Continuation The Biden Presidency (3)

[Delvo]

As I've been reminded recently from scientific sources rather than political ones, it's not just age; it's also lead-head. Lead was introduced into gasoline in the 1920s, when cars weren't very common, but, the more common cars got throughout the mid-20th century, the more lead got into people until about 1980 or so. (Its banning was sudden, but its presence faded gradually because there were still old cars running on it.)

People who were born & grew up in that era spent their lives with many times the natural level of lead in them, and to some extent still have it because it soaks into bones and takes a long time to gradually leech back out. And even tiny amounts of excess lead are known to not only decrease IQ and ability to mentally adjust to changes in information but also result in lower empathy and more hostility & sociopathy. You can see it not only in the differences between how the generations vote and how likely they are to present certain kinds of political & economic arguments, but also in the generations' different crime rates.

It happened to Rome to a greater extent because of lead pipes (the Latin word for lead literally giving us the word "plumbing"), and it happened again to a lesser extent because of automobile exhaust in the atmosphere. The current world is essentially an "insane asylum" where the neurologically stunted patients/inmates somehow reproduced healthier, more reasonable, less hateful, better offspring than themselves and raised them in the asylum and told them that they way things are in the asylum is the way things need to always be.

[Fast Eddie B]

As an aside, most General Aviation piston aircraft burn 100LL (low lead) fuel. Though lower in lead that the 100/130 it replaced, it still has a lot.

Good new is they’re working on making an unleaded aviation fuel that meets the requirements without using lead. Also, many smaller “sport” aircraft are powered with ROTAX engines that are designed to run best on unleaded auto fuel. They can run 100LL if that’s all that’s available at an airport, which is most often the case, but doing so entails slightly shortened maintenance intervals due to the excess lead going through the engine.

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Parsman

This all sounds like the arguments over health care in the USA as well. You have grown up in a society where these things have to be paid for and make a profit for someone. We pay something towards higher education here in the UK but nothing like the huge amounts you pay in the USA, and the system seems to work pretty well. My own alma mater Edinburgh is well regarded as a teaching and research establishment around the world. It is not there to make money for people though, it is there for educational purposes. Similarly health care. You don't pay for an ambulance to take you to hospital and you don't pay for life saving surgery. The costs largely come out of general taxation which may mean we pay a bit more tax but we don't get a huge and unexpected bill when sickness strikes. If you really want to go private here in the UK you can, but the vast majority of health care is not provided as a business to make money. Unless the USA can change its societal commitment to profiteering, you'll never find an answer to problems like these.

Agreed. But conservatives are so brainwashed that capitalism and socialism are completely incompatible that it's doubtful this will happen, at least at anytime within the next several decades. Conservatives tend to see things in black and white instead of realizing that most things in life are shades of gray and that gray means having to compromise to make things work.

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Beelzebuddy

It's not quite that simple, I think. It's a matter of age gaps and anti-entitlement sentiment. The Democrats' goal is to make things better for everyone, or try to, which is laudable. But right now they're also a gerontocracy, so "better" is largely defined in the context of problems they remember having in the good old days. Student loans were not one of those problems. So the olds don't understand why the young folks aren't being more appreciative of Biden's efforts to address something they don't even see as a problem in the first place (read the last page or two if you disagree), while the youngs see a backhanded token gesture from Biden that does nothing to fix the broken system he campaigned on fixing.

You are right that there are parallels to health care discussions. Both health and education have evolved tremendously over the course of the past few decades, not always for the better, with political arguments lagging behind.

I'm so tired of baby boomers...the old folks, the "gerontocracy", the "olds" being blamed for the ills of this country. Who do you think were the very people who tried to make "things better for everyone" in the 60's and 70's? Who were the people behind the civil rights movement, the LGBTQ rights movement, etc? It sure as **** weren't the young Republicans. This isn't a matter of age; it's a matter of outlook, of philosophy. I'm 68 and, if anything, I have become more liberal as I got older.

Quote:

The survey by AP Votecast, reported by The Wall Street Journal, found that 49 percent of voters 65 and older voted Republican this election cycle, compared to 48 percent who voted Democrat

.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...s-65-or-older/

That's a ONE PERCENT difference.

This is from 2016:

Quote:

Research from Pew Research Center has found that baby boomers (those age 50 to 68) are less likely to identify with the label Republican than the uncomfortably titled silent generation (who are age 69 to 86).

Quote:

Don’t forget though, correlation doesn’t mean causality – the reasons why older voters lean Republican isn’t necessarily their age per se. Older Americans are more likely to be white and they’re also more likely to be religious (Protestant or Catholic in particular) – and both of those demographic groups also tend to vote Republican for reasons that are quite separate from pension plans.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/dat...-election-2016

There are more voters in the 50-68 (now 56-74) than the 69 to 86 (now 75 to 92) age bracket.

Half of all Democrats are age 50 and up and there are a hell of a lot more Democrats than Republicans.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...-and-religion/

[Pixel42]

Originally Posted by Delvo

People who were born & grew up in that era spent their lives with many times the natural level of lead in them, and to some extent still have it because it soaks into bones and takes a long time to gradually leech back out. And even tiny amounts of excess lead are known to not only decrease IQ and ability to mentally adjust to changes in information but also result in lower empathy and more hostility & sociopathy. You can see it not only in the differences between how the generations vote and how likely they are to present certain kinds of political & economic arguments, but also in the generations' different crime rates.

An interesting hypothesis, but if true I would expect to see a greater effect in cities than in rural areas. What I actually see is, if anything, the reverse.

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Delvo

As I've been reminded recently from scientific sources rather than political ones, it's not just age; it's also lead-head. Lead was introduced into gasoline in the 1920s, when cars weren't very common, but, the more common cars got throughout the mid-20th century, the more lead got into people until about 1980 or so. (Its banning was sudden, but its presence faded gradually because there were still old cars running on it.)

People who were born & grew up in that era spent their lives with many times the natural level of lead in them*, and to some extent still have it because it soaks into bones and takes a long time to gradually leech back out. And even tiny amounts of excess lead are known to not only decrease IQ and ability to mentally adjust to changes in information but also result in lower empathy and more hostility & sociopathy. You can see it not only in the differences between how the generations vote and how likely they are to present certain kinds of political & economic arguments, but also in the generations' different crime rates.

It happened to Rome to a greater extent because of lead pipes (the Latin word for lead literally giving us the word "plumbing"), and it happened again to a lesser extent because of automobile exhaust in the atmosphere. The current world is essentially an "insane asylum" where the neurologically stunted patients/inmates somehow reproduced healthier, more reasonable, less hateful, better offspring than themselves and raised them in the asylum and told them that they way things are in the asylum is the way things need to always be.

You post was quite interesting until you got to the highlighted parts. Then you left a well supported premise and veered into letting your personal opinion affect your interpretation of the facts. For example, you linked 'lead head' to the difference in crime rates without mentioning other reasons:

Quote:

Why Millennials Commit Fewer Crimes Than Gen-Xers

There are several reasons as to why this may be. First, Millennials are the most college-educated generation, which is generally linked to lower crime rates. Additionally, it’s possible that Millennials, who are overall empathetic and also, interestingly, more conservative than their parents’ generation, just don’t have the constitution for violent crime.

