In all fairness most of that generation is in nursing homes and can’t get to a polling place because of onerous voter ID laws. It’s their kids and grandkids who are the major shitbirds here.
They’re Silent Generation and Boomers. The Boomers might be getting old, but I doubt that most of them are that old, and I expect that there are enough silents who are still active that there are a majority still able to vote.
It’s in a different country and purely anecdotal, but my godmother who is mid Greatest generation still makes sure she gets out to vote and wouldn’t knowingly vote for fascists. I do recognise that she is an extreme case though (past 100 and still very active for someone 20 years younger).
4 Likes
I know this area pretty well - it’s rather diverse, in terms of race and ethnicity. This is an Atlanta suburb, after all, not out in the boondocks at all. And it’s the side of town which has a larger number of immigrants, primarily because of the refugee center that isn’t far from here. I suspect that the curriculum was indeed intended to do what @fuzzyfungus suggests, but it was incredibly hamfisted attempt.
3 Likes
My dad missed being a Baby Boomer by being 6 days early. He is only 72 and quite spry. I imagine there might be a some in homes but most are still independent.
Please, please, please be too stupid to be real.
Like @anon73430903 said.
The generation that fought the nazis was the Greatest Generation. Those were my grandparents. My parents are War Babies also known as Baby Boomers. My parents are mid 70’s now. They aren’t in nursing homes. Retired yes. But quite active and coherent.
They collectively seem to have forgotten what their parents died for.
5 Likes
I don’t think my grandfather had any qualms whatsoever about punching nazis in the middle of the battle of the bulge, for example.
4 Likes
6 Likes
My maternal grandfather was in Europe. He was a postmaster (Captain). My paternal grandfather was in the pacific with the 6th army division as a communications specialist (cpl).
Somehow my dad forgot about that and supports 45.
SMH
3 Likes
Boomers by definition came after WWII. Born during the baby boom of 1945-65.
Silent Generation and Greatest Generation are generally one in the same in most cases. Remember WWII ended 72 years ago. Anyone old enough to have fought in the war would be at a minimum age of 91 (assuming 18 years old in 1944/45). WWII veterans are an endangered species. Those old enough to remember the impact of WWII as children are getting up in the years.
4 Likes
Opposite for my grandfathers, paternal in Europe, and my (underaged) maternal in the pacific (it took them a year to figure out he lied about his age and send him home).
1 Like
But your parents are not old enough for WWII to be in their living memory. Especially if they are American. I was speaking of the Greatest generation. One which is pretty much an endangered species and pushing their 90’s.
My in-laws were children when the war ended. Both under the age of 10. But they are Japanese and remember literally running away from American firebombings, the near famine conditions in 1945 and how friendly occupation troops were…
But they already had a mascot in 1935, sort of.
2 Likes
2 Likes
You were referencing something I said. And you were wrong. I did not say the greatest generation ie my grandparents were trump supporters. I expressly said their kids (my parents) are trumpers who forgot what their parents did.
Go re read my post.
1 Like
My dad (1922-1990) was a Second Sergeant in the 83rd Infantry Division. Until the year before he died, he went to the yearly reunions, held all over the east-central states. Those old guys all hated the Nazis, but a lot of them hated women (except their mothers and daughters), and blacks, browns, yellows and reds. They were a good representation of white male of a certain age.
I think that some of the white male hate coming out now is because our fathers told us stories like they fought Hitler for America! and war and post-war times were the bestest times because they got to kill people and were glorified for it. Back then, veterans got the kind of pass we see police and politicians getting.
In college, during my master’s studies, we watched the propaganda films of Lena Wass-er-name, and learned the best applied communication theories to use to change the world. Or sell more soft drinks. Either. Both.
Anyway, master’s level studies are appropriate to look at specific propaganda. Not so much 6th grade. Having kids create proaganda is always morally and ethically a problem; it teaches less about why it’s effective and how to resist,than why it’s effective and how to create it yourself.
5 Likes
Which would fit with them being the generation whose parents fought and died to end the Nazis.
The Silent Generation are the ones who are old enough to have lived during WWII but most of them were too young to fight in it. Yes, they might be 91 at the oldest, but the youngest are 72 which means they could still have a few good decades ahead of them if they have looked after themselves.
1 Like
My cut-off point is those born in 1929, which allows for 16-year-olds who were old enough to have a near-adult appreciation of what was going on in 1945 (and sometimes fight if they lied about their age). The number of people aged 88 and older is dwindling fast, and I think the reason the fascists are crawling up from under the paving stones is that we’ve just lost too many who can object to it with the authority of lived experience.
Most Silents didn’t experience it that way. I know one 80-year-old who’s a Holocaust survivor but he was 8 years old in 1945. His experience was absolutely horrific and traumatising, but it was still processed through a young child’s perception. I also know a 78-year-old American who recalls the home front privations of the era mainly in terms of an inability to get candy bars.
2 Likes
My Mum’s husband is Silent Generation, but he grew up as a working-class kid in 1940’s London.
His earliest memory is of frantically pedalling his tricycle down the street…while being strafed by a Messerschmitt.
4 Likes
Yes. J.G. Ballard also captured that odd child’s eye view of the war in “Empire of the Sun” (the film version even more so). An 8-year-old might have had a frightening and crazy experience, but he wouldn’t be old enough to think to himself at the time “this horrible stuff is happening to me and my family now because [a | my] country went nuts and gave a bunch of right-wing populist thugs a chance to govern”; a 16-year-old at the time would have.
I’ll always remember being at a party as a teenager in the 1980s and chatting with a friendly and soft-spoken screenwriter who was probably in his 60s. All of a sudden the conversation shifted from movies to his telling me about flying a Spitfire when he wasn’t much older than I was, how awful it was to shoot down other young men and see them die all because the damned Nazis took over their country. That left an impression on me of the kind that I don’t think many teenagers have received over the last 7-8 years and won’t going forward.
6 Likes
