Donald Trump was already in the classrooms when Brown vs. the Board of Education desegregated schools in 1954. It was about 30 years before women could get their own credit cards, about 40 years before a black man ran a Fortune 500 company, and in her 60s before the election of President Obama.
opinion columnist
LZ Granderson
LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports, and living life in America.
Trump is among the oldest of the baby boom generation, born in 1946.
In 2030, everyone in your generation will officially be seniors. There are more than 70 million Americans who lived through the civil rights movement and women's liberation and witnessed the extinction of the last vestiges of Jim Crow. That also means more than 70 million are eligible for Medicare and Social Security.
These two facts may seem unrelated, but in their own way they are galvanizing Trump supporters: Many don't like the changes America has seen during Trump's lifetime and would love to turn back the clock to 1946. A handful of his Wealthier supporters, meanwhile, are more interested in ensuring that the needs of 70 million baby boomers don't get in the way of tax cuts.
During Trump's presidency, a bloc of conservatives focused on “making America great again” by attacking diversity and vilifying drag queens. While his base was distracted by his constant chaos and search for scapegoats, Trump was busy trying to cut benefits like Social Security every year he was in the White House.
Now it's back to that: Asylum seekers and immigrants are Trump's favorite boogeyman this election cycle, and his supporters are in a diversity frenzy. While he has MAGA focused on Haitians and Puerto Ricans, his the sights are set on cutting he very programs that baby boomers need. Make no mistake: Under Trump, the working class and middle class would again suffer as they did during his first administration.
One of the former president's most prominent supporters, Elon Musk, would reportedly head a “government efficiency commission” if Trump were elected, and you can bet he would find “inefficiency” wherever the government uses tax money in the interest of the public. average American. Recognizing that Trumponomy would hurt most people, Musk used the phrase “temporary hardship” to describe what Americans can expect if Trump returns to the White House. And he gave the former president more than $70 million to get there.
Like Trump, Musk grew up in a segregated society; in his case, apartheid South Africa. The world's richest man spent his formative years in a country where white men received preferential treatment and where white people were largely protected from seeing how the government treated black people. Like Trump, Musk despises diversity efforts. Both are prone to promoting misinformation, conspiracy theories and racism.
Oh and both pay a much lower tax rate than the average American: people, according to Musk, should prepare for “temporary difficulties.”
During the election campaign, Trump promises to eliminate taxes on overtime pay. What it doesn't say is that Project 2025, the plan for the next Republican administration to reshape the federal government, eliminate overtime pay. Both he and Musk are anti-union and speak fondly of finding ways to pay employees less. Trump has a reputation for not paying anything to contractors.
What exactly is up with this candidate who screams “compassionate conservative”?
For nearly five decades, that phrase, along with “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” and “Reagan Democrats,” has provided cover for white voters who want all the tax cuts promised on the campaign trail and none of the racism that surrounds them. cuts. Charismatic boomers like Trump have long launched policies in the United States under the pretext that such a dynamic was possible, but it is a thin veil when they use rhetoric like “welfare queens” and “they are eating the cats, they are eating to cats.” dogs.” It's no different than when white Southerners try to defend displaying the Confederate flag as “heritage and not hate” while electing officials who want to ban books that paint a realistic portrait of that heritage. Inventing “welfare queens” is never He was just trying to save tax money, and the Confederate flag has never been a simple symbol of something noble.
Millennials have displaced boomers as the largest adult generation, and yet the needs of boomers are guaranteed to be among the country's top priorities for years to come as they put pressure on the social safety net.
We have to find a way to have conversations about the future of Medicare, Social Security, and other programs without charlatans like Trump and Musk sullying political discussions with the racism of yesteryear. It's tedious and counterproductive, and the stakes are high: 70 million Americans depend on the rest of us to get our act together.
The nation is not only becoming more diverse; He is also getting older. The solutions will not come in the form of prejudices disguised as policies. That's the world Trump and Musk grew up in, and that's what they offer the most.
@LZGranderson
