15 2017 Baby Boomer Identity Crisis.\t<\/p>\n
Baby Boomer Identity Crisis.
\nby Paul Robert Sanford<\/p>\n
They told all us youngsters when we became wan and confused
\nafter matriculation in college in the sixties
\nthat we were just suffering from and \u201cidentity crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
The implication was that we would get over the yips,
\nsettle down and become good square citizens
\nas soon as we got some life experience.<\/p>\n
By the time I graduated
\nthe Vietnam War had hit its stride;
\nassassinations claimed MLK, RFK and Malcolm.
\nthe Watts riots and so forth burned, baby, burned.<\/p>\n
Half of us dropped out in some way or another,
\nthe other half pursued success and stability.
\nSome of us are still lost,
\nthe rest of us entering a happy retirement.<\/p>\n
It turns out the world has gone through an identity crisis also.<\/p>\n
In that half century America has dominated a world
\n,full of war, famine, racism and tribalism,
\ngenocide, growing chattel slavery,
\na population boom, environmental challenges,
\nextinction of species, loss of habitat,
\nglobal warming, stagflation, inflation, recession and
\nthe rise of depression among all of us.<\/p>\n
Like some people today, we were too smart, too hip, to vote.
\nAll the choices were between the lesser of two evils.
\nThen we learned how bad the greater of two evils can be.<\/p>\n
There have been unprecedented changes in personal freedom
\nin our country, even as freedom is challenged and held hostage across the world.
\nWe strum our lyres and sing Kum Bah Yah and We Shall Overcome
\nand to the naked eye it looks like progress.
\nFor a brief window it looked like even the Supreme Court
\nwas on the side of Justice and Freedom.<\/p>\n
Decade after decade the pendulum has swung back and forth
\nbetween courage and terror, liberty and law and order,
\nJustice and Just Us.<\/p>\n
For the first time it looks like the next generation won\u2019t do as well as their parents.
\nOr a few of them will join the 1%.
\nThe election of 2016 shocked us back half a century.
\nI don\u2019t know if we will recover in time for me to see it.<\/p>\n
Identity Crisis? It\u2019s personal, it\u2019s national, it\u2019s global, maybe it\u2019s universal
\nas we discover new and glittering ideas about cosmology.<\/p>\n
It looks like we need to take to the streets and the ballot box again
\nand take back our identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
15 2017 Baby Boomer Identity Crisis. Baby Boomer Identity Crisis. by Paul Robert Sanford They told all us youngsters when we became wan and confused after matriculation in college in the sixties that we were just suffering from and \u201cidentity crisis.\u201d The implication was that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":736,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/736"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40460,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40454\/revisions\/40460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}