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Obama • culture • politics

The last swing of the boom

By matt carter ⋅ November 12, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

After living through sixteen years of two Presidents’ terms, the Baby Boomer generation appears to have run its Presidential course. When Obama, on his way over to Grant Park for his election night event, emailed his millions of plugged-in supporters, he wrote “We just made history.”

As Damien Cave noted:

With that simple “we” in millions of in-boxes, the post-baby-boomer era seems to have begun. The endless “us versus them” battles of the ’60s, over Vietnam, abortion, race and gender, at least for a moment last week, seemed as out-of-touch as a rotary phone. Of course, that was Mr. Obama’s goal. In his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” he was explicit in his desire to move beyond “the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago.”

With an emphasis on consensus, communication, and cooperation, Generation O believes in teams and plans. It openly embraces diversity, meritocracy, and goal-driven achievement.

They saw in Mr. Obama, 47, who was born at the tail end of the baby boom era, the values that sociologists and cultural critics ascribe to them.

Government under Mr. Obama, they believe, would value personal disclosure and transparency in the mode of social-networking sites. Teamwork would be in fashion, along with a strict meritocracy.

Will this mobilization through meetups and social networks endure the slogging messiness of federal politics? Only time will tell, but, as the GOP learned during this election, they count Generation O out at their peril.

Will the rise of this well-informed and politically active generation of young people, and their candidate, be able to overcome the divisions inherent in the cultural fabric of the Baby Boomer? Are Boomers comfortable with the tech-heavy consensus-based ideals of Generation O?

Many baby boomers are unlikely to be comfortable with this generation’s technological boosterism and ease with blurred identities and mixed ethnicities. Peter Wolson, a psychoanalyst and former dean of the Los Angeles of Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies, said the crucible of the 1960s helped give baby boomers a deep suspicion of “the other.” Their world was bifurcated: pro-war versus antiwar; communist versus capitalist.

Perhaps, with the sun now setting on Presidential fortunes of the Baby Boomer Generation, a more appropriate question to ask is whether Generation O will be comfortable with its youthful ideals as they age. Given the emphasis on transparency and social networking with Generation O, I am certain that whatever the answer, we will in time have it.

Tags: baby boomers, culture, generation o, politics, society