u.s. politics: now guaranteed to contain no less than 35% u.s. political content

[SkynJay]

2 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

I feel much the same as I'm also born the same year.  I read an article recently that addressed this where social scientists were considering a new name for those born within the mid 80s whose childhood were more like Gen X'ers, but whose high school and early adult years were very different.  Can't find it now, but it was interesting reading some of the data from this mid 80s "micro generation".

ETA: googled micro generation and found it.  

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/06/28/xennials_a_23006562/

The Xennial thing mad the rounds recently but the idea was kicked arouns a few years ago with what i thought was a cooler name, The Oregon Trail Generation. 

https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2015/04/oregon-trail-generation/

As someone born in 81 i find it very apt.  We were a strange generation who grew up right with the tech boom, from early computer labs in school (still being ran by the old typing teachers who we ran circles around) to the joys and pitfalls of online research in high school.

[karaddin]

On 2017/09/28 at 8:37 AM, good chill praxis guy said:

yeah, i get that. it's been known for a while now. the point is they are based out of oregon, not some russian troll farm or whatever

I saw a tweet thread with some examples from that account and its so bad, it wouldn't be remotely convincing to anyone even passingly familiar with progressive viewpoints or antifa. Just dropping "gender diversity" and "gluten free" without actually understanding anything. But they're not meant to fool actual progressives, these aren't traps to get antifa interacting with them, they're to create screenshots of "the awful stuff antifa say" so that then centrists and conservatives can be shown their twitter profile and be all "oh yes, this is the real deal, its terrible!". They take the things conservatives mock and throw them back out without any further thought and that's that.

9 hours ago, Ormond said:

People cannot control their "generation" any more than they can control their race or gender. Sorry, I find your comments about boomers to be really personally insulting as someone who was born in 1951 who did NOT vote for Reagan (along with at least 45% of other baby boomer voters). Generational "groups" do not "take actions" as a whole. 

I have to side with the point being made by some others here. I know you aren't the one doing it, but the anti boomer rhetoric from most young people I see is a direct response to the sheer volume of mainstream media pieces shitting on Millennials (because they have to find stories to publish). I was born in 1983, the youngest (by a big gap) of a big family, so I have a lot of identification with X, but I've given up on trying to say I'm not a Millennial, so instead I'll just quote Billy Joel "We didn't start the fire".

Since the thread has deteriorated into music etc there probably isn't much point trying to discuss the issue seriously, but in this as with anti white/anti straight/anti cis etc rhetoric...the ranting is directed at a set of behaviour. Yes its tied together with the name of the generation, but everyone would have people they know and love who are from the Boomer generation. We don't literally apply this stuff to every single member of the group. We are ranting against a certain behavioural pattern that is common amongst a certain group of Boomers, if you don't engage in that behaviour then you aren't being maligned.

5 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

In the 1980s, the only protest song was “You gotta fight for your right to party.”

I mean, going with the first that sprung to mind here... Fuck tha Police seems a pretty glaring counterpoint. If you want to ignore the entire, at this point extremely political genres of rap and hip-hop then we can go with Born in the USA from 1984. Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 from 1983 is a really powerful song I remember from growing up as well.

Even the Beastie Boys themselves are very poorly represented by that song, let alone the entire decade. It produced amazing music and plenty of it was political and protest oriented. The most important I'd argue is the rap and hip-hop, at least in regards to the US, because that's the racial tensions that we're still seeing now.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, SkynJay said:

The Xennial thing mad the rounds recently but the idea was kicked arouns a few years ago with what i thought was a cooler name, The Oregon Trail Generation. 

https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2015/04/oregon-trail-generation/

As someone born in 81 i find it very apt.  We were a strange generation who grew up right with the tech boom, from early computer labs in school (still being ran by the old typing teachers who we ran circles around) to the joys and pitfalls of online research in high school.