It could also be down to the economy; though Millennials have a harder time finding a job, many of them may also have the wealth of their parents to fall back on.

Additionally, the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana in many cities and states means that generally, the crimes that are most common with Millennials simply aren’t being charged as often.

Today’s young people also drink less, which is frequently cited as a factor in violent crimes.

Your last paragraph (highlighted) is just a personal and nonsensical ranting opinion not based on any evidence.

*

Quote:

“Most of what we think of as the lost generation and the greatest generation and baby boomers [born pre-1965) had a moderate amount of lead exposure,” said Assistant Professor of Sociology Matt Hauer. “Generation X [1965-1980, ages 42- 57] was exposed to very high amounts of lead, and now millennials and the generation following them have been exposed to very low amounts of lead. That follows the trajectory of leaded gasoline use.”

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118631119

Somehow...somehow....Boomers (of which I am one) and Gen Xers miraculously raised Millennials to be "healthier, more reasonable, less hateful, better offspring than themselves" because we all know that kids aren't influenced by how they're raised.

[Delvo]

Originally Posted by Pixel42

An interesting hypothesis, but if true I would expect to see a greater effect in cities than in rural areas. What I actually see is, if anything, the reverse.

There's a reason why people think of cities as crime pits. It's because most they grew up in a world in which that was accurate. Just picking one city as an example although it looks about like this for most/all of them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYC_murders2.png

The years across the bottom of that example are the years in which the NYC murders happened. If you adjust them all down a couple of decades or a bit more, you get roughly when the people who committed those crimes were born or were still young children. And then it fits pretty well with how much lead there was in the air for those years. So the crimes happened right when the most leaded-up generations of people hit peak crime ages, and went down when their lower-lead successors reached the same ages. One might then wonder what kind of behavior these generations would then get up to once they were well past peak crime age; I'll get back to that later.

In general, rural crime information is harder to find separately from urban crime information, because it doesn't get as much attention, because crime also generally scales with population density, and because rural subcultures pride themselves on their image of low crime and are thus less likely to collect & publish the data. Searching for crime rate trends with time and the word "rural" didn't yield anything, nor did replacing "rural" with "Wyoming" or "Montana". But I did find this example from Nebraska, showing crime going up & down at about the same times as in NYC:

https://www.americashealthrankings.o...ze/600x300.jpg

In addition to the Nebraska example, here's one from the FBI which includes not only cities or a particular state but the whole country, which is about half-&-half rural/urban by population, and in this case they even explicitly included the time-adjusted lead graph as I suggested with the one from NYC above:

http://www.cambridgeblog.org/crime-vs-pb22-yrs/

So it looks about the same; including rural areas along with the cities doesn't dampen the effect of change with time. Rural crime rates might be lower at any given time than urban, but they move up & down in parallel over time. When one goes up, they both do, and when one goes down, they both do, regardless of which one is consistently lower or higher.

That actually fits what would be expected from environmental lead distribution; it's not particularly concentrated in cities but all over everywhere. How high the level was getting was first discovered by geologists & physicists trying to use element & isotope ratios to find the ages of rocks way out in deserts and seeing how far the abundance of lead on everything kept throwing off their results. It might have been getting released mostly in cities, but it blew around easily.

In fact, the lead signal in the data is so strong, and rural crime information on its own is so much less published than urban or combined information, that an image search for rural crime trends in the 20th century, without the word "lead" in the search at all, scooped up a bunch of results that weren't specific to rural locations and brought lead into the picture anyway... like these, where we can see that (taken whole countries at a time so urban & rural are both included) the same thing happened not only in the USA but also in Canada, Australia, the UK, and New Zealand, most of the last of which is globally about as far away from most major cities as you can get on land:

https://www.motherjones.com/wp-conte...resize=990,610

So, what would crime data and lead being pretty thoroughly distributed everywhere regardless of the urban/rural distinction have to do with political/economic/philosophical positions that are unempathetic/hostile but aren't crimes and seem more common in rural areas? Well, crime is just one symptom or set of symptoms of anti-social behavior (or the associated disorder), and lead is medically known to increase not just that one but the rest too.

Other aspects of antisocial behavior include, as Wikipedia puts it, "actions that harm or lack consideration for the well-being of others... any type of conduct that violates the basic rights of another person and any behaviour that is considered to be disruptive to others... covert and overt hostility". Arguing for policies that harm people certainly fits that, especially when the argument boils down to simply a complaint that the alternative would be too beneficial and help too much.

And the circumstances in which that's what we get just happen to be circumstances in which antisocial tendencies are known to be increased (such as unnaturally high lead levels) but crime is known to be decreased for unrelated reasons (such as being older than typical criminal age range and/or living in a low-population-density area where one is less often around many strangers). In other words, it's just what would be predicted by a theory that, when antisocial tendencies would be present but don't take the form of crimes, they take other forms instead, such as support of policies & philosophies that just financially/emotionally/culturally harm people for the sake of harming people. The generations that did the most crime when they were at peak criminal age got older and are now at the age of peak economic & political power & control. And what's changed about them is not whether they behave destructively to other people but just what form their destructiveness to other people takes. As Biden said it himself when asked about the fact that the problems facing young adults now are factually, objectively, mathematically much greater than they were for his generation, "Gimme a break! I have no empathy!". Meanwhile, the same principle applies geographically as well as chronologically: in low-crime locations, those who would do something antisocial are less likely to commit crime but more likely to favor hostile/hateful/judgemental philosophies and their resulting policies.

[Delvo]

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

you linked 'lead head' to the difference in crime rates without mentioning other reasons:

Your "other reasons" are excuses somebody concocted to avoid facing reality.

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

Quote:

Millennials are the most college-educated generation, which is generally linked to lower crime rates.

Going to college doesn't reduce crime; the less criminal are more likely to go to college. Lead, on the other hand, does increase antisocial tendencies, which increase crime. (Also, college attendance has been increasing in general for a long time, and anything that's just going up can't be the explanation for something else going first up and then down, like crime and/or lead in this case.)

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

Quote:

Additionally, it’s possible that Millennials, who are overall empathetic and also, interestingly, more conservative than their parents’ generation, just don’t have the constitution for violent crime.

The "more conservative" bit is not true and depends on some misleading definition-gamery at best, but, even if it were true, that sentence would just be an attempt to connect conservativeness with being inherently against violent crime... which is dishonest nonsense that only a lying or brainwashed conservative would tout.

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

Quote:

It could also be down to the economy; though Millennials have a harder time finding a job, many of them may also have the wealth of their parents to fall back on.

...except that they just don't. (And it's not as if their parents didn't, at least not to any greater or lesser extent).

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

Quote:

Additionally, the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana in many cities and states means that generally, the crimes that are most common with Millennials simply aren’t being charged as often.

