Say Goodnight Baby Boomers

An open letter to the Baby Boomers:
Barack Obama is the first president from Generation X. In 1990 Time Magazine profiled GenX:

"They possess only a hazy sense of their own identity but a monumental preoccupation with all the problems the preceding generation will leave for them to fix . . .This is the twenty-something generation, those 48 million young Americans ages 18 through 29 who fall between the famous baby boomers and the boomlet of children the baby boomers are producing. Since today's young adults were born during a period when the U.S. birthrate decreased to half the level of its postwar peak, in the wake of the great baby boom, they are sometimes called the baby busters. By whatever name, so far they are an unsung generation, hardly recognized as a social force or even noticed much at all...By and large, the 18-to-29 group scornfully rejects the habits and values of the baby boomers, viewing that group as self-centered, fickle and impractical. While the baby boomers had a placid childhood in the 1950s, which helped inspire them to start their revolution, today's twenty-something generation grew up in a time of drugs, divorce and economic strain. . .They feel influenced and changed by the social problems they see as their inheritance: racial strife, homelessness, AIDS, fractured families and federal deficits"

Born in 1961, Obama is on the fence as to which generation he belongs to, as far as historians are concerned, but I think that he is a far cry from the typical Baby Boomer. That is why I have said that he is the first GenX president. To the Baby Boomers, I say that the torch has officially passed. Your time is done; and your sunset is closer than your dawn. Collectively, I belive that we are not sad to see you fade. What we have voted for this past November is a referndum on what you have left us. You made us. Please do not cry when you have to reap what you have sown. The media have portrayed this election as a battle of red versus blue/conservative versus liberal/urban versus rural. I do not think that this is true.

Each generation writes their own definitions of conservatism and liberalism. How many times have our political parties changed polarities in their respective histories? Too many to claim any kind of consistency of policy or doctrine. This election was an overthrow of government by the next generation. We are the "Home Depot" generation. The "fix-it" generation. The "Do-it-yourself" generation. I think that it is not a coincidence that the do-it-yourself type shows that are so popular. We are a generation that loves to fix things. I think that we have rediscovered a respect for the spirit of work that was lost. Over the past few decades we have been internally and externally destroyed. In the coming years we will need to rebuild, like the Greatest Generation did following their war. While their war was disimilar to ours, and though we will never fully resurrect that sense of their spirit, it holds a place in hearts as the antithesis of what we fight against. The most incredible thing that the Greatest Generaration has done is to leave for us something to strive for.

Our futures will be written not by us, but by our children. Let us raise our children to be the kind of people that we want taking care of us when we pass the torch.