Conservative White Boomer Notes
A narrative synthesis of field notes
The following narrative synthesis is based partially on immersed ethnographic and autoethnographic data collection and cultural work in Rural American Cultures (RAC) from 11.9.2016 to 9.1.2019. Case study data synthesis and recommendations will be publicly available at The Relational Democracy Project. Analysis will also be a part of the manuscript, The Human Basis of Democracy, in progress. A partial list of references can be found here.
These are adults who had to grow up fast, who had to work their whole lives, sacrificing relationships on the altar of professional “duties,” driven by the idea that something better was coming if they were “good” and did what they were told: “Dot those i’s and cross those t’s. Don’t talk back. Defer to authority. Be a good worker bee.” They enforced these norms by excluding or punishing those who thought differently, who moved through the world with ideas of their own. Who didn’t appreciate all that boomers had done for them and the world.
They worked, mindlessly, detached from their bodies and everything present. Dreams of retiring and doing nothing filled their heads and removed them from the embodied daily grind, along with any obligation to make things better for those coming up behind them. They didn’t like change, and they occupied positions for decades, locking out anyone who might have taken a turn. It was a badge of honor to stay in one place: having “made it,” white boomers held on to it.
Many became isolated in work or after leaving that world behind. They ate and drank and spent to feel better. And learned Facebook. The disconnect from their bodies makes them the most obese and least healthy generation of white humans.
Boomers believed that their children owed them a debt for all they had done on their behalf, and the only currency they’d accept was time. And attention, but just time, even if filled with distractions, would often soothe the deep pain of being forgotten, tossed aside for screens and schedules and speed, at least for a little while. Children weren’t grateful: they never paid their debt sufficiently, so now boomers punish them by making them pay in other ways.
Capitalists made a market of them: Viagra, diapers, investing in the whole “second chapter” thing — with all that time and disposable income, it was like discovering the “gay market” in the 90s. AMAC became a primary source for Facebook post ideas and rocket fuel for anonymously trolling younger people online. Whether a big bug or a big fish in a little pond, boomers believe they are entitled to a legacy. It’s a product sold to them by capitalists who are building legacies of their own: silos of hoarded power creating scarcity conditions for the rest.
Their children made an obligation of them: ignoring their fear and alarm while the world changed around them and everything whizzed by, triggering comparisons, their competitiveness, and a desperate need to control. Their children were uninterested in their parents’ struggle to get back on their feet and out of the way of oncoming traffic when they were knocked down, knees skinned and red-faced. Determined, they picked up their children’s tools when they weren’t looking, coopted them, weaponized their use, and flipped the world upside down. For fun, because breaking things is a gas when you’ve been a good boy or girl all your life.
Authoritarians made a weapon of them: boomers’ combined power enabled those who stole a state to steal and hoard even more power from the people. Authoritarians pointed the boomer-missile directly at the heart of global humane governance and the health of the relations among us as a species. The incendiary force of hate has been catastrophic for the human species, but it has bloated boomer bottom lines.
These are adults who have never done the work to understand their own roles in the world, who believe that that labor is beneath them. Self-reflection is women’s work, soft work; it is ultimately inconsequential. There is no paycheck in it, so why bother. Inertia and stagnation of mind and body feed the need to self-protect, to avert eyes, to smile always, and to see “the positive” side of things while standing on the bodies of those they choose not to acknowledge.
Boomers solve problems from the “top” where elite white male humans live in abstractions disconnected from any experience with actual conditions for the humans on the “bottom” they ostensibly try to “help,” “fix,” or “save.” They are interested in results on paper, bottom lines, status, and legacies: considering whether or not the capitalist structures, processes, and spaces safely fit and protect the humans embedded in them is “social” work — soft science — that they need not consider.
Boomers sit in one place, on top of their pile of power, choosing to believe that they know all they will ever need to know. “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Learning is for suckers.” Warring endlessly in their one-dimensional adversarial frames, these humans show the scars — the massive gaps in knowledge — of forgetting how to learn. Hollow and blind, they force their uninformed delusions on those with less power, who are dragged behind by their need for boomer resources to live.
Consequently, these are adults who can’t see how what they do impacts others, can’t feel themselves as colonizing white human beings in the world — they just aren’t interested. The lack of curiosity about their own personhood is reflected in toxic practices they spread like a virus: a lack of curiosity about others, a rejection of difference, an adherence to the past, an inability to be present, and a deeply selfish future where their use of a second lifetime’s worth of resources leaves those coming after in scarcity conditions.
Not knowing themselves, they fail to understand others. Instead, they mindlessly project what they think they know (or simply choose to believe) — all the stereotypes, the names, the ugly assumptions, the misinformation — onto those who are forced to live in and adapt to those projections. The projections freeze those with less power in invisibility, forcing them into inhumane adaptive postures in an effort to be seen past the projections.
The projections become actuality when those with less power are unable to resist the force of the hailing: when the very basic human need to be seen and acknowledged overwhelms defenses against toxic reflections. For some, the pressure is too much and they succumb to the lethal boomer projections, internalizing the distorted mirrors, forever damaging who they are in the world.
Some adapt, blowing past the projections to disrupt. Or they return the projections with some of their own, mutually dissolving the relation and any chance at understanding one another. Some learn to dance and sidestep the projections. Some stand up under the debilitating force and shine brightly enough that the boomer projections pale in comparison.
In each case, power — the ability to generate and maintain forward momentum — is stolen from younger humans when their energy and creativity are drained to adapt to the boomers.
Cathy B. Glenn, Ph.D. is an independent critical researcher, creative, and cultural worker whose areas of expertise are power, culture, and change. Formerly Private Principal Investigator for The Center for U.S. Rural Cultures Studies, she is now Educational Content Director and Developer for The Relational Democracy Project. She spent 5 years functionally outside capitalist demands, and it changed her fundamentally as a human being.
Feel free to use this content, with attribution. It is a work in progress.
Cathy B. Glenn, Ph.D. is an independent critical researcher, creative, and cultural worker whose areas of expertise are power, culture, and change. Formerly Private Principal Investigator for The Center for U.S. Rural Cultures Studies, she is now Educational Content Director and Developer for The Relational Democracy Project. She spent 5 years functionally outside capitalist demands, and it changed her fundamentally as a human being.
