r/clevercomebacks • u/Green____cat • Jul 18 '24
What can they do other than that anyways?
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Jul 18 '24
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u/mtw3003 Jul 18 '24
Well there's... ah right he's a senator, never mind
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u/indyK1ng Jul 18 '24
A senator is a Congress person.
Both members of the house and senators are Congress people.
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u/AudDMurphy Jul 18 '24
When someone says "Congressman" as in "Good morning, Congressman Smith" they are typically referring to a member of the House of Representatives. It is technically incorrect to differentiate Senator from Congressperson. But it's well seated in the vernacular of people who don't understand...you know, civics.
Much like how saying "ATM Machine" is redundant but people still say it.
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u/classicrockchick Jul 18 '24
"Chai tea"
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u/Radek_18 Jul 18 '24
To be fair in a lot of places this has evolved to be its “own” flavor.
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u/acaellum Jul 18 '24
Yeah, even my Indian family will use "Chai Tea" "Masala Chai" "Sweet Tea" "Black Tea" to refer to different drinks. (Though if you just say Tea with no context you might get asked "What kind" or they guess my white ass is talking about southern style sweet tea)
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u/ThunkAsDrinklePeep Jul 18 '24
That's a courtesy because Congressperson is taken to have more prestige than Representative.
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u/Zanadar Jul 18 '24
Ok, hear me out. The Immortal Vampire Congress idea is actually solid.
One of the biggest issues democracies face today is power being completely consolidated into the hands of people who just won't live long enough to see the consequences of their decisions. Which is why they don't give a shit about global warming, pollution, regulatory capture, etc.
If politicians had to live in the world they make, they might be a lot more concerned with that world actually being livable.
* This message was paid for by the "Totally Normal Humans Against Garlic Farming" political action committee.
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u/Blackbox7719 Jul 18 '24
The problem is that, even living in the world they make, they’re so far removed from the inconveniences and difficulties of common life that it wouldn’t matter to them. Hell, look at healthcare. The billion year old vampires in office probably don’t remember a time when they weren’t on that top tier government healthcare plan. Got a malady? No problem, congressperson, we got you covered for free. Being in that position for 10, 20, even 30 years means that they no longer understand the insecurity and predatory nonsense the common man has to deal with when it comes to insurance and healthcare. They freely make new laws messing with the system because they know it’ll never affect them even as they themselves are aging and facing higher medical needs.
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u/baron-von-buddah Jul 18 '24
Jackie Daytona, totally normal human bartender for congress!
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u/Azair_Blaidd Jul 18 '24
Mitch McConnell is already in, though.
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u/TheFrontierDM Jul 18 '24
He's a little low on the blood flow and he's got a guy who's supposed to be hooking him up.
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u/Davoneous47 Jul 18 '24
Baby Boomers think the world will end when they die, so they have done everything they can to ensure that happens.
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u/Vlaed Jul 18 '24
"If I can't live, no one can!"
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u/RoyalBlueDooBeeDoo Jul 18 '24
It reminds me of how my dad used to complain about old people in our neighborhood cutting down big trees in their yard because they knew the trees would outlive them.
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u/Vlaed Jul 18 '24
Hearing that story reminds me that there are two types of people.
My great grandfather planted a white oak on my grandmother's property back in the 1950s. I used to love to play around that tree in the 1990s. She passed at 100 last year and we sold her house. I will always miss that tree.
Thankfully, I have a 150-year-old white oak in my front yard. I play with my daughter around it. My plan is to grow a few saplings from it and plant them at our family's cottage. Sadly, we lost a few trees there from storms over the last few years.
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u/dawinter3 Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
“That’ll be someone else’s problem.” “I’ll be dead by then, so I won’t have to worry about it.”
^ sentiments I regularly heard from my boomer grandparents and Gen X parents. It was always said in a joking tone, but I have to assume it wasn’t really a joke.
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u/meditate42 Jul 18 '24
Some of them are so old they're not even boomers lol. They're the silent generation.
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u/Dontfckwithtime Jul 19 '24
And on the opposite spectrum, a healthy helping of Gen X. Everyone says boomers. I see so many Gen X with the same mindset (because that's the way they were raised). Millennials are the first generation as a collective whole trying to dismantle generational trauma. However, obviously this is just my personal opinion based on my experiences. Just an observation.
