The baby boomers are not a bunch of hippies

Tim Engstrom, Pothole Prairie

Published Tuesday, October 21, 2008

I’ve been meaning to write this for some time now.

When it comes to the baby boomers, what comes to mind are that generation’s icons, which stem from the the 1960s: hippies, Vietnam War protests, “Easy Rider,” Woodstock, rise of the counterculture, flower children, use of illegal drugs, “Make Love, Not War” and the tunes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Neil Young, Joan Baez, Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, the Grateful Dead and so on.

For many baby boomers, anything from that era brings them back to their youth. These images and sounds live on in the marketing aimed at that generation. Actor Dennis Hopper even does TV commercials for a financial investments company to the introductory bars of the Stevie Winwood song “Gimme Some Lovin’.”

To be sure, this stuff is a big part of the baby boomers.

But it’s not the biggest part.

That honor goes to the members of that generation who dislike all that hippie stuff. I argue that there are more baby boomers who in the 1960s didn’t like the war protests, free-spirited behavior and political turmoil the youth stirred in the 1960s than who did like them. Putting it bluntly, I argue there are more hippie haters than hippie admirers. However, this majority of that generation doesn’t get the media attention that the minority receives because, well, the liberal hippie counterculture was new and different while the others were going down the usual paths of living.

Tim Engstrom

Not every young Iowa farm boy in the 1960s suddenly ran off to smoke dope and see Grace Slick sing at Veterans Memorial Auditorium. There was a big deal made of the members of that generation who tuned in, turned on and dropped out. What about the rest? They were left unsung.

I saw the movie “W” on Saturday. Look at the life of President George W. Bush. Sure, he did his share of partying in his youth, but he was never part of that hippie counterculture. He was a frat boy.

In fact, there were lots of frat boys, lots of jocks, lots of geeks, lots of soldiers, lots of ordinary folks, lots of all kinds of people for the protesters to protest against.

Now, I know, I know. I am painting with a broad brush. I am a member of Generation X, and the X means we apparently don’t like labels, such as jock and hippie. So forgive me, fellow Gen Xers.

Still, let me continue with my point: The idea that baby boomers are a generation of liberal-thinking, establishment-protesting hippie wannabes is false. The amount of people in that generation who vote conservative generally has outnumbered the liberal voters. I offer no deep research. One only needs to look at the past 30 years. Since 1980, the American political pendulum has leaned toward the conservatives — a time when the baby boomers were the largest voting demographic. And since the early 1990s, the presidents have been from their generation and so have most leaders in Congress. This is their time in power. The baby boomers run America right now.

Hippies, and their supporters, oppose war and favor peace. Would a generation that opposes war and favors peace support sending their children to another long drawn-out war with no clear end? The Vietnam War divided them in their youth, and then when they were charge of the country, they gave us the Iraq War. These are not hippie types.

Hippies and hippie supporters love Mother Nature. Would a generation that loves Mother Nature remove environmental protection laws, claim the science proving global warming was phony and drastically cut funding for national parks?

There are 76 million Americans who are baby boomers. Let’s just say that the free-spirited, change-the-world, hippie-counterculture part of that generation is only a single aspect. Let’s today recognize that there were many more cynical, distrustful-of-government members of the baby-boomer generation than the those Dennis Hopper commercials make it seem.

I dislike it when I hear a baby boomer talk about how they earned so much, how they worked for it. In fact, the baby-boom generation entered the workforce during the greatest jobs expansion in American history. They went to college during the time of the best student-loan assistance. When they were children, society had a decent safety net because of programs set up in the Great Depression. They also grew up in a time when the rural economy was strong, education was widely supported and parks were improved. Don’t forget the country was giving rights to people who didn’t have them.

But when they took charge, they cut student loans, sent jobs overseas, cut holes in the safety net, harmed the rural economy, slashed education funding, weakened the parks, made the rich richer and, now, sent the U.S. economy into the toilet.

Their parents — the Greatest Generation — gave and gave and gave. The baby boomers took and took and took.

If you think I am wrong, that’s OK. I at least gave you something to think about. What is the legacy of the baby boomers? What did they accomplish?

It probably will be a much better country when the baby boomers and the Gen Xers have moved on and our children finally are in charge. They seem wiser than all of us put together. Maybe they can clean up the messes.

Tribune Managing Editor Tim Engstrom’s column appears every Tuesday.