One group of boomers went to Vietnam. The other groups went to college and received deferments, which were their ticket out of Vietnam. Then there were the boomers who claimed they went to college, and the boomers who paid their way out of going to Vietnam. The second two groups are close together.
I was three weeks late to this split. Nixon canceled the draft at the end of my senior year of high school, but we still got our taste of the divide. In 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously voted that it was constitutional to break up neighborhood public schools by forced school busing. Public schools bused black kids to white kids’ schools, and white kids were bused to black kids’ schools. Last but not least, the late ’60s brought the public working unions, including teachers, which grew into 3 million public union workers through the ‘70s.
By 1973, my senior year of high school, the teachers started treating us like cattle. Imagine the categories. I was a poor white jock with good grades and a high IQ. They would need to destroy my academic standing, and walah, I get to go to Vietnam. The war stopped, and so did my education, so I became a carpenter for 55 years. I might be a MAGA supporter. The government did everything it could to keep me poor. I produced revenue, and the government taxed me on everything I needed to do my job. They regulated everything I did at work to make it harder for me to compete against a corporation with a building full of lawyers. Many of the deferred college students went to work for the monster that did this to us.
Some of us got off on how cool the song was. Some of us listened to the lyrics. We were still a problem, and we didn’t go away. So in 2008, the government, the banks, and Wall Street destroyed the mortgage market and got bailed out by Bush and Obama. Let us not forget 9/11 encouraged our poor smart jocks to go back to killing and dying in the Middle East. 9/11 was the new draft. They used patriotism against us for who knows how many times and years, and lives lost.
Everything that screwed up the boomers, are the very thing they are bringing to our door. No more. It stops here.
All so true. I hit 71 in January and know exactly what you are talking about.