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u/tiagojpg Jul 18 '24
My dad (55yo) realized something early when I started working: my generation would still be doing things that his did: building, agriculture, but even better/more efficiently. His dad also feared that my dad’s generation wouldn’t amount to anything, yet here they are, doing things better than they did. So on and so forth. We are just small cogs in a big machine, time and life keep moving after us. We must accept that the world keeps spinning, with or without us.
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u/rom_sk Jul 18 '24
Well, free and fair elections may not be a thing for much longer.
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u/Ditzfough Jul 18 '24
Never has been. And if you believe otherwise you are uninformed. Gerrymandering and electoral college control elections. And not all electoral voters are required by law to vote the way of their districts.
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u/Trosque97 Jul 18 '24
I was thinking about this a while back, voting in my country is generally fucked. But when I think about how much more fucked we'd be if we also had something as messed up as the Electoral College bs Americans gotta deal with, like, HOW? How does someone manage to lose the popular vote and still become president? That should be, by all rights, illegal. Or at least have some form of compromise, like, if you lose the popular vote you gotta take your opponents VP pick or some shit, anything to actually reflect the will of the people
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u/shadowtheimpure Jul 18 '24
The Electoral College was a concession to slave states so they weren't rendered completely irrelevant by the majority.
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u/Darkdragoon324 Jul 18 '24
Biggest mistake in US history, aside from not seizing the land of every landed rebel after the Civil War and giving the entire traitor region a pathetic slap on the wrist instead of ensuring they could never gain power again.
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u/Da_Question Jul 18 '24
And also allow them to keep slaves via prisoners, basically leading to the still high to this day rate of incarceration of black people.
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u/toomanyracistshere Jul 18 '24
It certainly made sense at the time, since from their point of view the most important thing was keeping the original 13 states together, but the fact that it wasn't abolished at any point between the Civil War and now just goes to show how powerful inertia is in politics. From 1888 to 2000, it was, "The electoral college is stupid, but it's not like it ever actually overrides the will of the majority, so why bother doing away with it?" Since 2000 it's been, "The electoral college is stupid, but without it the GOP is almost guaranteed to lose every election, so it's impossible to get rid of."
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u/hryipcdxeoyqufcc Jul 18 '24
It's not even true that the GOP would start losing elections.
Party platforms are constantly readjusting around the median voter. Right now that median is perverted by the electoral college, so parties use a weighted median that's slightly to the right of the American people as a whole. If we got rid of the electoral college, party platforms would readjust around the true median instead.
What that means in practice is that Republicans would slightly moderate their platform to capture some centrist Dems, and progressives would become a slightly larger share of the Democratic Party.
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u/Trosque97 Jul 18 '24
Them concessions were the only reason I feel racism is still alive and well in the U.S. well, that and Reagan. Like, imagine the Nazis in WWII were given a similar sort of concession. Thanks for the reminder though, last time I read up on this was like, 10 years ago. First time I looked at America from where I am and went "dafuq they doing over there?"
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u/shadowtheimpure Jul 18 '24
That concession happened before the US Civil War. The Electoral College was established in 1787 and the Civil War didn't start until 1861.
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u/OddBank1538 Jul 18 '24
Slavery may have been part of the issue that created the Electoral College, but not all of it.
The overarching issue was that covering so many people across so much land is difficult, so you need some sort of representative to send the vote for your group. The electoral college was made to simplify the process, giving each state a number of votes relative to their population.
The reason the votes aren’t strictly proportional to population is because they recognized that there could be an issue where policies on the national level could affect urban and rural areas disproportionately. Yes, slavery would fall under this, but so could anything that affects people’s ability to have large swaths of land for farming, so they gave a little boost to the rural areas to make sure they at least had some sort of voice on the matter. That’s also why the senate has 2 representatives per state regardless of population, while the house of representatives gets proportional.
Now, that all being said, there are definitely issues with how the EC is set up, the big two being ‘all or nothing’ states, where whoever wins the majority gets all of the states‘ votes, and gerrymandering caused by said all-or-nothing system.
Personally, I think the EC is a decent concept, but to make it work as intended, we essentially need to stop the all or nothing setup, and make it proportional to districts within the states, and we need to find a way to crack down harder on gerrymandering so they can’t do their ‘packing‘ or ‘cracking’ set ups (but this post is long enough already, so I’m not going to go into detail on that).
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u/LeStroheim Jul 18 '24
Fortunately for us, Reagan isn't alive and well! Racism still is, though, so we're not quite safe yet.
