Baby Boomers Better Beware
A geronticidal fury is building to the boiling point
Folks in the post-war generation born between 1946 and 1964 are now sixty or older. Scanning social media, it’s hard to miss the anger building against Baby Boomers. Those born after them are increasingly placing the blame for their woes on the unrelenting greed of the Baby Boomer generation. They believe that the Boomers had the sheer luck to be born when America was in its ascendency, and so they accumulated all the wealth, and now they are determined to take it all with them to the grave, not sharing a penny with the generations which came after.
[DISCLAIMER: This post about growing PERCEPTIONS of Boomers. It’s not about how I feel, it’s about the growing anger toward older Americans, deserved or not.]
The image posted on this Twitter / X thread sums up the situation.
The picture of an older man giving two middle fingers to the camera unleashed a torrent of generational rage.
And it’s not just a few random posts I’ve cherry picked from social media. It’s everywhere. Any search will bring up results like these below:
So add anger toward the Baby Boomer generation to the anger of Blacks against Whites, the poor against the rich, socialists against capitalists, Democrats against Trump Republicans, and a witch’s brew of social anger is being stirred with more and more fire building under the bubbling pot.
Our social contract is so frayed that when riots begin the withheld anger boils over.
White Baby Boomers living in single-family homes in affluent suburbs will be at the greatest risk of any demographic. The anger toward them will be come from several social vectors at the same time. People displaced from urban cores by rampant criminality will have no compunction at all against invading the homes of empty-nest Baby Boomers. Their lives will be taken in the first minutes if they are fortunate. If not, their prolonged abuse and torture will serve to amuse the new tenants. Read up on what happens to farmers in South Africa when their homes are attacked if you think I’m being hyperbolic. This is one screen capture, I could post pages and pages.
Do you think that the people who live in nice suburbs like the one shown below are ready for the hellscape and shitstorm that will ensue if and when America suffers a social breakdown, one that can result from any of the maladies now simmering in that witch’s cauldron? We could experience a financial collapse of our own creation, or a cyber attack by our enemies, or a direct kinetic attack against our exposed and undefended power grid.
Will the folks living on these leafy suburban streets be ready for armed, organized and mobile bands of desperate urban poor who are looking to relocate and upgrade their crib at the same time? In third-world countries, these homes would at least have walls around them. In our current “high trust” society, these homes can be approached from all directions, without as much as a security guard in sight. And you can take it at as given fact that there will be no official police making house calls, and your desperate calls to 911 will only get a busy signal, or a taped “please hold” message. If even that.
In my last novel, Doomsday Reef, a character tells the story of what happened in Charleston, South Carolina, after a prolonged regional power grid failure which led to a breakdown of supply chains, no food or water, and a total collapse of social cohesion. In this scenario, White Baby Boomers living in unprotected suburban neighborhoods will be the juiciest of low-hanging fruit.
The entire chapter from which the above excerpt is drawn can be read at one of my previous Substacks, Cannibalism in Carolina.
So what can Baby Boomers who live in those wonderful, paid-off suburban homes do to increase their survivability in the event of a social collapse? Just hope that you pass away before it happens, and avoid the unpleasantness?
One idea might be to invite a few of your struggling younger relatives to come back into the empty nest. Kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews. Look at them not as extra mouths to feed, but as extra guards, lookouts and shooters if TSHTF. A lesson from other social breakdowns is that loners and old couples don’t make it on their own. Folks need to gather together and “fort up.” Extra hands are also useful for foraging, scrounging, or garden work. They also give the outward perception that a house is fully manned up, and not easy pickings. The extra hands can also be used to help stand watch and protect the entire neighborhood, and not only your house.
Okay, the below photo is meant to be funny, but it also makes a serious point.
The younger folks sharing your domicile will also be grateful for the chance to stop paying rent, and maybe save up enough for their own down payment. A lot of the anger toward Boomers is based on the perception by the young that they are locked out of the housing market, and are being forced to be rent slaves, and will never be able to own a home. Turn some of that resentment into gratitude.
Sure, it may be wonderful enjoying the house all by yourselves, after 30 years of paying the monthly mortgage, but it also makes you the easiest of pickings in the event of social disorder. An older couple or single person cannot possibly defend a home in the suburbs, even if they are armed to the teeth. It just can’t be done, not against an armed mob willing to turn your home into bullet-ridden Swiss cheese, a mob who are ready to fire-bomb your home if they can’t capture it intact.
