The lineal time-line equivalent of who-wore-it-better seems to be whose-generation-had-it-worst?
My grandparents’ generation was born in the 19th Century when child labor still existed and was yet to be outlawed. Lots of children meant the better the chance your family would live on while in the meantime there were plenty of children to help bring home the bacon from the factories.
By the time they would have graduated from high school, not a common thing with them, the world was plunged into a war like none other, World War I, that was not limited to just the countries near each other, but those all over the world. Because of the deaths during that war and the Flu Epidemic that came toward the end of it, social structure was completely different as old countries ceased to exist and new ones began, the traditional forms of government could no longer function as they once had, countries realigned themselves in odd ways, the generational transfer of power ended in many places with the death during the wars of the next in line, and traditional forms of government were peacefully or violently ended.
Using my father’s year of birth, 1920, makes for a nice round number to use as a reference for his generation. By the time he was 10 and his parents were happily building a family and what future they could imagine, the world had been plunged into The Great Depression so that whatever new society was constructed after the War to End All Wars collapsed. Added to this, in 1933, the Dust Bowl in the Heartland ruined lives, plunged people into greater poverty, and created the Great Migration toward the West in search of jobs while Black people in the South moved North in hopes of better conditions.
By the time my father graduated from high school, more were doing that in his generation, we entered a war that if the first one, the War to End All War, had, indeed, been that, would never have happened.
After having survived the want of the Depression, his generation faced the rationing of food and other commodities for the war effort. Those who were not old enough to fight that war, did come of age for the Korean War that came within years the Big One ending.
My generation came in at the end of one war in time for the duration of another, and, because of the resulting Cold War, while we may be shocked now that active shooter drills have become routine in schools, the 1950s kids had Duck and Cover drills that had us cowering under our desks to avoid nuclear annihilation. It was Russia Vs. The U.S. Of A.
During those years, and growing louder with time, Black citizens whose conditions were worse than the majority population began to demand equality. If White GIs could get loans and buy homes through the GI Bill after WWII, so should the Black soldiers that fought. However, with bank policies, redlining, and Jim Crow laws they could not get the same things as their White counterparts.
By the time I graduated from High school a president, his brother, and MLK had been assassinated, and many of my peers were involuntarily drafted to fight in a war in a foreign country no one had heard about before the “conflict” in order to prevent the suspected Domino Effect of Communism.
As we approached our 18th birthday, a major consideration for my peers was the possibility of being drafted or finding a way not to have to fight in an old man’s war based on reasons that really did not hold water. Turning 18 meant high school graduation for most boys but registering for the draft for every boy. We could kill in the name of the country but had no say in who was in charge.
Comparisons of the Vietnam War and the recently ended 20 Years War in the Middle East are somewhat weak when the fact that the presentday army is volunteer with enlistment being the choice of the individual knowing full well they might have to fight in that war, while during the Vietnam War, there was no choice. At 18 you got a diploma and a draft card.
As with my grandparents’ and parent’s generation we lost friends and loved ones in a war, and many of those who did not die came home maimed physically and mentally and would have to live with that for the east of their lives.
Facing death before you turned 20 was not a desired prospect.
Soon after this, AIDS broke out, and because it was assumed that only Gay men got it, the virus went unchecked because it was erasing the undesirables while, in reality, it was affecting the whole population- a fact obscured by an initial jump to bigotry which answered a political and religious fundraising thirst by connecting it only to Gays, drug addicts, and Haitians. It was originally up to Gay people to deal with it and when the reality of AIDS’s universality was discovered, the programs created by Gays in protecting themselves from the disease while the government sat back buying the God’s Punishment trope were exclusionary so that Gay people could not benefit from the very treatments and protocols they had created.
Although not exactly the same, the treatment of Blacks and Gays when it came to things like housing, loans, jobs, and medical treatment had their convergences.
Black people theoretically got equal rights in the sixties but had to deal with all the bigoted machinations of those who resented that, and Gay people, when they finally got a modicum of equality, faced those same games often from the same people and religious and political entities.
Unlike today, when Gay people can be themselves in public and attend events or enter venues where being Gay is no secret and Straight people are more welcoming, Gay people could be killed just for being Gay. The shocking isolated attacks on Gay people these days, was a bit too routine in the old ones.
By the time I entered my forties, there had been another rather odd war in Iraq which took the lives of some people I had had in class and whose future, the one I had prepared them for, was now cut short,
The Murrah building in Oklahoma City shook up the Heartland and the days watching a hawk making lazy circles in the sky came to a crashing end, and the horrors of terrorism were brought home.
The attack on the Twin Towers resulted in a thirst for war with avenging a wrong the cover for the real reason we attacked a country that really had nothing to do with the attack, and an adept application of jingoism had the volunteer army filling up to make sure a war could be fought.
Many of the people of my father’s years lived into the 21st Century and saw all that their parents had had a share in and saw what was added to that in their own lives, their children’s and, perhaps, those of their grandchildren. Did they have it worse for one moment in time or is it accumulative? Is there an age at which, though still alive, members of one generation cannot experience the realities of the world experienced by those in the right age bracket?
Or is it that each generation has things to deal with, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and this experience is added to through the life of each of them.
Perhaps no generation has it worst or best. Perhaps it depends on how you handle it.
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