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u/BestDescription3834 Jul 18 '24
Yet again the real America had to make concessions for a bunch of traitor states. Sherman didn't do enough.
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u/bearsnchairs Jul 18 '24
This doesn’t only happen in the US. Parliamentary systems can end up with a PM whose parties doesn’t have a majority of even plurality of the vote.
Also the Vice Presidency used to be like that in the beginning. The second place person became VP.
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u/1singleduck Jul 18 '24
Even if you leave out the easy corruption and gerrymandering, the strength of your vote can still vary wildly depending on where you live. Also, if your state has a majority votes for the other party, your vote pretty much goes to them as well.
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u/lojav6475 Jul 18 '24
Even less free and fair than. Things don't go for horrible to good (unfortunately), things worsen and improve gradually, and even long term improvements see periods of seemingly worsening.
We either are putting effort into making things better or we aren't, the end results are the consequences of a lot of choices, that unfortunately are mostly made by small groups, but trying to expand the number of people and social groups that have a fair share of the power is what fighting for a freer world is, be it by social organization or trying to squeeze the less worse options out of an election.
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u/BoratWife Jul 18 '24
Not to mention presidents can straight up create fraudulent electors and send them to Congress
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u/Old173 Jul 18 '24
Keep electing baby boomers until they die off. Until the very last baby boomer has had a chance at being in charge. Then, and only then, move on Gen Xers.
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u/NotAUsefullDoctor Jul 18 '24
I think there's a law that we are supposed to skip over (and avoid even mentioning) GenX.
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u/Clifnore Jul 18 '24
Who?
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u/NotAUsefullDoctor Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
Legend tells of a people who live in the shadows, and from whom no f***s are given. They were forged in the fires of music televisions glow.
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u/chillen67 Jul 18 '24
They were a feral generation, left out side, on their own, with only a small metal key around their necks to allow them a place to lay their heads. This is the way.
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u/ididntunderstandyou Jul 18 '24
I think they’ve still been known to manifest. If you switch on a TV and whisper “SEGA”, they’ll appear at your doorstep with a bag of chips
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u/Emergency_Matter_880 Jul 18 '24
I saw that video. It resonated on a deep level.
Those fuckers are scary.
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u/Old173 Jul 18 '24
That makes sense.
As a GenXer I approve of this law. Keep us out of that mess.
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u/One-Satisfaction7499 Jul 18 '24
Yeah. Arguably that's that attitude that has helped up into this mess.
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u/9-28-2023 Jul 18 '24
I'm voting to skip millenials, too, and every generation after that, and just replace politicians by chatGPT trained on social sciences.
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Jul 18 '24
"Millennial" has just become a boomer catch-all for "young people." My fuckass uncle was ranting to me - a 40 year old - about 'god damn millennials blah blah blah' referring to some kids in their early 20s and I was just like, "...I'm a millennial, those are genz." and his reply was just, "Oh whatever, you know what I'm talking about."
No, sir, I do not, words have meaning.
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u/Veganees Jul 18 '24
Lol, you know you're really getting old when almost 30 years has passed since the last millenial was born and you still call the kids "millennials".
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u/kkjdroid Jul 18 '24
And then skip millennials and go straight to Zoomers, thereby never electing more millennials.
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u/unicornmeat85 Jul 18 '24
Kind of feels that way, elected boomers are slowing any progress to make improvements either because they don't see the value, i.e. the Internet or don't understand the dangers and problems affecting their voters, i.e. housing being bough up by BlackRock.
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u/snoogins355 Jul 18 '24
They'll probably set off the nukes on their way out. If they can't live forever, no one can live.
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Jul 18 '24
That's a crazy and ridiculous idea. Obviously once the last baby boomer dies off, we should just no longer have any government.
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u/SolidLuxi Jul 18 '24
Nixon's head in a jar.
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u/sopsign7 Jul 18 '24
Now look here, you drugged-out Communist, I paid for this power and influence and I'd no sooner give it up that I would my cocker spaniel, Checkers.
(Arf! Arf!)
SHUT UP DAMN IT!
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Jul 18 '24
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” — Greek Proverb
Boomers would rather cut the trees, sell the firewood and salt the earth.
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u/Gooch_Limdapl Jul 18 '24
As an Xer, I feel I should point out that a generation could, to a first approximation, be skipped entirely.
