- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26024422
Saikat Chakrabarti, AOC’s former chief of staff, thinks the Democrats need a bolder vision.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26024422
Saikat Chakrabarti, AOC’s former chief of staff, thinks the Democrats need a bolder vision.
I’d rather we judge on mental capacity and not on physical age (so that in theory wisdom is not lost), but there is something to be said for giving someone else a chance to drive the car.
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The issue with lifelong politicians isn’t just their mental capacity but their lifelong detachment from reality as they live in a privileged bubble.
Wisdom can be written down, that would be more wise to do anyway.
Yes, but there is also Bernie. He is far more attached to reality than any young Republican in the Senate (or Democrat).
No one can argue with that, but the reason his name comes up every time is that he’s the exception, not the rule. His net worth is also a fraction of that of Pelosi’s or most of his political peers.
A ceiling on net worth for representatives is certainly an interesting concept, but not really relevant to the conversation.
It gets hard to show a correlation with time in service to detachment from reality when one of the longest serving members is the most grounded, and many of the youngest and most recent members are absolutely insane.
Even Pelosi is pretty progressive relative to the rest of the Democratic representation, and certainly of Congress as a whole. (Very feint praise given the field). She is certainly out of touch, but she was that way when she was far younger as well.
Part of the thing about being young, is having drive to do stuff. Be it good or ill. The Geronocrats have no drive, so they can’t fight the pull of the Right Wing.
The problem isn’t with youthful Democrats, it is with the fact that the elders kept them out.
The point of my net worth comment is that it’s part of her privileged bubble, and is one factor encouraging Bernie to be less out of touch.
I also think Bernie still gives a shit about the common person, and I don’t think Pelosi can remember any details of how the common person lives, based on many of her recent actions, including but not limited to this.
Ultimately my point is that citing Bernie is not (IMO) a reasonable rebuttal to the quoted bit at the top of this comment, and is very specifically not an apples to apples rebuttal of the Pelosi situation, even if he weren’t also a singular example.
Bernie is (unfortunately) a rare exception.
Then demonstrate the trend to me. I’ve given you an undeniable counter example. I agree that Congress is out of touch. Are the older Congress members more out of touch than MTG or the psycho tradwife Katie Britt? I don’t think so.
And he’s acknowledged himself that he’s an anomaly in that regard.
No doubt he’s an exception, but where is evidence for the rule that would justify punishing the exception? When I think of out of touch Congress members, all the first names that come to mind are almost all among the youngest in Congress. Even Pelosi would never be on my short list if she wasn’t in leadership. (She is definitely out of touch, but she has some fierce competition). Also, all the older ones that I think of were just as bad or worse when they were younger.
Undoubtedly. However, a Bernie who retired due to age or term limits, would still be able to mentor upcoming politicians. Handing the helm to a competent person and training their successors would be a much wiser strategy than what we currently got.
Why the hell should we keep creatures like Pelosi, who exist exclusively to suckle from the fetid teat of the stock market?
Oh, we should definitely get rid of Pelosi, but not because she aged out. The Pelosi of 30 years ago was just as worthy of dismissal.
Does that include Bernie?
Something written may not be read. Better to have both, the Wisdom at ground zero in real-time (especially if the feces is hitting the fan), and written down afterwards for posterity’s sake.
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Literally every fucking time lmao
Well, when someone says that ALL of them live in a “privledged bubble”, and I can see with my own eyes some that do not, I’m going to push back against that b.s. /shrug
Metaphoricallyh speaking, people keep trying to treat Life like its an On/Off switch, when in truth is a Volume control/dial, it has variance.
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That was a slam dunk because he’s the obvious exception.
And even then, should he stay? If we had more people like him to take the reins, i would be more comfortable having him retire. But everyone is susceptible to time. Without someone there at the right time we will have another RGB on our hands
Yeah, he could be an advisor to a younger progressive or something.
It also makes the point, and counters the previous point.
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No, we need a physical age limit. Aside from needing to get new people in so that we can pass on institutional knowledge before their staffers are voting for them while they hang out in a nursing home.
The fact that we live in a gerontocracy is part of the reason we’re in so much shit in general. Why should the 83 yo senator from Bumblefuckia give a fuck about climate change, they’ll be dead way before it’s a problem. Why do they care about proper financial regulations when it might impact their ability to insider trade and pass off their unearned wealth to their kids.
