihero of the film Wall Street confirmed that “greed is good”, and Americans nodded this sentiment as gospel. Kids yelling “sell, sell, sell!” into their make-believe brick phones, was a recognized piece of slapstick at the time. Out of the decay and licentiousness of New York City sprang the corporate excess that would define the 1980s. The Trump character known today was fermented in this Opera Bouffe, self-promoting himself to the top of its tabloid librettos. (Ever wonder why Trump has such a bawdy manner of speech? The same reason Christopher Walken speaks with a zydeco meter: the environment in which they were raised. For Walken it’s the gypsy Broadway theatres, for Trump it’s the bridge and tunnel discotheque.)

Reagan rebuilt the Party after Nixon bankrupted it, it’s fair to say. Because, in the early ‘70s there was still enough political decency, even among Republicans, to not allow Nixon’s executive overreach to be countenanced. Nixon’s indiscretions hardly would be considered news in Trump world. Imagine Nixon getting a second chance. Reagan’s platform then reconfigured government to project more strength internationally, and less on domestic regulation, leading to an explosion of American business, and an implosion of the Soviet Union, some would argue. American corporations developed further into inherited foreign market shares. McDonald’s opened a record 220 international locations in 1985, for example. The ethics of the market—the transaction, rational choice theory, Chicago School of Milton Friedman—juiced civil society of its decorum. For the boomer businessman killed the American intellectual. Compare today’s iteration of Firing Line to an episode in the ‘80s. Among the general public the word “critical” is considered to be an expletive, unless it’s used in marketing language such as “critically acclaimed.” Juxtapose the elocution of Trump and Bush Jr. with that of Republican spokespeople of the past—Reagan, Nixon, Buckley, etc.: the devolution can be measured. Both born in 1946 the former pair exhibit the same habits of mind.

Charivari

The Baby Boomers have stampeded through the post-modern era bearing individual torches, fireflies crackling in a mason jar, handling truth like particles of Hadron’s Collider: an entropic cloud made combustible by flinted egos. Trump is the consummate baby-boomer, embodying every phase of that generation’s lifespan in a single burp. He wasn’t a hippie per se, but he shares the same hippie ego-anarchist delusion that underlies the boomer ethos, an ethos suited almost poetically for social media. As such he’s found himself filling the role of avatar-prophet for an ever-living demographic. In 2024 over 4.1 million Americans reached the age of 65, a figure that still needs some time to bell curve off, as the youngest boomers cross this threshold in the next couple of years. With over 60 million people, it constitutes the largest share of this cohort ever counted, one whose material and psychological significance will require a much longer historical view to assess properly. Their saliency as a voting bloc in the last 45 years is clear, with the presidential elections of the 2024 cycle perhaps being their peak, coinciding with so-called “Peak 65”. Old people vote, and there are a lot more of them now.

It’s hard to imagine targeting this group wasn’t a platform strategy for Trump’s campaign from the outset. Copying Reagan’s slogan denotes recognition of how much nostalgia remained in that notion, and the increased political power for the people who held it. According to exit polls, 28 percent of those who voted in the 2024 presidential election were 65 and older, and 27 percent 50 to 64 ; the first time in election history 65 and overs claimed the plurality of votes. Growing old without growing up, Trump is boomer charisma par excellence, a Steadicam his generation uses to make sense of the funhouse mirror socialscape new technology has created, particularly for those who didn’t understand how to use it initially. As godfather of modern trolling he honed a reification trap--letting loose provocative junk speak so as to diffract reality to his favor by way of indignant response. A rhetorical device he cultivated while chasing familial distinction in the tabloids of New York City’s Ed Koch era. Garishly simple, looped, demotic language with a spoon full of dramatic sugar, this tactic emotionalizes phenomena consistent with boomer sensibilities. Left or Right, Trump’s pathos is consonant with all his peers. As the first generation suckled on visual marketing, baby boomers refocused the epistemology of American culture on feelings. Such that the discipline of marketing is now revered as an intellectual endeavor by the general public, a general public still exhaustingly influenced by that single, everlasting generation. Thank god for the future.

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