I love this channel, and starting my day with this video, it put me into this amazing open-hearted place where I long to unite with others to build something better whereas I am much more prone, normally, to angrily wish to tear the capitalist's world down.
I really wish changing our society was as simple as the old generation dies and then a new better one replaces them, but it just doesn't work that way, look at gen-x, they are no better. Still I'll be screaming Boomer Remover til the last one leaves us.
Boomer is definitely a state of mind which makes sense because what makes a boomer a boomer were their material conditions growing up. There are still people living the charmed boomer life story even today, it's just no longer the default.
It's not their conditions from growing up.
Almost all of them had depression era parents.What makes a boomer a boomer is the flirting with love and peace and than snorting a shit load of coke in the 80s making as much money as possible and than reeling those ladders up in the 90s.
:this: I work in health care in the states. I know how horribly elderly people, and especially poor elderly people, are treated. Advocating for them is all well and good, but the minute someone tries to rehabilitate "boomers" I'm going to laugh in their face, and possibly punch them in it.
the fact you have these fears and understand that Millenials and Gen Z are often apathetic libs like everyone else demonstrates perfectly that generational politics is bullshit.
in my experience, most other zoomers recognize that capitalism (whether they call it that or not) is fucked up to some extent or another but feel resisting it is futile and dangerous. more than political apathy, it's political learned helplessness born out of the death of mass politics and organization under neoliberalism.
They are ultimately comfortable. Even if exploited, even if destitute, there is routine their to lives. Until their routines are upset and unsustainable will anyone actually be in a position to slide into the cool zone.
They are ultimately comfortable. Even if exploited, even if destitute, there is routine their to lives.
This is the big problem. Bread and circuses work. People will endure unlimited suffering if they get their treats and going along seems safer than revolting.
the apathy of Millenials and Gen Z confuses and worries me. They (we) should be baying for blood.
The fact that we are not (that nobody anywhere is, really) has me thinking that we are never going to revolt. Maybe our understanding of how to psychologically manipulate people, combined with technology, is advanced enough that people really are just permanently fucked and powerless against the ruling class.
nothing to add but I really like the way you've expressed these things.
Ageism is bad when the aged do not hold a near total monopoly on power and wealth. In this case, ageism is good, actually.
Boomer communists exist but are extremely rare. To be bourgeois in the USA usually means that you are also a boomer and vice-versa. Even if you don’t actually own any capital, the social safety net that exists for boomers + the lifetime you’ve spent having the entire country and planet bend over backwards for you means that you are almost certainly either a liberal or a fascist.
I mean, yes, boomers clearly need a lot of mental help, but that’s probably going to come after capitalism (which they almost universally adore) is destroyed.
Also, there were more cool boomers once upon a time, but most have died via social murder.
It's a joke but true, every commie meeting or socialist thing I've been to either has under 30s or over 70 year olds and nothing in between lol.
To me, that just means orgs need to work on providing better childcare for their members. 30-60 (maybe not so much 60, more like 30-50) is around the age when you have kids to take care of.
So are you gonna keep this tune when it comes to houseless elders, impoverished elders, minority elders, and queer elders? Probably not, I'd guess, which means you agree with me that age isn't the problem, having a monopoly on power and wealth is the problem. Don't advocate ageism unless old age in and of itself is something worth punishing to you.
I only advocate ageism in the sense that any criticism of boomers results in cries of “ageism.”
Exactly, it's like everyone who hates Israel is an "anti-Semite". I don't know why this is such a fucking struggle session today. When people say "fuck boomers" they're saying "fuck Zionists", not "death to the Jews".
Hearing boomers cry “ageism” is like when white people cry “reverse racism” when a POC calls them “cracker.” There is a power dynamic that must be considered
Being white is universally connected with having power. Being old is not universally connected with having power.
Being old is not universally connected with having power.
It currently correlates highly with being an extremely privileged (like nobody else in human history) piece of shit
Most people in power are old, but most old people are not in power. Plenty of old people are rotting away in low income housing drowning in medical debt and utilities bills. If you're mad at people in power, be mad at people in power, don't drag the 5 million senior citizens in America below the poverty line into this.
Good and thought-provoking. But they appear to be surrounded by absolutely blessed boomers in their life, while I really struggle to muster up much empathy for the cursed boomers around me. I know I'm basically saying "a black guy mugged me once so therefore racism is justified" but it's tough.
If you were non-stop mocked and robbed and often enough abused by black people ot would make sense if you had some problems with them. However, that's not a real problem for most white people, it's a kind of pointless discussion point. But boomers have mocked, robbed, and often abused younger people, so the anger is deserved.
Yeah I realized this a few minutes after writing was too lazy to try to write it down, thanks
Boomers are about to have to lay in the bed they made.
