Generation X reshaping global politics

[Captain Genet]

What's your opinion on this?

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I don't think it's happening now. In British politics, Xers (Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer) are already the most important players. So is in France, with Emmanuel Macron, Xavier Bertrand and Marine le Pen. But the most important countries are still led by Boomers: Biden, Putin and Xi Jin Ping.

I estimate it'll take until about 2030 or 35 until all boomers cease to be a part of public debate. What difference will this make? I think less polarization and a move toward the millennial consensus as described by Steve Barrera, though its more authoritarian impulses will be held in check by Xer leaders.

[nguyenivy]

My guess: 2020s decade will be the transition. Will X be the next long-running generation in power or will they get just a couple terms/major players before a multi-decade Millennial run like Boomers had?

[Eric the Green]

(07-08-2021, 05:23 AM)Captain Genet Wrote: What's your opinion on this?

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I don't think it's happening now. In British politics, Xers (Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer) are already the most important players. So is in France, with Emmanuel Macron, Xavier Bertrand and Marine le Pen. But the most important countries are still led by Boomers: Biden, Putin and Xi Jin Ping.

I estimate it'll take until about 2030 or 35 until all boomers cease to be a part of public debate. What difference will this make? I think less polarization and a move toward the millennial consensus as described by Steve Barrera, though its more authoritarian impulses will be held in check by Xer leaders.

Xers claim they are less polarizing, but in the US congress there are just as many Xer members in the reactionary "freedom caucus" as boomers. The authors warned against Xers who might have authoritarian impulses. But Xers are supposed to be a more calming influence once they assume more leadership roles in the 1T, and lead in their cynical "get off my lawn" and "don't rock the boat too much" style that represents acquiesence in exhaustion. Although Boris Johnson started his term as a reactionary trouble-maker, I am glad to see he has become more practical and flexible as an Xer is supposed to be. I think his bout with covid taught him something. Macron is a moderate, but is not very successful in getting public support. LePen is obviously a looney extremist and represents the authoritarian tendencies of Xers. I have no info on the other two.

As long as some boomers are at the helm, some of them will challenge us to move forward toward change and idealism. But who's to blame if this means "polarization," those pushing and leading us forward to "complete the mission," or those who are resisting and insisting on keeping things the same? (boomers probably included among those on both sides, no doubt).

Since late Silents are still in the debate in the second half of the 4T, I would expect some late-blooming boomers around makin' noise and trouble well into the 1T, maybe 2040.

I think what this site attributes to Xers, generally applies more to Gen Y (Milllennials). Xers are not challenging the status quo to any great extent. They are not nearly as ethnically diverse as Millennials are. Their voting record and the views of their leaders are not much more progressive than the boomers are now (who might have been more progressive in youth than Xers were, but lean a bit more conservative than Xers now). I suspect though (but only suspect) that the relaxing of some cultural and lifestyle issues as mentioned in their last sentence might apply. Xers have a strong sense of adventure and a pragmatic focus, and though (despite claims otherwise) many Xers are actually just as liable to get caught up in the religious righteous moralism from the counter-awakening as boomers are, perhaps more of them are willing to relax the strictures which the religious types impose. As suggested, some Xers share the growing concerns with Boomers about the environment now, though both generations are being pushed further forward on this now by Millennials and Gen Z.

[Captain Genet]

Justin Trudeau is a good example of an Xer politician with views very similar to the Millennial consensus. Expect more such leaders in the late 2020s and in the 2030s.

Keir Starmer has been described as a "soft socialist" and also an environmentalist. He supports the UN and disagrees with Scotland's wish for independence. On my diagram, he belongs on the red-purple border, close to the centre.

Xavier Bertrand is a centre-right French candidate who wants to re-industrialize France and reduce Islamic migration, but disagrees with Le Pen's brown idiocy.

Many Xers I've debated with strongly support the anti-PC movement. They enjoy bashing leftists with pseudo-intellectual terms like "cancel culture" or "intersectionality" (I am marginally better with "inclusivism" since "inclusive" is indeed a buzzword for the modern Left). They don't like moral restrictions from the religious Right, but don't want new "caring" morality from the Left either, and it's best to view them as moderate libertarians.

