POLITICS SCHMALITICS

[chasfh]

On 1/1/2023 at 10:06 PM, gehringer_2 said:

On the cohort topic, this is notable - maybe:

Millennials are not aging into conservatism like older cohorts

 

This may be because we are going through a moment not dissimilar to when the country, the world, went through a moment during the 1930s. One big difference is that no one today is flocking to the Communist Party.

[chasfh]

22 hours ago, mtutiger said:

Econimics are a part of the politics piece of the breakdown between Millennials/Gen-Z and the GOP, but culture as well as just the fact that the GOP in general is more of a grievance-oriented party versus a solutions-oriented party are a pretty big piece of the puzzle as well.

Part of that might be because in the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps self-made-man culture, there are no solutions that can be applied top down—only individuals achievements from bottom up. And if you don’t make it that way, it’s your own damn fault, wait, no, it’s the immigrants’ damn fault!

[chasfh]

19 hours ago, Screwball said:

I also understand it is getting harder and harder to make ends meet.  I have argued that for years - and it's not getting any easier.

But these are the cards we are dealt - so we must play the had we have.  Or eventually you starve.

Or hustle. Or beg. Or borrow. Or steal. Whatever it takes to keep from starving.

[chasfh]

19 hours ago, Screwball said:

Many of these kids not only flunked my class, they are going to flunk life.

People in danger of flunking life can be very dangerous people, indeed.

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

This may be because we are going through a moment not dissimilar to when the country, the world, went through a moment during the 1930s. One big difference is that no one today is flocking to the Communist Party.

yeah - it's been something I've found interesting for a few years now. I remember posting about how I thought part of the bankruptcy (only part!) in US conservatism is that "good" conservatism normally frames itself as the moderating influence opposing activist over reach/extremism/over-idealized propositions like communism, but the Western left and especially the US left, with maybe the exception of Elizabeth Warren, has basically been bereft of any paradigm shifting economic concepts since 1930. That hasn't left an honest conservativism much useful to do....

Edited January 3, 2023 by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

😉

Yes, I am technically a boomer - right on the border of the next generation.  

[oblong]

Boomer is defined as 1946-1964.... I think that's too broad as it's a cultural distinction.  I see a difference between people who will be 77 this year and those who will be 59.   Especially since those who will be 77 could have been retired for 25 years already due to workplace changes that took place in the 70s and 80's regarding pensions.  

I mean... Tommy Lee Jones and Marisa Tomei are both boomers?

 

[chasfh]

I wouldn't mind going boom with Marisa Tomei.

[gehringer_2]

19 minutes ago, oblong said:

Boomer is defined as 1946-1964.... I think that's too broad as it's a cultural distinction.  I see a difference between people who will be 77 this year and those who will be 59.   Especially since those who will be 77 could have been retired for 25 years already due to workplace changes that took place in the 70s and 80's regarding pensions.  

I mean... Tommy Lee Jones and Marisa Tomei are both boomers?

 

Agree. I think they pick 46 because it's conveniently post WWII. But the most of the vets didn't get home and settled and into starting their families for a while after VJ day and a pregnancy is 9 MO, so children born in '46-47 especially were still mostly being born into pre-war families. The true marker of a boomer culturally is who their parents were, which should properly be children of the Depression and of service age for the 'good wars', WWII & Korea. If you define it strictly by the demographic bubble (which is fine for that purpose)  it extends further, but culturally the cohort ends earlier.

Edited January 3, 2023 by gehringer_2

[CMRivdogs]

These are a few years old...MAD was the best...

 

thread..

 

[Tiger337]

I was born in 1962 but I don't really identify with boomers because I was too young to really experience the 60s revolution which supposedly defines the boomers.  I have vague memories of the 60s, but I grew up in the cynical post-revolution 70s.    

[gehringer_2]

2 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I was born in 1962 but I don't really identify with boomers because I was too young to really experience the 60s revolution which supposedly defines the boomers.  I have vague memories of the 60s, but I grew up in the cynical post-revolution 70s.    

I don't know how the experience for women changed at your end of the BB, but certainly for men, worrying about being drafted was a defining property for those born before maybe 58 or so. You had to have been born before 54 to have actually been drafted for 'Nam, but I figure if you had reached high school with the draft still going it still would have been a major part of your consciousness, 

[CMRivdogs]

14 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I don't know how the experience for women changed at your end of the BB, but certainly for men, worrying about being drafted was a defining property for those born before maybe 58 or so. You had to have been born before 54 to have actually been drafted for 'Nam, but I figure if you had reached high school with the draft still going it still would have been a major part of your consciousness, 

Using these parameters puts definitely puts me in the center. I remember arguing with a high school social studies teacher who claimed that Earth Day was a Communist Plot. Viet Nam was in the forefront of our thoughts with the first Moratorium Day (?). I was on the cusp, not supporting Nixon policies but not wanting to get into trouble either. I was also part of the last "lottery" group, I still remember the feeling of hearing that my birthday was a high number. The last time I "won" a lottery.

I'm old enough to remember being old as a radio program director that I needed to find and hire an African American, but not one who sounds "black". It was also in the late 70s that my wife was told by a mid market, 50 thousand watt radio station GM that a woman would never anchor a morning drive newscast on one of his stations. (The guy is long gone, but his memory is still revered in that market). Don't even think about women in management.

I'm definitely  a Boomer.

Edited January 3, 2023 by CMRivdogs

[romad1]

Gen X despises the Boomers.  :--) 

OTOH, The boomers don't now nor ever cared what Gen X thought.  

