The assumption that old people are inherently right wing and young people are inherently left wing is just wrong. Correlating age with political beliefs is a fucking pseudoscience, and so is the whole concept of generations like boomers and zoomers. Their marketing terms, the baby boom was a uniquely United States thing and to apply that term to 20 odd years of people from across the world is just factually wrong. We got to stop self identifying with these terms because they are ageist and they divide us and they allow for shitty excuses like “it’s just their generation” to excuse shitty behavior.
What’s the point of this? Stop dunking on old people. Old people aren’t inherently reactionary.
Fred Hampton was a boomer
Boomers were born 46-64, Hampton was born in 48. So he’s at the very very far end of Boomer to the point you could argue he was culturally more silent generation. Most major counter cultural figures of the 60-70s were. Boomers today are 80s Reagan kids who miss the late-80s treat parade and are generally about as left as Clinton at best.
Boomers are the generation born right after WW2 in the US. That’s exactly what Chairman Hampton was.
The diagram of the airplane above is the classic image of survivorship bias. The Br*tish were trying to figure out how to make their bombers slightly less deadly to their crews, so they analyzed the bombers that came back and found they’d been shot in the places you see red dots. The insight was realizing that the bombers that didn’t come back had been shot in the places you don’t see red dots. The dataset (bombers that had seen action over Europe) was biased by only including the bombers that had survived and come back.
Similarly, if you only look at the boomers who made it to the present day, you will get a biased and inaccurate picture of the generation. The best and most revolutionary boomers were murdered by the US government through its cops and FBI (And also with AIDS).
Fred Hampton is a perfect example of the kind of boomer that i was thinking of when i posted the pic. if he and probably millions of other boomers weren't murdered before we were even born, boomers wouldn't seem so reactionary now. but they were.
The pic is about suviorvorship bias, so Fred Hampton being a boomer is exactly what they are trying to say. Many of the good died young
the treatment of older adults in the United States is… I have no other word but sin. I don’t mean how we talk about the elderly, I mean how once you’re past your use as a laboring employee, you’re expected to just exist - day after day, week after week - in a glorified motel, run by overworked nurses, for a private company that only sees you for your social security check. It’s horrific. It’s bleak. It’s a sin. No nation worthy of respect would see this as an acceptable ‘solution’.
Utah Phillips has some good songs about this: All Used Up and Too Old to Work, Too Young to Die
It’s not pseudoscience though. In all Western countries statistics show that Boomers have a hugely disproportionate share of wealth, consume right wing media and vote right wing. Remove the boomer vote and Jeremy Corbyn is the prime minister of the Uk and Sanders is president in the US, that is a fact. What kind of world could we build on from there. We could stop climate change. Obviously all Boomers are not reactionary, but on a social level their impact is real.
Remove the boomer vote and Jeremy Corbyn is the prime minister of the Uk and Sanders is president in the US, that is a fact
Remove boomers and younger people will take their place in society and become vicious reactionaries, as some already have.
Also, Bernie would have lost because he's getting ratfucked or murdered no matter how many supporters he has in a Presidential election.
anyone older than me is an out of touch boomer and anyone youger is a snot nosed brat/ s
Shortly before she died my grandma told me, “you know that I’ve worried about your soul with you not going to church. But I think as long as you keep your love of people in your heart, you’ll be safe.” And then went on to tell me about how the church wouldn’t let her get married to a Swede or recognize her marriage because she had a baby out of wedlock and how she got questioned at one point because she was a social security employee who had registered as a communist in her early 20’s. She just got to a point where she knew she was going to die and she started confessing stuff because my partner and I were one of two sets of grandkids and spouses who took care of her, despite her having dozens. At one point she talked about how she’s a Christian but she knew Reagan was a liar and that the Soviet Union wasn’t as evil as they say, which I was taken aback by. I’m not gonna act like she was some revolutionary with no reactionary views. But people are complicated.
https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/ep-167-the-attractive-anti-politics-of-gerontocracy-discourse
"Why Are We Still Governed by Baby Boomers and the Remarkably Old?," inquires The New York Times. "Why Do Such Elderly People Run America?," The Atlantic wonders. "Gerontocracy Is Hurting Democracy," insists New York Magazine’s Intelligencer. "Too old to run again? Biden faces questions about his age as crises mount," The Guardian reports.
