about specific older people.

I know I am not who they are referring to, for sure.

However, people don't always know the history of the people they blame for things. There is a distinct ageism that pops up on DU from time to time. I don't like it much, so I created this thread.

and it saddens me to think that the ones who are bashing us think that we do not have their best interest at heart. We are all in this together, and we have to stay united, to the benefit of all of us.

which is one of the reasons I no longer post here. At a certain age, one becomes invisible or a pain in the ass to others. Don't say it isn't so....I know when I stand waiting for service somewhere (Staples) and the person behind the desk says "Next!" to the guy behind me that I have slipped into the "invisible older woman" role.

Age has nothing to do with conservatism.

I have not become more conservative as I have aged.

The word, "conservative" today can be defined as "selfish."

Selfishness is not a trait confined to the old or to the young. It is found in all age groups.

They also vote strongly Republican, and have for a while now.

Romney won the 65 and older crowd by a margin of 56 to 44 over Obama last go around. That was his best age demographic. Obama won the 18-29 crowd 60-37 - his best age demographic.

In 2008, McCain win the 65 and older crowd 53-45 - or nearly at the same level as Romney four years later.

In 2004, Bush won the 60 and older crowd 54-46 over Kerry. Again, not terribly different from the last two presidential elections.

2000 was the last time the 65 and older crowd voted Democratic - supporting Gore over Bush 51-47. However, 65 in 2000 meant you were born in 1936 - not a boomer. The last time the older generation voted Democratic was the generation BEFORE the boomers - so, people who made up the Silent Generation and the Greatest Generation.

It's clear the Boomers are more conservative on the whole than the rest of the country. Now the question we have to ask ourselves - how conservative will the Gen Xers be?

In 2012, Obama won the 30-44 age group 52-45. If they're the next Boomers, and, as you say, their ideology doesn't change as they age, in 20 to 30 years, when those in their 30s and 40s are in their 60s and 70s, they should be far more liberal than today's Boomers.

I tried other Democratic websites before I decided on DU. The other websites were far too conservative for me. The late '50s and the '60s generation of Democrats are the most progressive/liberal that have lived since the Great Depression. I volunteered for the George McGovern campaign -- many, many hours. That's liberal. That's Progressive.

The younger generation can prove its liberal views by supporting Elizabeth Warren. That's where I draw the measure.

That's the problem, really. If older people thought like DUers, we would have never heard of Bush.

Maybe the president should be elected not by the electoral college but by the popular vote. It would make election fraud in that race more difficult and give the power to the people not to the states.

There is some ageism here, and we have had some pointedly ageist posts in the past (by very few posters), just as we have the occasional "young people suck" posts.

I am 52 (old/old enough) I didn't feel that "that" post was in any way directed toward me ... or most of DU (and we tend to skew old)... As an "old" white woman I can't figure the "outrage" out.

If we are fighting the good fight ... aren't we fighting it for the betterment of society and NOT personal accolades or recognition?

Solidarity and hugs to you, MineralMan.

An idea of Eisenhower and many either uses those roads or has goods shipped on those roads. We do not see the convoys as we once saw, troops are moved much more efficiently today but we still have our roads.

Our legacy is, quite frankly, shit. Now of course that doesn't mean all of us are to blame, it just means that the leaders we produced were a sorry lot, and our accomplishments, in terms of what we as a generation are handing off to those who follow, is on the whole a disaster.

I get the criticism. I accept it. Now lets move on.

I doubt that DUers voted for any of the leaders you refer to as a sorry lot.

And when it came to Carter, Clinton and Obama, those of us who voted for them voted for the best alternative in the presidential election. As for local candidates, my member of Congress is one of the most progressive seated. DUers are not responsible for the horrible conservatives in Congress any more than we are responsible for Reagan.

Boomers, particularly, white suburban male boomers are not helping

White males voted 62% for Romney.
People aged 50-64, Romney with 52%
People 65+ Romney with 65%

My generation is not helping at the ballot box and the men of my generation are the pits.



http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/03/the-generation-gap-and-the-2012-election-3/

So why diss those of us who are older and on DU?

I volunteered for George McGovern.

If young DUers want to prove they are liberal or progressive, they should help try to convince Elizabeth Warren to run for president. That is the test of our time. Hillary, a Wall Street crony, or Elizabeth Warren, steadfastly supporting the middle and working-classes and the poor.

The Clintons are friends, big friends of Pete Peterson who opposes Social Security and thinks we should all hand our money over to Wall Street. Booooooh.

Interesting to see how a lot of DUers choose not to use it.

threads, some multi-hundred long, that waste so many progressives' time when we should be fighting the RepubliCONs (instead of each other), particularly with the Senate at stake in just 5 months, and who knows how many state legislatures and governorships.

Some of us old white guys have been supporting women's rights, gay rights, civil rights, voting rights, etc for many decades. Some of us old white guys have never voted for a Republican, and never will.

with being young is thinking you know everything, or at least thinking you know more than you actually do. Most of us grow out of that, age cures it (not sure about Republicans, too many of them still behave like children).

Like it or not you just have to give them time. Patience was never one of my strong points when I was younger. I'm a lot better at it at 51. They'll learn. If they didn't want to they'd probably be on a different, right-wing forum.

Suit (gasp) in 1970 in the school district office. Experienced the first Teacher's Strike in 1974. Had to quit and get a "paying" job. Broke my heart. Still working, too.

