231 points

Do people really not remember that it was also boomers protesting vietnam and working in the civil rights movement? Or that plenty of people born after that voted for trump, and will again?

Three intergenerational fake fight is dumb, and it prevents any real attempt at unification to fight against a real enemy: fascism.

Fucking idiots, the whole fucking human race.

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75 points

The counter culture was called a counter culture because it was a minority. Even of the boomers.

The intergenerational fight is dumb, but if you’re talking generalisation and joining in, most boomers weren’t hippies.

They conformed and are still complaining about those who don’t conform. Just as they complained about hippies then they complain about zoomers now.

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24 points

I wasn’t exclusively talking about hippies, there were other counter culture groups and movements.

But the thing I think you missed is that even if most baby boomers weren’t hippies and protesters, all of the hippies and protesters were boomers.

It isn’t a generational issue at all, it’s a human issue, where you have people that fall into loose groupings of motivations and thinking, which seem to be either “nature”, or carried across generations over time. Some people, likely the majority, will be the conformists, and the rest fall into varying degrees of heresy.

There are plenty of baby boomers and later generations (us gen x old fucks are old fucks now too) that don’t sit around bitching about “kids today”.

Some of the baby boomer resistance got worn out and stopped fighting to some degree, but that’s totally different than the entire generation just becoming conformist.

Truth? People are just idiots in general, and every generation has them. But until you spend time really hanging around a given generation, you only see and hear the loudest of them. I spent two decades of my life taking care of the elderly and dying. You ended up running into a big cross section of baby boomers and older generations doing that during the nineties and early noughts.

That’s part of the problem. Most of us never get a chance to get paid to sit and listen to someone. We only hear the tiniest sliver of a generation. Even with my hundreds of patients to listen to, that’s still a tiny sliver, it’s just bigger than most people get. All that usually happens is you get access to family and whoever is in the news/talk show circuit. Online, you tend to only get the extreme ends of things being the loudest.

It isn’t a generation issue at all.

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8 points

When a large generation is voting to block progressive change it is a generational issue on the macro scale.

I am fully on board with the idea that shouldn’t lead to discrimination on age, shouldn’t lead to assuming all boomers are the problem.

Nor that all those younger are progressive.

But politically it is a generational issue. When talking about politics it is legitimate to talk about demographics and voting blocks and how we might get them on side. Or at least prevent them doing further damage.

Obviously my side is primarily the “stop wrecking the planet” side with a healthy dose of “poverty and homelessness are a stain on any developed nation”. So boomers voting the way they do is a problem and has been for some time.

They are yet to stop voting in people who make the world worse. That generation is still a problem. It has been since the 70s.

Either we get enough of that generation to change direction or, more likely, we have to out vote them.

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2 points

wait, it’s like not a generational issue, and isn’t using generation as a shorthand for specific demographics still useful in everyday language? how else would you refer to such a group of individuals, i’m drawing blanks.

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36 points

Ahh, the voice of reason. All ____ are ____ (fill in with your favorite stereotypes). Then, us serfs fight amongst ourselves, oblivious to what’s really going on.

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4 points

A significant number of serfs dream of lording over their peers, just like, or worse than, the current lord. Those are the perfect, disposable tools for the oppressors, little promises go a long way.

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13 points
*

Nah, it was still the WW2 generation that fought for Civil rights. The Boomers were in elementary school in the 50s and only the oldest could even vote in 1963, 1964, and 1968.

But once all the Boomers could vote, who got elected? Reagan. So fuck them.

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2 points

yah and then most of those fuck went and voted for reagan

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2 points

Hating on boomers has been popular on the internet for over a decade now.

Before that, young millenials and gen z wouldn’t even know what the term boomer referred to.

And now they just use it to mean anyone who is older than them. 40 year olds are boomers to them.

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13 points

Boomer was definitely a term in the 80s at least… I was there, Gandalf.

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7 points

Oh “baby boomer” has been a term for a long time. Probably since history and social sciences started categorizing generations. My point is young people on the internet were not using it as a blanket term for anyone over 30 or 40 years old.

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4 points

which is hilarious because if you’re 40 you became an adult at the turn of the millennium.

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3 points
*

I mean, the oldest zoomers were 17 a decade ago, and most were significantly younger. So yeah, I guess a lot of them wouldn’t know what “boomer” meant, but what of it?

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1 point

Yeah fuck it. Just pick a word and use it.

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1 point

Completely agree, but mate half the fun is watching generations gradually understand the multi layered perfection of life stage related Simpsons clips.

Oh BTW everyone you’re due to listen to cat Stevens father and son again to see if it has changed meaning

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145 points

a global generation that won’t be storming any beaches or cities would be a blessing for the world

imagine a generation in russia that just keeps doing what they do instead of listening to an old psychopath in Moscow who decides that it would be “good” to send hundreds of thousands to their deaths to bring death and destruction to millions of others

being peaceful is not a shame!