Irrelevantly-colored fish of an irrelevant species. The crime statistics that are being compared are not and never have been marijuana crimes, and any effect being caused by changes in laws in certain specific jurisdictions would only happen in those jurisdictions, not everywhere including in jurisdictions where the alleged cause didn't even happen.

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

Quote:

Today’s young people also drink less, which is frequently cited as a factor in violent crimes.

...and is also itself another sign of less lead, not another separate unrelated thing; kids & young adults know that drinking alcohol is something they're told they shouldn't do because it's harmful, and doing stuff you're told you shouldn't do because it's harmful is a classic description of one of the symptoms of antisocialness, which is what unnaturally high lead increases. So this one actually is just another part of what I was saying, not a contradiction or alternative to it.

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

Boomers (of which I am one) and Gen Xers miraculously raised Millennials to be "healthier, more reasonable, less hateful, better offspring than themselves" because we all know that kids aren't influenced by how they're raised.

Scarecrow; nobody claimed that how kids are raised doesn't affect how they turn out. In fact, I even brought up the fact that it does so myself by even mentioning at all the bit about being told that the way things are in the asylum is how they must always be kept; it's part of the explanation for why even people in the post-lead generations still sometimes perpetuate the same antisocial attitudes of their leaded-up parents & grandparents. However, as I'm sure you already know perfectly well I was saying, there are also other factors affecting how people turn out, in addition to how their parents raised them, not instead of that. And less lead is a pretty big one of them.

[Fast Eddie B]

Originally Posted by Delvo

And even tiny amounts of excess lead are known to not only decrease IQ and ability to mentally adjust to changes in information but also result in lower empathy and more hostility & sociopathy. You can see it not only in the differences between how the generations vote and how likely they are to present certain kinds of political & economic arguments, but also in the generations' different crime rates.

I think it’s a reach to conclude that decreased intelligence is linked to voting Republican or Conservative or whatever. There are many quite bright people voting both ways. Is there an actual study correlating intelligence with political persuasion?

[Beelzebuddy]

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

I'm so tired of baby boomers...the old folks, the "gerontocracy", the "olds" being blamed for the ills of this country. Who do you think were the very people who tried to make "things better for everyone" in the 60's and 70's? Who were the people behind the civil rights movement, the LGBTQ rights movement, etc? It sure as **** weren't the young Republicans. This isn't a matter of age; it's a matter of outlook, of philosophy. I'm 68 and, if anything, I have become more liberal as I got older.

Think back to those times, which were *checks watch* fifty years ago. What would you have thought of someone who was then 68? What do you think they would have thought of you at the time?

They were the very people who tried to make "things better for everyone" in the 10s and 20s. They fought for suffrage. They brought in the New Deal. Did you respect your elders, young Stacyhs, and let them set the pace of social adjustment on the strengths of their laurels from bygone ages? Or did you write them off as doddering old coots, maybe well-intentioned but archaic and hidebound in their perception of society's ills?

What, then, should the young members of your party think when they see their venerable leadership refuse to give up the torch, or fight for issues important to them, or even allow them their own voice in the party, because they did a thing fifty years ago?

[SuburbanTurkey]

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

I'm so tired of baby boomers...the old folks, the "gerontocracy", the "olds" being blamed for the ills of this country. Who do you think were the very people who tried to make "things better for everyone" in the 60's and 70's? Who were the people behind the civil rights movement, the LGBTQ rights movement, etc? It sure as **** weren't the young Republicans. This isn't a matter of age; it's a matter of outlook, of philosophy. I'm 68 and, if anything, I have become more liberal as I got older.

the counter-culture was just that, a radical counter-culture and not the mainstream. The boomers love to LARP like they were all there in the streets or doing LSD in their hippy communes, but they overwhelmingly weren't. Bunch of posers. Don't worry, I'm sure plenty of younger people are going to pretend they were in portland throwing tear gas back at cops in a couple decades instead of posting "back the blue" memes on Facebook and generally being bootlickers, or pretending they weren't rabid transphobes and were always cool with queer people. The boomers have no monopoly on the rosy lenses of self-revisionism.

Quote:

In a 1986 poll for Time magazine, only a third of the generation said they had favored the social protests and demonstrations of the 1960s and ‘70s, and only a quarter said they took part in them. A mere 8% of respondents said they used marijuana regularly during the 1960s and ‘70s, although 26% acknowledged occasional use. And just 18% of those surveyed in a poll done for Rolling Stone magazine in 1987 said they had pursued a countercultural lifestyle in the late ‘60s.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-x...912-story.html



As a matter of simple math, the baby boomers had nothing to do with the 60's civil rights movements. The earliest boomers were born in '45. All but the oldest boomers were still children during this era. The people getting bit by police dogs were not boomers.

The heyday of the boomer was later, the 80's through today (because grandpa won't give up his car keys). Reagan and Clinton era neoliberalism is their legacy.

[Delvo]

Originally Posted by Fast Eddie B

I think it’s a reach to conclude that decreased intelligence is linked to voting Republican or Conservative or whatever. There are many quite bright people voting both ways. Is there an actual study correlating intelligence with political persuasion?

There are a bunch, but that wasn't really the subject I was getting at, just a "not only this, but also that" tangent. The real point at the moment was about not intelligence but attitude, such as the attitude of opposing a policy that would help people and improve lives because they don't deserve it.

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey

the counter-culture was just that, a radical counter-culture. The boomers love to LARP like they were all there in the streets or whatever, but they overwhelmingly weren't. Bunch of posers.

Even if they had been, that still wouldn't mean anything for the current subject. There's no contradiction at all in admitting that people who were forces for improvement on cultural issues long ago can be and are now forces for harm on economic issues.

[ponderingturtle]

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

"That no one, absolutely no one, should feel they have to do in order to pay for an education. Demanding that people should be willing to potentially die or worse, kill, before they complain about an obviously broken system or ask for lone forgiveness isn't a lot of things, including rational. Or moral."

Did I, anywhere in my thread, or did anyone else, demand that anyone should have to join the military? I clearly said it was an option. An option that both my husband (Navy submariner) and his brother (Air Force) chose.

Fighting and dying is of course the only way you support some people getting an education. Yes you are clear on that.

[bruto]

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey

the counter-culture was just that, a radical counter-culture and not the mainstream. The boomers love to LARP like they were all there in the streets or doing LSD in their hippy communes, but they overwhelmingly weren't. Bunch of posers. Don't worry, I'm sure plenty of younger people are going to pretend they were in portland throwing tear gas back at cops in a couple decades instead of posting "back the blue" memes on Facebook and generally being bootlickers, or pretending they weren't rabid transphobes and were always cool with queer people. The boomers have no monopoly on the rosy lenses of self-revisionism.




https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-x...912-story.html



As a matter of simple math, the baby boomers had nothing to do with the 60's civil rights movements. The earliest boomers were born in '45. All but the oldest boomers were still children during this era. The people getting bit by police dogs were not boomers.

The heyday of the boomer was later, the 80's through today (because grandpa won't give up his car keys). Reagan and Clinton era neoliberalism is their legacy.

