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ROBERT Incognito's avatar

You are ignoring the elephant in the room- the voting apparatus in NY is opaque and corrupt. Mamdani won the same way Biden won, with a plethora of mail in ballots. AOC is constantly winning in spite of doing absolutely nothing for her constituents so either people willingly vote against their own interests or the voting is rigged. Also, the younger generations don’t trust the system so many do not vote thus allowing for easy voting manipulation through fraudulent mail in ballots and rigged electronic voting machines.

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Bruce O'Hara's avatar

As I said, the only thing worse than young people using their ever increasing numbers to determine who gets elected in America in coming years would be if young people lost all trust in the integrity of the electoral process. That's when it could get really ugly...

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Jim's avatar

So the apocalypse then. Wow. Is the sky really falling?

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Bruce O'Hara's avatar

Not today. Not likely even this year or next. Not all at once either. We're talking a changing of who is in charge of America that will take the better part of a decade to occur.

Whether the coming change is merely painful or full-on catastrophic remains to be seen. America cannot continue to borrow from the future indefinitely. The longer America procrastinates on facing that reality the harsher the eventual reckoning reckoning will be.

It is the relentless borrowing from the future that has pushed stock and real estate markets far into bubble territory. When that borrowing stops - and at some point it has to - the air will come out of both bubbles.

I am not saying the young people who will get elected in the next several years will be vandals wanting to bring the system down. I am saying they will refuse to have more and more of their birthright stolen to prop up a faux prosperity that cannot continue forever.

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Farrah Nayka Ashline's avatar

Thank you for writing this!

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Bruce O'Hara's avatar

You're welcome. I'll admit I feel a little uncomfortable writing about what young people want when I am 73 years old myself. I hope any young people reading this don't feel I am putting words in their mouth. In talking about how many young people feel I'm not ignoring the huge diversity of opinion which exists in younger generations.

Part of why I felt the need to write is that most of my generation seems to think everything is just fine the way it is. They don't understand why the young are unhappy. They don't get it that leaving future generations hopelessly in debt is not a kind thing to do to your children and grandchildren.

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Donna LaBruno's avatar

I’m Gen X and we are badass. We will do whatever it takes to save our country. Sadly, millennials and Gen z are gonna FAFO the hard way.

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Bruce O'Hara's avatar

I would argue that Gen X is the generation most likely to get screwed here.

I suspect that whatever crash is coming is still a few years off. Most of the Silent Generation and many of the Boomers will be dead before that crash occurs - great beneficiaries of having stolen trillions of dollars from future generations.

Younger generations won't have either enough assets or enough retirement savings to lose too much in any crash. They can start over. If housing is much cheaper, and stock prices have dropped enough to be in bargain territory, they could actually end up better off.

Gen-X may see their retirement savings evaporate at a time where it is too late to re-build them easily. They may see the value of their house drop below what's still left to pay on the mortgage. Have you considered the possibility that your generation could be left holding the bag here?

It's not as though younger generations have to try to bring down the system. They just need to stop the reckless borrowing from the future that has pushed stock and real estate markets deep into bubble territory. That's all that needs to happen to deflate those bubbles.

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Gary's avatar

Mamdani is most likely a one-off thanks to unique circumstances in that race.

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Bruce O'Hara's avatar

More accurately, Mamdemi might be an outlier. Every year more self-serving Boomers die and more disaffected young people turn 18. At some point that will change who America elects to public office. When this will happen is open to debate. Whether it will happen is not.

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William Sherman's avatar

You wrote:

“ A great many young Americans voted for Donald Trump precisely because he promised to stop doing that. (Boy, did they get burned!)”

How exactly did they get burned? Seems to me that Trump has been brokering peace deals left and right. That looks like “promise kept”, not “burned you”!

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Bruce O'Hara's avatar

Six months into his term, Trump has already dropped bombs on Yemen and Iran. "Peace through Strength" would make Orwell proud. The Boomers may be okay with that, but most of America's young people are not.

