Bernie Sanders
In reply to the discussion: I went to the Bernie rally tonite in Phoenix. And I have something to say to the media. [View all]potone
(1,701 posts)I'm not in that category yet but I think it is insulting and ageist. We live in a youth culture in which old people are treated with disrespect and their knowledge and experience is disregarded to everyone's loss. In other cultures those qualities, and the wisdom that is only acquired with age, is valued.
Our cultural disrespect for old people is part and parcel of our historical amnesia. If we learned from our past mistakes we wouldn't be so likely to repeat them (e.g. foreign policy disasters). In one of the debates that I watched, Bernie brought up our past disastrous adventures in Iran and Latin America. One pundit I heard talking afterward pooh-poohed his comments, stating that those events occurred before he was born, as if the past has nothing to do with the present. This is dangerous, and feeds into the militarism of our foreign policy that has caused so much death and destruction for the benefit of the few. As Bush so memorably said, "Sometimes profits trump peace." I was appalled at the time that that statement wasn't met with outrage. The fact that it wasn't says a great deal about the corruption of our media by their corporate owners.
So please keep on objecting to the use of this term and the dismissive attitude it expresses.