#okboomer, #whatever
Nancy Pelosi, Nirvana, and the political short-term
Nancy’s on fire, hail Nancy! Now meet her replacement (for 2021)
There is a generational warfare unfolding based on made-up categorizations of people, Boomers vs. Millennials. The conflict is aptly summed up by 25-year-old New Zealand lawmaker Chloe Swarbrick who recently “ok, boomered” an older colleague heckling her about climate change while accusing, “Current political institutions have proven themselves incompetent at thinking outside a short political term.”
I feel her pain. And though I am loving me some Nancy Pelosi as she guides us surely through a tragically necessary impeachment, come the March primary I will be voting for her progressive young challenger Agatha Bacelar, and this causes me no cognitive dissonance. I was born in 1963 so I am technically a boomer, as is Nancy, who has been in her Congressional seat longer than Agatha has been alive. I’m a boomer the way Courtney Love is also technically a boomer while her better half Kurt Cobain was technically a Gen Xer — in fact, if he didn’t flat out define Gen Xers, he sort of crystallized what it meant to be one.
Baby boomers is a term that started appearing as a way to describe consumers in the 80s & 90s; back then, the defining birth range was 1936 to 1963. That was according to American Demographics magazine, an ahead-of-its time actual physical magazine that talked about demographic, pyschographic, and even geographic trends underpinning consumer desires. You can see why bucketizing people as boomers etc. makes it easier for the makers of products to target their advertising. But that’s pretty much all it is a — a big bucket that defines people in the broadest possible terms as similar in the most common denominator ways. It’s not an identity.
With a birthdate in late December 1963, I never felt like part of the boomer generation — to me, they all looked and sounded like Wilford Brimley pitching oatmeal. Gen X wasn’t really a name for a generation so much as a consonant that replaced a question mark, Gen ? We weren’t our parent’s generation, but what were we, besides fans of Winona Ryder? No one seemed to know, even as hair bands continued to commit crimes against rock in huge stadiums that totally ruined concerts. Then came Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails, and the GenX culture solidified around alternative rock and the angry, shrugging apathy of “Whatever”.
Today, the definition of boomer has shifted like an Overton window; now, they are defined as the generation born between 1946 and 1964.
I listened to Hole and Nirvana but I bet Nancy didn’t — she seems more like the people in my office the year Nevermind and Doll Parts topped the charts, redefining rock for a generation — I was in my early 20s, they were in their late 30s and 40s, and grunge music was a clear dividing line that separated us. Over beers and Cobain’s howl on the jukebox, the then 39-year-old secretary of our department once asked me if there were any lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit, or was the singer ‘just, you know, screaming?’ I was 24 and knew the difference between us was anger — we were not angry about the same things.
But ok, whatever, I’ll be a boomer for the sake of argument, mostly because lately I have been feeling compelled to defend them in a big way. Boomers have done a lot of good things, like fight WWII and lay the groundwork for a democratic world ideal, and they are still doing good things — lately, Nancy Pelosi chief among them.
In the last few months I’ve heard three different scholars of democracy (Robert Reich, Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Lessig — boomers all) remark that “We are in dangerous times.” That’s a scary sentence to be hearing repetitively from sober-minded, data-driven intellectuals, and I resent the insult implicit in #okboomer on all their behalf. I for one am glad we have Nancy in charge of the House right now. She is, as former defense secretary and CIA director Leon Panetta has said, the exact right person in the right place at the right time. She, along with Adam Schiff, are the best we have for what we’re facing, which has never been more serious. The soul and longevity of the republic, what it means to be an American not to mention our democracy itself are at stake right now.
The constitutional crisis that is our corrupt chief executive office is in Nancy’s excellent hands, hands I trust completely for the task. I believe Nancy will represent the best of the boomers as she navigates the American ship safely through the rough waters of impeachment. And in a storm-tossed sea, Nancy is showing a sure and steady hand. Last week she was nothing less than magnificent, telling a reporter “Don’t you mess with me” when he asked her coyly if she hated the President. I fist-pumped as I listened (but in a small quiet way so as not to disturb others around me). Generally I’m not a huge fan of any of the octogenarian status quo politicians, but in that moment Nancy was a beacon of democratic rationality: she was strong and unhesitating, her white suit was impeccable, and I felt like everyone should have given her a salute when she finished at the podium for the second time.
