Seniors are the most vulnerable people on the internet, the most likely to be fooled by disinformation, the most likely to vote, and are one of the biggest threats to civil society. Boomers are destroying what previous generations have built.
Here in Germany they also ignored the demographics, so our social insurance systems (retirement but also health) are heading towards a catastrophe, because there is no capital backing them. They are fundamentally relying on the next generation being bigger or at least equal. This has turned them essentially into Ponzi schemes. The taxpayer has to jump in, making the state less and less able to do anything at all. Of course they now collectively avoid responsibility and slowly milk the young - their own children - dry.
ChatGPT thinks, that in the US social security makes up about 30-40% of the retirement income of a typical American, while the German system makes up about 80-85% of a retired German. Home ownership rate in Germany is also way lower.
Germany is an outlier in that there is no capital backing for that generation whatsover. The problem has been known for 30 years, they just chose to ignore it.
Are they the most egoistic generation ever? The ones who decided to go on this path weren't the boomers but the generation before (as with some other things boomers are blamed for). A capital backed social insurance system is a "ponzi" scheme in different ways from a PAYG system it's really not some holy grail. The problem is just demographics
It's going to be interesting when the Millenials retire - IIRC, that generation was almost as large as the boomers. Gen-Z/Gen-Alpha that are going to be supporting them are a LOT smaller.
It's been this way for 100+ years (probably much longer) and people found a way to vote. It's easier than ever in most places today, with early voting, mail-in voting, whatever other options are available.
How long can we push this narrative? It was a terrible situation and I can't imagine the minutes of complete fear she must have felt. I pray for her family. But to then draw a conclusion to say this is evidence that we are in some sort of fascist decline, because of this incident, takes away from the innocent lose of life. And greatly exaggerates the skill and aptitude of the killer. People spew the fascist narrative every chance they get. I'm sure most of us who like strawberries will be picking strawberries come June.
Yes I understand. And given the heaviness of the situation I could have chosen a better way to phrase that I completely disagree with it being evidence that we're on the road to fascism.
How can you watch ICE shoot and kill these two people and then leadership calls them both terrorists and the shooting justified and then suppress and block any investigtation and prosecution of the offenders and think they have ANY regard for human life?!
It's not because of one incident. And the fascist part of these incidents isn't just the killing, it's the official response to it. They immediately claim the victims are terrorists and assassins and suppress investigation of it. Let's not pretend this is just some sad accident.
Agreed the official responses to almost everything - killings, terrible policy, various files - has been horrible. That is the result of having an uncouth person as president.
You have an unrealistic picture of what fascism looks like. Most people got to pick strawberries throughout the Spanish, Italian, and even German fascist periods.
The problem isn't that fascism will kill all of us, but that you will not get to choose. If the regime decides that your city, your company, or your friends are an enemy, they will destroy you, and if your fellow strawberry-pickers bother to read about it in the paper they'll be told that you were an anti-government radical who had it coming.
When has this "regime" destroyed any company, city, or any of our friends? I feel this whole conversation is emotionally charged and its clouding reality. People are protesting. Media is not controlled by the government. Our courts are strong. There is no dictator.
Some of my friends lost their research funding when Trump unlawfully cancelled a bunch of grants, and one still hasn't found new employment.
The government is working hard to control the media. Regime allies have conducted ideological purges at the Washington Post and CBS News so far, and another has promised Trump to conduct one at CNN if he's allowed to buy their parent company Warner Brothers (https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/10/media/trump-cnn-sold-paramoun...).
Our courts are strong in some ways and weak in other ways. There's a number of cases where ICE unlawfully kidnapped someone before eventually being ordered to let them go and eventually complying, after days or weeks of holding them in overcrowded facilities with absolutely no basis.
Is Trump Hitler? Probably not. It's true that people are protesting, it's true that public dissent is alive, and it's unlikely IMO that he will be able to engage in mass detention of citizens. But he's extremely open about the fact that he thinks it should be illegal to dislike him, or to try and stop him from doing what he wants to do.
90% of the stuff in the OP will break certain sites… The problem is that non-technical users will think “oh, privacy, that’s good” (which it is, don’t get me wrong), click the “max privacy” option, but then be unable to fix things when they don’t work and switch back to Chrome.
reply