Any one that quotes Marx saying generational politics isn't a thing is ignoring our current reality. It is a thing. And it will be a thing to boomers do something to change that.
Do your hippie dippy stuff if you want, but I'm not watching that. Every pit a boomer and every boomer a pit.
so this sounds fun and all, but have you considered that whether or not this is hippie dippy, there's an argument to be made that "warmhearted leftism" is tactically expedient and possibly even our most plausible shot at fixing this hellworld?
Surely the people who've committed the lion's share of the world's resources to ensuring their continued comfort at the cost of untold black and brown lives just needed more hugs. You're either ridiculously privileged or hopelessly delusional or both.
Or perhaps the people who did that did so not because they were born between an arbitrary set of years but rather were in positions of power over capital and incentivized to do so by the horrifically broken system they lived in, all the while other people in that same generation suffered the consequences as well (like, you know, the black and brown people you just mentioned).
That would require some material analysis though. Much easier to just assume everyone between the ages of 50 and 75 just need the wall.
You crack me up, man. Hellworld exists because people made conscious decisions to make it this way. They aren't victims of circumstance. They knew what they were doing.
I'm not defending the people who did it, I'm saying that you should call them the self serving capitalist shit bags they are instead of labeling them by their generation. Newsflash: millennial capitalists aren't any better, greatest generation capitalists are just as evil, and if capitalism still exists in 50 years there'll be some gen alpha Bezos feeding workers into the Soylent machines.
Whining about generations is idealist nonsense.
lol u are very out of ideas
love my meme generational politics supported by shitty analogies
It's a fine analogy, Mr. Start my comment with "lol". Boomers are trash and so are their apologists.
yeah boomers are trash on aggregate, you're tripping if you think that means what this person said is wrong. actually believing in generational politics is a meme, capitalists can be any age. yes even infants I said it
Of course that's true, everyone knows that "boomer" doesn't refer to a person born between 1945 and 1965. It's a very specific person with a very specific world-view. This is why "not all men" is the perfect analogy to combat all you concern trolls. Also, it's not just capitalists that are the problem, but those who live privileged lives under the capitalist system because of their position in it. But you knew that already.
Saying "not all men" is a perfect analogy to "not all boomers" is like saying a 65 year old homeless woman also has the societal privileges of a wealthy person.
You just come off like you hate a certain class of people categorically and that you don't spend much time worrying about the details.
and people with this kind of position always insist they don't hate it as a category. and I often believe them, but I literally don't get what the point in speaking categorically is if you don't really mean it. it's just contrarian and counterproductive. really weird attachment to pointlessly bad optics that to me reads mostly as cliquishness.
yeah, it's the same tactic but with radliberalism instead of fascism.
the internet sucks shit lmao
There are humans born between 1945 and 1965 and there are "boomers". The 65 year old homeless woman isn't a boomer. No unhoused people are boomers. You're right in that I do hate a certain class of people categorically, but you're wrong that I haven't spent much time thinking about the details.
If you know what you're doing then it comes off as deliberate motte and bailey
it's such lib shit, they would rather get to be like "actually ur immature and toxic, I didn't mean literally all of that group" and feel superior than appeal to anyone who doesn't already get/use their favorite radlib jargon
What is the safe opinion that I claim to now be defending? It's farcical to claim that my original position was that everyone over a certain age is bad. For the better part of a decade now "boomer" has been used to refer to a very specific type of person. Nobody could reasonably believe that it simply refers to everyone born in certain years.
It’s farcical to claim that my original position was that
Do you believe it's possible to perform a motte and bailey strategy without using these exact words?
Nobody could reasonably believe that it simply refers to everyone born in certain years.
No one reasonable would, but it was not a reasonable person who replied to this comment with 'not all men'. That's why you're catching shit. You doubled down hard.
I don't even understand what point you all are trying to make. What makes a boomer a boomer is that they've had all the advantages possible in life and still operate under the delusion that their hard work alone is what has afforded them their comfortable position. Words don't exist in a vacuum, they are contextual and the way I use "boomer" here is different than the way I'd use it in another context. I still say "not all men" is a perfect analogy. Most of my non-cismale friends have said, at one point, "men are trash". In that context, a bunch of non-cismen hanging out and having a casual discussion, it's assumed they aren't referring to all men, or really even most men, but a very specific type of man. Of course, every so often a cis man will butt his head into our conversation and offer up a "not all men". In this space, where all of us understand class politics, I feel like it should be understood that "boomer" means exactly what I've written. It should be obvious that being born between some arbitrary dates doesn't determine whether or not you're a capitalist. I don't understand how anyone who spent any amount of time here could honestly believe that someone here is an unironic supporter of generational politics. It really just seems like concern trolling to me and a huge waste of energy. But I guess a video titled, "We need to talk about elder-care" isn't going to get clicks and a post about that video isn't going to generate any engagement on hexbear, so we get to have a huge struggle session over it.
