this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
128 points (100.0% liked)

politics

22338 readers
291 users here now

Protests, dual power, and even electoralism.

Labour and union posts go to [email protected].

Take the dunks to /c/strugglesession or [email protected].

[email protected] is good for shitposting.

Do not post direct links to reactionary sites.

Off topic posts will be removed.

Follow the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember we're all comrades here.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I wish I could feel sympathy, but I don't. The Reagan generation did this to themselves, and the rest of us have to suffer with them.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Generation is absolutely real and informs people's decisions and attitudes

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The only way you can really define generation is by way of political economy though.

Boomers grew up during the post war era when the social services created by the post depression era were being leveraged to build up white wealth after the war.

Gen X grew up during Nixon and Reagan, experienced stagflation and the massive austerity imposed by the new neoliberal ideology. The wealthy ones got wealthier and the poor ones got poorer.

Millennials were in that post neoliberal haze of the 90s where American empire seemed to have come into it's power. It has subjugated all developing markets in Asia and Europe and cemented itself as the sole superpower after killing the USSR.

Gen Z and the younger millennials grew up with 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the 2008 housing crisis, and COVID recession, something that caused complete and total disenchantment of America.

It can feel like it's hard to discuss things between these generations, because any one of them trying to find common ground with younger people only has their own experience in the economic climate of their time. Boomers just say "get a job" because for the white ones it really was just that easy. They don't grasp the idea of economic stagnation as something that happens when you're young and that it causes you to enter a state of perpetual poverty that benefits their pension funds.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And you don't think the political economy of a person's formative years will affect their view of politics?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It does, but you said generations inform decisions. Which is such an ambiguous term as to be useless. I was just more clearly defining generations by major economic factors.

Lots of "generation" talk is about nostalgia and culture. When it's really economic.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Generation is absolutely real and informs people's decisions and attitudes

to an extent but the bourgeoisie capitalizes on these differences to divide the proletariat. This episode of citations-needed is pretty good:

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-38-the-medias-bogus-generation-obsession

“Baby Boomers are bloating the social safety net!” “GenXers are changing the nature of work!” “Millennials are killing the housing market!". The media endlessly feeds us stories about how one generation or another is engaging in some collective act of moral failing that, either explicitly or by implication, harms another generation. It’s a widely-mocked cliché at this point, namely the near-constant analyses detailing what Millennials have “killed” or “ruined” lately - everything from Applebee's to diamonds to top sheets to beer to napkins.

The first rule of drama––and by implication, the media––is to create tension. But what if tensions that actually exist in our society, like white supremacy and class conflict, are too unpleasant and dicey to touch––upsetting advertisers and media owners who benefit from these systems? To replace these real tensions in society, the media repeatedly relies on dubious and entirely safe points of conflict, like those between two arbitrary generations. It’s not the rich or racism that’s holding me back--it’s old people running up entitlement spending or lazy youth who don’t want to work!

In this episode we talk about why this media trope isn’t just hacky and cliche, but also subtly racist and reactionary.