As someone born in 85, I find that very apt as well - and love the Oregon Trail usage.  To this day I can tell if I can reminisce with someone at the bar about similar pop culture, sports, music etc. by their knowledge of oregon trail.  The only thing I must admit is that by college napster was dead.  We had ares and...limewire, I think.

35 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I mean, going with the first that sprung to mind here... Fuck tha Police seems a pretty glaring counterpoint.

I haven't followed this music discussion but yeah, in terms of hip hop, the late 80s also had, ya know, any KRS-One song.

[all swedes are racist]

hate to feed into this, but the 80s had no protest music beyond springsteen? gtfoh. this is the decade that gave rise to the whole grindcore/crust punk idea, fucked up ronnie, and like the entire steel pulse catalog

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

8 minutes ago, good chill praxis guy said:

hate to feed into this, but the 80s had no protest music beyond springsteen? gtfoh. this is the decade that gave rise to the whole grindcore/crust punk idea, fucked up ronnie, and like the entire steel pulse catalog

CALIFORNIA UBER ALLES!

 

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, good chill praxis guy said:

hate to feed into this, but the 80s had no protest music beyond springsteen? gtfoh. this is the decade that gave rise to the whole grindcore/crust punk idea, fucked up ronnie, and like the entire steel pulse catalog

The comment was actually Beastie Boys '(You Gotta) Fight for your Right (To Party)'. I threw Springsteen in there as one of a smattering because he's the popular with middle America guy, wanted a broad spread with just a few examples. Not rejecting your examples, just saying the original point didn't bring in Springsteen....just claimed there was no protest music at all

[OldGimletEye]

On 9/28/2017 at 11:55 PM, karaddin said:

.I mean, going with the first that sprung to mind here... Fuck tha Police seems a pretty glaring counterpoint. If you want to ignore the entire, at this point extremely political genres of rap and hip-hop then we can go with Born in the USA from 1984. Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 from 1983 is a really powerful song I remember from growing up as well.

Even the Beastie Boys themselves are very poorly represented by that song, let alone the entire decade. It produced amazing music and plenty of it was political and protest oriented. The most important I'd argue is the rap and hip-hop, at least in regards to the US, because that's the racial tensions that we're still seeing now.

I know. Was just cracking a bit of a joke.

[Guy Kilmore]

18 hours ago, Ormond said:

People cannot control their "generation" any more than they can control their race or gender. Sorry, I find your comments about boomers to be really personally insulting as someone who was born in 1951 who did NOT vote for Reagan (along with at least 45% of other baby boomer voters). Generational "groups" do not "take actions" as a whole. 

You are correct.

At the same time I have to square this with the fact that looking at recent voting patterns and I have to take issue with how certain age brackets are distributing their vote.  

I have that same struggle with caucasian males as well and I am one of them.

So while I do agree it is unfair to paint with this broad brush, it is also a hard fact to ignore and something that is keenly felt.

I will also say, that some of it is a reaction to the constant bombardment of headlines and articles that seem to blame Millennials for the downfall of everything and my own interactions with people of that generation.  So we look at youth and heck, people nearing middle age today and we find ourselves looking down at the rise of fascism (or some kind of isms, be it race or a sexual variety), economic uncertainty, and the lasting monument of Gordon Gecko's message, "Greed is good."  

The people of the Baby Boomer generation were the stewards of our nation and they haven't been good ones and will probably take some flak for it, but they have been and are in positions of cultural and economic power.  I do acknowledge that they will hit a point, some are there already, where they will become vulnerable due to their age.  I hope I am able to advocate for their wellbeing much better than they have for the previous (and their own) generations.

[LongRider]

Yes Sir!

Quote

Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, superintendent of the Air Force Academy, yesterday "stood all of his 4,000 cadets at attention ... [c]hins in and chests out ... to deliver a message on racial slurs found written on message boards at the academy's preparatory school," The (Colorado Springs) Gazette reports.

