"Boomers" have immense similarities that are probably more important than ideological differences: lived through America's post-war American Dream, experienced segregation and civil rights movement, assassinations of Kennedys and MLK, Vietnam, the hippie counterculture, Watergate, the 70's, Reagan debt binge in the 80's, and so on. Look at college kids today: they barely know life pre-9/11, pre-smartphone, never knew a world without internet. Generations do have huge unifying characteristics.
The overriding cultural influence on "Boomers" was televison. I think rampant consumerism is the primary result.
The overriding influence on the "Boomer Generation" was and is their parents, members of the aptly described "Greatest Generation." All the rest is just noise, in my humble opinion.
You know Deck, we boomers mostly rebelled against our parents though we morphed into them when we had kids. The Greatest did start the Madmen phase of consumerism, expanded dirty industries without thought to sustainability and supported racism and jingoism coming out of the War. I don't blame them, like I don't blame us boomers, people have an innate drive to press for advantage. We keep thinking youth will be different, but they always get older.
I agree. It's weird, isn't it? I worked really hard to be different from my parents, as you did (and so many of us, I'm sure), yet looking back, no two people had more of an impact, a good impact, on what I am today than they did. Yes, they had negative impacts as you suggest, much of it through ignorance, but in my own case, my Democratic parents gifted me with a good life, good liberal ideals, a good education, and a fine example of how to raise my own children, who have turned out very well indeed. Ardent Bernie supporters, active supporters of the LGBT community, lovers of travel with a deep interest in the rest of the world, and now successful young adults. Yes, life is strange.
