Why Are ‘Boomers’ So Gullible?

I am a ‘Baby Boomer’ born in 1947 and I grew up in a time that history, if it is allowed to be taught in the future, will tell the tale of a country coming to terms with itself.

Across the board people seem to be losing their confidence in Donny with the exception of one group…..Boomers.

A new poll shows a slight uptick in President Donald Trump‘s approval rating among Baby Boomers following a significant dip earlier this summer.

What Happened: The InsiderAdvantage polling data revealed that Trump’s approval rating among voters aged 65 and above was at 45% in May and fell to 38% in June. However, the August survey indicates a slight recovery, with his approval rating climbing back to 40%.

The poll analysis notes that Boomers were instrumental in Trump’s 2024 election win, with 51% of voters in this age group casting their votes for him.

The recent uptick in approval seems to align with Trump’s attempts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

Despite these efforts, Trump’s approval ratings on foreign policy have seen a dip in several recent polls. However, his net approval rating on foreign policy among baby boomers has remained relatively stable.

https://www.benzinga.com/news/politics/25/08/47297826/trumps-approval-rating-rises-among-baby-boomers-after-dip-in-june

The very people that being hurt the most by Donny’s tragic decisions still support what he is doing…..why is that?

A couple of years ago with all the chaos in our politics I wrote an apology for my generation….

Apologies From A Boomer

As I stated many of the people I know that are my age voted for Donny and I still have a hard time grasping what made Boomers turn against the very things that made us a great generation.

They all seem to believe all the misinformation that is spread by MSM and all those social media sites….but why has this come about?

We will have to do one of my favorite things….take a look at history….

Boomers seem to not be capable of fact checking the outrageous BS spread by politicians….why is that?

They never had to learn to fact check, thanks to the Mayflower and Fairness Doctrine. Not only did they not need to fact check news sources, they didn’t have to critically think about the information that was presented to them when it came from places of authority. This isn’t because they were blindly trusting. It’s because the information provided by news stations or radio broadcasts no matter how controversial were not allowed to contain any bias or misinformation. They could literally trust everything a newscaster said.

That type of fair and unbiased news reporting was the result of an FCC ruling called the Mayflower Decision (also known as the Mayflower Doctrine) that preceded the Fairness Doctrine. In 1938 a former Yankee’s employee Lawrence J. Flynn accused two radio stations of airing one-sided political views, editorials and attacks against politicians the owner of the network didn’t like.

According to the 1948 Columbia Law Review, due to this kerfuffle, the FCC announced a rule in 1941 that “the radio broadcaster and his station should be allowed neither to editorialize nor take a stand on any controversial matter. This policy appeared as a concomitant to the previously announced position of the Commission that whenever controversial issues were presented they were to be treated impartially and objectively.”

In 1949, three years after the first boomers were born, The Fairness Doctrine was passed building from the FCC’s guidance on the Mayflower Doctrine. This legislation was meant to break up the monopoly of audience control by ABC, NBC, and CBS with concerns that the news stations could promote extreme bias. It required news outlets, which included radio stations, to provide equal airtime to opposing views. The information needed to be factual in nature without editorializing.

Doesn’t that sound lovely? In a world where every other headline is written to scare the bejesus out of you and news pieces feel more editorialized than factual, having policy in place to tamper it would probably be beneficial. So what happened? Boomers spent all of their childhood, teen years and early adult years never having to question the factuality rating of their news. Then after more than 40 years of television and radio stations having guardrails in place, Ronald Reagan’s administration started rolling it back.

https://www.upworthy.com/why-boomers-are-easy-misinformation-targets

So we can blame Reagan for the beginning of the laziness in politics.

Then it became more lazy with Bubba Clinton….and his Telecommunications Act of 1996….which allowed corporations to own the news….and the stage is set for the dolt in the White House today.

The negative impact of the law cannot be overstated. The law, which was the first major reform of telecommunications policy since 1934, according to media scholar Robert McChesney, “is widely considered to be one of the three or four most important federal laws of this generation.” The act dramatically reduced important Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on cross ownership, and allowed giant corporations to buy up thousands of media outlets across the country, increasing their monopoly on the flow of information in the United States and around the world.

Democracy in Peril: Twenty Years of Media Consolidation Under the Telecommunications Act

I can say without flinching that I have held true to my ideals from the 1960s….I have not wavered and I am sorry that my generation is leading the pack on the destruction of a system that worked well for years.

