Table of Contents
Are you an angry white Baby Boomer? If you voted for Donald Trump, did you do so enthusiastically? Stop whining! Chill out! Be not afraid! We are the luckiest generation in our long history. Consider …
1. Our parents lived through a ten-year global depression, and then fought a five-year world war. Sixteen million Americans were in uniform, serving and fighting in places even today you can hardly find on a map. Four hundred thousand died. Then, after they had defeated two brutal enemies, they came home and launched the greatest period of American growth and prosperity in history, and gave it to us.
2. In 1965 forty-four percent of adults smoked. Today it’s eleven. No-smoking laws have rescued the rest of us from a haze of secondhand smoke in restaurants, hotels and airplanes. Lung cancer is in decline, but for those who do get it, survival rates are up. In fact, survival rates for most cancers are up. I should know, because I’ve had three different cancers in twelve years, and I’m still here to write about it. Fifty years ago the first one would have killed me.
3. Racism lives on, but there has been progress. When I was born, in 1957, it was possible in the deep south for a white mob to murder a black man and get away with it. They don’t do that anymore. Separate but equal was the law, in schools, rest rooms and water fountains. But they were never equal, were they? Those laws are gone, too. More progress to come, one hopes.
4. Our cars are luxurious by any past standard of opulence. My mid-priced SUV can tell Ford service technicians exactly what’s wrong. It keeps me in my lane on the highway, has a camera so I can see what's behind me, alerts me when someone is in my blind spot, and has air bags, all features that keep me safe. The seats are more comfortable than ever, and in the winter they keep me warm. And it’s not going to rust for a very long time because the paint is so good. Do you really miss your ’73 Oldsmobile?
5. And regarding auto safety, your chances of dying in a car accident have declined by two thirds since 1973. It’s 1.38 deaths per 100,000 vehicle miles today, versus 4.43 then. The largest causes of traffic fatalities? Not wearing a seatbelt, followed by drunk driving. So if you buckle up and don’t drink and drive, your chances of having a crash are lower and surviving one are higher.
6. Grocery stores stock more products than it was possible to imagine. If you wanted an apple, you could buy a Red Delicious. They were red but not all that delicious. Today your average grocery offers a half-dozen varieties, not to mention exotic produce like mangos, plantains and avocados. There was one version of Oreos, which we called, “Oreos.” The previously non-existent Mexican and Asian sections are practically aisles in themselves. Tacos and Kung Pao Beef forever!
7. Women can aspire to and achieve the highest levels of leadership in business, government, academia and science. The glass ceiling still exists, but women have many more options than their previous three: nursing, teaching, or fetching coffee for their white, male managers. In my hometown the entire city council is women. Well, that's interesting, but it's not going to make "Breaking News" on cable, is it? And that's the point.
8. The Cold War is over. Communism is as dead as Lenin. Although Russia has regressed to its past bad habits, the rest of eastern Europe, more than 100 million people, now lives in freedom and reasonable prosperity. They don’t threaten anyone, not even with tariffs.
9. The internet is a limitless source of information and utility. It makes possible in two seconds what would have taken a week in a library. I can schedule, change or cancel doctors’ appointments; read any newspaper in America or around the world; check out books from the library; review my stock portfolio, bank and credit card balances; compare and buy products, and then have them delivered to my door the next day. True, a lot of garbage can be found online, but mostly, doesn’t it make our lives better, more convenient, even richer?
10. Have you checked the weather, lately? Three-day forecasts are now more accurate than the twenty-four-hour forecasts we relied on just a couple of decades ago. And the twenty-four-hour forecasts now accurately predict the temperature, cloud cover, and probability of rain by the hour. Wind speed is a breeze, too. I like knowing those things
Next Post, Part 2: What Did We Break This Time?
