Out with the Old
by Jim Buckley
Out with the Old; No Really, Out with the Old
Last year at this time, I wrote that “Anyone who has a stock portfolio can be thankful that 2022 has been put to bed, or more likely, thrown out with the garbage.”
Well, let’s hope you retrieved that scrumpled-up old portfolio from the trash can (I did!), because this turned out to have been a great year for investors.
It’s over, and though 2023 was one of the most lucrative (for investors and savers) of the past two decades, it remained almost as depressing as 2022, what with the increased cost of living and all.
The bad news is that we still have another 12 months of the bumbling Biden presidency, meaning as many as another three million “asylum seekers” will wander across our open border that we’ll have to deal with after our sad-sack president makes his much-anticipated exit.
The good news is that Baby Boomers, born just after World War II – who had it better than probably any generation, ever, but who then squandered the legacy of The Greatest Generation that birthed them, leaving their offspring with a crumbling infrastructure, creeping inflation, a compromised Justice Department, invasive Intelligence agencies, destruction of the rule of law, and most of all a staggering $35 to $37 trillion debt – are now on their way out.
Thank heavens.
The good times for the 16.1 million young men who served during World War II began with their return to civilian life, stuffed with experiences most would never speak of to anyone, not even their family. Some 350,000 young women had also served, having joined the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WACs), the Navy’s Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), and the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) and ended up experiencing a taste of the kind of freedom their daughters and granddaughters would one day take for granted.
Most of the returning soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen married their hometown, high-school, or college sweethearts and got on with finding jobs, resuscitating careers, having babies, and raising families.
A Rocky Road
Though it was frequently a bumpy ride, there was a lot of fun for the little boomers born along the way.
A list of those “bumps,” and not particularly in chronological order, but maybe in order of their impact, would include: the fear of atomic and then nuclear annihilation that permeated their early school days; many dads had to go back in uniform a few short years after coming home from Europe or the Pacific; they were sent to Korea to fight again. Communism was on the march and the Soviets had absorbed Eastern Europe. The Free World (née the United States of America and its allies) had to stop them, first in West Berlin with an airlift, then at the 38th parallel north in Korea, and then again in Vietnam.
There were other bumps, including the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, Kent State (National Guard troops firing on protesting students, killing four of them), and myriad lesser incidents such as riots in Detroit and Los Angeles in the mid ‘60s, mayhem in Chicago during the 1968 Democrat Convention, followed by the years-long Watergate unraveling and the resignation of President Nixon.
The Woodstock Effect
If Vietnam defines the baby-boomer generation, the Woodstock Music Festival, held on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, NY (I was there along with 400,000 or so other mostly teenagers and 20-somethings) completes the picture.
The years between the end of World War II in September 1945 and the festival called Woodstock in August 1969 shaped and molded us into what we are today. Free love and nearly free drugs, dispensed in great quantities on Max’s 600-acres, would become this generation’s calling cards.
As a prelude, there was Dr. Benjamin Spock, a noted pediatrician who advised parents not to punish children for being children in his best-selling “Baby and Child Care.” More than 500,000 copies of the hard-bound best seller were sold in the first six months of its printing in 1947. Little did most mothers and fathers of the day know that Dr. Spock (who today is described as a “left-wing political activist”) was a leader of the movement that has produced the transgender fad, sexual grooming at the elementary school level by drag queens, “teachers,” and other invited guests, along with a plethora of bizarre “learning” experiences that have nothing to do with Reading, Writing, or Arithmetic.
Another doctor who strongly influenced the Baby Boomer generation was Dr. Alfred Kinsey, whose “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” (released in 1948) moved the left-wing agenda considerably along. This former entomologist became a sexologist whose “research” proved flimsy at best. Turns out, he was something of a pedophile.
But, enough about the medical profession, after all, we have Dr. Anthony Fauci…
Going, Going, Gone…
The halcyon days of the baby boomers were the 1950s to the mid 1960s, before sex and drugs became the center of their universe. Boomers had more toys than they could ever play with, and had part-time jobs at soda shops, drug stores, supermarkets, and gas stations that translated into cash. That made this age group the most sought-after demographic for the recording industry (record players and records that cost a buck a pop), automobile manufacturers (a ’57 Chevy convertible was every kid’s dream car), the clothing industry (think jeans), the college industry, and virtually every other business.
The draft and a trip to Vietnam put an end to what had been for most an idyllic childhood.
Within the next ten years, boomers will no longer control anything. They’ll be gone, having left a trail of destruction behind. The ruin they’ve wrought (starting with the 34 trillion-dollar-and-climbing U.S. debt) will take another generation or two to clean up. The psychological damage done to proceeding generations, however, may never be put right.
But just as bull markets burst up out of even the worst bear markets, all this gender-changing, pre-adolescent grooming, and Equity! Diversity! Inclusion! garbage that came to a head from 2022 to ‘23 will indeed – one day– be thrown out with the trash.
Wishing you a Healthy and Happy 2024!
Yes, the baby boom generation was only concerned with themselves, as evidenced by its maniacal preoccupation with making no changes to social security or medicare, despite the fact both will be bankrupt in a decade and a dim hope for the next generation when they retire. But let's not forget the quintessential baby boomer, the self-absorbed, narcissistic Trump, who attacks any Republican if they dare suggest reforming either or both programs. According to Trump, Republicans like Paul Ryan and DeSantis (not boomers) are RINO's because they dare to suggest that boomers may have to make some sacrifices to ensure their progeny will have the same retirement benefits they enjoyed.
Some of us are War Babies - born during WWII - and are definitely not Boomers. Instead this very small demographic was called unwittingly to ride the crest of the later demographic Boomer bulge. Many of us War Babies remained far more rooted in traditional cultural values, while at the same time we directly experienced Boomers rebelling against so many of those same cherished values - both rightly and wrongly. The divide between these two generations War Babies and Boomers was swift and abrupt. It seemed virtually overnight.
My very traditional college years came to a screeching halt, when the Free Speech Movement erupted during my senior year at Cal. That was the major cultural watershed year that permanently divided sensibilities for many War Babies. It was a journey between Frank Sinatra and the Beatle's Rubber Soul. From the musical Camelot to Hair. From doobie-doobie-doo to doobies. Some of many transitions that I never made.
We War Babies were forced to teeter on both sides of this virtually instant generational divide. War Babies who did go off to war when called for Vietnam never dreamed of protesting, because our fathers never protested when they were called to serve in WWII. That was our inherited value of duty speaking for us. Yet, following decades proved duty to false government premises was not an exercise in valor after all.
War Babies were often forced to look in two opposite directions at the same time. One direction was the bulk of our formative years being very traditional and unquestioned. (define traditional please?), Yet this new Boomer generation that we did not immediately understand, questioned and even mocked everything we knew before. Boomers would drag us War Babies along into their own future, ready or not.
Four score years later, I continue to teeter. Upside is when younger people today say "Okay Boomer" I get to pull out my War Baby card and say,.... Hey don't blame me. But many wrongs also got righted by Boomers. I can take little credit for that, having been stuck somewhere in the traditional.