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Confusing Political Manipulation Post from Facebook

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vividgroovy
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09 Oct 2020, 7:08 am

I have a facebook friend who seems like a nice, smart guy and posts lots of interesting tidbits about history.

He also keeps posting "get out the vote" stuff, which I find less compelling. (He's a Democrat, but I see this kind of stuff from both sides.)

This guy says:
"Stats say this is the first national election where Boomers will be outnumbered by their children. Millenials, Gen X and Gen Z, YOU now have the Power! We Boomers were supposed to end racism. Today it's worse than ever. We were supposed to fix the environment. Now the planet is overheating...Millenials, show your parents how to fix things. Donnie and his Rich Boys Club is prepared to steal Democracy itself, if it's close enough to steal. The best way to prevent this is to vote in such huge numbers, it buries any doubt who won. Boomer Trump is counting on you staying home. Time for you to show us."

So he's trying to use young people's ageism against his own generation to manipulate them into voting for a man who is technically part of an earlier generation because he's just three years older, and he's trying to encourage them to take up the causes that were started by his generation by saying that they all utterly failed.

Regardless of how you feel about the election or the candidates positions, I must ask...is anybody actually convinced by the kind of argument represented by the quote above, or is it just there to make the partisan people feel better? Would any young person who wasn't already going to vote really be convinced to do so out of Boomer hatred?

I was born in 1981, so according to what I can find online, I'm borderline Gen X and Millennial, so I don't really feel I have a "generation" and this generational feud stuff never appealed to me.



GGPViper
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09 Oct 2020, 8:41 am

Well, I was born in 1981 too, and that quote sounds very lame (or "square", to use an 80s term) to me.

I wouldn't call the quote outright political manipulation, though... just badly written and trite partisanship.

Why not this instead?

Slightly less trite partisanship wrote:
In this election, We the Boomers will be outnumbered by Millenials, Gen X and Gen Z.

We the Boomers were supposed to end racism. We failed.
We the Boomers were supposed to fix the environment. We failed.

Millennials, YOU now have the Power! And now it's time to send your parents to school and teach *them* how to be adults. If you don't, then Trump and his Rich Golf/Gulf buddies will steal not only your future, but Democracy *itself*.

And don't expect us Boomers to fight for *your* future and *your* rights, but stand forward and don't stand by. Let's overwhelm Trump at the ballot box, let's erase all doubt about what this country stands for, and let's have an America for everyone, for The People, and not just for us Boomers.

Boomer Trump is counting on you staying home. Let's make him count the hours until eviction instead.



TheRobotLives
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09 Oct 2020, 1:22 pm

vividgroovy wrote:
YOU now have the Power!

The new goal -- same as the prior goal -- will be to push the debt off to the next generation.

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vividgroovy
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14 Oct 2020, 6:46 am

GGPViper wrote:
Well, I was born in 1981 too, and that quote sounds very lame (or "square", to use an 80s term) to me.

I wouldn't call the quote outright political manipulation, though... just badly written and trite partisanship.

Why not this instead?

Slightly less trite partisanship wrote:
In this election, We the Boomers will be outnumbered by Millenials, Gen X and Gen Z.

We the Boomers were supposed to end racism. We failed.
We the Boomers were supposed to fix the environment. We failed.

Millennials, YOU now have the Power! And now it's time to send your parents to school and teach *them* how to be adults. If you don't, then Trump and his Rich Golf/Gulf buddies will steal not only your future, but Democracy *itself*.

And don't expect us Boomers to fight for *your* future and *your* rights, but stand forward and don't stand by. Let's overwhelm Trump at the ballot box, let's erase all doubt about what this country stands for, and let's have an America for everyone, for The People, and not just for us Boomers.

Boomer Trump is counting on you staying home. Let's make him count the hours until eviction instead.


That's a punchier way to put it. I just don't like the whole premise of linking a politician with an entire generation, especially as a way of distinguishing him from an opponent who's a mere three years older. Trump's 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton is also a Boomer, as is her husband, the former Democratic president.

The idea of selling a vote for a 77 year old man as being the hip, young, rebellious thing to do reminds me of an ad campaign from when I was a kid, that tried to make eating Apple Jacks cereal seem rebellious. (STUFFY ADULT: "Why do you eat it when it doesn't taste like apples?!" REBELLIOUS TEENS: "WE EAT WHAT WE LIKE! HAHAHAHAHAHA!")