People call Boomers a generation of sociopaths, but I feel like the Missionary Generation has even more sociopaths in them.

Calling Boomers "a generation of sociopaths" is lazy internet slander, but if we're handing out that label, the Missionary Generation (born ~1860–1882) deserves the crown.

Boomers get flak for being selfish, materialistic, culturally destructive, and leaving younger generations with debt, housing crises, and a gutted middle class. Fair enough, they did a lot of that. But at least Boomers had visible empathy as a generation:

They wept over Vietnam body counts (even if many supported the war at first)

They marched for civil rights (even if some backslid later)

They cried at Live Aid and felt bad about starving kids in Ethiopia

They romanticized the 1960s as a moral awakening (even if it was mostly sex, drugs, and rock n roll)

They still get misty eyed about the assassinations of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, and Harvey Milk and turned them into martyrs.

You can hate Boomers for a lot, but you can’t deny they had emotional soft spots: Vietnam, civil rights, environmental panic, anti nuclear fears. They cared about something, even if it was inconsistent or self serving.

Now look at the Missionaries. These people were in power from the 1890s through the 1940s and they were stone-cold about human cost when it served their vision:

They led WWI (“war to end all wars”), sent millions to die in trenches, and then helped write the Versailles Treaty that guaranteed WWII

They oversaw the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo (tens of thousands of civilians burned alive in a single night), then approved of the dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki while knowing Japan was already trying to surrender

They allied with Stalin, knowing full well about the Holodomor famine and purges, and handed him half of Europe at Yalta.

They normalized total war doctrine: civilians are legitimate targets if the cause is "just".

They watched their countries's own empires and traditions decline in the name of "progress" and "self-determination."

They framed every horror as necessary sacrifice for democracy, freedom, and the triumph of good over evil. They were the original “ends justify the means” generation that were cold, calculating, convinced their moral vision was so pure that any body count was justified.

Boomers at least had moments of doubt, protest, and cultural self criticism (Vietnam protests, civil rights, environmental movement).

The Missionary Generation doubled down, wrote the history books to make themselves heroes, and told their kids (the GIs and Silents) that everything they did was righteous.

So if we’re throwing around “sociopath generation,” the Missionaries take the trophy.

They weren’t just selfish.

They were righteous sociopaths: people who could watch millions die and sleep soundly because they believed God/History/Progress was on their side.

Boomers were messy, hypocritical, and self absorbed. Missionaries were efficient, convinced, and merciless.