[pbrower2a]

(07-08-2021, 07:30 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: My guess: 2020s decade will be the transition. Will X be the next long-running generation in power or will they get just a couple terms/major players before a multi-decade Millennial run like Boomers had?

The youngest Boomers have already hit the Big Six-Oh. Not many start political careers after age sixty, although one highly-prominent one did. That was a disaster. Any further Boomers approaching high office are already close. The oldest Boomers are approaching the Big Eight-Oh, and even with better health habits, such is still old. Sure, we still have some highly-prominent Silent pols (Pelosi, McConnell, and Biden), but these are clearly the Last Acts of their generation. 

The tendency for gerontocracy arises when lifespans increase and expertise is still respected. But even though the GI Generation had a long run, the last GI in the House of Representatives was defeated in a primary election in 2014 at the age of 91. There are limits. 

If I am to make any prediction about Boomers, it is that the more reactionary among them are likely to be defeated in all but super-safe districts. Such Boomers who remain relevant will largely be those who can relate to X and Millennial voters. Boomers are starting to vanish in large numbers from the electorate.

[AspieMillennial]

Britain and Canada are to the left of the USA and much more secular than the US outside of the true solid blue counties. In those solid blue counties however, the left skews very extreme like in Portland or Seattle. What you see as going towards Millennial consensus are normal for Xers in those countries.

[pbrower2a]

(07-08-2021, 07:30 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: My guess: 2020s decade will be the transition. Will X be the next long-running generation in power or will they get just a couple terms/major players before a multi-decade Millennial run like Boomers had?

Something else to say: so far it is a clumsy transition. We have gone from Barack Obama (X, and he very definitely is a Reactive in style) to Donald Trump (Boom, and most of the vices associated with Idealists at their worst with practically no virtues) to Biden (Silent, and under freakish conditions in which a bare majority of Americans elect someone unusually old). Lifespans are longer than in the 1940's because the GI's set a pattern of remaining active and involved as long as possible while rejecting some bad habits. 

What Crisis Era is not messy? The American Revolution and the Civil War were both big killers by the standard of the time. An American soldier was far more likely to survive the Second World War. If one compares the Plague of Donald Trump (COVID-19), the death toll is similar to a badly-bungled shooting war. 

The mark of this Crisis War is one of two of the last three: political polarization. OK, political life was freakishly placid during the Second World War. With the near-collapse of the Republican Party in the early 1930's the Democratic Party achieved the sort of dominance one associates with a totalitarian Party without the flagrant violations of human rights (aside from the incarceration of Japanese-Americans, which was a moral failure and a blunder).  

I see Barack Obama as a portent of the sort of leadership that America will have in the next 1T. Although he may in some respects seem like Adaptive sort who puts together Boom-like (Idealist) and either GI-like or Millennial-like (Civic) traits of masculinity, his pattern as a top political leader is characteristically that of what I call a Mature Reactive. (OK, so what is an immature Reactive? Someone who uses the political system to settle old scores or enrich himself, sells out to a foreign power believing that he has latched onto "greatness", or adopts a mean-spirited populism best described as a consistent middle-finger to the other side. Donald Trump may have paradoxically better fit that mold). Reactive leaders at their best have no great agenda to shake things up. They prefer protocol and precedent in law and diplomacy. They reject radical change and may have one big program but little else because the country is no longer amenable to great crusades. They are cautionary characters of the "I've-been-burned" school.

[Anthony '58]

If only the good old U.S. of A. can follow suit.

But then again, we're the only developed country without universal health care, and also the only developed country without high-speed rail.

And while we have had a string of Boomer puppets in the Oval Office, it has actually been the Silent - or as I call them, "The Cold War Bloody Shirt Generation" - who are pulling the strings, with their paranoia about "socialism."

[pbrower2a]

We can't build low-cost housing, but we can instead build an oversupply of "McMansions" for the few people who can afford them.

We have politicians who exploit the bogey of Critical Race Theory that nobody has defined, yet we find politicians who create racist memes and exploit them.

We had a coup resembling the Bolsheviks seizing the Winter Palace in Petrograd yet millions of us excuse it because it was intended to go their way.

Parts of America back-track to Third World status yet many see nothing wrong.

We have millions of people telling us that Donald Trump was the greatest thing to ever happen to American politics -- indeed almost a plurality -- even if we recognize something terrible about him.