At the culmination of his five-minute lecture on "the power of diversity" of race and gender, the general barked: "Reach for your phones. I'm serious: Reach for your phones. ... Grab your phones. I want you to videotape this — so that you have it, so that you can use it, so that we all have the moral courage together."

 

• Then he said: "If you can't treat someone with dignity and respect, then get out." The general turned and left.

Watch what he said in the video in the article, that's the way a good leader addresses hard problems.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Yeah, there definitely was a lot of cheesiness going on with a lot of 1980s movies, but there was some good stuff too. Like the original Star Wars trilogy. That was really special as before that sci fi movies were kind of cheap and cheesy (I like them anyway, but I think you catch my drift). I was still pretty young in the 1980s, but I lost my mind with the Star Wars stuff. I must have driven my mother nuts as I went through spell where thats the only thing I wanted to watch.

Sorry, I phrased that wrong. I was talking about movies about the 80’s, not movies made in the 80’s.

15 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

 

And I would just like to say, that although I might have been guilty of wearing the parachute pants, I never had a permed mullet. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

That’s a shame. I’m growing my hair out for the first time, and when I decide to cut it I’d totally rock a mullet for a week before I shaved it off.

 

[DMC]

44 minutes ago, Guy Kilmore said:

At the same time I have to square this with the fact that looking at recent voting patterns and I have to take issue with how certain age brackets are distributing their vote.  

I have that same struggle with caucasian males as well and I am one of them.

I think this is a fairly good way to look at it.  I give my parents shit about the boomers all the time, and while it's somewhat tongue-in-cheek, they largely agree.  Same goes with white males - if we to place blame on any demographic (including generational) group, they're obviously far more to blame for society's ills than any other, but I don't take offense at that just because I'm a white male.

49 minutes ago, Guy Kilmore said:

I will also say, that some of it is a reaction to the constant bombardment of headlines and articles that seem to blame Millennials for the downfall of everything and my own interactions with people of that generation.

Well, by the same token I don't take much offense to this either (perhaps because I don't identify as a millennial even I technically am one).  This just seems to be the amplification of every older generation's hand-wringing about the younger generation.  I recall the same thing being said about Gen X, and pretty sure the boomers got quite a bit of this in the 60s, so, meh.

52 minutes ago, Guy Kilmore said:

The people of the Baby Boomer generation were the stewards of our nation and they haven't been good ones and will probably take some flak for it, but they have been and are in positions of cultural and economic power.

This is my qualm.  The boomers have, for the most part, been in control of American politics for nearly 30 years now.  My issues are (1) the results have not been very good, and (2) I'm tired of the same social battles dominating politics during their tenure (and, really, since the 60s).  As the late great Owen Hart said, enough is enough and it's time for a change.  That being said, it's incumbent upon Gen Xers and Millennials to wrest that control over politics from the boomers.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

23 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Well, by the same token I don't take much offense to this either (perhaps because I don't identify as a millennial even I technically am one).  This just seems to be the amplification of every older generation's hand-wringing about the younger generation.  I recall the same thing being said about Gen X, and pretty sure the boomers got quite a bit of this in the 60s, so, meh.

This is as old as time. I came across a funny quote in college where some pharaoh from before 2000 BCE was complaining about the laziness and lack of morality of the next generation and that it would lead to the end of the Egyptian empire. It lasted another 2000 years.

[all swedes are racist]

7 hours ago, karaddin said:

The comment was actually Beastie Boys '(You Gotta) Fight for your Right (To Party)'. I threw Springsteen in there as one of a smattering because he's the popular with middle America guy, wanted a broad spread with just a few examples. Not rejecting your examples, just saying the original point didn't bring in Springsteen....just claimed there was no protest music at all

ugh, you're right, late night posting.... but yeah, thats even worse then! haha

[The Wedge]

8 hours ago, karaddin said:

The comment was actually Beastie Boys '(You Gotta) Fight for your Right (To Party)'. I threw Springsteen in there as one of a smattering because he's the popular with middle America guy, wanted a broad spread with just a few examples. Not rejecting your examples, just saying the original point didn't bring in Springsteen....just claimed there was no protest music at all

Someone already got to "California Uber Alles," so I'll name check some other 80's protest songs.

