Polipricks

I'm a Boomer.
I used to be proud to say that.
I was raised in a generation that created a social attitude and atmosphere that was not centered on a war effort like our parents.
It was actually an anti-war effort.
A new society mind-set.
A multitude of ideas garnered from past poets and social commentators to gel into a group-think that put Love and Peace and Caring for one another at the center of everything.
At least that's how it felt to a youthful,rose-coloured glasses me.
This generation brought about and set into motion a miraculous outpouring of inventiveness and creativity in art and music and social interaction that promised that Age of Aquarius,that Utopia,that Promised Land that America could be.
I could not wait to see what happened when we came of age in the political arena.
The kids on the streets and in the courtrooms in Chicago and Ann Arbor and anywhere and everywhere were politicos.They were seeking change and bringing it about.
Maybe they didn't raise the pentagon,the bastion of warmongering, off of the ground but they brought about public awareness and eventually ended a war that never should have happened.
I foresaw great things when these people would move into the seats of power.Bringing change from the House and Senate floors.
What a great day it would be when one of us became President of the United States of Amerika!!!
It happened.
It wasn't Earth shattering.
There didn't seem to be much change.
It was politics like usual.
Even a guy who had housed with the Weather Underground kow-towed to the banking industry.
We were not seeing the changes in Society that happened in the Sixties.
By the Eighties we were more concerned with ourselves than the good of us all.
Yippies became Yuppies and the all-mighty dollar was as much of an aspiration as it had been post-war.
There was talk and action but not to the extent that I had envisioned.
Then came the bullies.
That's all I can call them.
The string of political leaders in this country since the new millenium have been nothing but macho men with their public image at the center of their political positions.
It seems to be they are more invested in the yippee-ki-yay of the Old West than any New Age communal love,peace and suppose-they-gave-a-war-and-nobody-came mindset I had hoped to see in our leaders.
Who can police the World and kill the bad guys and Make America great again kind of thinking seems to be the norm.
When was America great I ask.
When we pushed people off their lands and took what we wanted?
When we have been forever at war,with each other,with anyone we don't see as thinking like we do,when we promote the ideas and policies onto others that we think they should have?
This brings me to my point.
That being the last elections of presidents since 2016 when Americans,a large majority of them being my beloved Boomers,seemed to think that an aging,failed businessman with only his public image and need for power in some way had the good of the common man at heart and should be the face and leader of what we like to call the Free World.
He brought the divisions and hateful thinking of the common man out into full view.Suddenly it was okay to be a bully and an asshole and have no regard as to what one said or thought or did and how it would reflect on and affect our fellow man.
Up popped another old boomer with his hands clenched,all ready for fisticuffs on the campaign trail and debating floors.The self-appointed hero who would bring down the bully and make everything all better.
Not the shining examples of the peace and love generation I imagined.
There is good out there.
There are people with caring and the good of humankind still in the world and in the political climate.
I say it is time these old farts forget their agendas and move aside and let a new generation try to do better than we did.