For the better part of a decade now “boomer” has been used to refer to a very specific type of person. Nobody could reasonably believe that it simply refers to everyone born in certain years.
That is only true if you're terminally online. In meatspace, "boomer" still means "people who spend at least part of their childhood in the 60s."
You're kind of making my point for me, this IS a terminally online space.
not all men is a normal response to people saying confusing shit like "men are predators". people don't usually mean literally all men when they say but it's unsurprising some people take it to mean that.
like we're on the same page here about boomers but if you say in public "boomers are irredeemable" a lot of people will take that to mean all of them. Cause in most contexts just saying a general group like that means all. Its just in-group signaling to speak in generalizations but not really mean it, because some people wont share your definition of men or boomers or whatever else
No, "not all men" is the response of immature men who think that because you're critical of toxic masculinity they need to defend themselves instead of listening to your concerns. This feels the same to me, like somehow we're more concerned about the feelings of the two people over 50 reading this website that aren't feds as opposed to the real harm boomers have caused in the world.
whatever, keep losing people because you'd rather only speak in broad generalizations than actually be clear about who you mean. it's too hard to be specific, fuck anyone not already on the same page as 1000 online leftists.
This isn't a space for engaging people who aren't already on the same page, and you know that.
there are clearly people in this thread who did not get what you meant by boomers. I think this point stands really anywhere, you don't know who your audience is and it's extremely easy to speak with clarity instead of vague generalizations. inevitably you will confuse someone with bad rhetoric, so why use it?
There are clearly people in this thread who are concern trolling.
you have no interest in actually discussing or thinking about this so i'm disengaging. peace
:liberalism: It's not my job to educate you
:sankara-shining: “As revolutionaries, we don’t have the right to say we are tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We know that when the people understand, they cannot help but follow us.”
Omfg for the last time, this is not the space for educating the uninitiated. If I ranted about "boomers" on reddit or Twitter or Facebook or YouTube comments you'd have a legit gripe. People who aren't already leftists don't come here. To me, hexbear is a place to vent to my fellow comrades, not to do political education. Leave my irony poisoned :doomer: ass alone.
Generational politics is not a meme.
It fully exists right now.
It's absolutely a meme. Generational politics imply that boomer capitalists are somehow qualitatively different from gen x capitalists or millennial capitalists, that we can juxtapose capitalism with boomer characteristics vs capitalism with gen x characteristics vs capitalism with millennial characteristics. Outside of surface level aesthetics like fashion sense and use of slang, there's really not a whole lot distinguishing the three different types of capitalists. It's not like boomer capitalists are more likely to be industrialists or that millennial capitalists are less likely to pursue labor arbitrage.
Gates is a boomer, Musk is a gen x, Zuckerberg is a millennial, but they're all capitalists in the end. I was honestly surprised that all three belonged in different generational cohorts. Bezos exists on the cusp of a boomer and gen x, but no one would use this fact to somehow suggest that he acts like a cross between the boomer Gates and the gen x Musk like some Gates/Musk hybrid because that's a ridiculous thing to say.
beyond boomers tending to be wealthier than other generations (and perhaps more annoying), no it doesn't
i literally conceded they are wealthier, the amount being more or less doesn't change that generational politics is meme bullshit in place of actual anticapitalism lol
Unfortunately there is a massive rich generation that is dead set on protecting capitalism that helped elevate it
they'll all die someday and if the rest of us aren't organized and ready to fight capitalism, it will still be here like it was 100 years before boomers were born.
that is a strange conclusion and I would like to see your definition of generational politics
The view that generations in and of themselves have a class character, rather than their correlation with class being just a statistical trend from differing historical circumstances. i.e., Boomers don't just more often tend to be bourgeois, the generation as a whole aligns with the bourgeoisie and will support capitalism independent of other factors. Vice versa, younger generations as a whole align with the proletariat and will support revolution against capitalism, independent of other factors.
younger generations as a whole align with the proletariat and will support revolution against capitalism
I wish.
you said the generation is "dead set on protecting capitalism." and I said that capitalism came long before them and capitalism could easily outlive them.
i'll be more specific now and say that millenials and zoomers can be capitalists and support capitalism, and they can't be counted on to be socialists or revolutionaries just because these generations tend to be less wealthy. if you agree with that, then you don't believe in generational politics under the definition I gave. but, that's a definition I made up and if you think of the term differently I'd be curious to hear.
I think we see it similarly.
Right now the bullwark of capitalism in America is the boomers. And that's due to there wealth and propganda.
their other videos are great too lol
Actually fuck revolution, lets just spread COVID to nursing homes