Though these headlines are framed as exploratory questions, news media seem to have their minds made up: the problem with Washington is that it’s chock full of geezers. In recent years, we’ve often heard that U.S. policymaking, helmed at the federal level by seventy- and eighty-somethings like Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi, and at the state level by the similarly aged Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Grassley and Pat Leahy, is simply growing too old and out of touch with the electorate.
There’s some credence to this, of course. It’s certainly true that those occupying the most powerful positions in U.S. government, on the whole, don’t legislate to the needs of the public – whether on healthcare, policing, education – the list goes on and on. But is that really because of legislators' age? Why does age have to be the focus in this analysis, rather than policy positions and, relatedly, class interests, which exist independent of age? Who does it serve to reduce the causes of U.S. austerity politics and violence to pat, Pepsi marketing-style "generation gap" discourse? On this episode show, we detail how "generations" analysis is ineffectual and, more often than not, misses the mark. We'll discuss how fears of a "gerontocracy" can – if not in intent, in effect – malign old age itself, stigmatize the elderly and, above all, distract from what could be a substantive critical analysis of real, more profound vectors of oppression such as class, racism, sexism and anti-LGBTQ currents.
old people are cringe
kids are also cringe
you get at most like 20-30 years in the based zone, use your time wisely
Counterpoint, Parenti is still alive and not cringe.
counterpoint: dementia is cringe. we gotta figure out how to cure that shit
No.
The cool/class-conscious young people get fucking murdered and don't live to old age. Older folks trend rich because the rich survive. Rich people trend more reactionary. An entire generation of cool LGBTQ+ folks got wiped out from HIV. This is a fact of our society and it absolutely means the older you are, the greater percentage of reactionaries exist in your age group.
This doesn't mean that you should attack old people in the street or anything. I'm not even in my mid 20's and I'm already too old for this shit. After you get out of high school you're old. Your body starts falling apart and you may as well die.
After you get out of high school you're old.
I dunno, aside from some weird digestive issues and getting eye strain more easily, I feel like my body is fine in my early/mid 30's
Nah, you're old. You just don't have the life experience to understand that the body is deteriorating.
You don't just wake up one day with backpain or worse vision. It's a long slow process but it largely starts when you're 18-19. After that, your life has already been lived and you're old.
Respectfully, when looked up, most experts seem to estimate that people start deteriorating later than that. The earliest I could find was 25 years.
I am not disagreeing with your attempt to categorize everyone above 18-19 as old. That is definitely a subjective category and I can’t argue with that.
What I do disagree with is the idea that anyone above 19 is deteriorating, and on a much larger scale, that those who are old “might as well die”. What difference is there, really, between someone who’s cells are deteriorating and aren’t, except from a medical sense? If the cell deterioration is an inevitable event in anyone’s life, why does it’s start indicate that we might as well end our life, and not the beginning of our life in general? One could plausibly argue we begin to die the moment we are born.
What I do disagree with is the idea that anyone above 19 is deteriorating, and on a much larger scale, that those who are old “might as well die”.
It's not a literal physical deterioration but a spiritual and mental one. The human brain develops itself to destruction by 20-22 and after that there is no real reason to continue living. You become old and then your body starts breaking down.
Think about it like this, mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungus. Their main job is to spread spores and once they do their"purpose" is fufilled. They still stick around for a bit but they are essentially useless. The human brain does the same thing to the soul around 20 and develops itself out of its purpose. I don't really care that the body lives to deteriorate over the next 50 years, the soul of the person is dead. Any brain development done after 16 is largely self-destructive to the soul of the person. Whether that be metaphysical or literal I don't care.
It's Schizophrenia in the Deleuzian sense. The body develops past the need for a soul and ultimately kills it to enhance its evolutionary suitability. I'd highly recommend you meditate on the difference between the soul, again literal or metaphorical I don't care, and the body as a product of evolution. When you see that the body and the soul are in conflict, you'll start to understand where I'm coming from.
Wtf are you talking about
There is no material basis for any of this. Dualism is widely disagreed on by the kind of people who came up with evolution.
If you mean that human brain development stops and that people are incapable of having new emotions or new beliefs, this is blatantly and empirically untrue.
Not to mention that you can still have kids as far as like your 40s for both people with wombs and without, so the primary reason given (our species doesn’t need us to reproduce anymore after 19) is blatantly wrong. And why 18-19? Why not even younger than 16? Why not 21 because that’s when most people agree the brain stop’s developing? Aren’t there theories out there that the brain stops developing at like 25?
