Wrong Side of History
Since the disastrous summer of 2020, the United States has undergone a surge in murders seen nowhere else in the world. During that unhappy time, homicides in the country increased by 30%, leading to thousands of extra deaths in cities already plagued by violence.
The cause, despite some noble attempts by journalists to blame lockdown, was the death of George Floyd and the protests that followed. During that strange summer the world’s greatest power was laid low by demonstrations, violence, and even the creation of a bizarre Münster rebellion-style state in Seattle.
What was odd to many of those watching under house arrest, while huge crowds gathered with the support of medical experts, was that these destructive protests were carried out with the blessing of almost every institution in the United States, save the President and the police. Perhaps more significantly, they came with a great deal of support from white Americans, especially the well-educated and wealthy – and this despite the BLM movement having far less of a legitimate gripe than the far less popular activists of the 1960s. This change of mood in part can be explained by how the country now remembers its recent history.
One of the few upsides to that miserable year was reading Helen Andrews’ Boomers, published at the very start of 2021 and charting the generation who lived through the sixties in their youth, and who still control the country’s economy and politics.
Andrews’ book, like Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians of which it is a conscious echo, recalls a generation through a series of biographies. Each of the six portraits says something about that exceptionally lucky cohort, and each is condemned in their way for the changes they brought to American society
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