Mr. Bleske, I appreciate what I believe you are trying to say, but I have reservations about both your process and your purpose in writing this piece.

We cannot deny that the baby boom generation went through the past 50 years like an elephant through a boa constrictor. This generation made unprecedented demands on our earth, our institutions, and humanity’s very worldviews. As I read, I kept thinking, “Well, he’s not wrong about that.” I am of that generation. Like others, I hasten to add that I believe I was on the right side during the struggles, but plainly we did not get ourselves back to the garden. So there’s that.

However, two things need to be said, sir. First, although you link to one other article as a resource, a quick google shows that this particular bell has been popularly rung for quite some time now. Dozens of commentators have latched on to this theme as a “new” lens with which to see the current global crisis that is still so hard to talk about. This generational blaming allows us to take a break from talking about the perennial racism, corrosive classism, and failures of late stage capitalism that continue to work together to wreck the planet. I recognize the statistics you cite; I’ve read them before.

But all you appear to have added to the conversation are sad and illustrative anecdotes about people you know who are losing… well, everything that matters. Cognition. Identity. Dignity. Health. Respect. You know — the losses that apparently have gotten on your last nerve because you believe you will be left to clean up the mess. Sure, it’s a lot of people endlessly circling the drain, which may explain the seeming exhaustion of any kind of compassion for the sick, the old, the poor. I hope that for you it’s a temporary low point, and that something will change to allow you to forgive your elders for not being dead yet.

As a side note, let’s not forget that this was a baby boom caused by the Greatest Generation who came home from a war and were just fornicating away without reliable birth control, which we didn’t get until, what, the mid-60s? The plain fact is that we were right when we whined, “I didn’t ask to be born!” And nobody was prepared for us, from the moment the first of us began to swell the suburbs.

Which brings me to my second point: where are your conclusions? What are your suggestions? Do you have any ideas at all about how to mitigate or reverse the damage that rightly see has been done? Surely it’s not enough just to affix the blame, once and for all. Have you any solutions, besides the unfortunate implication that current life spans need to be curtailed somehow?

I apologize for sounding so bitter. I am bitter, because, like many others in my cohort, I tried mightily to be on the side of the good in a world that galloped through major cultural changes at the speed of light.

Will it be the case, at the end, that the winners will take all — and then destroy it in the quest for just a little bit more money to add to their billions? Will I be longing to check out, when surrounded by hungry, angry predators or children who would just as soon set me adrift on an ice floe? And even if I DID check out, would the world still be destroyed, because we were all so busy resenting each other that none of us did a damned thing to prevent it?

That sucks.