Who would dispute that boomers have been the worst generation ever? The greediest, most wasteful, most indulged, most sociopathic. They’ve made life economically arduous for Millennials, and almost futile if you look at things from an environmental perspective.
Eight years ago I read P.J. O’Rourke‘s “The Baby Boom: How it Got That Way and It Wasn’t My Fault and I’ll Never Do it Again.” That same year Reason‘s Nick Gillespie did a video interview with the libertarian O’Rourke during Freedom Fest 2014, and one of O’Rourke’s topics was about how today’s culture is much gentler for kids, or certainly less rough-and-tumble.
“Just this whole process of going through the baby boom’s history, I began to realize what a nicer society — kinder, more decent society — that we live in today than the society when I was a kid. I don’t think my ten-year-old boy has ever been in a fist fight. I mean there might be a little scuffling but I don’t think he’s has ever had that kind of violent confrontation that was simply part of the package when I was a kid.”
In my twelve years of primary education I got into one (1) schoolyard fist fight. It happened in seventh grade on a sunny spring day (or was it early fall?), on the edge of a baseball diamond. The other kid started it, but I fucking finished it.
It was over in less than a minute. Okay, 90 seconds. I took a few blows, but I kept punching and punching and actually knocked the guy down. The downside is that my hands were pretty swollen from all the hitting, and I think I may have gone to the family doctor to get my hands or wrists taped up.
I once came upon a pair of eight- or nine-year-olds beating up Jett. It was near the end of a school day, during some kind of outdoor recess. He was crying and crouching against a concrete wall, and his two attackers were standing over him. I stopped it, of course, and went over to the teachers who were presiding and explained what had happened. They in turn told the mothers of the two attackers, and subsequently those mothers really read the riot act to their boys.
