https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/29/us-congress-age-lawmakers-millionaire-boomer
There’s a word for this sort of oligarchical rule by the elderly, of course: gerontocracy
We'd be lucky if they were boomers. These are greatest generationers. Feinstein is 90 years old ffs
Seems like a humble crowd, naming themselves the greatest generation.
/s, just incase conservatives read this.
US Congress is a cozy club of multimillionaire Boomers and Greatest Generation lawmakers WHO ARE UP FOR REELECTION EVERY 2 TO 4 YEARS IN A COUNTRY WITH 50% VOTER TURNOUT.
Fixed the title to reflect the reality that Americans don't want to hear. We don't like to be told that it is our role as citizens to keep these people in power, or vote them out of power. But that involves effort, and we instead love to turn to excuses like "oh, if only we had turn limits" or "but, but, but, gerrymandering". We essentially have term limits - they are called elections, and in even some of the most gerrymandered districts, we could vote politicians out of powerif we got off our fat asses and voted. But we don't, and we use whatever excuse we can come up with to defend that laziness.
Instead of "people are too lazy", can we acknowledge how unnecessarily difficult it is to vote?
You dismiss gerrymandering, but we can't exactly vote in a district we're not a part of, or rely on convincing the biggest supporters to flip their politics.
Meanwhile, mostly targeting minorities, voting is made overly complex with people waiting for hours after work to be told they need a document or didn't register correctly.
No wonder only retirees in affluent areas vote, they're the only ones not jumping through hoops to do it. We need voting to be handled federally, with universal registration and mail in voting. Election day should be a holiday, and the polls should be open for a week.
THEN we can complain about people being too lazy.
I love the method Arizona uses. Of course we elected a corrupt piece of shit, but there's no way we would have gone blue without mail in voting. It's not like we get election day off, which should be in the Constitution
We can do more than one thing. We should constantly be reassessing voting to make it easier and safer as new technologies and processes develop (seriously, why are we not doing mail-in everywhere?). It will be hard to implement effective changes without significant political capital. So in addition, we don't have a choice but to be shouting from the rooftops that it's partially our fault it got this bad, and it's our responsibility to fix it.
I talk a lot of politics (I'm very popular at parties /s), and easily the most common response is along the lines of "I don't vote, what's the point?" or just pure ignorance of anything beyond some headlines and a casual disregard for civic duty. We have majorly slipped, and people by and large have entirely taken society and it's framework for granted. I genuinely think people need a kick in the ass from fellow citizens to focus up and not pretend apathy isn't part of the problem. There's no chance we fix anything without motivating a huge block of the population that just doesn't prioritize these things for a multitude of reasons.
Obviously, this also means those of us that don't have a difficult time voting should be volunteering where possible and donating to like-minded causes when that's not an option. We should be having frank political discussions and not straying away from calling out absurdities. It's not fun, there's no glory therein, it just needs to be done. Nations don't endure on belief alone.
No, I'm not going to acknowledge that because for the vast, vast majority of people it isn't true.
It's never taken me more than 15 mins to vote in even the biggest election cycles and that's gonna be true for the vast majority of people. Sick of hearing some BS about It ToOk ToO lOnG usually from people who have never 3ven tried to vote and instead are just regurgitating some BS they heard online. Are there SOME districts which are far worse than others? Sure, I'll condeed that, but it's not the norm. Not by a long shot.
I've been in hour long lines on the regular in white districts. The black districts on the other side of town people wait all day.
Additionally you assume no time to get to and from the polls. Which of course takes longer if you don't have a car. So now do you see how easy it is for voting to be an all day thing for some people? And probably a day off work you can't afford if you can't afford a car.
People in my State use gerrymandering and obstacles like this to discourage voter turnout. They restrict polling locations on purpose to make it hard on purpose. To make lines long. To basically poll tax black people with a missed day of work.
And you want to pretend your experience is everyone's experience and shame people for not voting when you don't live their lives?
We need to make it as easy as possible to vote and encourage people to get involved. Not shame them. The situation is fucked up enough without shaming each other.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/04/upshot/voting-wait-times.html
"For most voters on Election Day, things went well. Most people in our data took 20 minutes or less to vote..."
But even in districts that took much longer, the data they collected shows 110 to 180 minutes as being on the extreme end of the spectrum. No one should need to wait that long, but again, that is in no way, shape or form, the norm. And in no way, shape or form is 180 minutes considered "all day".
