Word: boomeritis
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Were you there, back in the beginning? Were you one of the 76 million children born in the most fertile years in American history? If you weren't, you're probably thinking that you really can't take any more boomer solipsism. You've already suffered through a lifetime of references to Woodstock and the Beach Boys and Vietnam. You've gritted your teeth as you endured the preening, self-congratulatory smugness that leads Ken Dychtwald, a gerontologist who has lately made his living warning about the coming boomer bust, to say, "Boomers feel superior to the younger generations...
Need more? There are no movies made for people your age, the music on the radio is dreadful, television programmers behave as if you don't exist. In an astonishing merger of boomer aging with boomer self-involvement, Matsushita Electric has built a prototype smart toilet with built-in microsensors that can run an automatic, daily chemical analysis of the user's urine. Stock-market analysts are growing bullish on companies that build nursing homes or manufacture laxatives...
...Memorial Day and its reminders of things military. And I have come to the conclusion that it's time to direct the old baby boom magic toward the problems of the armed services. Of course, the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines have changed a great deal already under boomer influence - women, gays. The trouble is that the military, by the nature of its work and code (duty, honor, country, sacrifice) is not exactly in the boomer spirit of things. Vietnam long ago produced a profound split in the generation - the Elite Draft Dodgers v. the Suckers Who Went...
...that, I think. Some have protested that the armed forces are not supposed to be a social experiment. I say, let's make it a real experiment. Here's how: Enlist the baby boomers now. Replace today's armed forces, in which the young predominate, with service people over the age of 50. To get the ball rolling, it might be a good idea for Bill Clinton, who is at liberty as of late January 2001, to be the first boomer recruit in the new Army...
...benefits of the plan are clear: Fitness: The military will rejuvenate the middle-aged boomers, functioning as an incomparable diet-and-exercise program. Slim down, shape up. Sexual behavior: If all the service people - women as well as men - are in their 50s, the incidence of sexual harassment will decline almost to zero. So will the incidence of pregnancies. Let older, more mature hormones exert their civilizing influence. (The commanding officer may want to have a word with Private Clinton on this matter). Boomer psyche: An all-middle-aged army would repair at last the moral split in the generation...