That isn’t the logic I’m using though. You’re refuting an argument I’m not making.
The majority of the boomer voting bloc elected these politicians and supported the policies of the rich. Their entire adult lives the majority of their voting bloc time and again supported terrible regressive policies.
That isn’t true of millennials.
To the extent we can look at a generation’s consistent and prevailing political activity, we can fault the boomers.
Sam Altman wanting to be a billionaire doesn’t excuse them.
That logic is called “collective punishment” or collective blame, and it’s you blaming all boomers for what a subset of them actually did.
If all millenials turned up to vote, or even just the majority, we wouldn’t have Trump in office, therefore millenials are to be blamed as a whole for him being elected.
Don’t feel like you deserve to be blamed for that? Great. Neither do boomers.
And that’s on top of the fact that you’re ignoring multiple factors:
boomers started out farther left and then drifted farther right as they aged, same effect is true for millenials, we haven’t seen how far right this generation will go yet. And on a percentage basis, they don’t even skew that differently, they just have always had the tyranny of the plurality available to them since they’re the biggest generation, so when their generation shift right, everything did, an effect not true for millenials or gen z.
millenials and boomers were raised in different environments, with different pressures and values, hell boomers are largely the result of parents that just went through two world wars. That alone will have generational effects on families.
Even just in terms of information, would you be going to the library, reading books, and paying for newspaper subscriptions to replace the internet, or would you be out playing and hanging out with friends?
Without the Internet and your parents raising you, would you have fallen to Fox news or Sky news or The Telegraph, just like them?
If you were born in boomer times you would not be the person you are right now, and it’s wild to blame all of them when half of them were literally deliberately manipulated by corporations, in a time with little awareness that that could be happening.
Blaming the Boomers overall accomplishes nothing. It is at best too broad a category to actually learn anything from or make any meaningful change.
The rich upper class however, has continuously fucked over Boomers, GenX, Millenials, and now Gen Z. They are the actual subset of people to blame, because a) they have the power to change the systems we live in, and b) they are by and large (though still not universally) the ones who have chosen to keep perpetuating the system.
I suppose to some extent I’m blaming the collective, and to some extent I’m saying “boomers” instead of “the majority of boomers that voted to support conservative politicians since 1980” to save some time.
This is sort of how discussion works. You’re also doing this. You’re saying rich people instead of “politically active rich people supplying money to XYZ, while ignoring those born into money and disconnected or lottery winners, or whatever other issue with syntax I can dig up. I’m just interpreting your language in good faith and more generously.
To your point, I do blame non-voters for electing Trump.
At some point “they’re a product of their time” stops being exculpatory. That logic can forgive just about anything when taken too far. For me boomers don’t get let off the hook. They’re happy to live in the GOPs alternate reality rather than face the reality of what they’ve done. The generation needs to be regarded with what their political activity produced and continues to produce, which is the entrenchment of the policies of the rich.
“the majority of boomers that voted to support conservative politicians since 1980”
This is inaccurate again.
Boomers is a generation of people, not Americans. The majority of boomer aged people around the world did not vote for conservative politicians in the way you’re describing.
the majority of American boomers didn’t even vote for them. Are you sure that Republicans have held more offices, for longer, then Democrats? Are you sure it’s not just that they’ve been more effective at accomplishing their goals? Even if that is the case, given voter turnout rates, it’s not the majority of that generation, just of who turned out to vote.
This is sort of how discussion works. You’re also doing this. You’re saying rich people instead of “politically active rich people supplying money to XYZ, while ignoring those born into money and disconnected or lottery winners, or whatever other issue with syntax I can dig up.
No, it’s fundamentally different. You can never change being a boomer, you can change whether or not you’re rich.
They’re happy to live in the GOPs alternate reality rather than face the reality of what they’ve done.
Your own sentence points out the issue. You yourself instinctually scoped it down to those living in the GOPs reality, which is a tiny fraction of the billions of boomers.