That may be partly true, but I, being a 1947 boomer myself, did not imagine that I was at those peace marches. I was. I wasn't at Woodstock, but I sure as hell was in Washington and New York, and I even have the War Resisters League buttons to prove it. Ok, I'm being a little facetious there, even though I do have the buttons. I wasn't putting my life on the line, and I wasn't throwing bombs either, and maybe I was in an unfortunate minority, but I think we were trying to do something and it wasn't what our reprehensible contemporaries are doing now. A minority is always a minority, but you cannot pretend that it did not exist and did not at least try to do something real to change society.

And my sister (perhaps counting as a pre-boomer, having been born on Nagasaki day) did not imagine that she was being arrested and jailed for civil rights marches. Sure, most of the people being bitten by the dogs and clubbed were older, but not by much, and a lot of the impetus that made things happen came from those who were young.

I think part of the mistake is the identification of groups like "boomers" to begin with. So it's true, for example, that when I was 17, the organizers were older, most of the people I was marching with were too, and so they weren't "boomers," and most of my sister's cellmates were a little older, but plenty of the people doing this stuff were young then.

Many of our contemporaries have drunk the conservative Kool Aid, and are no doubt responsible for many evils and regressions and stupidities, just as their parents were when they got older and stupider, just as their children and grandchildren probably will too. But not all of us have forsaken all our principles. The people who were stupid then are stupid now, but it's not the fault of when we were born. To dismiss this, or pretend it was of no consequence is to skirt close to the conservative accusation of "virtue signaling," as if the unfortunate tendency of society to degenerate and regress and of people to resign and become stupid somehow marks the ferocious failures of youthful idealism as hypocritical.

Sure, I'm a Boomer and so is Donny McBonespurs. Ron de Santis, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Matt Gaetz, etc. etc. are not. Don't blame us all for that ****.

[SuburbanTurkey]

Funny enough, one of the coolest and best things happening during Biden's admin is a nascent resurgence of union activism. Starbucks across the country are starting to unionize, and a huge Amazon warehouse in Staten Island just organized despite a well-funded opposition effort. Biden's NRLB is playing a significant role in these successful efforts, and it's arguable that neither would have been successful without this vigorous enforcement of labor law by the labor board that in recent history has been largely toothless.

One of the few good things happening under Biden and I'm only seeing it covered in alternative/progressive media. I suppose this makes sense, because unionization is an anathema to neoliberalism that is the mainstay of the Democratic party.

https://theintercept.com/2022/04/22/...on-biden-nlrb/

Seems like a real missed political opportunity for the Democrats to shake the rightly earned image of them being a bunch of out of touch elites to go mingle with real working people on a picket line. As far as I can tell, no politician is really trying to find a mutually boosting arrangement with these workers advocating for themselves.

When you talk about the liberal gerontocracy, you have to notice trends like this where opportunities to inject youthful vibrancy into the party are allowed to escape unrealized. You have workers self-organizing into unions as a response to the depravities of corporate America, a natural well spring of liberal political energy, and the party couldn't care less.

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey

.....
One of the few good things happening under Biden and I'm only seeing it covered in alternative/progressive media. I suppose this makes sense, because unionization is an anathema to neoliberalism that is the mainstay of the Democratic party.
....

Let's note that Biden has always been a strong advocate for unions. When he talks about his infrastructure and related proposals, he always talks about "the good jobs, the union jobs" they will create. And I dunno why you would blame Democrats for the decline of unions. That started with Reagan breaking the air traffic controllers and continued through decades of Repub rule. Democrats have generally supported unions and been supported by them.

[Beelzebuddy]

Originally Posted by bruto

Sure, I'm a Boomer and so is Donny McBonespurs. Ron de Santis, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Matt Gaetz, etc. etc. are not. Don't blame us all for that ****.

That's the point. That's what young conservatives look like these days, because the population has shifted to the left while political ideologies have lurched to the right. Florida Man, I Can't Recall and Gaspedo are the best they can do. Where are their contemporaries on the Democrat's side? The young liberals who stand to inherit the party once the boomers finally die in their seats? DNC leadership (which to their credit typically were the people in the marches, etc) have spent a lifetime fighting down every challenge to their power, making it them or nothing, and now they're old, and it's still them or nothing.

[SuburbanTurkey]

Originally Posted by Bob001

Let's note that Biden has always been a strong advocate for unions. When he talks about his infrastructure and related proposals, he always talks about "the good jobs, the union jobs" they will create. And I dunno why you would blame Democrats for the decline of unions. That started with Reagan breaking the air traffic controllers and continued through decades of Repub rule. Democrats have generally supported unions and been supported by them.

Why aren't they trying to capitalize, politically, on this huge union win? it's not like they have anything better going on.

Their recent support of unions is tepid at best. Republican want a ram a stake through the heart of unionism, Democrats tend to be more willing to let them slowly die of old age. Definitely the lesser of two evils, but that's not saying much.

[Beelzebuddy]

Originally Posted by Beelzebuddy

That's the point. That's what young conservatives look like these days, because the population has shifted to the left while political ideologies have lurched to the right. Florida Man, I Can't Recall and Gaspedo are the best they can do. Where are their contemporaries on the Democrat's side? The young liberals who stand to inherit the party once the boomers finally die in their seats? DNC leadership (which to their credit typically were the people in the marches, etc) have spent a lifetime fighting down every challenge to their power, making it them or nothing, and now they're old, and it's still them or nothing.

I want to follow on to this, because I'm the guy who spends most political threads saying it's no use fighting past battles, it's where we go from here that matters. It would be great to take a time machine back fifteen years and just start slapping people in the face when they make dumb decisions, but we can't. Here's how to fix this boondoggle:

Beelzebuddy's Evil Plan to Save America

• Take a pen and paper.
• Give them to AOC.
• Do everything she says.

There's a damn good reason the GOP is pants-pissingly terrified of her. She has more media-savvy in her little finger than Hillary's entire circlejerk of a focus group did. It is an outright tragedy that she is not already considered DNC leadership. She will probably tell you to give Bernie Sanders a pen and paper. Do that too. Every ounce of effort spent infighting, marginalizing and silencing passionate voices within the party is an unforced error that the GOP will not hesitate to take advantage of.

Out of curiosity, I googled for the Amazon unionization story to see if any Democrats had even bothered to show up. Two congresscritters did. Two. Want to guess who they were? AOC and Bernie Sanders. Bernie gets a lot of crap in these threads, but he's out there doing a better job of being a Democrat than the Democrats. New York has two D Senators. Where were they? Were they too busy? Was it not worth their time? Amazon, correct me if I'm wrong, is kind of all over the US now, right? Shouldn't every Democrat be watching for similar opportunities? Like, all the time?

Aside from (but almost certainly included in) AOC's dictation, if there's news that the Democratic party sees as a good thing, they need to make damn well sure there's a statement from a Democrat saying it's a good thing in the story about it. Get the county dog catcher (D) in there to spout off about how great it is if that's what it takes. You can't sit back and expect people to find the the GOP odious enough to vote against, you've got to get out there and remind people what they're voting for.