Watching Trump rollick through NATO like a cannon on an unsecured deck was painful; seeing his obvious hurt at being mocked by a cadre of world leaders made me want to crawl into a hole and pull it over myself until this cult of personality is in the rearview mirror of American history. That there are children living in cages on US soil and our president is pouting and calling world leaders “two-faced” (with a side dish of trolling 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg) is not a vision one ever expects to measure one’s values against, but here we are.
I love seeing Nancy rising to the occasion — these are fraught times, and we have never needed strong American leadership more than we do now. I know Nancy can be trusted to keep the big picture in mind as she pieces together the broken shards of our American democratic mosaic. As a friend said “Her quashing of the cheering once the articles of impeachment passed shows she truly gets it — taking down a corrupt President is serious business and a tragedy for us all. It is important. It is necessary. It is NOT a victory for anyone.” The impeachment is a fitting swan song to a distinguished career. But.
By November 2020, this will all be behind us; it’s either the end of the Trump era or will be the strong middle of it, and either way I don’t see Nancy Pelosi being the most effective representative anymore, and I’d be surprised if that is in any way a controversial opinion. She’s been a lightning rod for too long; is that her fault? No, I blame Republicans and mostly Mitch McConnell for that, but it doesn’t change the fact that what’s not her fault — being a lightning rod that reduces her effectiveness as a representive — is still our reality. Is that fair to voters? It’s certainly not *necessary*, not in a democracy. And while I’m the first to fiercely attack ageism in all of its guises, I feel it’s not ageist one bit to question whether it’s time for someone who’s been in the job three plus decades, is more than forty years older than her average constituent, and will be 81 when the next Congress is elected whether it’s time to pass the torch. We’re in a climate emergency here, and no disrespect intended but keeping octogenarians in the job so they can retire at their own pace while young people watch the planet go to hell in the proverbial handbasket doesn’t match the urgency of the situation we’re in.
Add to all this, the disastrous impact of money on politics means the priorities of average citizens have effectively had no influence on legislation FOR DECADES. That kind of problem can’t be fixed with the people who helped create the legislation that created the problem. For millennials, waiting their turn to lead is not an option. And there is little in the data to suggest they should.
Congressional approval stands at 17% — the lowest rate in the history of the poll, for the longest period of time, since the poll started in 1974. You have to go back 10 years to find Congress’ approval rating at 30% or above. And millennials, the biggest demographic of the polity, are paying the steepest price for the decisions of the last three decades. I, like many fed-up Gen Xers and boomers, am ready to start betting on a younger generation of leaders to reform our economy and our democracy.
So come March 3, 2020 (the primary vote) and November 2020 (the general vote), I will be looking forward to voting for an able young candidate, Agatha Bacelar, who is prioritizing everything that Nancy has not. At least, not with the urgency I believe that the millennial generation is bringing to the issues that concern the majority of Americans shouting into the void of their ineffective, corporate-owned Congressional representatives: universal health care, comprehensive immigration reform, the economy squeezing the working class ’til it bleeds, mass incarceration and gun violence. And, above all, getting money out of politics, the root cause of the great American decline writers like Anand Giridharadas and Chris Hedges write about with such terrifying eloquence. As the representative for CA-12 Agatha will carry the torch forward and use it to light a fire on climate action, a topic that Nancy Pelosi and her boomer legislator peers have have left comfortably unaddressed, as though finite resources and inequality are problems that can be ignored forever. Even billionaires themselves know better.
“There is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out,” warned Nick Hanauer in a TED Talk that has been watched more than 2.3 million times.
“You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. It’s not if, it’s when.”
We are at the beginnings of an uprising that today’s millennials have no choice but to lead us through, and I have confidence in them.