At the end of the day, you have to ask what the purpose of blame is. Is it so that you can vent? That’s human, but helpful only to you, and only in the extremely short term while it feels satisfying. In the long term constantly ascribing blame just makes you bitter and makes you see calculated ill intent where there’s just chance, systemic effects, or ignorance.
Blame is useful as a tool only so much as it can actually effect future change in the world.
And baming an entire generation for ‘being conservative’ evidently isn’t accomplishing anything given how conservative gen z and alpha are. This isn’t the kind of blame anyone can draw any meaningful lessons from. Systemically reducing wealth and class inequality is.
I thought it was assumed we were discussing American boomers since we were discussing American elections. The continued drill down isn’t really useful except if you’re trying to miss the point.
But really considering the past couple days of our exchanges. I’m saying boomers as this shortcut. I could as easily be saying conservatives, and probably be running in to less trouble while having a much more accurate net. So I blame conservative voters let’s say, and we will let the data speak to how many boomers that does or doesn’t catch.
To your other point, blame is useful in my mind to establish a record, consequences, and future disincentive. I don’t blame to feel better. I blame because I want to see bad action be consequenced.
If for a generation American republican voters can produce what they have produced, but be held blameless as a product of their time, or because billionaires are more powerful, then why not just forget everyone else and only act in my own short term self interest while enjoying all the benefits of the society I’m voting to destroy for the next generation?
Those individuals need to wear trickledown economics, and the Iraq war, and the Afghanistan war, and climate inaction, financial collapses, deregulation, massive debt, the return of fascism, open racism, and everything else they supported as badges for history to see and judge them. No one went to jail for lying to start the Iraq war. No one went to jail for any of the multiple financial crises in my lifetime. Everyone was let out of jail for attempting to violently overthrow the election of 2020. Nobody is going to jail over the Epstein stuff.
I blame the rich like you do. I also blame their useful, selfish, nationalistic idiots. I want them all held to account on the road to a better society. Blame as the first step to consequences.
Otherwise you can’t achieve a better society or even if you did they’ll be happy to dismantle it in the name of their short term personal benefit as soon as they can.
That isn’t the logic I’m using though. You’re refuting an argument I’m not making.
The majority of the boomer voting bloc elected these politicians and supported the policies of the rich. Their entire adult lives the majority of their voting bloc time and again supported terrible regressive policies.
That isn’t true of millennials.
To the extent we can look at a generation’s consistent and prevailing political activity, we can fault the boomers.
Sam Altman wanting to be a billionaire doesn’t excuse them.
Yes it is the logic you’re using.
That logic is called “collective punishment” or collective blame, and it’s you blaming all boomers for what a subset of them actually did.
Don’t feel like you deserve to be blamed for that? Great. Neither do boomers.
And that’s on top of the fact that you’re ignoring multiple factors:
boomers started out farther left and then drifted farther right as they aged, same effect is true for millenials, we haven’t seen how far right this generation will go yet. And on a percentage basis, they don’t even skew that differently, they just have always had the tyranny of the plurality available to them since they’re the biggest generation, so when their generation shift right, everything did, an effect not true for millenials or gen z.
millenials and boomers were raised in different environments, with different pressures and values, hell boomers are largely the result of parents that just went through two world wars. That alone will have generational effects on families.
Even just in terms of information, would you be going to the library, reading books, and paying for newspaper subscriptions to replace the internet, or would you be out playing and hanging out with friends?
Without the Internet and your parents raising you, would you have fallen to Fox news or Sky news or The Telegraph, just like them?
If you were born in boomer times you would not be the person you are right now, and it’s wild to blame all of them when half of them were literally deliberately manipulated by corporations, in a time with little awareness that that could be happening.
Blaming the Boomers overall accomplishes nothing. It is at best too broad a category to actually learn anything from or make any meaningful change.
