Baby Boomers and Younger Generation Opposing Viewpoint on Voting and Politics
Younger generations in the United States do not show much interest in the political games of boomers although recently, they are not the largest population of voters.
There was even an incidence when Matthew Shephard, the mother and symbol of hate-crime against homosexuals in Chicago expressed her dismay in front of the Roosevelt University. She questioned the political activism of the present generation for not expressing themselves the way they did before. She even recalled the times when boomers confronted authority.
The problem was that boomers are approaching retirement and perhaps losing their agility to make the same protests again. The new generation is asking a different set of questions. Some suggested to get rid off the authority and stop asking questions like what the boomer radicals did during the 60's.
The point of the new generation is to know where the authority goes. They see that the voter driver's efforts are nonsense. Even if they keep on pursuing the slogans "Rock the Vote" and "Vote or Die"; still it lacks assessment on the federal government's credibility. New generations cannot get what the government wants to emphasize. They observed that in order to obtain good things from the government, one should exercise their right to vote.
But these young people display activeness in their own way. They even exceeded performances of the baby boomers in numerous campaign activities like displaying bumper stickers, signs, and buttons, attending rallies, and persuading others to vote.
A great Sociologist, Robert Nisbet distinguished the terms authority and power. Power is a force while authority can be forged on social bonds of churches, families, communities, and business. Despite the rage of baby boomers against authority, they have accumulated lots of power for their bureaucracy. It might be under Bush or Clinton, R or D. It took off before the new generation of unwieldy and impersonal youths.
The new generation knew what power meant. They didn't want the baby boomers to tell them where it is and how to seek it. They are disposed by cultural usurpations touching their personal lives to become contemptuous of power. Young Americans know divorce power, Eric Harris and Klebold's power, Jerry Springer's power, teen sex power, abortion power, and Osama bin Laden's power. These are not the types of power that they crave because they have already seen its consequences. What they seek is a confident, strong, gentle, and honor-bound authority.
It cannot be denied that young voters are cynical concerning national politics largely different from apathy. The children born during the 80's named as Reagan's Children never invested their time on direct political procedures. They have changed the boomer's action to entrepreneurialism, community service, technology, and religion. They are after an authority which governs rather than an established government which has nothing to offer. Politics might also be the interest of the new generation, however in a very different perspective far from what their forefathers wanted them to inherit. They perceive that government as federal and big, centers on mobilizing the youth on their voting rights.
The person controlling the polls will gain larger percentage of the national power. But no one knows if the voting booths are sacredly held by baby boomers and beats the relationship authority prized by prospective young voters. It is possible that the obsession for power of the boomers generation will defeat the young American generation who hungers for authority. This could happen since boomers defeated that authority already.
However, everybody never wanted a generational clash. The boomer retirees are just determined in living life to the fullest as an expense on their children's paid taxes. However, this provokes wars in the Congress related on government costs. Thus it confounds their capacity to serve, to invest, and to love. Younger statesmen said that it is the cost that matters not their responsibilities, paid taxes, and freedom. The boomers power-hungry declaration requires the new generation (committed on authority institutions and focused on internet economy) to vote, to join politics, and fight the gray-haired builders of a powerful government.
In such struggle, they have enlisted a constitutional language which starts on securing their liberty blessings to themselves and prosperity. The task of the new generation is to save those blessings in threat more than ordering the people to vote.
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