Rage Against the Machine

A couple of weeks ago, a friend sent an e-mail urging me to write an article dispelling the notion that Baby Boomers are a bunch of navel-gazing, hippy-dippy boobs. I wish I could give you his original quote, but I’m scrupulous when it comes to deleting e-mails so this will have to do.

I have no idea what set off his mini screed, but I can tell you his request was met with a somewhat tepid reception on my end. Defending a generation is not the mission of this blog or its writer. I see the world as a level playing field, so you can be an asshat or an arhat whether you’re eight, eighteen or eighty. And although sociologists put me at the tail end of the Boomer generation, I’ve never really felt a part of that vast Sixties subculture. Yeah, I was weaned on The Beatles, The Stones and all the other groovy vibes of that tumultuous decade, but my real allegiance is to the punks of the late Seventies and early Eighties. Besides, the Boomers are like any generation in that they have as many marks in the minus column as the plus column, including being the first “helicopter” parents, for which I will be eternally ungrateful.

But this past Sunday, I heard a feature story on NPR’s “Weekend Edition” which, in light of the current national malaise, made me rethink my position and put fingers to keyboard in praise of an infamous Sixties-era event for which the Boomers deserve a major shout-out.

Tuesday, May 4th, marked the 40th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State. For those who weren’t around for what has to be one of the most heinous criminal acts of a so-called democracy against its own citizens, let me give you a brief rundown:

On April 30th 1970, Richard Nixon, who had promised to end the war in Vietnam during his presidential campaign, announced that he was expanding the war into nearby Cambodia. The response was widespread protests on college campuses across the country, including Ohio’s Kent State University. During the night of May 1st, a crowd of about 120 people – students, bikers and out-of-town kids – rioted on the streets of downtown Kent, causing Governor James Rhodes to call in the National Guard to keep order on the campus. On the morning of May 4th, with about 2,000 students gathered for a protest rally, the Guard made two attempts to disperse the crowd, throwing tear gas canisters and getting pelted with rocks in return. The crowd had now broken up into scattered groups with some of them leaving the area as ordered. At 12:24 pm, with no direct threat of any kind, 29 of the 77 Guardsman abruptly opened fire, sending a volley of 67 bullets across the campus. Four students were killed – two of them non-protestors who were walking from one class to another – and nine were wounded, one of them suffering permanent paralysis.

As appalling as this tragic event was, the aftermath stands as one of the ballsiest moments of the Boomer generation. Running the real risk of getting their brains blown out, four million students went on strike, closing down 900 universities, colleges and high schools across the country. A banner hung out of a window at New York University read, “They Can’t Kill Us All.”

No, but they could, and did, kill two more students just ten days later at Jackson State University, and under very similar circumstances to what went down at Kent State. And yet, the protests continued.

Forty years later, I think we need to take a page out of this particular chapter in our American history, not to mention paying closer attention to the on-going and valiant protests against the regimes in Tehran and Thailand where, believe me, no photographers will be present to document the carnage like the iconic photo from Kent State that accompanies this week’s blog. The next of kin will be lucky to recover the bodies.

To quote Bill Maher, “I’m angry that people aren’t angry.” I’m especially angry that the generation who risked life and limb forty years ago aren’t leading the charge against a financial system that’s now become our greatest domestic threat and a political system where the players are more interested in keeping their jobs than serving their fellow citizens.

Some people believe that hitting the barricades is a job best left to the young, and I tend to agree, but those helicopter parents I mentioned before should be setting the example in word and deed instead of being so tightly wound about their kids’ SAT scores or college GPAs. Maybe if President Obama instituted the draft to fight our two overseas wars (remember those?) that would get the Boomer ball(s) rolling again.

Or, as that Sixties chestnut goes, “Teach your children well.”