The Events That Mark A Generation

Every generation has an event or series of events that set up who we will become, something that happens in late childhood through our middle teens.   For my grandparents it was World War One and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic.  For my parents it would be Pearl Harbor and the subsequent World War Two.  For my millennial son it was Columbine when he was 14, followed by 9/11 when he was 16.   A year later he had to deal with the Beltway Snipers.

For me it started with the assassination of President John Kennedy when I was 10.  And yes, I was one of the millions watching when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot.  In 1967 I was terrified by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and two months later, Bobby Kennedy.  But the final blow was the Kent State Massacre in 1970 when I was 17.   The opening chords of CSNY's Ohio put me right back to where I was in 1970.

To be fair, I was already a pretty fucked up kid.  My dad left when I was 5, which created all sorts of problems in my self worth.   My mother and paternal grandmother were Republicans, back when all the southern Democrats were racists.  So my roots were conservative, but not racist.  

There was also a Cold War going on.  I lived in a town whose main employer was a nuclear weapons plant, so I grew up with secrecy and paranoia and a profound sense that none of us would live to see adulthood.  By 1969 I was already into drugs and sex and rock 'n' roll.  Watching kids get shot down by the Ohio National Guard turned me into a radical socialist.  

Then I attended Hiram College, a mere 20 miles from Kent State, where I met survivors of the shooting.  I remember drinking in a Water Street bar in Kent with Dean Kahler, the young man paralyzed after being shot in the spine.  Doug Wrentmore transferred to Hiram after he was hot in the right knee.  We all knew he was there and that he wanted to be left alone, so we did.

So in short, I was keenly aware of the shootings on that campus as well as the violence against friends I had known for years who were part of the riots at USC.  Not only did I abandon my Republican roots, but Nixon cured me of ever considering any Republican candidate or policy in the future.  I have never looked back.  

It isn't always bad stuff.  Inventions, music, comedy can have a positive effect on a generation too.  The rise of cinema, radio, television and now internet have a profound influence on society in general and on our developing children in particular.    From lessons learned from Animaniacs and Sesame Street to the wide-ranging mythologies created in Star Wars and Star Trek, the memorable comedy of Monty Python, the music that made Woodstock iconic -- all these things shape generations too.  If you take a moment to reflect on the early influences in your life you will see some unmistakable signposts.

So the question we have to ask is what does the slaughter of unarmed black men mean to the Zoomer  generation?   Anyone have a guess what the little girl who watched the murder of George Floyd will think in ten years?  Twenty years?  Fifty years?

What about all the kids ripped from their parents at the border?  Any guesses how they will view US authorities in the future?

We are creating and molding each generation by our actions --- and our inactions.