2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: A not-that-political friend's take on Bernie Sanders [View all]beerandjesus
(1,301 posts)I don't want to fight with you, because we're on the same side. I know you're for Bernie. And frankly, because you're for Bernie, it's probably a pretty safe bet that you're with me on the substance of the issues I would lay out if I were to catalogue the sins of our leaders over the past 20 years, since the Baby Boomers have become the generation most prominently represented in the upper echelons of government and business.
So I'm just going to add three small things, rather than reiterate what I've already said: (1) I am smart enough to be able to separate an individual from a group, and although I admit I am inclined to think things along the lines of "the Boomers sure fucked things up royally for us and the Millennials", I am fully--and gratefully--aware that we're not talking about all, or even most, Boomers. We're talking about the behavior of those Boomers that took power when it was the Boomers' historical turn. This is still significant, but does not automatically make all Boomers assholes. (2) Poke around on DU for a bit and you'll find plenty of examples of precisely what you paraphrase in your first sentence. They're saying EXACTLY what you said, minus the sarcastic quotation marks: We want a woman president, Hillary is running (and is a Democrat), how dare the rest of you be so rude as to actually look at policy. (3) There's nothing inherently insulting about the term "Baby Boomer", any more than there is about the term "Millennial". The former just refers to the historical phenomenon of a spike in births after World War II; the latter refers to the phenomenon of a generation coming of age right around the year 2000. Artificial, perhaps, but I don't think the label is so awful.
Again, I can understand the resentment--except for one thing: If you were born in 1965, you're not even a Boomer! The latest cut-off I've ever seen is 1964, and the cut-off I've seen in the more scholarly things I've read on the subject is more like 1961. Now, that right THERE explains why you've never asked anyone to sit down and shut up, right??