This just feels like a bunch of weird justifications for reproductive essentialist shit. Respectively, declaring the entirety of humanity beyond the age of 20 to be philosophical zombies is fucking wild and deeply misanthropic. Most workers are in their 20’s. How can you call yourself a leftist when you believe the entire working population has no consciousness or subjective experience?
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soul
Please define this word for me, because I don't think we think it is the same word.
I'm not even in my mid 20's and I'm already too old for this shit.
Smokes weed during philosophy class once:
 I’m 19 years old and I’ve already wasted my entire life
How about this hot take: We are about more than reproduction. Human society is enriched by having both young and old present, and adulthood doesn't kill your soul, capitalism does.
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So long as you are speaking in mystical terms of a "soul" and not understanding that what can be observed of that "soul" is the product of the very same body you disparage, this rhetoric is worthless for anything but reaction.
You're saying this like it is some kind of truth but it is just entirely subjective, and frankly harmful sort of rhetoric. I would find it horribly discouraging if it wasn't so counter to my beliefs and understanding of physiology.
It is moronic to say someone about a quarter through their life has "already lived their life". Are you listening to yourself?
"Someone should have told Marx he was dead 40 years sooner; idk why we are reading the writings of someone who was long dead when he wrote them."
After you get out of high school you're old. Your body starts falling apart and you may as well die.
Uphold Marxism-Logan's Runism
Seriously though what the hell, I didn't expect "if you're older than 18 you should kys" to get upvoted here
Seriously though what the hell, I didn't expect "if you're older than 18 you should kys" to get upvoted here
60% of hexbear is still in high school to be fair. 18 to them is like 40 to a regular person.
That would be interesting, to do a "how old are you" demographics poll for the Hexbears
Isn’t this “not all old people” ?
Sure, we know that. It’s the propagandised ones that bought into all the bullshit and the ones that own tonnes of property and succeeded in the system who expect you to as well. Does it really need every caveat ever all the time? I see it acknowledged really often.
The treatment of old people deserves more recognition under the term “ageist” rather than the criticism of boomer brained nonsense that’s actually more attributable to class.
 there are real concerns when it comes to elderly and older people to consider. But no one needs to stand up to defend "boomers" anymore than anyone needs to stand up and say "not all white people"
Not quite, it’s also a warning not to romanticize newer generations.
Being young and not a revolutionary defies even biology
-Salvador Allende
Sorry I dont make the rules
Correlating age with political beliefs is a fucking pseudoscience
No it’s not, it’s statistical analysis of demographic trends.
If I meet an old person, it is fact that they are more likely to be more conservative than if I meet a young person. I think a lot of the cause is just survivorship bias - Poor people die younger. But the fact remains, any random old person I meet is more likely to hold homophobic, racist, misogynist, and classist views than a young person.
But also older people grew up in a different world than exists now, and won’t be around to experience what’s to come. If you’re over the age of 65 you don’t have the same stake in something like climate change as I have, which is the main reason I don’t want anyone over that age in any elected office, as climate change is by far and away the most important issue at hand.
If you’re over the age of 65 you don’t have the same stake in something like climate change as I have
This is the part that's so dumb. You're just making enemies with random people for the heck of it. It's pointless finger pointing and othering for no reason.
They did give a good reason though
it’s statistical analysis of demographic trends.
Where have I seen this before…
…uh oh.
You’re right, we should completely ignore that white people are also more likely to be wealthy and conservative. Demographic factors aren’t relevant to political beliefs. Silly me.
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boomers are dead even in that graph.
the desire to prejudge and categorize people without having to speak to them or evaluate them properly is useful for the right but counterproductive for the left.
My back hurts and hangovers kill me but I still dream of revolution
I am old and should be mocked viciously.
Go up, baldy!
I can’t believe you would do a class reductionism like this
I feel like we are handling this better than we were four years ago (reddit link).
Could you blame us though? After years of "you'll understand when you're older and get more conservative" it starts to feel a little patronizing. I think there's some serious age-ism going on in the US and it isn't primarily pointed at older people. Younger people are almost entirely unrepresented in government and our interests are not being seen to. I'm not saying it's because they're old and their brains have shriveled or whatever, but their material conditions do not align them with young peoples' interests in a lot of cases.
Climate change and social program apathy are forms of ageism as far as I'm concerned. Where's that student debt bail out? I'm going to have negative wealth for some time, just because I decided to get an education and be a more effective worker.