They shouldn’t. I wouldn’t consider them wise if they didn’t give a fuck about it. Wise people think of the future as well as the present.
Just for the record, I’m not defending her personally (hence my “giving someone else a chance to drive the car” comment), I’m pushing back against Ageism in general. Biological age is not always a good indicator for capability (see Bernie Sanders).
Not sure why people keep conflating age with capability/morality, they’re definately seperate things.
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Because while they may be different things, but they’re absolutely not separate things given how age and cognitive decline are correlated. Because for every Bernie sanders you have multiple Feinsteins or Grangers that are at best not there or at worst hindering processes, holding up committee votes or taking up committee seats that could be used by someone who actually wants to improve things instead of making the line go up.
Bernie is an exception who proves the rule, unfortunately.
Of course, degradation comes with age, but when I say they are still separate, what I’m saying is the degree of degradation is not exactly the same for every human being, but people judge ALL older people as having the same level of severe degradation, and that is Ageism.
Bernie is a proof of what I’m saying, that not everyone degrades at the same amount/rate over the same amount of time, and it is possible to have elderly people that are very sharp-minded and very capable of doing the job, plus having the wisdom of surviving those years and the knowledge they built up from doing so to be beneficial to the rest of society.
The prejudice of Ageism really shouldn’t be justified. Anyone over a certain age shouldn’t just automatically be thrown away, there are younger people who could have mental illness that are not capable of doing a job, so age does not directly relate to capability, physical and emotional status of the brain does.
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Ageism already exists in the system and we don’t have an issue with it. It’s just okay to be ageist against young people.
We say younger people are not mature enough for certain tasks, but I know plenty of kids who are younger than the required age but able to understand and perform the same tasks. Does that mean we should let 12 year olds have drivers licenses? Are we just going to ignore these kids because they haven’t met a specific age criteria? Or are we going to say that as a rule, they don’t have the mental capacity to have that privilege/responsibility.
We already have rails in place for older people to have their driving privileges taken away, at the very minimum there should be one for government work. You keep saying this is ‘throwing away’ older people, when in reality, this is removing people before they do not have the capacity to do it themselves. No one is saying they can’t advise, but they absolutely should not be steering the future of this country. Because that’s how we get to where we are now.
I personally don’t agree with this at all.
I don’t judge younger people by their age. I look at their ideas, and consider those before passing judgment.
Actually there’s a lot of times where I see young people doing something that I would first think “wow that’s silly”, because I’m set my ways (which I fight every day to try and not be). But then I would actually give the young person some trust and the benefit of the doubt, and actually support them in their beliefs, in a “fresh minds, fresh ideas” sort of way.
My idea is when one generation gets older that they kind of become the assistants of the next generation coming up behind them, and then we just repeat that cycle every generation.
Ageism at any age is wrong, but I’ve seen it practiced a lot more against older people that I have against younger people (especially online), hence my initial comment.
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You’ve side stepped the point I was making yet again to argue something else, but I’ll indulge in this one last time.
Your disagreement doesn’t change laws on the books.
That can never happen when the previous generation is unwilling to let go of the reigns and are determined to die in office of at all possible.
Ok, well I’m talking about what happens in the real world, not people screaming into the void online. Whether or not you hear more about it towards the older gen online, the real world is ageist against younger generations all the time.
I don’t give a wet shit about online people arguing when there’s objective reality to look at for real examples. Good day.
Not purposely so. You’ll have to elaborate more/better.
[Citation Required.]
Having said that, I wasn’t speaking about laws when I replied, but society norms/beliefs.
Laws segregating adults from children is a thing. But I wasn’t speaking about children, but young vs old adults.
So, voting isn’t a thing then (assuming we are both in a voting country)?
No matter what you say about it, ultimately, anyone can be voted out of office, even if obstacles are put in the way of that happening.
Democracy is only as good as the people who vote in it.
Sincerely would like to hear some examples of real-world being against younger generations examples. Might give me a better idea of what your opinion expressing is all about.
Again though, having said that, not ALL old people (or ALL of any kind of people for that matter) think the same way.
Life is a Volume Control dial, and not an On/Off switch. Its variance, its something that can always be plotted on a bell-curve graph.
And here you were doing so well, but you didn’t stick the landing.
I wish for you a great day today and every day.
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Yeah, it’s not just mental capacity, her decisions right now no longer will affect her. We should have a younger people whose these policies will also impact.