[SuburbanTurkey]

Quote:

Biden pollster GSG is ‘deeply sorry’ for Amazon anti-union work as labor groups abandon it

Top labor groups and political action committees are distancing themselves from a major Democratic pollster after it was revealed that the firm worked on Amazon’s anti-labor efforts at a warehouse on New York’s Staten Island.

In late March, CNBC reported that Amazon tapped Global Strategy Group, an influential polling and consulting firm, to help with campaign materials at several Staten Island facilities, including JFK8, the site of a successful union drive earlier this month.

GSG is well known on Capitol Hill and in Democratic political circles. It served as a polling partner for a pro-Biden super PAC ahead of the 2020 election and maintains a high-profile roster of political and corporate clients, including Google and Facebook.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/14/bide...bandon-it.html

Surely this means the end of the pro-union Democrats working with these pollsters, right?

/s

Obviously this DNC connected firm did not miscalculate. They understand that Democratic pro-union sentiments are half-hearted at best.

[tyr_13]

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

"That no one, absolutely no one, should feel they have to do in order to pay for an education. Demanding that people should be willing to potentially die or worse, kill, before they complain about an obviously broken system or ask for lone forgiveness isn't a lot of things, including rational. Or moral."

Did I, anywhere in my thread, or did anyone else, demand that anyone should have to join the military? I clearly said it was an option. An option that both my husband (Navy submariner) and his brother (Air Force) chose.

And your entire argument is that some people can/did pay back their loans and that the existence of such options means student debt shouldn't be forgiven.

This is demanding that people avail themselves of these options if they want an education (which, as some of them are not college education, is kinda weird frankly) without forever debt. 'Have you considered that you could have signed on to kill people?' isn't a viable option for most of the people who now are over-burdened with non-dischargable debt most of them took on at eighteen on the advisement of the very people now denigrating their choice to do so.

The 'options' and advise here also follows this pattern of being something that might (might) be viable for any given individual but tell us next to nothing about the systemic issues, and do not scale in any meaningful way.

'They are always hiring in the trades' is nonsense. No, no they are not. This might seem to be the case, but let me tell you as someone who worked in the automotive industry where people like to say 'they're always hiring welders', NOPE. Absolutely not. At times that is the case it is because retention is so bad. I knew a guy who went to trade school for welding, got top certifications on every type of welding. He waited seven years to get a job worth a damn just to have that rug pulled out from under him. ('We don't need a Union here' is THE red flag right up there with 'we're family here' as far as jobs go.) Two of my best friends are machinists who make pretty good money, but not nearly as much as they should with the 3rd shift and other lack of benefits. Trucker drivers make 'great' money with absolute trash take home. It's a horrible job which is why they're always hiring; more people quit in a year than are hired. My recently departed step dad was a contractor for years. We know so many of the local plumbers and electricians and roofers in the area, and the work can be 'good', it just isn't viable for even a sizable minority of the people currently burdened by student debt.

Why would the laws of supply and demand NOT apply to any of these career paths? 'Electricians make great money!' would quickly stop being the case if a lot more people took it up. How many more jobs would be created by moving to more people in trades? I'm not saying it shouldn't happen. There are shortages in many fields. Many fields should have more people doing the jobs with less training and fewer hours than currently (Healthcare is like this, with a few people making a ton of money in exchange for stupid levels of over work when it could use some more people making a bit less dividing the labor up better.) However, it just doesn't fix the student debt crisis. It's a small part. Using it to justify not alleviating student debt is just a rationalization to avoid dealing with the sources of the actual problem. 'They didn't have to take on that debt' deflects from the fact that many of them didn't have viable options to get a good living and this is compounded by how few actually get to be middle class any longer. 'Why didn't you not do this thing we told you you needed to do? You could have done this other thing that also wouldn't have worked!' (Again, to the level it would need to in order to address the problem.)

The people getting this forgiveness have also already paid a ton as a group. They aren't getting out free of impact, and aren't being incentivized to take the same risk again.

Some people making bad choices that results in bad outcomes might be addressed by 'personal responsibility' or adding 'better people' to the equation, but once it becomes clear the issue is widespread enough to be systemic, such advise becomes a hand wave. This goes for personal/individual responsibility models of pollution, climate change, housing costs, wealth issues, policing, as much as it goes for student debt.

[Susheel]

Came up on my feed recently:

Over 10,000 Sign to Remove Sonal Shah As Homeland Security Advisor

Those of Indian origin are not necessarily in congruence with egalitarianism. Many carry their Brahminic caste privilege with them...case in point...Preeti Patel in the UK. The VHP is more or less the nascent Hindu version of the Islamic fundamentalist organizations.

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Delvo

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stacyhs View Post
you linked 'lead head' to the difference in crime rates without mentioning other reasons:

Your "other reasons" are excuses somebody concocted to avoid facing reality.

Pulled straight out of your nether regions. Who is this "somebody" and how do you know their motives? You don't. Do think there are no reasons other than "lead head" for the differing crime rates is ludicrous. "The lead made me rob the 7/11!" LOL!

Originally Posted by Delvo

Quote:

Quote:
Millennials are the most college-educated generation, which is generally linked to lower crime rates.

Going to college doesn't reduce crime; the less criminal are more likely to go to college. Lead, on the other hand, does increase antisocial tendencies, which increase crime. (Also, college attendance has been increasing in general for a long time, and anything that's just going up can't be the explanation for something else going first up and then down, like crime and/or lead in this case.)

LOL! Why do you think there is more crime among the poor? Because they breathed in more lead from gas growing up? Education gets one out of poverty. The poor are the least likely to go to college; it's called the poverty cycle.

Quote:

Education as a Tool for Breaking the Cycles of Poverty
According to Gates Foundation statistics, less than a third of young adults from poor families earn any kind of postsecondary credential.

Originally Posted by Delvo

Quote:

Additionally, it’s possible that Millennials, who are overall empathetic and also, interestingly, more conservative than their parents’ generation, just don’t have the constitution for violent crime.

The "more conservative" bit is not true and depends on some misleading definition-gamery at best, but, even if it were true, that sentence would just be an attempt to connect conservativeness with being inherently against violent crime... which is dishonest nonsense that only a lying or brainwashed conservative would tout.

A crucial phrase was left out of that: Millenials are more conservative than their parents' generation when they were their children's age.:

Quote:

The young adults, who were born between 1980 and 1994, are currently more politically polarized than Generation Xers and Baby Boomers, according to the paper, which was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin on Wednesday.

Additionally, millennials are more likely to identify as conservative than either Generation Xers or Baby Boomers were at the same age, said Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University and lead author of the paper.

“High school seniors are more likely to identify as political conservatives now compared to 10 years ago. Most surprising, more identify as conservatives now compared to the 1980s, presumably the era of the young conservative, such as the character Alex P. Keaton in the 1980s show ‘Family Ties.’ That goes against the common view of millennials as very liberal,” said Twenge, author of the book about millennials titled “Generation Me.”