Crony capitalism is fine but 'socialism' is horrible.

[David Horn]

(11-19-2021, 11:17 AM)Anthony Wrote: If only the good old U.S. of A. can follow suit.

But then again, we're the only developed country without universal health care, and also the only developed country without high-speed rail.

And while we have had a string of Boomer puppets in the Oval Office, it has actually been the Silent - or as I call them, "The Cold War Bloody Shirt Generation" - who are pulling the strings, with their paranoia about "socialism."

The two most guilty parties are

• Ronald Reagan, for selling nonsense in his wonderful aw-shucks style. He single handedly swung the American people away from the communal model and into the libertarian one -- yet no one seemed to notice.
  
• Bill Clinton for validating the Reagan model, and ending any opposition viewpoint from the political space.  GWB may have pushed the envelope even further than Clinton, but the path was already prepared for him. 
  

Resolution of this unnatural tilt and the restoration of the political duality that made the country a democracy is still TBD.  And you are dead on: the Silent generation is still solidly in charge on the left, and Gen X is storming the barracades on the right.  Boomers have little left to offer, so it's the Millennials or no one.

Will Nancy and her Crew go quietly into that good night, or rage on in their quiet and oh so polite style?

[beechnut79]

(07-14-2021, 07:04 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-08-2021, 07:30 PM)nguyenivy Wrote: My guess: 2020s decade will be the transition. Will X be the next long-running generation in power or will they get just a couple terms/major players before a multi-decade Millennial run like Boomers had?

Something else to say: so far it is a clumsy transition. We have gone from Barack Obama (X, and he very definitely is a Reactive in style) to Donald Trump (Boom, and most of the vices associated with Idealists at their worst with practically no virtues) to Biden (Silent, and under freakish conditions in which a bare majority of Americans elect someone unusually old). Lifespans are longer than in the 1940's because the GI's set a pattern of remaining active and involved as long as possible while rejecting some bad habits. 

What Crisis Era is not messy? The American Revolution and the Civil War were both big killers by the standard of the time. An American soldier was far more likely to survive the Second World War. If one compares the Plague of Donald Trump (COVID-19), the death toll is similar to a badly-bungled shooting war. 

The mark of this Crisis War is one of two of the last three: political polarization. OK, political life was freakishly placid during the Second World War. With the near-collapse of the Republican Party in the early 1930's the Democratic Party achieved the sort of dominance one associates with a totalitarian Party without the flagrant violations of human rights (aside from the incarceration of Japanese-Americans, which was a moral failure and a blunder).  

I see Barack Obama as a portent of the sort of leadership that America will have in the next 1T. Although he may in some respects seem like Adaptive sort who puts together Boom-like (Idealist) and either GI-like or Millennial-like (Civic) traits of masculinity, his pattern as a top political leader is characteristically that of what I call a Mature Reactive. (OK, so what is an immature Reactive? Someone who uses the political system to settle old scores or enrich himself, sells out to a foreign power believing that he has latched onto "greatness", or adopts a mean-spirited populism best described as a consistent middle-finger to the other side. Donald Trump may have paradoxically better fit that mold). Reactive leaders at their best have no great agenda to shake things up. They prefer protocol and precedent in law and diplomacy. They reject radical change and may have one big program but little else because the country is no longer amenable to great crusades. They are cautionary characters of the "I've-been-burned" school.

Paragraph by Paragraph response:

P1: What bad habits did GIs reject? After all so many of them smoked like chimneys and drank like fishes.

P2: Though not a Trump fan by any means I am a bit confused as to how the germ warfare which is COVID could be laid at his feet.

P3: You then have to be referring to American political life, because the regimes of Hitler and Stalin definitely didn't qualify for being placid. If anything we have been more placid since Reagan's "Morning in America" speech which actually was "Mourning" for those not in the top 20 percent of income status. And the society at large has been very accepting of what has been the status quo for the last four decades.

P4: But Obama did have a shake-up agenda when he campaigned for the office. It is known, especially within the black community, how excited they were to have their first US President. But did we just need to take a breath, count to ten, and realize that total transformation wouldn't be easy? The "I've been burned" school of thought not only produces demagogues, but also such pathologies as mysogony, to name just one.