The decade had benefit records like "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and "We Are The World."  These ideas, however, led Little Steven Van Zant to create the amazing Artists United Against Apartheid.  "I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City" was a ten times better song with ten times cooler artists than those other benefits.

Also, there were Peter Gabriel's "Biko" and The Specials' "Free Nelson Mandela."

And Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" is basic protest music that gets misconstrued as patriotic for those who can't be arsed with listening to the verses.

Maybe the most seen was the video for Genesis' "Land of Confusion."

Edit to add: Would a protest song about family farms like Mellencamp's "Rain on the Scarecrow" ever see the Top 40 like it did in 1985?  That song is bleak as hell.

[DMC]

Anybody see/post this article from vox yesterday?:

Quote

All the outreach activity by political campaigns, including door to door canvassing, phone banking, direct mail, and even advertising, has basically no effect on voters’ choice of candidate in general elections, according to a striking new academic study.

The new analysis covers 49 field experiments conducted in real US election campaigns, typically run with cooperation from the campaigns themselves.

The study isn't really striking other than the size of its meta-analysis - this has been the consensus among behavior scholars for long enough that I teach the minimalist approach to undergrads (and it was in the curriculum before me, I swear!)  Still, always good to keep in mind.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

43 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Anybody see/post this article from vox yesterday?:

The study isn't really striking other than the size of its meta-analysis - this has been the consensus among behavior scholars for long enough that I teach the minimalist approach to undergrads (and it was in the curriculum before me, I swear!)  Still, always good to keep in mind.

I could have told you that just from personal experience. You very rarely change people’s minds, but you can increase the likelihood that they’ll vote and the degree to which they support your candidate. The thing that I’ve always wonder about is at what point do you get diminishing returns and furthermore, at what point do you actually decrease the likelihood of someone voting. I bring up the latter because it always drove me nuts when I’d be told to canvas a neighborhood for the 5^th time only for the residents to tell me to go away and stop bothering them, then I’d tell my bosses that and they’d say go canvas the area again next week.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The thing that I’ve always wonder about is at what point do you get diminishing returns and furthermore, at what point do you actually decrease the likelihood of someone voting.

This is something that is inevitably brought up in graduate seminars (due to mutual experience), but to my knowledge has never been studied.  Mostly because I don't know how in the hell you'd design it.

Anyway, yes, the main objective of campaigns is turnout.  Most of the successful ones know this.

[Zorral]

47 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Anybody see/post this article from vox yesterday?:

The study isn't really striking other than the size of its meta-analysis - this has been the consensus among behavior scholars for long enough that I teach the minimalist approach to undergrads (and it was in the curriculum before me, I swear!)  Still, always good to keep in mind.

Yes, I put the link and a quote from it up here yesterday.  But one doesn't expect anyone to look at what came before in a fast moving thread, especially about generational culpability for what is wrong in the world today (especially when romperman is a boomer -- who are responsible for everything wrong).

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Yes, I put the link and a quote from it up here yesterday. 

Oh, sorry!  Whenever there's, like, five pages to read I inevitably skim.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

56 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

This is something that is inevitably brought up in graduate seminars (due to mutual experience), but to my knowledge has never been studied.  Mostly because I don't know how in the hell you'd design it.

Anyway, yes, the main objective of campaigns is turnout.  Most of the successful ones know this.

That’s interesting, but I guess it makes sense since I’ve been asking myself that question for years now with no real answer to be found. Anyways, I don’t think it would be that hard to study. All you need is access to a campaign’s data, and I think you could find one willing to give it up because they want that information or find a retiring politician who would give the data up in the name of political science. I know that most politicians protect their data more vigorously than they’d protect their children, but there’s got to be a few who would be willing to play ball.