According to Gibney, himself a member of Gen X, traits associated with antisocial personality disorder and narcissism do seem to be more prevalent in Boomers compared to any generation before or since. And the hard data pertaining to behaviors associated with such traits, especially crime rates and substance abuse, do indeed seem to bear this thesis out rather nicely, as do the voting records of that generation. Reagan, both Bushes, Bill Clinton, and especially Trump could never have been elected without the Boomers voting for them in large numbers. These candidates all basically promised Boomers (especially white, middle class ones) the moon while asking essentially nothing of them in return, and no price was too high as long as someone else (i.e. future generations) paid for it. And all of these candidates, to one degree or another, did serious damage to our country--economically, socially, and ecologically.
Granted, "not ALL Boomers" are like that. But enough of them are to be a problem, and more so than any other generation. Sound familiar? It really should.
The real question here is WHY this generation who had so many advantages in terms of wealth and power turned out the way that they are. Gibney, predictably, blames "permissive parenting" and the fact that they were the first generation raised with television. True, as the Dr. Spock generation they (mainly white, middle-class Boomers) were raised more permissively than previous generations, and likely more so than subsequent generations in at least some ways. The mid to late 1970s could indeed be considered a time of "peak permissiveness" in terms of both parenting practices and public policy, and such trends towards permissiveness indeed began from about 1945 onward. No doubt about that.
But stating such time-series correlations does NOT actually establish causation. Another factor, overlooked by Gibney, explains Boomer (and early Gen X) traits, behaviors, and statistics far more than anything else: preschool lead poisoning from leaded gasoline and paint. Leaded gasoline begain being used in the 1930s, and after WWII, gasoline consumption (and thus lead pollution) increased dramatically until the 1973-1974 oil crisis and the phaseout of leaded gasoline beginning in 1976. Lead paint, which was banned completely in 1978, had already been phased down in decades prior, but lingers in older housing stock. Thus, the first permissively-raised generation and the first televison-raised generation and the wealthiest generation in history and the most heavily lead-poisoned generation in history are all in fact one and the same.
And unlike the specious correlations with parental permissiveness and screen time, the correlation with early lead poisoning (a known nasty neurotoxin) and various traits and behaviors that can be described as sociopathic (or at least poor impulse control) is undeniable and meets all of the Bradford-Hills criteria of causation. As researcher Rick Nevin notes, relationship between preschool lead exposure and such adverse later outcomes as major and minor crime, juvenile delinquency, unwed/early pregnancy, and stuff like that remains highly robust across studies numerous time periods, nations, cultures, and functional forms. And while white, suburban and rural, middle-class Boomers were arguably much less affected by such lead poisoning than their poorer, urban, black, and/or Latino counterparts in terms of lead poisoning, that doesn't mean that they were completely unaffected by it, since there was still plenty of lead to go around everywhere. The difference was really one of degree, not kind.
Fortunately, thanks to the phaseout of leaded gasoline and paint, newer housing stocks, and reduction of lead emissions from incinerators, lead poisoning in children today is now at the lowest level in at least a century. But there is still much work to be done. There is plenty of old housing stock with deteriorating lead paint, and there is still too much lead in the drinking water of many communities across the country. According to Nevin, replacing old windows in old housing with new, double-glazed, energy-saving windows, along with stablilizing currently deteriorating old lead paint on walls, would be "low-hanging fruit" in terms of lead abatement that would more than pay for itself in the long run. As for drinking water, replacing the older service lines would be expensive and time consuming (though still worth doing nonetheless), but in the meantime we could stop adding fluoride yesterday (which is not only neurotoxic in its own right, but potentiates the neurotoxicity of lead and increases lead corrosion and leaching from pipes) and perhaps use ozone instead of chlorine (which also leaches lead) for disinfection of the drinking water supply.
And while many of the Boomer-induced problems left for future generations are indeed real, we should also note that Gibney's fretting about the national debt and Social Security's supposedly impending insolvency is misplaced since these things are really non-problems for a Monetarily Sovereign government like our own federal government. It is in fact a Big Lie that federal taxes actually pay for federal spending and that the federal government can somehow run short on dollars. And that big, scary number that is our so-called "national debt" is not debt in the usual sense of the term but rather more like a national savings account. Author Rodger Malcolm Mitchell, himself a member of the Silent Generation, would have some choice words for authors like Gibney in that regard. But that is a topic for another discussion.
And while many of the Boomer-induced problems left for future generations are indeed real, we should also note that Gibney's fretting about the national debt and Social Security's supposedly impending insolvency is misplaced since these things are really non-problems for a Monetarily Sovereign government like our own federal government. It is in fact a Big Lie that federal taxes actually pay for federal spending and that the federal government can somehow run short on dollars. And that big, scary number that is our so-called "national debt" is not debt in the usual sense of the term but rather more like a national savings account. Author Rodger Malcolm Mitchell, himself a member of the Silent Generation, would have some choice words for authors like Gibney in that regard. But that is a topic for another discussion.
So perhaps what is really needed here, instead of vilification of an entire generation, is that crucial trait that sociopaths and narcissists lack: empathy.
