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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
which is hilarious because if you're 40 you became an adult at the turn of the millennium.
yah and then most of those fuck went and voted for reagan
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
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!
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.
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
But being naive is sinful.
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
We're definitely not setting them up to be facing it in easy mode that's for sure.
No need to storm the beaches of Normandy we have the channel tunnel now. You can take a train, it's much easier.
They absolutely would not storm any beach. They'd meme the shit out of them though.
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".
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.
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!
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.
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.
Lol why are people here on lemmy so obsessed with classes?
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]
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.
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
Aren't we supposed to want a world where our children's generation don't have to do that?
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.
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.
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.
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.
But how will we build character?
"Never again" Oh... I meant never again for us, or like, white ppl. Genocide for brown peeps is cool.
Nope! Spiteful attitudes are the new normal.
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
This A+ civics genius over here seems to be forgetting all the millennials that went to Iraq and Afghanistan, and when we (the US government) inevitably set up another meat grinder overseas, then there will be a bunch of “today’s youth” getting killed over there just like she wants. Christ.
it's fair, wouldn't you say that the breadth of the campaigns in number of deaths and artillery/air support kinda make normandy different enough?
Also can’t imagine any of them holding a sword high while charging their horse into a wall of pikemen.
War changes. Normandy was 80 years ago. We had just invented duct tape.
Now that we have duct tape, I can't see us getting invaded again.
Nah, they'll just attack our infrastructure, the ones still running Windows XP. Power plants, emergency services, financial institutions, government, hospitables.
Don't bee too surprised, to this very day out government is attempting to protect from attacks like this and carrying out very similar attacks on other countries.
Ironically, Vietnam was Baby Boomers' avocado toast. Their parents were happy to keep shipping their children off to die so that politicians wouldn't look weak in front of the public. Remember that students were murdered at Kent State over daring to exercise their First Amendment rights.
Somehow those people STILL, as a generation, became gigantic shitbags who destroyed the world for their own personal gratification.
Heard a comedian crack a joke about that. Went something like, "well all the cool Boomers died of drugs or AIDS so now we're stuck with the hall monitors of the generation."
Hits a little to hard sometimes lol
A good point. We got stuck with the prudes. Seems to be a trend.
A lot of boomers dont realize they lost the Vietnam war.
My dad was shocked to learn that the communists won, when I told him a couple years ago.
My dad was shocked to learn that the communists won
Even that is distorted - the Vietnamese people won under incredible hardship. Simple farmers, hundreds of thousands simply refused to bow to imperialist rule. They were helped, but they did the fighting.
But you can also argue that the US did "win" the war or at least their objectives. The objective was to stop the domino effect of socialism and they absolutely brutally devastated Vietnam for many decades. And that was their objective, to punish anyone who dares to redistribute wealth.
That's hard to believe. It was a major issue for decades.
Judging by US politics nowadays and their behaviour in regards to both Israel's genocide in Gaza and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the average boomer would've sided with the Nazis.
That's because they collectively have the political intelligence of a concussed pigeon.
They go on and on about freedoms and their freedoms and their freedoms to have guns and in the next sentence endorse Trump a man who if he had his way would invite fascism into the country. Presumably their guns would be taken off them at that point. Since fascism with an armed population rarely works out.
But none of them realize this because that's like three steps down the line, and they're still struggling to think about step one.
Concussed pigeon, HAHAHA!
I am actively convinced that the boomer generation, and a chunk of the gen x gen, all had their development heavily and substantially impacted by the egregious use of lead throughout america, plus the waves of radiation that wafted over half of the country because of nuclear testing
The military industrial complex won. People suspect it's why JFK was assassinated. He was ready to go public with the conspiracy. Nowadays we just accept that the military industrial complex runs shit lol
Exactly. And this generational bullshit is just another stupid distraction.
It doesn't even have to be a conspiracy. It's just a group of like minded people making a ton of money.
Yeah, JFK, who started Vietnam and tried his best to provoke a war with the soviets during the Cuban missile crisis, was an enemy of the military industrial complex.
Nationalize
To an extent, the military has been asking for better raised, fed children but since that would require parents to labor less, and companies to make food more nutritious instead of immediately profitable, they get rebuked.
What won is the dollar made today at expense of $100 tomorrow.
And remember, it was Eisenhower, a general and Republican, that warned us. Admittedly, Eisenhower was a different kind of Republican than we have today.
ok but seriously
how to open PDF??
Today’s youth are fighting in Ukraine just fine. She probably thinks it’s character forming, having never once done anything remotely like that herself.
USA won, duh, just like they won the war on terror in Afghanistan!
We absolutely won the war on terror in Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden tried to show that he was the scariest terrorist, and the US military took that personally and wasn't willing to give up the crown. So, for a decade before his death, and a decade after, we spent trillions of dollars to make sure that a bunch of nice, lovely shepherds would shit themselves with fear if they're at a wedding or funeral and hear the sound of an airplane in the distance.
The goal was to make the most terror right? Did I move the goalposts enough that the US still wins?
The goal was to make the most terror right?
One might even say we were the terrorest
And the war on drugs!
The War Against Terror
Could of named Desert Storm? Or is that Gen X? Ether way older folks have been labeling the next generation as inept since the beginning of time but were still here long after they die.
Could have**
Yes this is always the way. We will all tell our kids we walked to school uphill both ways in the snow until forever. Hopefully they all still go to school.
