Archive: Opinions

A very important person in my life posed a rhetorical question in our appropriate socially distant manner the other day. With heartfelt sentiment she asked: "How did we get into this mess?"

Now it's important to let you know that we were not discussing our current pandemic woes, but the political situation, which may or may not have been a mistake. neither of us are Trump fans. She's a much more gentle but vehement type, and one conversation had evolved into mutually realizing that even though gratitude for the little things could be one of the truly amazing gifts that this pandemic may bring us collectively, we also realized at the same time that America will immediately slide into the political whirlpool or is that abyss? Hurricane? Vortex? Tsunami? In what promises to be the bitterest presidential election of our recent age. This might in my not so humble opinion, make 1968 look like the proverbial tea party.

As I expressed to another dear friend, the result, no matter the so called winner in November, will reap a harvest of bitterness and frighteningly dangerous anger.

"How did we get into this mess?" was the question, and I've been mulling this for days.

There is not one answer, not two answers, but I speculate that as many correct answers to that searing question may be as there are stars in our, Ithaca sky capital. So my theory is one amid the cosmos. Here goes...

My first radio partner was Chris Conley on the Morning Report and we coincided in temperament beautifully. He was the only person I spent any time in the outside of the radio environments and after hours, so to speak. Coming from this introverted soul that was saying something. And we clicked on radio every morning. He'd been doing radio since he was 14 and knew how to be a reporter, a news director and foil to me every morning,

One morning and I don't remember what exactly precipitated his response, he said to me: "The more I knew you baby boomers, the less I like of you."

It was not a petty or mean statement. He didn't mean it personally and I didn't take it personally, but I kept it in the Velcro of my overstuffed gray matter and now I recall it.

I think with Chris had said that morning semi-jokingly seemed to jump the years and question everything which we baby boomers had espoused in the 60s but somehow had gotten lost.

It was a raucus, liberating, and fearful decade in my generation, immersed with a lot of hope as well as a lot of cynicism. We also emerged with some deeply false notions about ourselves, our morals and motives and our self proclaimed dreams.

We patted ourselves collectively on the back for "ending the war " by demonstrations, be-ins, love-ins, and teach-ins. "Peace, love" was our mantra. We also sang "sex, drugs, and rock and roll". And this latter, I dare say, became more of the driving force to our 70s than the higher motives that we preached in the 60s.

The lie we told ourselves was that we had ended the war wrong. It was our parents who ended up with tearful pleas to members of Congress, anger at the loss of blood and treasure as opposed to fear and evasion of the draft.

It was to these adults who, please remember, could and did vote when most of us boomers could not until the year 1972, that Nixon appealed to as the "silent majority". And it was we baby boomers who consistently historically failed to show up at the polls as the young are wont to do even today.

It was when I thought of Nixon that I made a leap. The leap was thinking about a culture that beginning to be shaped by the media by the 70s, Top 40 radio, the nightly television news, and most especially the cinema.

We were being raised in a decade, which gave us the "anti-hero" in film and a more ambivalent stance of heroes, heroines, right versus wrong.

Alfie, Georgie Girl, Cool Hand Luke, The Graduate. Our understanding of Hollywood did not revolve around quotation living happily ever after quotation, but a nascent gnawing at the salvation of hero and our perceptions of right and wrong slowly became muddied.

As teenagers, of course, we didn't see shades of gray... of nuance... and hardly had the words for what we were seeing as the age of the anti-hero and the questioning of normality, morality and "all's well that ends well". We snickered at Ward Cleaver and Beaver's innocence.

I submit that our generation of boomers lost a sense of heroes and heroism.

Our leaders nationally could still bask in the glow of World War II and our conquering of the evils of Nazi-ism and fascism. We began to question even that, whilel, our country was honoring Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon... all world war II participants.

But even those who did not rise to the top of our esteem politically were honored and often assassinated for their courage and their values in the 60s. We saw Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X as leaders in all manner as we viewed them through our personal experiential telescopes of the 60s.

Congressional leaders squabbled and fought hard, but most of the time "country" was the ultimate winner and such '60s leaders as Sam Nunn, Scoop Jackson, Frank Church, Charles Percy, Margaret Chase Smith, Howard Baker, Everett Dirksen and many more commanded our respect by their honor. We understood we as in the collective America while the boomers denigrated everything that the welfare and best needs of the country trumped all the partisan squabbles.

Yes, the war both overseas and in our streets raged and killed and tore us up in the 60s -- but you know, I still think we had our heroes and heroines and we could name them.

Somehow something got lost from my generation once the undeclared Vietnam War was over -- and sometime soon I'll explain why any war is never over -- and we all retreated into our '70s cocoon of platform shoes, disco, Mary Tyler Moore, and newly found Country And Western music. Not only did our memories and aspirations fade, but so did any semblance of a continuing sense of hero or heroine. In John Prine's, words, "All my friends became insurance salesmen". We forgot our idealism, even if often naive and misplaced, and became convinced there were no more heroes.

In 1992, as an aside, our national preference for leader swerved from the last of the Greatest Generation of World War II -- for instance "Reagan-Bush" -- to a man who freely admitted to avoiding the draft and finding himself in the White House. Our anti-hero of the '60s was now the leader of the '90s. The baby boomers were "now in charge".

But what, dear 60-something and 70-something reader, did we, as the generation after the Greatest Generation, accomplish? The legislative accomplishments weren't really ours and the really upstanding political figures of the '50s and '60 had now retired, died off, or were seen as old and shuffled off to pasture.

I know I'm sounding like an old man. Okay, Boomer, but where are the upstanding heroes and heroines that are supposed to be running things now and leading us?

Agree or disagree with someone like George McGovern, for instance. But I met that man. I interviewed him and I felt deeply his moral conviction and desire to serve his fellow American and the world. Jimmy Carter -- same thing. And it is not that I agreed with them or many others of the same stature and acclaim. Like or dislike their viewpoint, deep in your heart of hearts you liked what you understood their values to be. And that, my friend, is the definition of a hero.

We are "in the mess we're in" because, I humbly postulate, we have no heroes. Yes, our medical professionals and first responders fill the bill admirably these weeks and months, and their stature in our collective memories will rise and thrive.

But America now also needs the stature of our past heroes and we look around seemingly in vain. I don't care if I disagree with my representative locally, my assembly-person in Albany, my governor or my president. I purposely have no party or faction to look to. I want to see their heart and soul, not which line they occupy on the ballot. I want a good, strong, heroic person to convince me that they are looking out for me, my country, men and women, my country. I want someone to lead me and share my dream of a truly free existence regardless of faction, race or creed.

And, my Baby Boomer friend, I fear there were so many things we shunned, shucked, and rejected after the '60s, we now must realize that we also failed to replace the heroes that brought us so much promise.

And that I say that may be "how we got into this mess".

2020 and beyond holds more angst and worry than COVID-19 ever could.

But Victor Frankl said this in 'Man's Search for Meaning': We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts, comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man, but one thing: the last of his freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one's own way."

Be strong, warrior. Take care of each other. Thanks for reading.