Voluntarily downsizing your personal living space in your own home by sharing it with some of your own kin now, will be preferable to having it taken from you forcibly, and in the ugliest ways imaginable. See South Africa for examples. And your younger kin who might have helped to protect your home will also be lost and adrift in the chaos and mayhem, and with no family home left to return to.
At least float the idea of them coming back to the nest in the event of a social breakdown. Offer up the idea of “the family home” as their refuge in times of peril.
I’d also suggest getting Jack Lawson’s books on surviving through “a failure of civility.” A single-family home inhabited by one or two Baby Boomers in a typical American suburb is only defensible if all the neighbors organize in advance and have a plan to defend their entire subdivision from outside attack. Lawson’s Civil Defense Manuals provide the blueprint for effective neighborhood self defense and survival through a grid-down period, when society will go completely off the rails.
For an in depth look at what complete social breakdown will look like, you can also read two of my other previous Substacks,
When The Music Stops – How America’s Cities Will Explode In Violence
If you’d like to read my full-length novels, here’s my Amazon author page link. You can get my novels from Amazon in print, Audible and Kindle formats.
Or, you can order the printed books directly from me, and I’ll sign them.
Snail mail works fine, but paypal.me/steelcutter48 is faster.
Does anyone remember stagflation? The oil embargo?
It's a myth that "boomers" made out like bandits. The economy began tanking as the oldest "boomers" were just starting to enter the job market, beginning with stagflation, which was followed by the oil embargo, as well as the move to "outsource", "offshore" and "downsize" the manufacturing base which all but eliminated good paying jobs that didn't require a college degree. (Just 26% of "boomers" went to college. That's went to college. The percentage that actually earned a degree is lower. Compare this to the 75% of young people who have enrolled in college.)
According to several sources, roughly 80% of the wealth attributed to "boomers" is owned by just 20% of that cohort, with the rest of that wealth owned by another 30%. Half of all "boomers" have no financial assets, in no small part due to the destruction of the manufacturing base.
That aforementioned 20% are the people living in those affluent suburbs. I suspect that they are also the children and grandchildren of the wealthiest members of previous generations.
Of course, the powers that should not be have been pushing the anti-"boomer" narrative since that generation began entering the job market, although the reasons for why "boomers" are to be singled out has changed over years, and it has been nothing but a psyop intended to keep people from focusing on the real culprits. Yes, some of those culprits are "boomers" and some are among the few remaining members of the "silent" or so-called "greatest" generation, but the old are now giving way to the culprits in the "Gen-X" and "Millenial" generation... the children who were born into those affluent suburban homes now owned by "boomers". Bill Gates is a "boomer" and Jeff Bezos is a borderline "boomer", but Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, Bill Ackman and Mark Zuckerberg (to name a few) are members of the younger generations. The median age in the House of Representatives is now 57. The youngest "boomers" are now 61.
It's time for all of us to reject this divide and control narrative intended to continue destroying the family structure by turning the young against the old. This destruction, by the way, began during the latter half of the 19th century when the nuclear family replaced the extended family as the ideal household. So yes, let's begin recreating those extended family, not only because it's the right thing to do for our younger relatives but also because it takes a family to create generational wealth. Ever notice how we talk about the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers or the Kennedys? Those with the most make sure to keep their families strong while selling the myth of the rugged individual to the rest of us.
And if we don't reject this narrative? Then "Gen-X" better start preparing because they will become the scapegoat once the "boomers" have all died out. Don't forget that the "boomers" were also primed to hate their parents and grandparents generations. "Never trust anyone over 30!"
I lived this 22 years ago in Newport News, VA in the aftermath of Hurricane Isabel. I lived in a 80 year old white bread neighborhood in line with 5 other 80-100 year white bread neighborhoods filled with 30-40 old families with kids and many retirees and widows and widowers. Power was out in our neighborhood for over 30 days. There were three gas stations serving a demo or 100K people that had power. Two days before fists, knives and guns came out in line at these gas stations. The third night we had to stand picket at the entrance of our cul de sac and form hasty hasty neighborhood patrols with my neighbors because the "Canadian" Utes from the bad part of town discovered the home invasion game.
This went on for over 30 days.