Well yes, there are outliers. My grandma was one of them. She participated in countless protests throughout her life, starting with the civil rights movements in the 60’s, and never stopped. She was part of the group that stopped the keystone pipeline from stealing people’s land in Texas. She was an amazing woman, may she RIP.
My point is, there wasn’t enough like her among boomers. There were, of course, plenty of boomers that didn’t have it easy. I too was raised in poverty and have known boomers who struggled. But, by and far, the boomers believed in the “American dream”, and even the ones who were struggling believed things could turn around for them eventually. The majority of them bought into or allowed reaganomics, propaganda, and blatant emperialism to thrive under their watch.
The difference I’m seeing in people below the age of 40 is that we talk politics openly, and we know who the bad guys are (the billionaires and their lackeys). We know that the billionaire’s, and their corporations, have been extracting our wealth for decades, that healthcare and higher education are scams, that we can’t trust anything the establishment media says. Even the younger right wing people know this stuff, the’ve just bought into the propaganda channels on TikTok and YouTube. But, I think the demographics have truly shifted in that the amount of people buying into the propaganda is no longer the majority. Young people actually are waking up, which is why we’re seeing all of these truth-to-power movements like BLM, quiet quitting, and “cancel culture”. These movements are growing despite major resistance from the establishment. Mostly because, those of us below 40 feel the effects of the status quo the hardest. They’ve extracted so much from us that we have nothing left to lose. We just need the older generations to fucking listen for a change, and stop fighting us at the polls every time. And we need young people to realize they can work around their work schedules with early voting. I’ve spent much of my adult life working 60 to 80 hour work weeks and I’ve voted in every federal and local election of the past decade. There’s really no excuse to not properly educate yourself on current politics and vote. Congress.gov and cspan are great resources for unfiltered information. Use them!
Sorry for the rant, OP, that last bit wasn’t directed at you. xD
I agree that we shouldn’t let the oligarchs divide us, and that there are boomers that haven’t been voting towards oligarchy for the past 60 years. But, at the same time, I have a hard time giving any boomers a pass because I think they didn’t fight hard enough. The vast majority of them stuck their heads in the sand and stayed there for most of their relatively comfortable lives. They let their government slide further and further towards oligarchy and didn’t talk about it because talking politics was considered uncouth… Or because they’re religious and “this earth isn’t our eternal home anyways”, or some other hand-wavy bullshit. It’s very hard for me to not feel betrayed by their collective ignorance and ineptitude.
Bernie Sanders (AFAIK) has done two 12 hour sessions of this in the past week or so. It feels surreal to watch an American politician at his age show such an impressive feat of stamina and determination to fight for the American people. I’m eternally grateful for that man and his lifelong efforts in working for the interests of the working class.
Why? This is the kind of “reporting” we always see after the US bombs people.
It says the “bad people” are “allegedly” doing something we think might be scary. It aims to plant seeds in our minds that the houthi’s are the new terrorist group of the year and our tax dollars need to go towards bombing them out of existence. Personally, I’m tired of the working class funding a war machine, that only serves imperialist interests, while we’re left trying to live off of scraps.
Right. The US does 1000x more of this kind of stuff, but we’re supposed to read this propaganda piece like “OoOOoh these brown people 10k miles away might be doing something scary! Better support our gov indiscriminately bombing them!”
Nice try propagandists. We are not our parents and grandparents.
Why do you believe giving the extractors/tyrants free reign will lead to real change? What if it follows the same trend of the last 50 years of things just getting worse and worse, while a large chunk of our populace implicitly accepts the normalization of it?
As a person currently living in extreme poverty, I can’t afford to fight in a revolution. I don’t have a vehicle I would feel comfortable driving long distances, I have zero food security, and I rely on consistent access to medications I need to stay alive. I suspect these are realities people that want some sort of revolution are ignoring. A lot of people, possibly myself included, could die from secondary effects if we go that route. Personally, I would like to avoid a full on revolution as much as possible.
This happened to an old co-worker of mine. His wife was deported after they had been married for awhile and had a kid. It took them something like 6 or 7 years, and tens of thousands of dollars, to get her back to the US, and she almost died in the process. The cartel found out her husband was American and mugged her on her walk home from work. They stabbed her in the neck, barely missing her carotid artery. Their story is crazy af, and still breaks my heart for them, when I think about. Dude, lost out on most of his first daughter’s early childhood and almost lost it all because the US thinks it’s necessary to punish people that were brought here as children. So stupid.
Thankfully, they’re all in the US now and, last I heard, they had another kid and are doing great. :)
Depends on your needs and typical traffic you have to deal with. In Texas, I have to deal with an endless horde of bullies in duallies and SUV Karen’s. It’s nice to have some passing power in certain situations… If I lived somewhere more rural, or with generally more kind people in traffic, I’d be fine with less.
What I heard her say at the DNC was; “We need Israel, we’re in a huge bind with that, but we’re absolutely not ok with what is happening in Palestine and we’re working to stop it”.
A claim was made. I asked for evidence supporting that claim. I don’t see how the question is in bad faith.
None of that is evidence of her supporting genocide. “You’re wrong and everyone thinks so” is kindergarten level “evidence”.
People need to recognize that this “war” (aka genocide of unarmed civilians) is happening between two different countries. As much as the US gov likes to think so, it is not the world’s daddy. It doesn’t have the power to come into any situation across the globe and immediately put a stop to it. Does the US hold a massive amount of political influence? Yes. But they still have to USE that influence to get things done, and weigh the impact using that influence could have on their military readiness for the region (which is important to maintain, now that it’s there, unfortunately). They could absolutely stop funding Israel’s military stock. Do you think that would immediately stop the genocide? I think it could cost the US an ally, which would remove ANY influence they have over them. This is a snippet of geo-politics that should highlight the necessity to handle complex problems with thoughtful, measured diplomacy. Personally, I don’t want a world in which the US can “lay down the law” wherever, however, and whenever they want. Even when it’s for the right reasons. Imperialism got the US into this mess. I’m not convinced more imperialism will solve it.
If geo-politics weren’t what they currently are, I would love for the US to end it’s relationship with Israel and immediately deploy troops to stop them. If domestic politics weren’t what they currently are, I would love to not vote for people I don’t agree with, on most issues, because I don’t get candidates that are progressive enough for me (or the many problems in the US ). But, as a gay man, I have to recognize the reality of my situation, and the domestic threats to my family, that are on the horizon, because people like you threw us (and all minorities/ immigrants) under the bus to make some point about your idealogies. Petulant children, the lot of you.
No, one doesn’t have to entertain any such notion. And, one speaking like a monk doesn’t make one sound mysterious or intelligent…
What you’re essentially saying is, we should let something terrible continue to happen, causing many real people (often children) to actually die, because some people are paranoid about something that isn’t happening… In reality, government’s need they’re civilians. Especially in late-stage capitalist societies were civilians act as value generators or cannon fodder for the ruling class. The more people they have to feed into their profit machines, the better.
There are many counter arguments to the sentiment you shared that show how silly your stance is. I won’t waste my time writing all of them because I think you’re too steeped in your own soup to consider anything that counters what you already believe.