12-14-2022, 05:26 PM
(12-14-2022, 05:05 AM)nguyenivy Wrote:(12-14-2022, 12:40 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: One thing that is sure to go: the divide over whether to have more vs less involvement overseas is a generation one, not a left/right one. Silents and boomers want more "spreading democracy", nation building, being the world police, etc. Millennials and zoomers want us to leave the rest of the world alone and focus on ourselves. One of my biggest gripes with Idealist generations is their tendency to want to project universalist ideologies as far as possible, and they expect other generations to foot the bill and make the sacrifices necessary for this to happen. The Civil War is probably the most extreme example, but this trait is still definitely present in boomers.
In the event that they are opposing rather than complimentary priorities, the question is what is best for America, not what is best for the rest of the world. Many boomers (and likely a few in here) will object to this, but frankly...most of y'all gon' be dead by the 1T, and the younger generations simply don't care about that. We care about rebuilding, not making sacrifices for causes primarily aimed at benefitting foreign parties.
Is this why the US is moving slowly on climate change so far & appears to not care as much as other places on this topic? Slowing down the phenomenon will also benefit the US in addition to everywhere else, but it seems even my (Millennial) generation & the Xers I know don't seem to care enough about it to push industry to change. Do we just think we won't be around to see whatever the outcome will be? (Xers will be 70+/'twilight years' in 2050, Millennials 50+/'leaving prime age', etc) Millennials are in the 'raising kids/family' phase and likely just don't have the time to pursue a lot of protesting for something far down the pike when we have plenty on our plate now that is troublesome.
The American political system gives disproportionate power to the super-wealthy who can supply the Dark Money to political aspirants who, like many of the super-wealthy, believe that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as such serves the power, indulgence, and greed of elites who know no limits for these. Dark Money supports politics of fear and loathing, reflecting to the extent that people can be manipulated, that those who own the gold are the only ones who can competently or rightly rule. This can change. Those super-wealthy are disproportionately white, and those who are most amenable to such an appeal are undereducated white people under economic and cultural stress.
Generation X acquiesced to neoliberal politics and economics in return for promises of opportunity but often hated their jobs and the abysmal pay that came with them. They griped to their Millennial kids who learned their economics as griping about economic inequity and an increasingly-rigid class structure.
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.