1946 was the first of the Boomers, must be you MM. I'm proudly of the Class of 1948. Our parents had been to hell and back...god bless them. I think a lot is because they tried so hard after the war to get to a "normal" life for their kids.

We had the time to consider social changes. The NDEA put me through 5 years of college, ultimately, for free. Lots of advantages I recall the younger generation doesn't have today. But they have their own set of issues...I am a parent of a Millennium Generational and it's not easy.

Blessings to all.

lol

kids today!

But the young bring inspiration, insight, new skills, and vigor to the community. They rightly point out that the Democratic Leadership are not dealing with this new modern world, probably because the leadership, collectively, is too old.

It is the older generation that has, unfortunately, sold out to the Republican ideals. They're the ones who keep this country from progressing on a whole host of issues and while there are champions of that era who are advocating just as passionately and strongly, if not more so, than my generation - they're also a minority in a subset that has, at least since Ronald Reagan, supported conservatives and Republicans in huge waves.

With that said, my generation is failing itself by not voting. I disagree with a majority of the boomers, and think their recent politics have been destructive to this country (which began with their support of Reagan in the 80s - these same older conservatives were the yuppies of the 80s - buying into the idea of money above all), but they vote. The boomers will vote in November. My generation, which I guess fits in with the tail end of the Millennials, won't. We'll stay home. Then vocally criticize why politics doesn't work for us.

We're all flawed. We all have groups who suck. The problem is that your generation sucked for far longer (not saying this as an insult - just that they've been around longer) and because of that, we're still reeling from an ideology that has hurt this country. The thing is, if my generation doesn't vote, we'll have failed the next generation and we'll be just criticized just as much as the boomers are today. But for the time being, because this generation is still relatively new, there hasn't been much room for us to fuck things up. If we continue down this path, though, we will and when your generation dies off, and the Gen Xers and Millennials are the new boomers, we'll be blamed just as you guys are today. And we'll deserve it if we don't get our shit in order - something, and I know this will be contentious, I don't think your generation ever did.

-- just by revealing what had been kept hidden in corrupt military and political corridors -- because of the ongoing danger that we posed to elites that got our leaders assassinated and many of us gassed, hosed and jailed. All the fights were about "corporate whores and their corporate wars," sexism, racism, homophobia, recovering buried history, environmentalism, and even nutrition.

Some of the Silents tacitly supported us. Mostly we fought on our own until we saw that we had to strategically retreat after getting gunned down and infiltrated. This history isn't some made up narrative that comforts us.

We uncovered and exposed a lot of the same issues that now involve our country. We started shit, but those who profited from it all retrenched and spread by stealth and we just haven't been able to finish it.

We went through a lot, established some foundational supports -- SPLC, EFF, gay, feminist, environmental organizations, voting organizations -- that still enfold, engage and help the younger generations to this day.

I daresay that you can't just sweep all that under the rug.

Just kidding.

Hope to see it continue to be realized.

or MineralMan will thump your gourd..

thru the hard years of war that followed, or in my dad's case dealt with the terrible scars of returning veterans. We almost envied the Greatest Generation as we went off to fight and protest "our" war that had far less clear moral objectives.

We saw crushing defeat of optimism when Kennedy was shot, when Watts errupted, when Nixon was elected and then re "elected"
by the dirty tricks of Watergate, when Reagan was elected, than (ugh) Shrub, (twice!) and each time we voted and voted again even as sometimes nightmarish things resulted instead of our dreams...

All progressives, old and young, are in this together. We stand united or we sink alone. We ALWAYS vote, even if we don't always get the pony.

As Mineral Man says, we're on your side.

(Oh, and let's GOTFV!)

it frustrates me sometimes that many people in my age range buy into political cynicism and are not more active whenever they don't get what they want quickly enough. Like DI said upthread, we basically shoot ourselves in the foot by not voting. Both of the major parties have a number of things they are at odds on and very few things they do agree on anymore. Sure, neither party is perfect, but then again, are there any political parties that are perfect? Political parties are man-made entities, and "perfection" is a man-made concept; one's idea of perfection may differ from that of another person.
There's no reason not to vote. As you've stated in many of your previous threads this year about GOTV, voting in all elections is the way to bring about change. Nobody is obligated to vote, but it is everyone's civic duty to do so for the sake of their country. I've been following politics since high school, and will continue to stay active to fight the regressive RW/libertarian agenda. We've reached a point in this country where our lives depend on how (or if) we vote.

This thread. Thanks for all your comments!

Was more active in protest when I was younger. I think the younger folks I meet who are engaged in changing the world are terrific. I am still hopeful about occupy, I met some great smart kids in my brief encounters with them. I had a conversation with a few if them and told them to listen to some of us old timers and then go on and do their own thing. They are the only chance we have. I' m all for progressives progressing, please young people continue to think I am way too moderate and be boldly progressive, don't hold back, take the future for yourself. Way back when I was 13 I stood up in my 9th grade class and did an oral book report on Margaret Sanger and argued for the entire class that birth control should be free for everyone, at 15 I joined the progressive labor party, I protested Vietnam in 1965, I marched after the riots, I lived in a commune. But I do not have that fire and fervor so please, do not apologize for your passion, my generation fucked up in so many ways , you have to fix your own future, I am proud of you all and happy to know you even if I sometimes want to yell at you" you don't know how fierce we once were"