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19 points

Yeah but… they seemed to not have realized that it would be THEM being used as cannon fodder. They thought they could just reap the benefits without having to lift a finger. It was going to be “repeal and then replace”, and then once they swallowed that line, it reeled them in when it was too late to pull back.

i.e. they were promised peace - the territorial expansion was only supposed to last 3 days and that hardly counted in their eyes - and did not realize that by having elected Putin, it was already too late.

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10 points

There is also no shame in fighting to demilitarize a dictatorship or tear down a theocracy, though. Tolerance ends with the Intolerant, I only hope that the Zoomers understand that at least as well as Millennials.

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0 points

Good people can’t kill without shame.

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2 points

Good people who watch others be killed have just as much if not more shame.

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-3 points

fight will end when everybody refuses to fight, not when people with their noble reasons find justifiable excuses to keep fighting

enemy is not detestable theocracies or sick dictators but thinking that there are enemies

we are one and we should act like one

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4 points

Nah bro, fascists, and theocrats are definitely the fucking enemy.

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3 points

If only one side chooses fight, then fight will end as well. With rivers flowing with blood of the innocents.

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2 points

There will always be someone who wants to fight

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2 points

Song

Translation

How much years unending

Slaughters inhumane

On children fall from sky

Bombs as bunch of anger

Tanks’ place is in museums

Let them quietly rust there

Body of mother is scarred

Warriors’ place is in romance

Wars are not glory

Groans in bloody mess

Tears, dirt on uniform

Wars don’t have a place in the world

Tanks’ place is in museums

Let them quietly rust there

In tales of old empires

People don’t belive anymore

“Homo homini lupus est” is what we said when

Voice of reason was silent in world and war raged everywhere

When lives were worthless, people were seen only as soldiers

And entire world was turning to burning hell

Why didn’t we become smarter Isn’t it’s time already

To understand as a matter of fact that more important

For hammer of war to stop clutter

Tanks’ place is in museums

Let them quietly rust there

Even as toys

Kids don’t need to know them

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-8 points

But being naive is sinful.

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127 points

I’d be willing to be that if there were an existential military threat, the zoomers would indeed find it in them to storm the beaches of Normandy.

I hope they storm the metaphorical beaches of climate change and economic inequality

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33 points

We’re definitely not setting them up to be facing it in easy mode that’s for sure.

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28 points

No need to storm the beaches of Normandy we have the channel tunnel now. You can take a train, it’s much easier.

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22 points

I don’t paint but, the imagery of zoomers “storming the beaches of economic inequality” gives me inspirational energy I haven’t had in a while. Thank you.

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20 points

I gotchu, fam

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27 points

Love that the central boat is going the wrong way

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11 points

Nah fam ,no shade but, I mean like real art.

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7 points

They absolutely would not storm any beach. They’d meme the shit out of them though.

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112 points

Generational labeling…

I see it as a way to divide the working class, same as the “lower class”/“middle class” and “unskilled labor”/“skilled labor”.

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15 points

Lower vs middle class maybe sure, there is discussion there. Skilled vs unskilled labor: you don’t know how to read even Wikipedia. It has nothing to do with skill (you can watch a guy dice an onion in his hand in 4.2 seconds and it’s still “unskilled labor”) and everything to do with choosing the right vocabulary to express a point: some jobs require college or trade school and some do not.

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5 points

All skilled labor is compressed unskilled labor, or in other words, all unskilled labor is skilled labor.

Training and raising someone to do a job contributes to the value produced by their labor, it matters more in comparison to the aggregate whole than anything else.

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4 points

I don’t know how to respond to this? I mean yes you are right but the compression is not situation agnostic which is the whole point: some jobs (“skilled labor”) require a particular degree or pretraining as a point of entry, and others (“unskilled labor”) do not. It doesn’t mean it’s not valuable or not worth pursuing, but it’s a mincing of words that are poorly chosen in the first place.

At the end of the day yes both varieties are worth pursuing and are necessary but one has a zero knowledge entry point and the other does not. I don’t agree with “skilled vs unskilled” as vocab goes, but this is the point.

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4 points

A line chef isn’t considered an unskilled laborer. Unskilled labor is like flipping burgers, digging ditches, and that sort of thing.

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23 points

Unskilled labor is a bullshit term used to diminish the work done by people in low paying jobs. Many people would say that a line cook is unskilled, slightly above flipping burgers or digging ditches. It’s nebulous and useless for productive conversation

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3 points

No youre conflating how you define the word “skill” with the actual definition. It’s absolutely unfortunate but just means you didn’t go to school to get the job.

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1 point

Do you mean to say line cook? Because it goes without saying that a chef is a skilled labourer but a cook also has to chop onions fast.

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8 points

I’d be inclined to believe you if the boomers weren’t literally the ruling class.

Even the poor ones are still land owners, and meanwhile the rest of us have to fight uphill both ways to get a single measly Congress seat!

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23 points

Even the poor ones are still land owners

This is very far from the truth. There has been an explosion of senior homelessness over the last 4 years because the poor baby boomers can’t afford the rising cost of rent on a fixed income, and are too old to go get jobs.