We can hope the current ceasefire in the Middle East holds, that it's not just a pause for each side to re-arm. The danger, if the ceasefire breaks down because Israel attacks Iran again, is that China would be legally permitted under international law to enter the war to defend Iran. If that were to happen, Mr. Trump can kiss his Nobel Peace Prize good-bye.

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William Sherman's avatar

I think you misread the views of most young people. And of the 100s of world leaders who say “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”, 1 acts. That’s leadership.

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Bruce O'Hara's avatar

America allows North Korea to have nuclear weapons. Why? Because it would be suicidal for North Korea to use one. Why would Iran be different? Or are you so blindly racist to think every Iranian has a secret death wish? This whole scam was never about nuclear weapons. It's non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" all over again. Only Americans - some of them, at least - could get fooled by the same scam twice.

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William Sherman's avatar

Your ad hominem attack aside (“Or are you so blindly racist”), it is a fact that fundamentalist Muslims believe that dying for Allah while fighting Jews or infidels is gloriously desirable; to be wished for; martyrdom. “Mutually assured destruction” might inhibit N Koreans, but probably not a deterrent to an Islamic madman who views the bomb as his ticket to the hereafter, and who leads his followers in chants of

“Death to America, Death to Israel”. Keeping the bomb out of his hands seems a mighty good idea

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Bruce O'Hara's avatar

Maybe not racism per se, but a comic-book view of Muslims not grounded in reality.

The Iranians had thousands of missiles and drones that they could have used against Israel any time. If the Iranians were as thrilled by the idea of martyrdom as you seem to think they are, why didn't they use all those missiles and drones years ago? Iran only used their weapons when they were victims of an unprovoked ambush. Even then they only used some of the weapons at their disposal. They stopped firing at Israel as soon as Israel stopped firing at them. Where's that "I want to die for Allah" you seem so sure every Iranian feels in their heart of hearts?

Part of what has enabled America to fight so many pointless foreign wars is there are so many gullible Americans like yourself willing to believe comic-book level demonizations of America's many enemies.

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William Sherman's avatar

How sadly ironic for you to deny Islamist martyrdom desires on the 20th anniversary of Britain’s “7/7” attacks, in which 3 Islamist “martyrs” blew themselves and 58 innocent Britons to pieces.

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Bruce O'Hara's avatar

May I remind you of two things. The reason the Iranians don't have a bomb is that their (Muslim) religious leaders decided it would be a crime against humanity to ever use one, so there was no point in building one. There is only one nation on Earth which has ever used nuclear weapons against human beings: the United States.

This week, your President said it was a 'good thing' the US dropped a bomb on Hiroshima because it ''ended a war." Tens of thousands of women and children were vaporized when the Hiroshima bomb fell. Tens of thousands more died slowly and horribly of radiation burns. Clearly your President felt the result of ending a war justified that mass slaughter of civilians - children, women, and old people dying horribly and in great pain.

The only difference between your President and Jeffrey Dahmer is they disagree about under what conditions it is okay to cause large number of innocent people to die horrible deaths. Both men are obvious sociopaths.

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Bruce O'Hara's avatar

There are those who will argue that the reason so many Americans are comfortable with the colonialist project in Israel, including the relentless slaughter of the indigenous native population is that it really is no different than what America did to its own indigenous population. Something is preventing tens of millions of Americans from objecting when starving Palestinians are shot day after day at food aid sites. Maybe that's what it is.

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Sober Christian Gentleman's avatar

You might appreciate this podcast in the American Undian Deception. They are now canibalized by the Marxists using them to further the Global communist goals

https://open.substack.com/pub/soberchristiangentlemanpodcast/p/s2-ep-36-american-indians-we-need-88d?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=31s3eo.

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Sober Christian Gentleman's avatar

Mind Captured audience. Perception, misinformation and false claims. The average person has no idea.

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Bruce O'Hara's avatar

In fairness to Americans, its not as though their media wants them to understand the brutality of Gaza. Which is a problem given that the mainstream media in much of the rest of the world shows that brutality relentlessly day after day after day. Which leaves the rest of the world thinking Americans must be stone-hearted psychopaths.

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