Baby boomers, how does it feel to be a failed experiment?

I'm referring primarily to the hippie ones and antiwar protesters.








Does it make you feel inadequate to know that when your parents were young they lived through the depression and went to fought in a brutal war, while you guys had drug frenzied orgies?Baby boomers, how does it feel to be a failed experiment?
This Vietnam veteran is just one of many who simply did what was expected of him. While far away from home I listened to all the negative talk about the war back in the US, and when I arrived home, just one of many more who made it back to no fanfare, I had to listen to the unfair and untrue things said about myself and my fellow soldiers.


I've continued with my life, working, marrying, raising a family, contributing more to my country and I've done it all silently without complaint.


I have to wonder if I have my limits.





ps....I get the biggest kick out of all you macho men who like to say the word.......';Nam';, like you're a big brave veteran of that place and have earned the right to call it that. AND I certainly WAS spit on as I walked through the airport in San Francisco in 1968. Maybe I should have ';protested' that?Baby boomers, how does it feel to be a failed experiment?
Yeah right. Just keep working at your non-fulfilling job so you can pay for our social security.
So wait a minute, you think drug filled orgies are bad things? Man I live in bizzaro world.
It's not over until it's over.


Being a hippy was fun!


Anti war was the right thing to do, it still is.
We had a little war of our own called Vietnam. Protesting the war was the right thing to do.





I don't think our generation was a failed experiment just because the worst of our generation went into politics.





I hate that I missed Woodstock because my Uncle Sam wouldn't let me go.
No one is downplaying the contribution of the Greatest Generation. No one.





I will say, though, that the percentage of those taking part in drug-frenzied orgies was mighty small. I'd also argue that anti-war protests in the Sixties shortened our involvement in Vietnam, and thus saved many lives. If anything, I'm surprised there hasn't been more protesting to our involvement in Iraq over the past several years.
What experiment? You clearly don't know what you are talking about. I was anti-war and a hippie and didn't do any drugs. Amazing that. Nor did I participate in any orgies or even have multiple partners.





And most of those hippies you look down your nose at are the CEOs and top professionals (lawyers, doctors, bankers, etc.) that run the world today.





You think Vietnam wasn't a brutal war? You think the people in that war didn't become war protesters? You think that the 10% unemployment of the Nixon and Reagan eras and massive inflation during that time were easy times? How about all the hatred we faced by alleged patriots for daring to express an opinion or preferring peace to war.





How about the spoiled kids today who whine if the computer/cell phone/game system isn't in their hands immediately. Or who haven't really known a war that affected most of the population. What, not every kid is like that?





I know. My kids aren't like that.





Generalizations such as yours only reflects your own ignorance.





Edit: The war had no reason, other than our typical bullying push our way of life on others. We couldn't win the war and we weren't even wanted. In addition, we murdered a lot of innocent civilians with things like Napalm and directly, such as My Lai. We had did the right thing by trying to put an end to the unconscionable.





I didn't spit on anyway and the rare people who did call all the press. I celebrated when soldiers returned home - fewer people killing fewer people dying.





Vietnam was the first war where soldiers were brainwashed to get past the unwillingness to kill, so we were more terrible in that war. (In WWII for example, only 25% of soldiers ever fired their guns.)





I suggest you read better histories, because clearly you are picking up on some biased nonsense that doesn't represent facts or any version of reality.
Fine, because we weren't.





Perhaps you've forgotten about the brutal Vietnam war, in which 58,000 boomers lost their lives.





Fun fact: the majority of Tea Partiers are baby boomers.
We weren't a failed experiment. We were one of the most passionate generations and we were actually willing to get out and fight for what we believed in, to your benefit and that of all succeeding generations. What have you been willing to sacrifice and fight for?





We were right about the war in Vietnam. Just like we said, it was all a big lie cooked up by the CIA and the military-industrial complex to enrich a lot of fat cat assholes at the expense of thousands of American families and millions of Laotian, Cambodian, and Vietnamese families. We were right when we said it was illegal, immoral, and just plain wrong. And people did not spit on the troops. That was an overhyped myth.





We were right when we said we couldn’t trust the government to tell us the truth.





We were right back in the 60s when we said we needed alternative energy, an environmentally sustainable life-style, and that we should stop trying to force everyone into the same mold.





We were right when we said we needed to curb the excesses of capitalism or the gap between rich and poor would become a divisive and oppressive nightmare.





We were right when we said that prohibition would not work and that the laws against drugs do more harm than the drugs themselves ever could.





We were right when we said that Nixon was a rat and a crook, and that the CIA was running heroin in Vietnam.





We were right when we said that Reagan was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and a disaster for America.





We were right when we said trickle-down economics was a bullshit greedhead rip-off of the poor.





We were right when we said they were torturing and murdering innocent people in SE Asia, South America, Central America and elsewhere, and that we were training foreign armies to do those things at the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia.





We were right when we said that Wall Street, the government, and the military-industrial complex had formed an evil iron triangle that has a stranglehold on our country and is pushing us inexorably into a state of total war to serve their own nefarious ends.





We were right when we said the mainstream media was becoming a propaganda machine.





We were right when we said the religious right was filled more with hatred and intolerance than with love or Christian charity.





We were right when we said love is the answer.





We were right when we said workers were being ruthlessly oppressed and unions neutered and pressured out of existence.





We were right when we said the government was spying on American citizens.





We were right when we said we were sending too many people to prison for all the wrong things.





We were right when we said that the government wants to take away our civil rights.





We were right when we said the Republicans were bible-totin’ fascists with fake smiles and daggers up their sleeves.





We were right when we said that we all deserve to be freer but that the government intended to make us less so.





We were right when we said that there is something bad wrong with a government that spies on Quakers, peaceniks, and the guy who wrote All You Need is Love.





We were right about the war in Iraq as well. Most of the anti-war protesters were Baby Boomers.





And you think WE were the worst generation?





Where is the respect? Where’s the love? Where is the acknowledgement that we were and are the leading edge of thought? Where is the admission that WE WERE RIGHT?





BTW what has your generation done to make the country better? Sadly, many Baby Boomers raised children who are only interested in greed and materialism.
Not good - we are a pretty selfish and despicable lot. But it's hard to look honestly at one's self.
I wonder what generation all of those Vietnam War soldiers belonged to?
We aren't ';an experiment'; at all. We're something no wing-nut seems capable of comprehending: HUMAN BEINGS.





It's not true that we're failures.





Hippies and people who protested the war (including my mom, who was born in 1925) have had huge, positive effects on both the US and the world.





????? First, why would the accident of what decade I was born in make me feel inadequate? Are you under the delusion that my parents CHOSE to live through the depression?





Never had a drug frenzied orgie. Over-generalize much?





It was a small percent of boomers who were actually hippies. And a tiny percent of them had orgies.





Again, I know wing-nuts HATE American values, but it WAS right to protest the government doing a WRONG thing. Preventing the Vietnamese people of their leader of choice was wrong. Murdering civilians and dropping napalm on villages was wrong. Supporting a government that oppressed and tortured its people was wrong.





What patriots do is speak our minds when the government is about to become engaged in, or is engaged in something that's morally wrong.





So, to be consistent, you have to condemn the TPers, since they are protesting the government.





It's a lie that _I_ spit on our troops. I know no one who did. (Although it DID happen it was a very tiny minority of boomers who did that. BTW, my baby-boomer brother served in 'Nam.)