: The amount of outright race-baiting and extra race-baiting in political ads over on FB is getting kinda startling.
Figures, though, what with all the Boomers over on there, especially the panicky faux-Christians alt-white one. Reading their comments on the ads demonstrates to me that perhaps cognitive ability and IQ tests should be brought back into use in re: voting.
Those MFs are irretrievably GD stupid, and I say that not lightly.
@thedisasterautist I was talking with my older sister about this yesterday. I can tell she doesn’t the changes that have occurred in media. We grew up with Walter Cronkite on the news. As rock solid as you could get. The changes since then are so many and so fast, it’s hard to get a grip on them before everything changes again! I think this is where many boomers are. It’s not that they want to be panicky, but it all moves so fast for them. The feeling that they can’t catch up scares them
@thedisasterautist
We were raised in a Chicago blue collar/blue politics family. We all seek to be knowledgeable voters. For her to do that is hard despite her desire to be up on the facts. So I think if media makes her head spin, it’s even harder for people who don’t want to work for the truth or who don’t understand how much more complicated it is to seek the truth. They’re older. They tire out easily. They don’t like things being complicated. Not an excuse but my explanation.
@allin: I totes get that. I noticed it in the 1990s, as early as '90 and '91. It shifted up into 2nd-gear by 1995, and then its acceleration became steadier. It took many Boomers fifteen years or so to "understand" Facebook, well behind the curve. It took a lot of them eight to ten years to "understand" computers enough to not be more scared of them than they were of angry stray pit bulls.
It's quite ironic and irksome that as a generation they often insisted they were the smartest people in...
@allin: ...the world. (I wish I was being facetious, but I'm not. Their parents were often intransigent based on tradition. The Boomers generally were intransigent because they were post-WW2, lived in relative comfort due to the 30-year economic boom, and they thought they saved the world from everything (Vietnam and racism, mainly). And they tended to think the economy would always keep rising. But here we are.
*Now* they're all alarmed and pearl-clutching in the world they made? In short...
@thedisasterautist It’s unfortunate you feel as you do about an entire generation of people. I worked hard as a teen in many jobs including factory work and on dairy farms in the summer. I saw the people around me doing the same. As I said, we were blue collar people. So I never felt I was getting handouts. Nor didI feel I was somehow taking advantage of future generations. I felt an obligation to work hard and that’s what I did.
@allin: I don't feel that way about an entire generation, which is why used words like "generally" and "often" and "tended [to]". Broad strokes are necessary when speaking of entire demographic populations, after which details are brought out in discussion.
"Several generations before" me and after? How old do you think I am? I'm 54. My eldests are 30. My paternal grandmother was born in 1918. She, my parents, me, and my sons are four generations and take up the entire 20th century.
@thedisasterautist Generations as noted by letters or phrases…. Z, X, alpha… whatever. Not actual generations. You referred to yourself as such and I assumed you’d understand that’s what I was talking about. I did teach kids in your generation, and some of their kids and grandkids.