I am ashamed and embarrassed of my generation.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What About Those ‘Boomers’?

The holiday is over time to readjust my thinking and get back to doing what I can do best….

I am what is called a ‘Baby Boomer’ and because of all the turmoil this country has been through I thought I should apologize to the nation for my generation….

Read it here in case you missed it….

Apologies From A Boomer

Yes us Boomers have been doing wrong but under that we did a few things right….so I decided that I should point those out as well….

Over the past few years, Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964) have been getting a lot of grief from the generations that came after them, Gen X (1965 to 1980), Millenials (1981 to 1996), and now, Gen Z (1997 to 2012). Their grievances include environmental destruction, wealth hoarding, political polarization, and being judgemental when they don’t understand how hard it is for younger people to make it in America these days.

Every Baby Boomer is different, so it’s wrong to paint them all with a broad brush. But it’s undeniable that each generation shares common values, and some are bound to come into conflict.

However, life in 2023 isn’t without its annoyances. Many that came about after the technological revolution put a phone in everyone’s hands and brought a whole new host of problems. Add the younger generations’ hands-on approach to child rearing and penchant for outrage, and a lot of modern life has become insufferable.

These problems weren’t created by Boomers but by their hyper-online children and grandchildren who can’t seem to get their faces out of their phones.

A Reddit user named AnitaVodkasoda took to the AskReddit forum and asked posters to admit there were some things that Boomers got right. “What is something you can say ‘I’m with the boomers on this one’ about?” they asked, and many responses came from people fed up with the modern-day frustrations caused by technology and social media.

Here are 19 things that people think that Boomers got right.

https://www.upworthy.com/how-old-are-baby-boomers-right-now-rp2

So you see with all the chaos around our political system there are a few things that us Boomers did right….it is a shame that those advances are overshadowed by the pettiness of politics.

I apologize for the chaos but am damn proud that my principles have not changed in my 76 years.

Enough said.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Those “Hipsters”

I begin my Saturday with a question……

Millennials like to call themselves “hipsters”….those non-conformists that pride themselves on the individuality……but there is a problem I have with this claim……

Ever notice that the hipsters all wear the same jeans, sneakers and that damn wool ‘watch cap”…..and yet they think they are non-conformists…….they dress a like, like the same music, eat the same food, drink the same types of beer…..now what part of that is non-conformists?

Can they explain this?

Can math do the trick?

The skinny jeans, the progressive politics, the Instagram photos: Hipsters, like goths and punk rockers before them, have become a cliché. And we’ve all become more like them as well.

Now math has shown the reason why. A new mathematical model shows that our collective strivings for individuality end up accomplishing the opposite, even if we’re aiming toward different points of “weird.”

It’s just math, says, Paul Smaldino in a paper just published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. Smaldino created a model of how human behavior adds up into collective conformity, precisely because we want to be individuals. Yet the takeaways contain a morsel of hope for how radical individuals can still change the broader society.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/03/04/math-hipsters-all-look-same/#.XIZmi6C1uM9

Now at least us Boomers were truly individuals or should I say non-conformists……but as we got older we slid into the abyss of conformity……well some of us kept the faith and remained on the outside looking in….

Closing Thought–29Dec17

What happened to America?

In the 50’s and 60’s it was booming and had a bright positive future……now fast forward to today…..we cannot say that about this country now.

Some are blaming  the Millennials, but is it truly their fault the demise of a ponce bright and prosperous country?

Everyone likes to bash millennials. We’re spoiled, entitled, and hopelessly glued to our smartphones. We demand participation trophies, can’t find jobs, and live with our parents until we’re 30. You know the punchlines by now.

But is the millennial hate justified? Have we dropped the generational baton, or was it a previous generation, the so-called baby boomers, who actually ruined everything?

That’s the argument Bruce Gibney makes in his book A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America. The boomers, according to Gibney, have committed “generational plunder,” pillaging the nation’s economy, repeatedly cutting their own taxes, financing two wars with deficits, ignoring climate change, presiding over the death of America’s manufacturing core, and leaving future generations to clean up the mess they created.

https://www.vox.com/2017/12/20/16772670/baby-boomers-millennials-congress-debt

I gotta slide out of here….better things in the wind….see you guys tomorrow…..chuq