Discussion

@stux i believe many want to fight but if you have children and loved one it is hard to fight as there is high chance to die. Look what happened in Minnesota. I am not sure if USA is a democracy anymore.

@stux hit 'em with history? anyone within spitting distance of "elderly" was around for the reagan tax cuts (from 70% to 50%). if they're actually oldies, then they were around for kennedy/johnson cutting rates from 90% to 70%.

so yeah, no, that's not how it has to be.

@stux It’s a conundrum because not caring or just accepting or only working on things that I can change is a good way to inner peace and the mental health that I need and maybe that’s why those people are how they are. But boy we need to fight back like hell, too.

@stux My very comfortably off sister said a while back that she has no problems with people becoming wealthy. I forgot to ask her both whey she said it and why she meant it.

Wealthy people on a planet with BILLIONS in poverty ...

@stux Though i agree there's this: the older, the more wars experienced and the more war-weary.

Grew up during the cold war, had a glimpse, a moment of hope when the soviet enemy fell, lost that after during both Iraq wars, 9/11, Aleppo, Bucha, 7/10 and recently tRump and his maggats.

57, Seriously think i'm not going to make it to 60. Have hit the Hopium too often, it doesn't work any more.

@stux boomers are addicted to convenience and adverse to change.

@stux

H. G. Wells got the Eloi and the Morlocks the wrong way round.

@stux
Maybe they feel powerless. Maybe they are lazy.
Hard to say.

But yes, it's a very common phenomenon.

@stux they sound like someone who understands how difficult it is to tax a powerful person with almost unlimited resources who can pay experts and workers to execute anything while they themselves sit on the beach un-bothered by any of it.

@stux

Sounds like they might be comfortable people and the suffering hasn't reached them yet, maybe?

People have to get fed up, out of patience. High empathy people can get fed up with the suffering of others. Low empathy people have to suffer directly, or see people just like themselves suffering, before they can get fed up.

@stux I am not sure *how* old these elderly people are but a good portion of elderly people aren't truly aware of "just how it is".

As just a surface example, I bought my home in 1999 for about $140k, and a home just like mine on my street recently sold for over $600k. My parents see this sort of thing on the news and are aware of it and will say things like "it must be hard for young people to buy a home if they are barely making $200k/year eh?" And I am like "oh mum they're lucky to make much more than half that" and they are just mind blown.

My parents were born before WW2 and grew up through the end of the depression and wartime rations so know hardship, but have lived their entire lives through fairly constant progress and prosperity. For older boomers they don't even know that pre war hardship, and comfortably retired they are all quite isolated from the experience of young adults. They cannot conceive of the concept 1st world society has unacceptably declined in recent years.

@stux
Learned helplessness?

Age has taught me that there are some things that no matter how vile, are just inevitable, and there are hard limits on how much one can do about them. When you have expended tons of energy and emotion on something only to see it revert each time, you start picking your fights to only those where you can make a difference.

Sometimes that is mistaken, because it was actually possible, but sometimes it is realistic

@stux For inspiration, the British ended the Atlantic Slave Trade. It took a long time and lots of effort—too much of each was required—but it happened in a nation that originally didn't see it as a problem.