Rap feynman

I’ve been fascinated by the observation that all of the anti-Trump energy, especially these street protests, has been so dominated by boomer age libs. In talking to them (which I recommend you do if given the chance) I’ve found their beliefs are mostly a hodgepodge of disconnected grievances and frayed moral suppositions (true of most political belief across the board tbf) but rooted in a very particular sense of their generational aspirations crumbling at their feet and without the neural elasticity to understand or reconcile these failures except by invoking hardened and pre-formed root evils like “Nazism” and “fascism.” These things don’t mean anything of course. They’re just placeholders for forces they can’t or won’t bring themselves to confront directly. It’s probably the case that the dissolution of any utopian fantasy ends like this. I wonder if conversations at the end of the Soviet Union had a similar cast. The old fervent believers, aware on some level the project was dead, but still bitterly possessive of the righteousness of their cause and committed to the very end to insisting that “if only but for capitalism…” etc. Makes me consider that maybe most revolutions aren’t dramatic or violent but the mundane passing of authority across divides of incalcitrant misunderstanding. Max Planck’s line about science progressing one funeral at a time as a corollary to political life. Post war liberalism dies when the boomers die. I think they know this. The rallies/protests then are just one last futile objection to what is inevitable. Raging against the dying of the light. I find this commendable in a certain way, if annoying and entirely misguided. I have a grudging respect for their determination, but also this derangement is unhealthy and ultimately undignified (which I guess is a perfectly fitting end; going out in the 2020s in the same self-indulgent, performative manner they arrived in the 1960s). I wish them the peace they were searching for. But it’s time for them to go home.