“So the current view of millennials as liberals might be due to their age – young people are more likely to be liberal. But if you compare young people now to young people in previous decades, those now are more conservative,” she said.

Quote:

The data showed that millennials are the most polarized political group that the United States has seen in some time, given their age, Sherman said.

Quote:

Furthermore, “they are not the extremely liberal and Democrat generation that many anticipated,” he said, as the researchers found that the polarization that has emerged in the millennial generation may be driven by conservatives.

(https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/healt...ons/index.html)

So what was that you were saying that this was "some misleading definition-gamery at best" that only "a lying or brainwashed conservative would tout,"?

Originally Posted by Delvo

Quote:

It could also be down to the economy; though Millennials have a harder time finding a job, many of them may also have the wealth of their parents to fall back on.

...except that they just don't. (And it's not as if their parents didn't, at least not to any greater or lesser extent).

They don't?

Quote:

Millennials Are Struggling To Get Jobs - Here's Why, And What To Do About It
Despite being an up-and-coming, in-demand generation, and one that’s consistently shaping how we think about work, millennials are still having a hard time finding reasonable jobs. The millennial unemployment rate stands at an unfortunate 12.8 percent, compared to the national average of 4.9 percent.

The modern American workplace needs millennials to gain experience and replace previous generations in positions of leadership as time goes on, but millennials seem to be facing a uniquely difficult challenge doing so compared to other generations.

Originally Posted by Delvo

Quote:

Additionally, the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana in many cities and states means that generally, the crimes that are most common with Millennials simply aren’t being charged as often.

Irrelevantly-colored fish of an irrelevant species. The crime statistics that are being compared are not and never have been marijuana crimes, and any effect being caused by changes in laws in certain specific jurisdictions would only happen in those jurisdictions, not everywhere including in jurisdictions where the alleged cause didn't even happen.

1) How do you know that the crime statistics being compared "are not and never have been marijuana crimes"? You provide no evidence of this.

2) The rest of that paragraph is another claim made with zero evidence to support it. In fact, I've read lots of allegations and claims by you for which you've provided zero evidence while I, on the other hand, have quoted and cited evidence supporting mine.

Quote:

...and is also itself another sign of less lead, not another separate unrelated thing; kids & young adults know that drinking alcohol is something they're told they shouldn't do because it's harmful, and doing stuff you're told you shouldn't do because it's harmful is a classic description of one of the symptoms of antisocialness, which is what unnaturally high lead increases. So this one actually is just another part of what I was saying, not a contradiction or alternative to it.

LOL! This is so far beyond unsupported nonsense it's pathetic.

Quote:

Alcohol Consumption by Generation
Some studies have found that the younger generations, particularly the Millennials and GenZers, are drinking less than their older counterparts. This is due in part to the fact that they fear what will happen when they lose control when drinking and how their actions will appear on social media platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram.

These younger generations are concerned about their health as well, but are mainly influenced by a wider cultural shift that younger people have accepted as normal: that of being watched on social media. As a result, the sales of non-alcoholic beer and cocktails are on the rise.

Originally Posted by Delvo

Scarecrow; nobody claimed that how kids are raised doesn't affect how they turn out. In fact, I even brought up the fact that it does so myself by even mentioning at all the bit about being told that the way things are in the asylum is how they must always be kept; it's part of the explanation for why even people in the post-lead generations still sometimes perpetuate the same antisocial attitudes of their leaded-up parents & grandparents. However, as I'm sure you already know perfectly well I was saying, there are also other factors affecting how people turn out, in addition to how their parents raised them, not instead of that. And less lead is a pretty big one of them.

NO, what you said is that the lead headed "neurologically stunted patients/inmates", i.e. Boomer/Gen. X, " somehow reproduced", not "taught" their children to be, "healthier, more reasonable, less hateful, better offspring than themselves":

Originally Posted by Delvo

"The current world is essentially an "insane asylum" where the neurologically stunted patients/inmates somehow reproduced healthier, more reasonable, less hateful, better offspring than themselves and raised them in the asylum and told them that they way things are in the asylum is the way things need to always be.

DON'T PEE ON MY LEG AND TELL ME IT'S RAINING!

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Beelzebuddy

Think back to those times, which were *checks watch* fifty years ago. What would you have thought of someone who was then 68? What do you think they would have thought of you at the time?

They were the very people who tried to make "things better for everyone" in the 10s and 20s. They fought for suffrage. They brought in the New Deal. Did you respect your elders, young Stacyhs, and let them set the pace of social adjustment on the strengths of their laurels from bygone ages? Or did you write them off as doddering old coots, maybe well-intentioned but archaic and hidebound in their perception of society's ills?

What, then, should the young members of your party think when they see their venerable leadership refuse to give up the torch, or fight for issues important to them, or even allow them their own voice in the party, because they did a thing fifty years ago?

Why are you asking me this when this has never been a point I've debated? My point is that I'm tired of Baby Boomers being blamed for all the ills of the world which is pretty much what you were doing. It had NOTHING to do with older leadership refusing to give way to the younger generation.

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey

the counter-culture was just that, a radical counter-culture and not the mainstream. The boomers love to LARP like they were all there in the streets or doing LSD in their hippy communes, but they overwhelmingly weren't. Bunch of posers.

Did I say everyone in the 60's and 70's were part of the counter-culture? No.

But no generation that has fought for any cultural/social change was in the majority. It's always been the vocal minority that actually made the noise, did the protesting and moved the change forward. The suffragettes were never in the majority; most women weren't out marching or going to prison. But the 19th Amendment was still passed. It was the same with the Civil Right movement or the anti-Vietnam war protesters; the majority of young people weren't out there marching and protesting. It was the vocal minority of them that got the results.

The 'revisionism' that you claim exists...without any evidence of it... because "The Boomers love to LARP like they were all there in the streets or doing LSD in their hippy communes," is just nonsense based on nothing but your imagination. You think Boomers are all a bunch of "posers" because you've got your knickers in a twist that we're all not far-left enough for you. You really need to get over Bernie not winning.

Quote:

Don't worry, I'm sure plenty of younger people are going to pretend they were in portland throwing tear gas back at cops in a couple decades instead of posting "back the blue" memes on Facebook and generally being bootlickers, or pretending they weren't rabid transphobes and were always cool with queer people. The boomers have no monopoly on the rosy lenses of self-revisionism.

Sure of that are ya? Well, if you're as bad at predictions as you are at describing Boomers as being "LARPers" and "posers" because we all claim to have been hippie, tripping, free love, flower children, don't gamble.


https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-x...912-story.html

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey

As a matter of simple math, the baby boomers had nothing to do with the 60's civil rights movements. The earliest boomers were born in '45. All but the oldest boomers were still children during this era.

Nothing to do with the Civil Rights movement? Voting Rights Acts of 1965 and 1968: earlier Boomers would have been their late teens and early 20's, not children. At least according to my simple math.

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey

The people getting bit by police dogs were not boomers.

