Can the generation gap explain our problems?
Among our seemingly intractable, even existential, dilemmas is that Americans no longer trust their institutions or one another. Thanks to internet algorithms and hyper-partisan television channels and radio programs, it is possible to consume information 24/7 that only confirms, rather than challenges, one’s political views or conceptions of science.
This media landscape did not exist in the 1960s, when a generation gap was at the center of the nation’s upheavals, when many baby boomers rejected the values of their parents’ generation – the generation Tom Brokaw dubbed the “Greatest Generation.”
In this episode of History As It Happens, historian Paul McBride takes us on a trip from the 1930s to the ’60s, explaining how events and movements shaped the different attitudes and outlooks of two distinct generations.
“Things changed so dramatically that we didn’t have time to digest what we were dealing with,” said Mr. McBride, professor emeritus of 20th century American history at Ithaca College.
By the time someone born in the early to mid-’20s was old enough to remember anything, the country was mired in the Great Depression, followed by a global war to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan, and then followed by the start of the Cold War and the American prosperity of the Eisenhower years.
“All three of those things cemented a very strong relationship between [an ordinary citizen] and his government. The government saved him from catastrophe,” Mr. Bride said.
Contrast that experience to someone who came of age in the early 1960s: the assassination of John Kennedy was followed by America’s descent into Vietnam, the explosions of the civil rights and women’s liberation movements that challenged entrenched systems of discrimination, the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and urban riots.
To listen to the full interview with Mr. McBride on how the generation gap continues to bedevil American society today, download this episode of History As It Happens.