The rich upper class however, has continuously fucked over Boomers, GenX, Millenials, and now Gen Z. They are the actual subset of people to blame, because a) they have the power to change the systems we live in, and b) they are by and large (though still not universally) the ones who have chosen to keep perpetuating the system.
I suppose to some extent I’m blaming the collective, and to some extent I’m saying “boomers” instead of “the majority of boomers that voted to support conservative politicians since 1980” to save some time.
This is sort of how discussion works. You’re also doing this. You’re saying rich people instead of “politically active rich people supplying money to XYZ, while ignoring those born into money and disconnected or lottery winners, or whatever other issue with syntax I can dig up. I’m just interpreting your language in good faith and more generously.
To your point, I do blame non-voters for electing Trump.
At some point “they’re a product of their time” stops being exculpatory. That logic can forgive just about anything when taken too far. For me boomers don’t get let off the hook. They’re happy to live in the GOPs alternate reality rather than face the reality of what they’ve done. The generation needs to be regarded with what their political activity produced and continues to produce, which is the entrenchment of the policies of the rich.
This is inaccurate again.
Boomers is a generation of people, not Americans. The majority of boomer aged people around the world did not vote for conservative politicians in the way you’re describing.
the majority of American boomers didn’t even vote for them. Are you sure that Republicans have held more offices, for longer, then Democrats? Are you sure it’s not just that they’ve been more effective at accomplishing their goals? Even if that is the case, given voter turnout rates, it’s not the majority of that generation, just of who turned out to vote.
No, it’s fundamentally different. You can never change being a boomer, you can change whether or not you’re rich.
Your own sentence points out the issue. You yourself instinctually scoped it down to those living in the GOPs reality, which is a tiny fraction of the billions of boomers.
At the end of the day, you have to ask what the purpose of blame is. Is it so that you can vent? That’s human, but helpful only to you, and only in the extremely short term while it feels satisfying. In the long term constantly ascribing blame just makes you bitter and makes you see calculated ill intent where there’s just chance, systemic effects, or ignorance.
Blame is useful as a tool only so much as it can actually effect future change in the world.
And baming an entire generation for ‘being conservative’ evidently isn’t accomplishing anything given how conservative gen z and alpha are. This isn’t the kind of blame anyone can draw any meaningful lessons from. Systemically reducing wealth and class inequality is.
I thought it was assumed we were discussing American boomers since we were discussing American elections. The continued drill down isn’t really useful except if you’re trying to miss the point.
But really considering the past couple days of our exchanges. I’m saying boomers as this shortcut. I could as easily be saying conservatives, and probably be running in to less trouble while having a much more accurate net. So I blame conservative voters let’s say, and we will let the data speak to how many boomers that does or doesn’t catch.
To your other point, blame is useful in my mind to establish a record, consequences, and future disincentive. I don’t blame to feel better. I blame because I want to see bad action be consequenced.
If for a generation American republican voters can produce what they have produced, but be held blameless as a product of their time, or because billionaires are more powerful, then why not just forget everyone else and only act in my own short term self interest while enjoying all the benefits of the society I’m voting to destroy for the next generation?
Those individuals need to wear trickledown economics, and the Iraq war, and the Afghanistan war, and climate inaction, financial collapses, deregulation, massive debt, the return of fascism, open racism, and everything else they supported as badges for history to see and judge them. No one went to jail for lying to start the Iraq war. No one went to jail for any of the multiple financial crises in my lifetime. Everyone was let out of jail for attempting to violently overthrow the election of 2020. Nobody is going to jail over the Epstein stuff.
I blame the rich like you do. I also blame their useful, selfish, nationalistic idiots. I want them all held to account on the road to a better society. Blame as the first step to consequences.
Otherwise you can’t achieve a better society or even if you did they’ll be happy to dismantle it in the name of their short term personal benefit as soon as they can.
https://youtu.be/7Szfj5VC8_U