You sure about that? You better tell that to Lynda Blackmon Lowery who was born in 1950:

Quote:

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March

As the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Albama, Lynda Blackmon Lowery proved that young adults can be heroes. Jailed eleven times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. for the rights of African-Americans.

Quote:

The heyday of the boomer was later, the 80's through today (because grandpa won't give up his car keys). Reagan and Clinton era neoliberalism is their legacy.

So you think the Boomers had no effect on ending the Viet Nam War, equal rights for women, etc. ? Hmmmm...I lived through the 1960's and 1970's. Did you? Or are my life experiences simply "revisionism" ? Maybe I'm LARPing. Or posing.

[Beelzebuddy]

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

Why are you asking me this when this has never been a point I've debated? My point is that I'm tired of Baby Boomers being blamed for all the ills of the world which is pretty much what you were doing. It had NOTHING to do with older leadership refusing to give way to the younger generation.

What do you think "gerontocracy" means?

[Delvo]

In the general population, lefty thinking is more associated with the young and righty thinking is more associated with the old, but the average age among politicians (at least at the Federal level) is higher for Democrats than it is for Republicans. But that doesn't mean the way to look at what the DP has been doing to make it that way is in terms of age, as in failure/refusal of the old to step aside for the young. The driving force behind it is ideology: they're righties in a party which has (so far) still been the party that young lefties join, and they're fighting to keep out this invasion by their ideological opponents.

In a way, it makes perfectly obvious political sense to do so. The only problem has been that they need to trick youngsters & lefties into voting for them, and that means walking a tightrope between projecting an image of themselves to the left and governing to the right, and that rope keeps getting thinner and wavier.

[bruto]

Sure, there is, as always, too little allowance for youth in leadership, and old farts are running and ruining everything. People like Greta Thunberg are dismissed for being young as if being young were being wrong.

But it's also true that one does not need to degenerate into a conservative curmudgeon, even if many do. A minority is always a minority. And it's also true that once upon a time, a vociferous minority of younger people made a difference in society. The fact that the recalcitrant majority still rules is not their fault.

Bernie Sanders is old too, don't forget. When some of us were young firebrands fighting for peace and equality, many of the leaders we respected were older, and they knew that much of their support came from those younger and welcomed it. (Side note,) my sister never, as far as I know, got bitten by dogs, but she was clubbed and jailed, and yes the leaders of the now historic movement to desegregate Maryland's East Shore were older, but they openly welcomed, and credited, the young people who joined them. And yes, she was a teenager just starting college when it happened, and yes, it was the older Gloria Richardson who kept bailing her and her fellow students out, and she's dead now and can't tell the tale, but don't anyone tell me those kids weren't there, and don't ******* tell me they made no difference.

A minority is always a minority at any age. We may not have done enough, we may have failed and fallen short, and no doubt many of us have calcified into the very forces we once despised, but that does not retroactively erase who was where or who did what.

[Tero]

a whole year and 3 months and
Louis DeJoy is still there

[Aridas]

Originally Posted by Tero

a whole year and 3 months and
Louis DeJoy is still there

On that front, at last check, Biden's nominees that could make any difference there are still being filibustered.

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Beelzebuddy

What do you think "gerontocracy" means?

I didn't introduce that word; you did. I repeated it and put it into quotes for a reason:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stacyhs View Post
I'm so tired of baby boomers...the old folks, the "gerontocracy", the "olds" being blamed for the ills of this country.

Try reading for context.

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Delvo

In the general population, lefty thinking is more associated with the young and righty thinking is more associated with the old, but the average age among politicians (at least at the Federal level) is higher for Democrats than it is for Republicans. But that doesn't mean the way to look at what the DP has been doing to make it that way is in terms of age, as in failure/refusal of the old to step aside for the young.

Quote:

The average age of Democrats in Congress is 61 and of Republicans is 58.

Overall, there is an average of a three year difference in age.

Quote:

Half of the US Senate is 65 years or older
Exactly 50 of the 100 senators are at least 65 years old. There are more Senate Republicans than Democrats who are 65 years or older. But in the House, nearly twice as many Democratic members are at least 65 years old than House Republicans.

As for the larger difference in the House, let's look at the quality of those being elected. The GOP are electing such stellar people as Boebert, Greene, Cawthorn, etc.

Originally Posted by Delvo

The driving force behind it is ideology: they're righties in a party which has (so far) still been the party that young lefties join, and they're fighting to keep out this invasion by their ideological opponents.

Exactly HOW are the "fighting to keep their ideological opponents out"? Not encouraging young people to vote? Making it more difficult for them? Keeping them off of committees?

Originally Posted by Delvo

In a way, it makes perfectly obvious political sense to do so. The only problem has been that they need to trick youngsters & lefties into voting for them, and that means walking a tightrope between projecting an image of themselves to the left and governing to the right, and that rope keeps getting thinner and wavier.

Again, just HOW are they 'tricking" youngsters and lefties into voting for them?

First you claimed that the Dem "oldies" are "fighting to keep out this invasion by their ideological opponents" (the leftie youngsters) and then you claim they "need to trick youngsters & lefties into voting for them." Which is it?

Sigh. You do have a penchant for making claims without providing any facts to back them up...claims that are mostly just highly biased opinions.

[Beelzebuddy]

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

I didn't introduce that word; you did. I repeated it and put it into quotes for a reason:

Try reading for context.

"Okay Boomer"

[ETA] Sigh... I hate flippant replies even if they're called for. Putting something into "quotes" doesn't mean you can just ignore it and knock down a strawman instead.

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by bruto

Sure, there is, as always, too little allowance for youth in leadership, and old farts are running and ruining everything. People like Greta Thunberg are dismissed for being young as if being young were being wrong.

But it's also true that one does not need to degenerate into a conservative curmudgeon, even if many do. A minority is always a minority. And it's also true that once upon a time, a vociferous minority of younger people made a difference in society. The fact that the recalcitrant majority still rules is not their fault.

Bernie Sanders is old too, don't forget. When some of us were young firebrands fighting for peace and equality, many of the leaders we respected were older, and they knew that much of their support came from those younger and welcomed it. (Side note,) my sister never, as far as I know, got bitten by dogs, but she was clubbed and jailed, and yes the leaders of the now historic movement to desegregate Maryland's East Shore were older, but they openly welcomed, and credited, the young people who joined them. And yes, she was a teenager just starting college when it happened, and yes, it was the older Gloria Richardson who kept bailing her and her fellow students out, and she's dead now and can't tell the tale, but don't anyone tell me those kids weren't there, and don't ******* tell me they made no difference.

A minority is always a minority at any age. We may not have done enough, we may have failed and fallen short, and no doubt many of us have calcified into the very forces we once despised, but that does not retroactively erase who was where or who did what.

[Delvo]

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

{no point in bothering to itemize}

The tone of voice in which the following text was written is not a yell but a low, slow, calm, flat delivery...