In a few years: "Grandpa, what the fuck is snow?"
Some tail end boomers may have fought in Desert Storm but that’s primarily Gen X.
Then millennials took over since then, and Gen Z joined us in the last decade.
The Boomers had Vietnam … and I guess thought it was so fun they decided to make it worse for all their kids and grandkids
We had a war in the desert and said fuck that.
Then we had a war in the jungle and said FUCK THAT and now we stick to desert wars
Of COURSE we're inept - we're inexperienced. What, did you think we were going to spring out of the womb fully ready to run all of society!?
And even then, how da fuq did we manage to surpass them in knowledge of like every subject imaginable - not just computers/technology but climate change, abortion rights, and most everything else besides?!
Maybe sitting on the couch/sofa isn't the best way to learn how the world works? Although I could do it, with just a phone in my hand...
But many will vote for tRump anyway, while yelling at me for being "inept", even as I vote to keep their Social Security and Medicare going that keeps them alive and relatively healthy. Though their happiness is still up to them, so maybe turn off the Faux News that just tells them to be sad 24/7.
But - and this is crucial - many old people will vote for Biden, even while many younger people will vote for tRump, bc while this whole age division thing does exist, it's irrelevant and meant to distract us from the class warfare division that actually does matter.
Why do people say zoomers are super liberal?
Look at music now; it’s materialistic and conformity. The punk scene is a minority, rap being about the struggles of life is a minority
Zoomers lean more left than previous generations, in larger quantities and as a percentage, even including increased far-right zoomers as compared to previous generations.
Modern pop music being materialistic and conformist is just the music industry, there's tons of anticapitalist modern punk if you look for it.
Gen Z more likely to deny climate change than millennials
Less likely to approve of NFL protests
Same on gay and interracial marriage
The only thing they really differ on is pronouns which Zoomers always swing way conservative on with overwhelming approval
But the "leaning more to the left" comes from "you promised and didn't deliver so fuck you" place. And it's not only young people. We've been told for decades that "If you work hard you'll succeed", you have to defend your country so your country can help you when you need it" and shit like that. But those are lies the upper class tells everyone else.
Since when do musical lyrics irrevocably dictate political party affiliation?
This isn't a binary choice.
By your standards those that listen to country music would actually give a shit about this country and their fellow person while driving trucks and drinking beer. They only get the last two.
They care, just you have different ideas of caring. They think “keeping the bloodlines pure” is caring
That's because people figured out a formula to make the most widely accessible and profitable music possible. Its a process that isn't exclusive to music or gen z, and I fail to see how its relevant.
Well we're also seeing a trend of younger men falling for the manosphere type bullshit. It's a weird divide. Lots of younger people in general are leaning more into socialism, too. But yeah sweeping generalizations either way aren't representative of reality
Pretty much. Look at most countries around the world. In South East Asia, in the Philippines and Indonesia the Gen Z just reelected their dictators.
Materialism and conformity. Hmm, where have I heard these as the basis of political theory before?
Oh right, Marxism.
wrong materialism
nobody can imagine Boomers doing anything selfless, and neither can the Boomers
IDidntHearNoBell.gif
Ever heard of the
VietnamAmerican war?Pouring gasoline on the fire 😈
"Do you have any idea how litte that narrows it down"
Blaming societal woes on the boomers (or any generational group) is boring. Yes, it's cute when old people can't do basic things, but if you let your attention be drawn away from the super rich, you got played like a fiddle.
Nah fuck that they got theirs then pulled the ladder up behind them while blaming us for all the problems that they created and voting against any progress.
I mean yes ultimately it is a class war but this generational shit is not nothing. And for many of us it is a genuine coping mechanism with having That Kind of Boomer(s) in our life.
I'm part of the exploited generation.; Just like everyone else.
Not that it proves anything, but both my (boomer) parents have apologized for being a selfish generation that left us a fucked up world. They were both right-leaning too.
So, at least some of them recognize a difference in opportunity and quality of life between their generation and subsequent ones, and feel remorse over it.
As long as old people vote to take away rights and the majority of politicians are from that generation, I'll keep blaming them since it is easier.
Who do you blame when younger people vote that way? The entire generation they happen to belong to, or is there a more nuanced analysis for that situation and not the other?
fatality
Brags about wars she would've been intelligible to fight in.
Nixon won
Today's youth won't have to land in Normandy to fight Nazis. The battle is raging much closer to home.
I think their point was more about fighting than winning, so the reply doesn't quite work.
We've been a nation at war for the entirety of zoomer's lives until just a couple years ago. Who does the OP think is fighting in those wars? It was Gen X & millennials, and then zoomers.
I really don't know. I think their argument relies more on their perception of the generations than fact.
How many people volunteered for Vietnam compared to WWII?
I think that factors into the equation.
I found this
Fact: 2/3 of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers. 2/3 of the men who served in World War II were drafted. Approximately 70% of those killed in Vietnam were volunteers.
https://www.uswings.com/about-us-wings/vietnam-war-facts/
Dunno about the validity of the claim though
No, the reason she used "storming the beaches of Normandy" and not idk, "the beaches of Da Nang", is because Normandy is associated with the beginning of a turn in fortunes of that conflict which ultimately led to Allied victory. Nobody would fucking care about Normandy if the Nazis won.
Tough guy posturing.