We’re reaching the end of some very finite resources — ice, clean air and water, fish — and yet there is enough abundance on earth that no human need starve or want for anything. Millennials, the generation of mass school shootings and the opioid invasion, the generation of ginormous student debt and a life of lowered expectations and lower life expectancy — they are, as Steve Jobs advised, thinking different. In the ruins of runaway capitalism they are the generation best equipped to help us chart the way forward in a time where, during our lifetimes, life will be conducted as much digitally as physically, and the idea of ‘making a living’ will undergo a profound transformation. Continue on the path we are and we’ve got the playbook of 1984 to look forward to, right down to Newspeakian Fox News continuing to act as the unofficial official state channel for authoritarian wanna bes.
Regardless of which side of the Gen X/boomer divide I fall personally doesn’t really matter of course — as Greta Thunberg has noted again and again, the generations need each other to get to a better future for all, and I think Agatha and many other young candidates — the post-Squad squad, if you will — are bringing the urgency we need to see in our leaders now.
Another reason I’m looking to Agatha — a Stanford-trained engineer — and the younger generation to take their seat at the table of power: we need more STEM expertise in our legislation, and fewer lawyers. Currently, less than 10% of US Congressional representatives were trained in the sciences. But the need for STEM-trained leaders goes beyond the issue of climate: in our brave new digital age, legislators are passing laws on issues that would have seemed like science fiction to our Founding Fathers. Artificial intelligence, blockchains, digital money, cybersecurity, biotechnology, data privacy, biosecurity — these are all things our modern day government has to deal with, where scientific and technical backgrounds are valuable if not essential. As the 314 Action Fund — “the Emily’s List of electing scientists” — notes,
“One of the best ways to stop the attacks on science is to send more people to Congress who have spent their careers working in STEM fields. We need leaders who aren’t afraid of data, who won’t shy away from the facts and who will base policy on evidence.”
My vote for Agatha Bacelar for Congress CA-12 in November 2020 is about lowering the median age of our Congressional leadership to more closely align with the on-the-ground reality in San Francisco, where 40% of voters are millennials; it’s about getting science, fact and reason back into government, guiding policy; it’s about restoring democracy to the people over corporate interests…and the beginning of getting money out of politics for good. San Francisco has more millionaires than any other city in the US…but the city has more non-millionaires by far, thousands of them homeless or about to be. I think a lot of Americans are ready to change up the formula of the past 30 years, and send to Congress as their representative not another multi-millionaire representing other millionaires and corporations with decades of political favorkeeping to account for, but a non-millionaire ready to represent the the 100%, as our democracy is intended to do.
A very GenX P.S. to this story:
“Who’s Courtney Love?” Agatha asked me. She’d just called me a boomer and while I wasn’t offended exactly I was also firm in my Gen X correction. I have a Hole t-shirt, I explained. I’m practically a card-carrying Gen Xer, if an old-ish one. So her total blank at even knowing who this iconic-to-me person was both hilarious and flummoxing. How to explain how this Courtney person epitomizes the silliness of the boomer definition? Boomers are my parents, who are now in their eighties, three knee replacements between them, and a penchant for Hallmark films. Courtney Love was the leader of a band charmingly named Hole, and, not coincidentally, the seller of t-shirts with the band name Hole on them (of course) — significant for being the first time I ever bought a t-shirt just to anger other people , namely, my parents — as well as the wife of Kurt Cobain, singer-songwriter in the band Nirvana and dead by suicide at just 27 years old. For me, Courtney is and always will be the widow standing before a griefstricken crowd of fans that gathered spontaneously on a gray afternoon with lit candles, crying and swearing and reading her husband’s suicide note. (You bastard, she sobs).All of that was a long time ago, and Courtney Love is of course many things besides the widow of Kurt — she’s an actress, her restrained performance in The People vs. Larry Flint was a revelation, and showcased real talent and the pain that often underpins same (some day you will ache like I ache she howls, in Doll Parts). She’s a mom to the perfectly named Frances Bean, and she’s alive and well and living her post-Hole (hahahaha) life happily, as far as I know. I bet she, like me, thinks Nancy Pelosi is a badass and is grateful for the way she’s stood up to Trump. But I bet she doesn’t think of herself as a boomer, and I bet she’d support Agatha’s run for Congress if she knew about it.