[gehringer_2]

1 minute ago, romad1 said:

Gen X despises the Boomers.  :--) 

OTOH, The boomers don't now nor ever cared what Gen X thought.  

Gen X has a legit beef. Few generations have had their prospects for advancement more blocked than they. OTOH, history also dealt them a relatively smooth gig.

[CMRivdogs]

My son is at the tail end of Gen X so there is some concern. From what I see I taught him well somehow.

[romad1]

2 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Gen X has a legit beef. Few generations have had their prospects for advancement more blocked than they. OTOH, history also dealt them a relatively smooth gig.

Our generational cohort's war was Desert Storm.  That wasn't so bad.  In any event, I missed it despite my military service.  The war i spent my adult working life fighting against the terrorists, wasn't nearly as bad as marching in the green forests of south Vietnam until your unit bumped into an ambush.   Some would say it was worse...well.   I don't envy the next cohort their war if the worst comes to pass.  But the Boomers could have said the same about Desert Storm if the worst had come to pass. 

[oblong]

I was a senior in HS when Desert Storm broke out and my birthday is in October so until fall of 1991 I had no risk or fear of being drafted.

 

[chasfh]

When I was basically eight until maybe age eleven, I was scared shitless I would have to go to Vietnam. When they announced that the draft would end, I felt a little better. At last until the Hostage Crisis, which took place when I was 18. I already had to register with Selective Service, but this made that whole exercise feel more real than I imagined at the time. The Iran thing was the actual impetus to get me up off my recently-high-school-graduated ass and get myself into college for what I assumed would be a student deferment!

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

I don't know how the experience for women changed at your end of the BB, but certainly for men, worrying about being drafted was a defining property for those born before maybe 58 or so. You had to have been born before 54 to have actually been drafted for 'Nam, but I figure if you had reached high school with the draft still going it still would have been a major part of your consciousness, 

My father used to show me WWII movies to explain his experience in the war.  Although he tried to present it as a positive experience, it terrified me.  I remember my mother looking up my birthdate in one of the draft lotteries, seeing that my birthday was near the top and being thankful I was too young.  However, the draft ended well before I was of draft age.  There was still a little fear that it would get re-instated, but being drafted was never a reality.   

Edited January 3, 2023 by Tiger337

[Tiger337]

19 minutes ago, chasfh said:

When I was basically eight until maybe age eleven, I was scared shitless I would have to go to Vietnam. When they announced that the draft would end, I felt a little better. At last until the Hostage Crisis, which took place when I was 18. I already had to register with Selective Service, but this made that whole exercise feel more real than I imagined at the time. The Iran thing was the actual impetus to get me up off my recently-high-school-graduated ass and get myself into college for what I assumed would be a student deferment!

I had that fear from about 8-11 too.  What I remember most about the Hostage crisis was some asshole on the wrestling team nicknaming me "The Irainian".  Every time he saw me, he would yell, here comes "The Iranian" and his friends, of course, thought it was hilarious.  

[Screwball]

The draft ended in 1973 if I remember right.  I was a year too young but would have been toast as my number was 8.  Some of my buddies weren't so lucky.  The war was a huge thing to us people as we were all worried about going, not to mention all the stuff that was going on here.  Like the 1970 Kent State thing.  And of course we had the anti-war songs as well.  Wild times, and not so good.

I knew people at Kent State, even to this day, on both sides, students and the guard.  I also had a bunch of buddies who ended up in Nam.  Some didn't come home, and many didn't come home the same.  Some are not right to this day, including one of my best buddies who still has flashbacks.  Then of course there were others; like the guy in the bowling alley I worked who went nuts.  Hid in the back of the bathroom in the last toilet stall thinking he was in Nam foxhole and going to kill anyone who came near him.  What do you do with someone like that?

And it was all for what?

[gehringer_2]

26 minutes ago, Screwball said:

And it was all for what?

I've been as down on US foreign adventures since and because of 'Nam as anyone, but to be fair, they thought they were doing a Korea, when they were really doing an Afghanistan. But how could they know? You can't look at Japan or S. Korea and not take some pride in what the US made possible there. You can't look at 'Nam or Afghanistan and not despair, and you can't look at Iraq and Ukraine and not realize the last acts are still yet to written. What I can look back and criticize is that LBJ realized the war was lost and the coward walked away from the presidency instead of ending it, leaving it to Nixon to make it worse. Just as we failed to course correct for way too long in Iraq (Mission Accomplished!) or Afghanistan. I guess I can forgive an American administration trying to do something they think is right, but not one that won't see when a mistake has been made and get out.

Edited January 3, 2023 by gehringer_2

[oblong]

Nixon secretly sabotaged the peace talks in Oct of '68, having a spy indicate to the South that he would give them a better deal.  He was afraid a peace agreement would tip the election to Humphrey.  That planted the seeds later on for watergate.  His fear in the Pentagon Papers thing was the discovery of that Johnson knew he did that.  

It was great theater.  Nixon knew Johnson had his plane bugged.  Johnson knew he knew he had his plane bugged.  Nixon knew Johnson knew he caused the talks to fail.  Two guys with no morals playing chicken.  Of course after the election LBJ got on his hands and knees in the bedroom and showed Nixon his taping system, telling him he'd want something like that so that the academics don't get to write the damn history.

[romad1]

Only Oceania could have done Afghanistan or Iraq.  Our hubris and our maritime power allow us to hit Eurasia and Eastasia on its peripheries.