When I was a kid in the 1960s and my late mother was mad at me, she’d say I was “spoiled rotten.”
Looking back, I was. So were most people of my generation.
We still are.
Our privilege as Baby Boomers makes us assume everything should be perfect all the time. When it isn’t we complain bitterly.
Right now, America is in the best of all possible worlds. We have the world’s strongest economy. Our unemployment rate is below 4%. COVID is in retreat.
It’s the rest of the world that’s in trouble. Europe is at war. China is on lockdown. Africa and India are threatened with starvation.
What we should be doing is focusing on the future. We should be laser focused on maintaining the viability of this planet. We have the most to lose if that’s lost.
Are we? No. We’re complaining about inflation, we’re whining about housing prices, we’re attacking our schoolteachers, the diversity that made us great, even our democracy.
Nothing is perfect. Nothing ever is. But just once could my fellow Boomers stop acting like the spoiled brats we were at 13 and count our blessings?
Our leaders are old because we’re all living longer, healthier lives. My dad had his first heart attack at 46. I didn’t, thanks to statins. The drugs I take for blood pressure also didn’t exist when he needed them in the 1970s. My mom went blind in her 50s. I had some retinal thinning a decade ago and got it taken care of in 5 minutes. My wife beat cancer without chemotherapy, and our congenital orthopedic problems (her knees and my feet) were easily handled with surgery.
My dad (above) died at age 78 in 1999. The current President (right) is 79. That's not a problem. It's a blessing.
A hundred million miracles are happening every day in this country. There’s a huge opportunity to replace gas cars with electrics, and huge markets opening for renewable energy, which is now cheaper than coal. Rockets can be landed just like in science-fiction movies. We beat COVID with a vaccine that was designed in two days. Cloud computing has lifted a billion people out of poverty. The Internet has replaced TV, and you can carry it in your pocket. The pace of scientific progress is accelerating.
All this is an American lake. All five of the biggest cloud owners are American. So are the biggest semiconductor firms. So are most of the great software firms. I’ve spent a lifetime as a freelance journalist and, thanks in part to the frugality my Depression-era parents bred in me, I’m a millionaire.
Yeah, there’s bad shit out there, but it can all be fixed. We don’t have to live in fear of guns, or each other. We don’t have to have sub-standard roads or health care. We choose to have these things, by electing people who pretend that we’re all self-sufficient and not mutually-dependent.
We choose to believe lies and blame others for everything that’s wrong with the world.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