EDIT: I guess posting proof to my point, gets one downvoted on Lemmy. So I guess Lemmy ain't that different from Reddit afterall.
That same year, in my city (I won't say which because I value my anonymoty), voter turnout was down almost 10%.
And you're not factoring in distance and transportation to and from the polls. Which is something that affects poor people more (by design).
This is a near-useless critique. It's on the level of "If people stopped doing bad things and did good things, society would be perfect." Sure, individual responsibility is all well and good, but why do the young people in the United States have such a reliably low turnout? It's not just Gen Z, the other generations had similarly low turnout when they were in the same age range. Could this point to a systemic issue that causes young people to be less likely to vote? Ah no, it's just laziness. Also, to be clear, elections are not term limits. China, Russia, and North Korea all hold elections, and yet I would bet money none of those leaders are going to be leaving office anytime soon.
This is exactly the reality today. I'm old (50's). I voted in every election since I could vote. I made a point to educate myself and vote on candidates and issues that helped the working people (me and many more).
I'd ask the younger people I work with if they were going to vote and they told me it doesn't matter if they voted. And then they don't vote, and complain about laws and changes to social safety nets.
I am waiting for the young people to go vote these people out of power.
Every time I vote I see a sea of white haired people at the polls.
Online, while I can't see how old people who post are,I think it is safe to say most trend considerably younger. To this younger generation they think some wicked burn on Twitter or a meme posted on on Reddit or a snarky comment on Lemmy is the equivalent to voting. They think that's how politicals change works.
These reanimated corpses have been in power for way too goddamned long. They can barely carry the weight of their own clothes FFS. Just. Go away.. I bet they park their shit boxes on the sidewalks too. Bastards the lot of them.
yall check out a movie from the 60s called Wild In The Streets. The boomers are pretending they don't remember.
How is this a new article? Of fucking course it is. "Breaking news! Pea soup has peas in it.". It should have been prefixed with "just a reminder..."
Nonsense, just ask Mitch!
Queue the tenders of the sarcophagus busily working
Steam rises
"Mitch" is wheeled out to the crowds of MAGA...
Silence...
"Uuuuuggggghhhhh"
The crowd goes wild.
As much as I (a 43 year old teacher) may shake my head at the tik-tok generation, we need their energy and idealism to renew our democratic institutions and approach society’s problems with fresh eyes and optimism. Term limits have never seemed more crucial to that renewal process than they do now. This much entrenched money and power just seems like fear of that change and renewal.
I agree with term limits. Just a shame it would also mean less time served for people like AOC.
Don't judge a generation by the popular app of the time. I'm not much younger than you and remember being called the Facebook generation, and now it's swarmed with boomers. Plenty of 40 year olds use TikTok anyway.
You're right, we need their energy and idealism more than ever because they are sticking to their ideals and see the writing on the wall.
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” — Emma Goldman
If you don’t know who she is, I’d recommend you spend part of your day finding out. A remarkable woman they don’t want you to remember.
If voting didn't change things. They wouldn't be working so hard to take away the ability or right to vote from certain groups. Or negate their votes. Voting matters. But so does who's counting. It's an uphill battle. But there are almost no better battles to be fighting.
That must be why things are getting better. They’ll let you vote for culture war policy, but not economic policy. The battle in the streets is where real change happens. Protests. Strikes, organizing, unions. That’s what scare the capitalists. Hypothetically, if we overwhelmingly voted for Socialism, you think they would allow that?
Actually the fact that things are getting better is a very reason why conservatives are on a cultural jihad. It used to be that hateful bigotry and exclusion was normal for people who did not meet intolerant conservatives approval. Nowadays they are allowed to get married and even be open with who they are and that just really upsets conservatives.
And believe me. As a Gen X socialist in the Midwest I would like to see things improve economically as well. But the fact that I have to try to pool my votes with liberals on heavily flawed capitalist candidates. In the simple hope that the outright insane conservative candidates don't get elected. Which they generally do. Is very frustrating to me. But seeing conservatives try to take away my general ability to vote lets me know that I'm doing the right thing.
You should have never been put in the position of having to choose between a fascist dictatorship or a mediocre corporatocracy.
People should not have to experience a lot of things in their lives that they do. But what sets them apart is how they handle them. Defeatism only begets defeat. And the only way to affect change is through the broken system. It's doable but a lot of hard work.
I’m not defeatist. I can argue you are. I want a grass roots popular revolution to usurp the corrupt electoral system. You want to keep it the same and hope it gets better over time. We don’t have time with climate change. This is where I am.