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20 points

Let me tell you, then… Boomers are NOT the ruling class. A small group of rich people control most of the wealth in the world. Those people are the ruling class.

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7 points

Really? Because when I see the folks that hold the line against anything positive getting done, I don’t see rich people, I see wannabe rich boomers. Blocking legislation, packing courts, gerrymandering, keeping the electoral college, introducing politics of spite, it’s all the fucking boomers and I refuse to be gaslit that they aren’t at the core of the problem.

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17 points

That’s really far from the truth. For every article talking about boomers contributing to inflation by spending fat 401k’s, there’s another saying boomers didn’t manage to save anything and either have to work until they die or end up part of the homelessness problem.

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1 point

Lol why are people here on lemmy so obsessed with classes?

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9 points
*

Edit: Great question, thanks for asking!

Division of the working class keeps us fighting ourselves, while the people with money and power keep the status quo.

Great activists in US history have tried to unite the working class, but sadly they tend to get assasinated…


I thought this video would explain where some of us have learned how the class system works.

Economist Richard Wolff explains our class society.

How Class Works – by Richard Wolff [12:36]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=euH3pAuLuko

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8 points

Lemmy is a FOSS answer to the failings of Capitalist Reddit. Everyone who doesn’t care enough is on Reddit, leaving Lemmy with tons of leftists who do care enough.

There’s also Linux, Privacy, and other FOSS things, but FOSS in general aligns with leftist views.

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4 points
*

FOSS also aligns with free market capitalist views.

I’m not here because Reddit is capitalist, I’m here because Reddit sucks. I don’t like new Reddit or the Reddit app, and I certainly don’t like the tracking they do. Lemmy seems to be the closest alternative and is good enough, so I’m here.

I consider myself libertarian (not US libertarian party, but ideologically libertarian, like Penn Jillette) and I’ve been a FOSS enthusiast for decades. I contribute to FOSS because I enjoy it and honestly think FOSS projects work better than their alternatives. I don’t do it out if some social obligation or whatever, I do it because it just seems to work better. I disagree politically with the creators of this project, yet I’ve contributed code and enjoy the work they’ve done.

Just an alternative perspective.

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5 points

Short answer is a person’s class, and the class they serve, is the single most important factor for the amount of power an individual is capable of gaining in society. Class in this context is how you get the money you need to live. The owning class get that money by owning businesses, land, buildings, or intellectual property. The working class gets it by working.

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2 points

Because the principle struggle is the class struggle between the working class and the owning classes, all other strugles are either secondary, incidental, or made up in order to distract us from the principle strugle, or a combination of the above. Once one learns this, the world starts to lock into a better prospective and we can start working to our ultimate goal, making a stew from the Rich

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2 points
*

all other strugles are either secondary, incidental, or made up in order to distract us from the principle strugle

I’ve heard this from syndicalists so many times as an excuse for disinvesting from any other contemporary struggle. They end up alienating everyone who cares for more than one issue.

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86 points

Aren’t we supposed to want a world where our children’s generation don’t have to do that?

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25 points

And the worst part is forgetting that Boomers did their best to avoid going to war, just like any person would. In fact, it got so bad and so many people were going to jail or becoming Canadian exiles by avoiding the draft that Jimmy fucking Carter had to issue a general amnesty for all citizens.

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12 points

Being “toughened up” is far more important than being a happy, well adjusted, compassionate person.

…for the conservative mindset. It’s like making things worse for other people, even if it hurts you just a little bit, is worth it because it still elevates your position relative to theirs.

Though they do often shoot to the other side of the spectrum, sheltering kids from learning about important facets of the real world at an appropriate age. Maybe for religious reasons.

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4 points

Not even religious, I’ve known people yell at their pastor for mentioning death exists, using the word virgin in context of Mary.

Toxic positivity, and love of power. I have also known of pastors who got threatened by their congregation for quoting the Bible where it says don’t exasperate your children. These people wanted to throw hands with God for daring tell them how to raise their kids and they can’t just treat them as thing to dominate over.

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3 points

Finding happiness within yourself by realizing your ideal sense of self goes against everything conservatives believe. They think life is about hatred, and winning at all costs.

You can’t just be happy and content with who you are, you have to chase happiness at the end of a crucifix, gun, and credit card. Pick your poison so long as you’re spending and supporting division. Anything else would collapse their true religion of capitalism.

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4 points

Once I first read about the three poisons in Buddhism (essentially hatred, greed, and delusion) it seemed so simple and obvious. Then of course I noticed those obviously bad things in every shitty news story about the world.

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10 points

But how will we build character?

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9 points

“Never again” Oh… I meant never again for us, or like, white ppl. Genocide for brown peeps is cool.

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8 points

Nope! Spiteful attitudes are the new normal.

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4 points

It’s all fun and stuff until the aliens come and invade us, catching us with our pants down after a millennia of peace. No, we must prepare ourselves to face the horrors that lurk in space and if we have to keep training against ourselves, so be it. /S

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