With a casual attitude to responsibility, and an unassailable belief in their self-worth, Boomers bounce between opposing values with ease. They revolted against ‘the man’ when they were young, but were happy to join him when the price was right. Free love, non-violence, equal opportunity, no ‘sell out’ turned into fads when these principles required any kind of personal sacrifice. They rebelled against the Puritanism of their parents, then did an about turn and ended up lurching to the Right; after all, they were forced to knuckle down and make some cash if they wanted to tick off all the cars and second homes on their shopping lists.
They drank, they smoked, they shagged around and they broke the rules. Nowadays you can’t even put your rubbish out without risking a fine. They frown on single parent families, call the unemployed ‘scroungers’ and demand ever-tougher action against drink and drugs.
‘We need to mend our broken society!’ shout the Conservatives. ‘Marriage is important!’ they say, offering young families a £100 bribe to stay together. No prizes for guessing which generation’s divorce rate shot up by 700 per cent in their lifetime.
Hypocrisy is the unconscious act of self-deception, a way of rationalizing the uncomfortable facts of life which, in the case of our parents, is a complete volte-face of the principles that they define themselves by.
Sex, drugs and rock and roll – they invented all that. Not us. But they love to bash us over the head with high-minded values, flicking through the Daily Mail with one hand, loading a Bob Dylan CD with the other. ‘They professed to go with the flow,’ quips commentator Joe Queenan, ‘but it was actually the cash flow.’
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