A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

by Bruce Cannon Gibney

What establishes the Boomers as a political generation is that the Boomers’ overriding policy ambitions have been defined not in conventional terms like race or gender, but by age and life cycle. This has been the case from the very start. The Vietnam draft was, obviously, age based, as were the domestic responses, like lower thresholds for voting and drinking. And Boomer (and thus American) politics will continue to be driven by life cycle, with the Boomers’ desire to maintain old-age benefits overriding all other political concerns.* The true power of the Boomers has been partly disguised by the nominal political divisions within the Boomers and also by the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, which provided colorful headlines but rarely distracted the Boomers from pursuing the many economic policies on which they agreed, and, given their strength, achieved. Appreciating the vast scope and influence of Boomer power is essential to understanding that the events of the past few decades have not been an accident, the product of grand consensus across many groups, or the anti-democratic perversions of a plutocratic cabal, but rather the generally democratic expression of a uniquely influential generation and its self-serving priorities.