(11-15-2018, 01:52 PM)GeekyCynic Wrote: I was studying the generational breakdown of the new Congress and while some elections are still undecided at this point, it appears Millennials may just barely now have more House members than the Silent while Boomers still hold a small but shrinking edge over Xers. It is very likely after 2020 that Xers will finally have a plurality in the House (60 years after their first birth year). In the Senate, depending on how the Florida race goes, the Silent will have 10/11 members, Boomers 59/60, and Xers 30. Do you think Millennials will rise to power as slowly as Xers have?
The GI and Silent generations have had the longest lifespans in American history, which is reflected in the extreme ages at which both have lasted or can reasonably be expected to last in public life. Think of Robert Byrd, Strom Thurmond, Frank Lautenberg, and Daniel Inouye in the Senate. The last member of the GI Generation in the House was around to age 92, losing a primary challenge in 2016.
GI adults found a trick to longevity: remaining physically and mentally active as long as possible. The Silent have done much the same. As Boomers fully enter old age (and they are now largely a generation of old people by any earlier standard, people born in 1953 passing age 65 this year) they will do the same. Possibly the lightest smokers ever as a generation since the Gilded and perhaps before the Millennial Generation, Boomers will be in high public office for a very long time. X? Ask me in about 20 years if I am still around. I turn 63 next month, so don't count on my ability to judge or discuss that. If Generation X continues that trend, then the GI pattern of behavior of the elderly will be clearly an indelible part of American culture, and political careers will tend to start late or develop more slowly.Slower development might mean that people develop more local ties and concerns, and later careers mean that people would develop more ties to economic interests to which they are vocationally attached. That may not be all to the good.
The youngest member of the Senate will be Generation X this time. No Millennial has yet reached the Senate, but I would not be surprised about one or two reaching the Upper Chamber of Congress in 2022, 2024 at the latest. Old people competent at holding high office and willing and constitutionally allowed to do so will do so. That will slow promising young politicians who get to learn the ropes of politics a bit longer in city councils and state legislatures before achieving prominence.
Don't forget that Silent Nancy Pelosi supplants Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House -- constitutionally third in line for the Presidency and among the most powerful five persons in American politics in normal times. When the President is politically crippled (and Trump could be due to his scandals), she is among the top three, and one cannot always predict which of the top three.
...The Millennial generation has been slow to reach high office (now, I assume, exclusively the House of Representatives) not so much out of apathy as because the elder politicians have been slow to lose power. Eighty-something pols have typically been rare in high public office, but not now -- and they block the thirty-something pols.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.