Your berzerker "it's Delvo!!!!! " rage is exactly the same for points we agree on as for those we don't, including the ones where you had to lie about what I'd said just to pretend there was more disagreement than there was. Such a compulsive need to "Fight! Fight! Fight!" over every distortion you can come up with for every word and every sentence structure every time you see my name/avatar, without even stopping to notice when we're in agreement on the actual subject, is the most perfect demonstration imaginable that, even if I did bother to edit around the nearly constant personal attackery and counter your points where I actually do disagree, you definitely wouldn't really listen. You don't appear to be even capable of it as long as it's me, because to you the subject isn't the subject; I am. (This is also demonstrated, in other posts of yours before, by your history of routine blatant Rule-12 violations aimed at me, although I don't recall this latest post of yours containing one this time.)

If I were looking at this the way your behavior shows that you are, I suppose I'd say something like "wipe off the drool, get down off the countertop, put down the red crayon, and breathe slowly til either your heart rate adjusts to your lungs or you pass out", but it's actually just mildly sad. This can't be a good way to go through life. I hope that you don't have this same kind of response to other stimuli as you clearly consistently do to my presence, and that you recover from whatever made you this way. In the meantime, I am a stimulus that you can and should easily cut out of your life with the Ignore List, for the sake of your own well-being. I have already just done the same, not for the same reason, but because rational conversation with you is simply not a possibility in your current state, knowing that your response to absolutely anything & everything from me will always be the same for the foreseeable future. (...including this one, at least at first.) There's just no point, for either of us.

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Delvo

The tone of voice in which the following text was written is not a yell but a low, slow, calm, flat delivery...

Your berzerker "it's Delvo!!!!! " rage is exactly the same for points we agree on as for those we don't, including the ones where you had to lie about what I'd said just to pretend there was more disagreement than there was. Such a compulsive need to "Fight! Fight! Fight!" over every distortion you can come up with for every word and every sentence structure every time you see my name/avatar, without even stopping to notice when we're in agreement on the actual subject, is the most perfect demonstration imaginable that, even if I did bother to edit around the nearly constant personal attackery and counter your points where I actually do disagree, you definitely wouldn't really listen. You don't appear to be even capable of it as long as it's me, because to you the subject isn't the subject; I am. (This is also demonstrated, in other posts of yours before, by your history of routine blatant Rule-12 violations aimed at me, although I don't recall this latest post of yours containing one this time).

If I were looking at this the way your behavior shows that you are, I supposed I'd say something like "wipe off the drool, get down off the countertop, put down the red crayon, and breathe slowly til either your heart rate adjusts to your lungs or you pass out", but it's actually just mildly sad. This can't be a good way to go through life. I hope that you don't have this same kind of response to other stimuli as you clearly consistently do to my presence, and that you recover from whatever made you this way. In the meantime, I am a stimulus that you can and should easily cut out of your life with the Ignore List, for the sake of your own well-being. I have already just done the same, not for the same reason, but because rational conversation with you is simply not a possibility in your current state, knowing that your response to absolutely anything & everything from me will always be the same for the foreseeable future. (...including this one, at least at first.) There's just no point, for either of us.

In other words, Delvo, you can't refute anything I said with any evidence so you resort to the ad hominem fallacy. You accuse me of "lying about what (you) just said when I did not as is there for anyone to see. Then you accuse me of attacking you personally all the time and this is evidenced
"...by your history of routine blatant Rule-12 violations aimed at me," which is
false because I just went through every single rule 12 violation I've been issued since I joined and there were exactly ZERO for any post to you or about you. Ironically, just what do you think your rant above is?

If you choose to put me on ignore, fine. If you can't stand the heat of being challenged with evidence, then get out of the kitchen. This is a skeptics' forum, not an echo chamber.

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Beelzebuddy

"Okay Boomer"

[ETA] Sigh... I hate flippant replies even if they're called for. Putting something into "quotes" doesn't mean you can just ignore it and knock down a strawman instead.

And yet again, you fail to actually address the issue which is that your question to me was based on a false premise that I had argued something I never did. There was no strawman on my part.

[kevbo]

Originally Posted by bruto

Sure, there is, as always, too little allowance for youth in leadership, and old farts are running and ruining everything. People like Greta Thunberg are dismissed for being young as if being young were being wrong.

But it's also true that one does not need to degenerate into a conservative curmudgeon, even if many do. A minority is always a minority. And it's also true that once upon a time, a vociferous minority of younger people made a difference in society. The fact that the recalcitrant majority still rules is not their fault.

Bernie Sanders is old too, don't forget. When some of us were young firebrands fighting for peace and equality, many of the leaders we respected were older, and they knew that much of their support came from those younger and welcomed it. (Side note,) my sister never, as far as I know, got bitten by dogs, but she was clubbed and jailed, and yes the leaders of the now historic movement to desegregate Maryland's East Shore were older, but they openly welcomed, and credited, the young people who joined them. And yes, she was a teenager just starting college when it happened, and yes, it was the older Gloria Richardson who kept bailing her and her fellow students out, and she's dead now and can't tell the tale, but don't anyone tell me those kids weren't there, and don't ******* tell me they made no difference.

A minority is always a minority at any age. We may not have done enough, we may have failed and fallen short, and no doubt many of us have calcified into the very forces we once despised, but that does not retroactively erase who was where or who did what.

Thank you. I'm a boomer and I get tired of being lumped in with many of our more conservative peers. We didn't all forget the sacrifices and passions of the 60's and 70's. It may take longer to get where we want our society to be, but I do believe we will get there. It is going to take more than one term to undo the damage of the last president. With congressional obstructionism Obama wasn't able to undo two terms of W. But he did try, and now Biden faces the same, if not worse, obstructionism. I believe it is going to be a long hard process. We need to work together and celebrate even small accomplishments.

[kevbo]

Originally Posted by Aridas

On that front, at last check, Biden's nominees that could make any difference there are still being filibustered.

^^ This. It isn't that people aren't trying, but the Republicans have mastered obstructionism, first under Bush and then Trump. Accomplishments are going to be small and slow in coming for a long while. Perserverence is key.

[Beelzebuddy]

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

And yet again, you fail to actually address the issue which is that your question to me was based on a false premise that I had argued something I never did. There was no strawman on my part.

What the hell are you talking about? You replied to me. If that wasn't an actual response to what I was actually saying, you were just taking the opportunity to shake your cane and yell at clouds, then fine but you ought to have said so.

[ETA] On second thought, this is exactly the problem. Old liberals identify more with old conservatives than with young liberals, to the extent that they'd rather reach across the aisle for support than sort out conflicts within their own party. We saw this last year when Dem leadership sided with Republicans to kill the progressive half of the BBB rather than push it through as they'd promised.

Originally Posted by kevbo

It is going to take more than one term to undo the damage of the last president. With congressional obstructionism Obama wasn't able to undo two terms of W. But he did try, and now Biden faces the same, if not worse, obstructionism. I believe it is going to be a long hard process. We need to work together and celebrate even small accomplishments.

I like your sentiment, but we don't have more than one term. The next GOP administration will wreck the system even further. It's not like the spine of neo-Fascism has been broken and we can plan on a slow, peaceful reconstruction process. They're still out there. These are not normal times. The only thing we'd be celebrating is our dignified defeat.