Boomers. . .like, like, worst generation ever, like

Image: Unknown origin: it came to me by email. If you know the source, please tell me and I will credit it.



"Boomers ... like, like, worst

generation ever, like."

I took my title today from a comment on a Newsweek article (Mar. 13/20) about Covid-19 being called the "Boomer Remover".

Someone else thought it would be more ear-pleasing to say: "Boomer Doomer".

Anyway, it was quite a hate fest. If some millennials aren't careful they're going to be mistaken for Greta (image above).

The Greta image came to me in an email from my Uncle out West. He's maybe 7 years older than I am, having been a late pregnancy for my grandmother, who died when he was still quite young (I still miss her) and he came to live with us.

Yeah, he's old now, but he's still interested in the world around him and has a keen sense of humour, and anybody who can make me laugh is okay in my books.

Anyway ... I thought it was a bit late that another Newsweek article (Apr. 20/20) stated: "We need to talk about death":

• ... there are things much worse than death. There always have been. Death ... is a natural part of the cycle of life ...
• ... We used to be intimately familiar with death; today we are barely on speaking terms.

Two things that well-meaning guy doesn't seem to have realized:
​

• 1.  The military are very much on speaking terms with death (through causing it and being felled by it in return) and ...
• 2. "Millennials" had plenty to say about death -- and about who can't be visited by it soon enough -- back in March when the "Boomer Remover" epithet was first bandied about.

Only one of the commenters seemed to have things in stark perspective:
(all comments are copied as is; no editing):

• If this shutdown last long enough we will all find out what's worse than a few thousand covid-19 deaths. Mass unemployment, wide-spread homlessness, destitution, famine, hunger, suicide, rioting, looting, lawlessness, societal collapse, war.

Sure enough, Canada has since seen a case of utter madness down East in Nova Scotia, and one also has to wonder (again) about the sanity of the RCMP:

• -- [it] knew it had a murderous gunman on the loose Saturday night but failed to warn local residents about the threat to their safety through the provincial emergency alert system.

One hopes this is not yet another case of the RCMP grooming for a panic effect.

Yep, somebody sure likes to see us all in a panic and needing someone to blame. So what do we do?  We start picking on one another.

As usual, the sentiments in the comments section of the March Newsweek article are what grabbed my attention more than the article itself.  I prefer to know what the readers are thinking, rather than what the media are saying, and it seems there's a war (in the U.S. at least) between the "Millennials" and the "Boomers".

Back in November I posted an image/graph of the designations assigned to the various generational eras. You can see it here, where I was attempting to understand and even sympathize with the so-called "Millennials".  But I had no idea at the time how cold-blooded some (all?) of them have turned out to be.

One commenter laid out a simplified version of who's who on the generation list, which knocks me (born in 1940) out of the "Greatest Generation" and into the "Boomer" category. (It was probably only thought of as great because we were born during a world war to working mothers supporting the "war effort", keeping production going, with no fathers at home.)

It was also a time when Canada still hanged convicts, not far from our house, in a walled-in area behind the Court House. A time when females were allowed to have jobs, but only until their men returned from the war.

It seemed to me that my generation knew the value of work at a young age. We didn't get allowances; we worked at part-time jobs after school and during summer holidays. We rarely saw a doctor because there was no OHIP.  If we're the cause of how the world is today, then there are some things of which we can be reasonably proud. Millennial females not only can now have jobs, they can also sponge off their parents if they can't find work that suits them.

I was sympathetic toward them, however, as you can see here and here. The Newsweek articles are American, of course, so their anger at not having proper health care coverage is justified.

Here are some of the conflicting comments from both Millennials and Boomers:

• Millennial equals anyone between 0-40. Boomer equals anyone 50-100. Gen X equals a few IT nerds and Tom Brady.


• It isn’t some anomaly that one of the heroes of progressives and millennials, Bernie Sanders, is a Boomer.


• Baby boomers were born between 1944 and 1964. Bernie Sanders was born in 1941 so he is not a boomer, lucky for him by the sounds of it. He's every millennial's grandfather who gets more respect from millenials than Keanu Reeves (b. 1964)


• I'm a Boomer who would never call anyone a 'snowflake' (I loathe that term & the use of it by some), and as some others are saying, it's ridiculous to paint all Boomers as the same.  I've been a mega-environmentalist for most of my life, have never owned a gas guzzler, have recycled for 30 years, etc.  So don't blame me personally for climate change - I've been angry at others for 30 years for keeping their heads in the sand about it.

Now get this. It's a stock reply, used several times, from someone with the nickname: "Olive Tree".

• Ok  Boomer, time for a dirt nap!

Lots of murderous hate in that term "dirt nap". It's shocking. Other commenters tried to mitigate the effect:

• boomers take note any child that looks forward to the deaths of others please leave out of the wills.


• How could the term "Boomer Remover" be coined by a Millennial? There are no grammar errors.


• I’m a boomer and I call this disease the “Old Fart-away”. Ha ha. Chill....everyone! We all die. It’s just a matter of when, where, and how.


• Guess they dont want their grandparents' love and respect or their inheritance.


• Boomer Remover? Lame, it is an extraneous syllable that ruins the flow.lets call it Boomer Doomer

Here's probably the sanest, most cogent response in the whole list:

• I'm a late boomer, but nonetheless, still one. The only shame I feel in a younger generation calling out names to an older one, is that we did not to a very good job raising our children to think any different than we did. We also rebelled against our parents too. But we were not born into a social media spectrum, where freedoms of speech meant you could hide behind a firewall and spew forth obscenities and name calling at the world blaming it on your parents generation. The millennials do not know any better and they know not what they do. They are our children still, and as angry as they are, they too have their reasons, as we did. Like anything time waits for no one. And I only hope that their kids are easier on them than they were on us.when they get to be their age.

Unfortunately, it seems that along with all of their other complaints, Millennials are hard of hearing: you'll need a strong stomach to read what follows this bit of Boomer pique:

• I was going to leave my big bucks to my younger relatives, but I think I'll now leave it to the AARP Foundation! So sorry rugrats!

Get ready for the deepest cut of all:

• OK boomer, maybe AARP will change your diapers and feed you, because the rugrats sure will not..

That has to be the ugliest, most hateful comment.  But it's true already and it's why there are so many "old folks homes" where elderly invalids are at the mercy of low-paid, sometimes quite nasty "care" givers (Millennial syndrome?).

Now get this! Whaddayano -- it had to happen; somebody had to blame all this dissension on the Russians:

• It wouldn't surprise me to learn that this whole kerfuffle was a product of Russian misinformation and attempts to cause our whole country to become dysfunctional.  What teenager would want their grandparents to die?  And the media spreading the word all over the place, some of whom are either dreadful or tools for those who would see our civilization crash.  Name calling and supposed wishes for a whole generation to die just make matters worse.

Way to try to keep one's pride.  Where else could the truth be denied if not for Russia?

Image from: Twitterer Mark Sleboda: First one to press to blame Russia wins the prize!"