Discussion for article #246262
Class act. I support Clinton â and I admire Sanders.
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We are in the over 65, longtime Democrats demographic that is calculated as automatic for Hillary. My immediate circle of ten contemporaries is overwhelmingly (8 to 2) for Bernie Sanders. We have all committed to vote for whomever the Democratic Party nominee is. The eight believe Bernieâs aspirations are our aspirations, and that they must be pressed to avoid backsliding into the business as usual mindset of temporizing corporate interests at the expense of the public interest, the intent of triangulation. None of us will cave in reflexively. We recognize that when the sun sets, you go with the best you can get, though you may need to bite your tongue to do it.
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I was over at Raw Story tut-tutting and finger-wagging at some of his more over-enthusiastic supporters over the level of over-the-top venom and general cray-cray theyâve worked themselves up into over Hillary, and came away instead with a real sense of how much of that passion is fueled by sheer despair among the Millennials.
They really do feel, with good reason, like they are just well and truly permanently fucked by this this economy beyond any hope of advancement. And theyâre not wrong. The reality is that they are just holding the other end of the shit stick from me and people my age. People in their fifties who get fired for making too much money and being too expensive to insure and having crazy, unrealistic expectations about retirement plans and shit like that, and they get hired to to my old job at a fraction of the cost without the benefits. And still our Galtian Overlords in the .1% look on in barely concealed rage that any of us are still are allowed to have anything, that pesky pan-handlers and homeless people clutter up their nice streets and demand âfree stuffâ like schools and roads and cops who donât act like Peacekeepers from the Hunger Games.
Yeah, the appeal of anything that smacks of revolution to a person in their twenties, unafflicted by the general deadening of passion and hormones we call wisdom, is pretty easy to understand.
But the thing is, a major part of the reason theyâre fucked (and me too) is because so many of them, and so many of their predecessors in Gens X and Y, were besotted with the insane fucking notion that their votes must be âearnedâ and that not voting is a viable means of expressing dissatisfaction.
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In my generation, we faced Vietnam after college. In my fatherâs, there was the Great Depression and then the horror of WW II. So, Iâve pretty much had it with the bellyaching about all the problems the millennials face. Spoiled.
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The thing about Millennials (I have two) and what separates them fro my 60âs boomer generation, is they do want to buy into the âsystemâ; have good jobs, family, a home and all the related feel-good stuff of adulthood. They appear far more mature and less suspicious than many boomers who were resistant to buying into the rigidity and conformity of the '50âs and '60âs.
But opportunity does not come knocking for them. Thereâs no longer a clear path to the feel-good stuff they want to experience. And they see whatâs going on and as a result have learned to live with less. It amazes me just how fucking adult they can be about their situations. Thereâs nothing more dangerous to the economy than a young consumer who has learned to live with less.
So I think they will vote in the general election but if itâs either HRC or Sanders in the WH and little gets done the first two years, in that no real effort is made to âfixâ those issues they campaigned on related to Millennials (1.3 trillion student debt), 2018 will be deja vous all over again.
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Thatâs it. Thatâs it exactly. Thank you.
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Personally, I think that passion for the left leaning social policies of Sanders, and North European Social Democracies, bodes well for the future - whether or not Sanders is the nominee.
This is a whole new generation of Democrats who, I think, are going to turn the policies weâve been told are pie-in-the-sky fantasies for the past 5 decades, into pragmatic realities that future politicians will either have to support, or suffer repeated electoral losses - in much the same way that even the Conservative Parties of Northern Europe, Britain, Israel, et. al., have to support universal healthcare before they can even hope to get elected today.
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If only theyâd had civics classes instead of NCLB standardized testing prep, they might know what to do with it. Or, fuck, at least Saturday morning cartoons where theyâd have been exposed to Schoolhouse Rock.
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Iâm also the parent of two millennials, and my talks with them (and with my students) give me the same impressions. They will be there in November, perhaps reluctantly, but they will be looking for substantive change in two years. My children understand that we have divided government with checks and balances (the polite way of saying designed for gridlock) and so electing Congressional majorities compatible with the Presidentâs program is a requirement for progress.
My students donât generally understand this. Iâve had discussions with them, and they donât understand why President Obama canât get stuff done. I point out that we elect a President, not a dictator. Some get it, some donât.
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Karnival just said that he wants his daughters to enjoy the same set of liberties that we enjoy. Heâll ensure that by appointing principled conservative judges (like Fat Tony Scalia).
Anatole France said it much better than I can:
La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain. (In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.)
Dear Millennials, generation of my children, please heed Anatole France. If you feel youâre fucked by the system today, youâve seen nothing compared to what the likes of Ted Cruz would bring you. Hillary Clinton might fuck you, but it probably wonât be intentional and she wonât enjoy it. Ted Cruz will fuck you intentionally and enjoy every moment.
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Bellyaching for me, but not bellyaching for thee got it.
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You have expressed my sentiments exactly. My parents lived through two world wars - one as young children and then as adults. My father was a soldier who stormed the beaches of Normandy and had nightmares for the rest of his life over the horrors he experienced. My grandfather fought in the first world war. My father marched as a foot soldier from Normandy to Paris. My parents and grandparents lived through the depression. I was a high school student when John Kennedy was assassinated and then saw Robert Kennedy murdered. And watched the horrors of the civil rights movement and and the Viet Nam war on nightly TV.
My generation lived through the years of Ronald Reagan and his decimation of unions and the trickle down economic theory which we live with to this day We watched as the Supreme Court as it filled with Judges that gave us George Bush and the Iraq war.
My generation of young men were sent to a war in a country that no one had ever heard and many of them died there. For my generation college was not a given much less for free. I started at a junior college at the age of 35 and graduated from law school when I was 43. I paid for that education on my own and raised a child as a single mother.
So the whining and moaning about how unfair this world is because you feel somehow cheated doesnât mean a damn thing to me. Grow up. Nobody owes you anything
Well, Iâm pretty aggravated by all this, âThey will vote reluctantly in the fall, but if there isnât big change fast they outta here.â What do they think democracy is, an iphone app? Take the free college stuff, well public college tuition is set by each state. If millenials want free college, all they need to do is get their fellow state citizens to raise taxes enough to eliminate the need for tuition. So, have millenials been doing any of this hard work to achieve that goal? Not on your life. I bet almost none of them even know that this is how public university tuition is set. And I must say, I live in a state where we have, in fact, been paying higher taxes to keep college tuition down. And now Bernie Sanders wants me to pay even higher taxes to cover the higher tuition in states (Vermont ?) that cut college funding, forcing those colleges to raise tuition. Intellectually lazy, politically lazy and self-centered.