Some of the most, shall we say, enthusiastic and frankly, most tiring debates you’ll see online are about a concept known as the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). The GOAT is the notion that there must be one athlete that undeniably stands at the top of their sport as the best of all time. Having lived in various cultures, I get the impression that the GOAT is primarily an American thing. There were always debates about athletes in the past, but they were usually viewed as matters of opinion and a test of one’s debating skills. That’s not the case anymore; it’s a matter of war, keyboard the keyboard combat. The ability to differentiate between favorite and superior has become very murky in these conversations/debates. The most heated of these conversations take place between fans and admirers of Michael Jordan and LeBron James.
People engaged in these debates often make generational choices. Perspectives are primarily formed by what you have seen in real-time; if that is true, wouldn’t it stand to reason that an individual that has seen several generations of athletes would be in an excellent position to assess the merits of intergenerational athletes? Just saying. There is also an ongoing historical and cultural debate about which American generation is the GOAT of generations. It may not be as transparent as the sports debate, but it exists. Most historians identify at least six distinct generations. They are:
The GI or the Greatest Generation – (before 1928)
The Silent Generation – (1928-1945)
The Baby Boomer Generation – (1946-1965)
Generation X – (1965-1980)
Millennial Generation – (1981-1996)
Generation Z – (1997-2012)
Let me clarify that it is not my intention to elevate or devalue any generation at the expense of another. It is far too easy to be biased towards the generation you represent, mind being baby boomers. Each generation has had daunting challenges that they must confront and conquer. We would hope that each previous generation has addressed some of the significant issues of the day before passing it on to the next generation. It is each new generation’s responsibility to address what the previous generation fucked up or neglected. It is critical not to adopt the “A woe is me” mindset because that is a barrier to generational change. Another major roadblock for each generation is that the political leadership during young adulthood typically has a one or two-generation lag time. The priorities and the perspectives of younger generations will often be opposed to that of the current political leaders. That may be an excellent reason to consider mandatory retirement ages for politicians for the sake of progress.
The GI Generation, or the Greatest Generation dubbed in 1988 by Tom Brokaw, is respected and praised for its resilience and perseverance through adversity. They were a generation that suffered but prevailed through the deadly 1918 Flu Pandemic (misnamed the Spanish Flu) pandemic, the Great Depression, and most memorable their participation in the war effort to defeat fascism and totalitarianism in World War II. More than 16 million Americans served in World War II. There is an inference that most service members were volunteers, driven by their patriotic duty, but 61 percent of servicemembers were draftees. Fueled by the war effort and necessity, a second industrial revolution took place, and many White women became part of the workforce. While acknowledging that we should not glorify wars, World War II has become known as the good war, the righteous war, the patriotic war. I’d call it the Necessary War. The glorification of this war has only grown as time has passed, in part because we have engaged in subsequent wars that people viewed as dubious, corrupt, or mismanaged.
Many historians and commentators define various characteristics of each generation. It is a difficult task to identify the general characteristics of tens of millions of people without overgeneralizing. Sometimes the passage of time will also create myths or legends about a particular generation, but some things are indisputable. I believe that two of those things about the Greatest Generation and, to a large degree, the Silent Generation were the resilience and persistence they showed in overcoming the challenges they faced during this period. They had to fend off the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. They were primarily driven by their survival instincts but also a measurable amount of patriotism and unity.
The 1918 Flu killed approximately 675,000 Americans. This number is eerily close to the number of Americans that have died because of the current COVID-19 pandemic. The mortality distribution was different, though. It was much higher in people younger than five, 20-40, and significantly impacted healthy people. At the time, all they had were masks and social distancing measures. We have vaccines and can’t get our act together.
The Great Depression left more than 25 percent of Americans unemployed, and starvation was a constant threat to tens of millions of Americans. Millions of acres of farmland were destroyed in the Midwest by what is known as The Dust Bowl. The Depression shuttered factories, and Gross Domestic Product shrank by 30 percent. Crime and homelessness exploded. The worst of this economic nightmare lasted approximately four years, but total recovery did not happen until 1939. But they endured.
World War II was probably the most unifying event in the history of the United States. It was also the primary reason for the recovery of the United States economy. Over 9 million American men and women were contributors to the war effort. Over 400,000 servicemembers lost their lives during the war, and approximately 600,000 were injured. At the height of the war, women comprised 36 percent of the workforce, a 50 percent increase from pre-war participation. The Great Generation showed excellent judgment by electing Franklin D. Roosevelt as the 32nd President of the United States. With programs like the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Social Security, and new labor laws, the New Deal transformed the role of government regarding its duty to American citizens and balance of economic power. Can we all agree that these were some tough SOBs?
These commendable achievements deserve praise and recognition, but we should not just look at a generation through a prism glorifying their accomplishments. It is a disservice to history and our democracy. As we fought to promote democracy abroad, the Greatest Generation perpetuated and benefited from systemic and cultural racism during this time. The most popular movie during their adolescence and young adulthood was Birth of A Nation, for real. During this period, 1.2 million Black soldiers were treated like sub-humans during their service and denied the same respect, access to benefits, and recognition as white soldiers afterward. My father was one of those servicemembers. Black soldiers were not participants in the programs that virtually created a strong and vibrant middle class.
It was also the generation that interned approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War Two. Not so well known is the fact that Canada, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina participated in this atrocity. Attorney General Francis Biddle pleaded with President Roosevelt not to accept these measures but did not prevail. However, earlier policy positions cannot always predict future policy positions. The same Attorney General Biddle that opposed the internment of Japanese Americans advocated for not granting refugee status to tens of thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution from the Nazi regime.
We rarely mention atrocities like these in discussions about this generation. Our nation owes a great deal to the accomplishments and efforts of the Greatest Generation but what has happened is the mythology about this generation has been so seared in our brains that we view subsequent generations as inferior. Not true. It is one of our shortcomings as a nation. We feel our past must be sanitized or play like a Disney production to be worthy of praise. In closing, I’ll use sports speak for a moment. If the Greatest Generation were a baseball team, we would have to say they played better on the road than they did at home, but they were a very successful team.
In the spirit of transparency, my favorite basketball players of all time are Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Michael Jordan, and Doctor J. Let the debates begin
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