We talk a lot on this blog about community issues related to health. Societies need leaders, and for the last 4-5 decades the Baby boomers, born after World War II, have been our leaders. How good of a job they’ve done is covered by Helen Andrews in this remarkable book. I highly recommend it. To sum it up, the story is a tragedy, thus the title:
Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom but Delivered Disaster
The bottom line is that we live in an age of institutional failure and disintegration – families, communities, businesses, government, non-profits, social organizations, and churches have all declined since the Boomers took over.
The prior generations of Americans built institutions, the boomers destroyed them.
I wish it weren’t true but it is. The stats in the book detail it in black and white.
A staggering statistic: The percentage of children living with both biological parents by the time the mother is 40, among working-class families was 95% in 1960, now it’s 30%.
There are countless other stats in the book.
I could quote the entire book, because it’s unbelievable what has happened to the USA. It’s disintegrated much faster than the Roman empire.
Andrews is a fantastic writer, and some of the book is laugh out loud funny. This is because American culture has become so absurd and tragic and ridiculous that you have to laugh or cry one.
6 Tragic figures are profiled in the book, all of whom have some redeeming qualities, but ultimately contributed to the train wreck we’re living in.
- Steve Jobs
- Aaron Sorkin
- Jeffrey Sachs
- Camile Paglia
- Al Sharpton
- Sonia Sotomayor
This book will go down in history, because it chronicles this generation and their effect on America’s institutions and has been all the talk in my circles. Looking back on it, it’s amazing any of us Gen. Xr’s made it out alive, literally. Sadly, I’m not joking. That’s because many of us are gone- drug addiction, depression, accidents, suicide, despair, and other issues. I could name dozens.
They took a country that was the most united, most prosperous, and the most successful in history and ran it in the ground within one generation. This book for me has been cathartic, a painful but cleansing type of beneficial red-pill experience, to realize who the people really were who were running all the flailing institutions I was formed in. They weren’t all the same, and if you weren’t like them then hold your head high.
The question moving forward is, will the coming generations be able so save a sinking ship?
