What American Heroism Teaches Us About Generations and Politics

• In Event: Generational Perspectives on American Politics: Applications and Methods

Abstract

President Barack Obama, while touring the MacDill Air Force Base in 2014 hailed the “9/11 Generation of heroes” who responded to the September 11 attacks, killed Osama bin Laden, disrupted “the core al Qaeda leadership,” and helped Afghani citizens in “reclaiming their communities” (Nakamura 2014). The president’s remarks combined an enduring political trope (American heroism) with a generational emphasis, a move that connected twenty-first century soldiers with their predecessors, while also marking a new period of turmoil and civic challenges. President Obama’s pairing of generational language and heroism is not uncommon in American political rhetoric. In his First Inaugural address, for example, President Ronald Reagan linked the military veterans of the American Revolution with the more freighted legacies of Korean and Vietnam soldiers (Peabody and Jenkins, 2017, 59).
But how much of this generation talk about heroism reflects the particular experiences and perspectives of the American public? This chapter extends and challenges existing generational research by evaluating and accounting for the divergence, overlap, and likely sources of the attitudes of four age cohorts: Silents, Boomers, Xers, and Millennials. More specifically, we explore whether the so-called “Greatest Generation,” associated with the veterans of World War II, is an important dividing point—serving as a potent heroism metric for the Silents and Boomers, and less meaningful reference for the younger Xers and Millennials. We are also interested in whether and how different group attitudes about politics and the media shape conceptions of heroism. These issues are important for both understanding the role of generations in American politics, but also for better appreciating the political significance of heroism in a hyper-partisan and distrustful age. We explore these topics with diverse measures and analysis, drawing on focus groups, survey research, and content analyses of political speeches, news articles, and social media.

Authors

• Bruce Peabody, Fairleigh Dickinson University

• Krista E. Jenkins, Fairleigh Dickinson University