Because literally everyone older than us didn’t do this to us. The rich upper class of them did, just like the rich upper class of young tech bros are screwing us over now.
It’s never been a generational issue, it’s always been a class issue.
Plus, the wave of anti-boomer hate is literally a massive marketing campaign paid for by the former head of Blackstone, all to get the young generation of Americans to hate social security so it could be run by private capital.
Who elected Ronald Reagan twice, and George Bush, and George W. Bush? Who elected Trump?
I agree with you that the hyperbolic assertion that “every person older than us caused these problems” is wrong. But I also disagree with you that this somehow forgives boomers.
Their largest cohorts left us a dumpster fire and they’re doing everything they can on their way out to keep it burning.
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.
Because literally everyone older than us didn’t do this to us. The rich upper class of them did, just like the rich upper class of young tech bros are screwing us over now.
It’s never been a generational issue, it’s always been a class issue.
Plus, the wave of anti-boomer hate is literally a massive marketing campaign paid for by the former head of Blackstone, all to get the young generation of Americans to hate social security so it could be run by private capital.
Who elected Ronald Reagan twice, and George Bush, and George W. Bush? Who elected Trump?
I agree with you that the hyperbolic assertion that “every person older than us caused these problems” is wrong. But I also disagree with you that this somehow forgives boomers.
Their largest cohorts left us a dumpster fire and they’re doing everything they can on their way out to keep it burning.
By your logic, you did.
If that is what you think you haven’t understood my logic.
My generation is millennial. Our majority supported Clinton in 2016, Biden in 2020, and Harris in 2024.
Boomers as a voting cohort have always turned out disproportionately to give majority support to bad candidates.
Yes ,millenials elected Trump twice, because your generation was alive when he was elected.
That’s the logic your using to ascribe every previous bad decision to every boomer. By your logic, you are to blame for Trump being elected.
Again, it’s not boomers who did this to you, it’s the rich.
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.