According to Grok, the Boomer Generation were born between 1946 and 1964. Roughly 76 million people were born in the U.S. during this period.

Let’s look at this generation in a different light: they grew up drinking water from a hose. Here is a list of other “traits” from this generation:

• Playing outside until the streetlights came on — This was the common curfew. Kids left after breakfast or after school and stayed out for hours with minimal check-ins.
• Being latchkey kids — Many returned home alone after school, wore a house key on a string around their neck, and occupied themselves until parents got home from work.
• Roaming the neighborhood unsupervised — Exploring vacant lots, woods, creeks, or friends’ yards in mixed-age packs without adults tracking them.
• Walking or biking to school (and elsewhere) alone — Often starting at a young age, without helmets or adult escorts.
• Riding bikes without helmets — Helmets were rare or nonexistent for everyday riding.
• Riding in cars with few safety measures — No (or rarely used) seatbelts, kids piled in the way-back of station wagons, or sitting in the front seat; car seats were not yet standard or required.
• Entertaining themselves through unstructured play — Building forts, playing with sticks, inventing games, climbing trees, or dealing with boredom without screens or scheduled activities.
• Limited media and technology — A few TV channels (often watched as a family), Saturday morning cartoons, rotary phones with long coiled cords, no internet or cell phones, and answering the home phone or front door themselves.
• Everyday independence and responsibility — Doing chores as expected (not always for allowance), fixing minor problems themselves, and handling scraped knees or sibling disputes without constant adult intervention.
• Other everyday norms of the era — Exposure to indoor cigarette smoke, sugary cereals and soda with little restriction, metal playground equipment that got hot in the sun, and PSAs like “It’s 10 p.m. — do you know where your children are?”

Our upbringing made us self-reliant and more aware of our surroundings. We did not have much in material wealth but we understood the concept of the American Dream. So we worked hard, were frugal and did not expect the “government” to help us succeed. We played in the sun and did not have “electronics” to turn us into screen sucking vampires. We became responsible adults and wanted our children to have the same values.

But the government and the educational system had other ideas. So now our children see a dark future with no hope for success. Our Western European white culture has been vilified and our “taxes” have been used to attack us and erase our founding principles.

In other words, the government won and the villains became the last generation of Western European descent who had a chance at the American Dream. There will always be people who are successful and who are greedy.

I started from nothing and built a successful business. I am not rich in terms of people who lived in the 1960s and 1970s. The government ensured that our “wealth” was excessively taxed and our monetary wealth degraded by inflation.

My parents did not leave me anything. My father once offered me $10,000 and I turned it down. I told him I was fine and he should keep it. He then asked me for some money and I asked how much he wanted. He did not answer me but the twinkle of pride in his eyes was a moment that I will never forget.

This newest division concerning the Boomers is just a fabrication. When I started out, being white was just becoming an impediment to a career. Being smart was a death blow as I found out. Fortunately, I found out early enough to understand that building a business was my best course of action for success.

My life lessons growing up gave me valuable experience and the hope of attaining the American Dream. It is not our fault that college tuition became a trap to enslave our future generations with debt. It is not our fault that government malfeasance gave us high inflation for expensive housing and automobiles.

What wealth I have will go to my children. That is my choice, not someone else who is basing my character on the year I was born. It is also my choice to expose people who judge other people based on characteristics, success and unfounded divisions. Should boomers be vilified for reasons that are not their business? If you want an answer, look at how the comments skewed off into tangents on this article.

Stop drinking the Kool-Aid and prepare for battle because war and famine are in our future.