No, Your Parents Aren’t Bad People.
Let’s talk about fear. Fear is one of the largest motivators we have and drives so many of our decisions we make. Fear can keep you from going out and trying to meet someone you met online or keep you from purchasing something you don’t know if it will be worth the money. Fear can keep you from buying a house because you aren’t sure if your income level will rise or fall in the next few years because of how hard the stock market has bounced around in your lifetime and the future looks unclear. Fear is what motivates your parents to love The Donald.
If you watched the RNC (why would you do that to yourself it was really bad) you may have picked up on a theme. Trump and the republicans want you to be afraid, and to be afraid of a lot. That Joe Biden is going to raise their taxes (which he is not). Fear that Joe will move MS-13 gang members onto their suburb block to kill or rape them (which he is not) or that he will make it so women can abort children up until the point of birth (not unless the birth would kill/harm the mother. So no he is not) These things most of us under age 45 would recognize as lies. I’ll link to the actual campaign platform of Joe below so you can look for yourself.
But to many of the boomer generation, there are two things they fear more; 1) Antifa destroying their neighborhood 2) Joe Biden being a communist who hates America.
Antifa is on the lips of every republican from top to bottom and spewing out between Tucker Carlson’s red cheeks just above his bow tie on a nightly basis. Republicans have a blind spot for groups like this because of how heavily they have been lied to about the group and its purpose. Many don’t know that George Soros or Bill Gates are in fact not funding and organizing these protests. It’s hard for many to believe that this many people see their country as being racist for the same reasons they don’t see statues of Robert E. Lee as racist and removing them is tantamount to removing history. Civil unrest scares boomers. Their life is, on the whole fine, many have retirement accounts or are in upper management about to retire. They are not living paycheck to paycheck, they didn’t just get laid off due to Corona and don’t understand why hundreds of thousands, millions worldwide, have taken to the streets to yell and vent frustrations at their government. They also will not consider how these people have been left behind or how a black person, even a few decades removed from being redlined into inner cities, further removed from Jim Crow being the norm in almost every state and city, and further from slavery.
The effects of Jim Crow and Redlining and Slavery are all still felt. There aren’t any reasons, unless you think black people are just somehow less than white people, that we can’t show that black people in America are still reeling from the effects of all of these things. That black people are several times more likely to be arrested, that they are looked over in piles of applications because of their names, still denied loans and systematically segregated against when they go to exercise their right to vote, and get murdered for not complying with police officers.These things all still happen, but to your parent, we already solved those problems and because of affirmative action one guy at his job 20 years ago was fired and a black man took his place. We already solved this in their minds because laws on the books don’t say “Put black people in jail more” because it would have to be spelled out like that for them to get it. They fear you are trying to rewrite history and make America about the bad things and ignore the good things. In reality, we only talk about the good things all through school and when you learn about the bad, it makes it all the more shocking and horrifying that the problems are still going on.
Don’t worry my fellow white young adult friends! You are also beginning to experience something akin to what black people in the country have been facing for generations. Our generation is less likely to ever own a house across racial lines. We are less likely to pay back loans of any kind (And get higher rates because of it). There are less economic opportunities available and less of us over the age of 25 with healthcare and dental. We know that we have to solve these problems because we are experiencing what it’s like to not have them and can sympathize with millions of other Americans who also don’t have these things. We all rent from landlords that charge too much for our apartments and pay too much for our vehicle loans and are forced to drive for Uber if we want to make rent. (I’m still waiting on my background check to clear. Wish me luck!) The reason we advocate for Medicare for all and for wages to go up and student loan forgiveness it is becoming increasingly harder to make it above all these challenges to land a good job that doesn’t require 5 years of experience and a Phd. for an entry level position.
Your parents probably love America because it has been good to them. They were able to go to school and get a job and get a home while being paid more and paying less for their home and education. They have been able to have savings for when things go wrong and take trips every summer. The same fears that we have, making the rent and paying at least half of your bills on time, aren’t the norm with them. They profited off of a system that is trickling down less and less. Bernie Sanders scares them because they have been taught for a long time to fear the Russians and the Ideology of the USSR. We don’t want to take your home or more of your money unless you are in the top 1–2%, and neither does Biden. He only wants to take 2%-5% more depending on how much above 400k per year you make. If you don’t make at or above that, your life will not see a demonstrable difference. Even then I’m sure you can just learn to budget a little better and not invest in that second house to rent out to college students at exorbitant rates.
Your parents are not bad people. They are afraid their way of life is going away, without realizing for most of us it has already. And others, namely those of darker skin, have not existed in the same way at any point. Your parents experienced the good parts of capitalism. They worked hard up into middle management and were able to afford what they needed and often a little extra. We are struggling to make ends meat without going tens of thousands of dollars into debt. Their world is different than yours and seek out those who tell them they are not wrong and the radical Communist Antifa dems re going to come steal their way of life and their guns and take their liberty. That’s not what the socialists are doing, and it’s certainly not what Biden is proposing on doing, but it is what Trump told them for 70 minutes the other day was going to be the end result of a Biden presidency. Don’t be mad at your parents, explain to them as calmly as you can that Trump is lying, even if they don’t believe it. And keep doing it until maybe they do.