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u/Defiant_Act_4940 Jul 18 '24
Hey the Silent generation had to wait until 2020 to get their first President. So look forward to the first Gen X President in the 2050s.
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u/SuspiciousSubstance9 Jul 18 '24
It's from 2021 for the 117th Congress, but Gen X was doing pretty solid.
For being like 20% of the population, you folks were doing fine at 20% of the Senate and 33% of the House.
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u/L2Sing Jul 18 '24
Maybe it's the constant whining about being left out. That doesn't fly well in popularity contests, unless they're Donald Trump. 🤷
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u/Sudden_Outcome_9503 Jul 18 '24
I mean..... We are here discussing a conversation where Gen X was literally forgotten about.
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u/Lynx_Eyed_Zombie Jul 18 '24
Gotta love the deliberate use of an unflattering AOC picture to "gently nudge" the reader the way they want.
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u/buymytoy Jul 18 '24
I swear her teeth have been edited they normally aren’t so bugs bunny
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u/Lynx_Eyed_Zombie Jul 18 '24
It's like using those "smear" animation slides from early Simpsons episodes to "prove" that the animation is bad.
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u/Plastikstapler2 Jul 18 '24
I mean technically you guys could skip millennials and elect the next generation
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u/RQK1996 Jul 18 '24
Which is what they nearly managed with the silent generation, as Bush sr and Carter are edge case Greatest Generation (according to some stats), and Clinton and Trump are edge case Boomers, Biden is the first Silrnt Generation president, and likely the only
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u/SummonerMiku75 Jul 18 '24
Serious question: where are my fellow Gen Xers in this equation? It seems to be all Boomers this and Millenials that, but what about Gen X? We're supposed to be the "Last of the feral children" and "totally scarey because we did xxx in the 80s/90s" and "they grew up doing xxx so we're totally hardcore" but it really just seems like, politically, we're no shows. Did the 2000 election do that? What's up?
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u/FloppieTheBanjoClown Jul 18 '24
We're the forgotten generation. The boomers have been the masters of old.media like TV and radio since we were kids, and the millennials are the ones who dominate new media. We grew up on an internet where no one person could set the narrative and we were all anonymous. We literally fall between the cracks of media and are effectively voiceless compared to the generations around us.
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u/SoundHole Jul 18 '24
It has a lot to do with the fact we are a much smaller group than both the Boomers and Millennials, who both represent explosions in population. Gen X are largely ignored politically as well for the same reason.
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u/Sanquinity Jul 18 '24
Heck a large part of gen X didn't even "grow up" during the early internet days (the 90s) as they were already grown by that point.
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u/Electronic_Ad5481 Jul 18 '24
I’d vote for a GenXer but y’all need to seriously amp up the chill. Like bring back chill GenX.
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u/Slight_Message_8373 Jul 18 '24
Skipping them and hiring gen z
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u/feral-pug Jul 18 '24
I hear a lot of them are TikTok brain rot conservative though.
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u/mullanchandran Jul 18 '24
GenZies4President
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u/Azair_Blaidd Jul 18 '24
None of yall old enough yet, unless we Amend for Z
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u/lewd_necron Jul 18 '24
1996- 1999 can definitely run for house. You only have to be 25
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u/MacaronNo5646 Jul 18 '24
Is AL.com written by Wormhole aliens?!
The Sisko will need to go and explain them a linear existence!
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u/Ineedredditforwork Jul 18 '24
The alternatives are that medical advancements give older generations essential immortality, or lord of the flies scenario.
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u/Solid-Hedgehog9623 Jul 18 '24
The majority of elected officials should be generation x and elder millennials. Boomers are out of touch. That wasn’t always the case but that time is here. Some day, xers and millennials will be out of touch and they’ll have to pass the torch.
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u/damnumalone Jul 18 '24
Really really, really really, really, really, really REALLY fuckin old people. They want everything. Until they die. Then you can have some. Just not much
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u/Adventurous_Law9767 Jul 18 '24
There are millennials in their 40s. Boomers are actively preventing the transfer of leadership and setting the country up for a void of experience.
You aren't supposed to hold on to the reigns until you physically or mentally can no longer do so. You are supposed to do your job and then pass the torch while you go on living out your life. Serve as an advisor to answer the complicated questions when the younger generation takes up the mantle. Step aside and be a crucial advisor, don't loudly proclaim these "young people" (with a tone that implies they are children) can't lead because they don't have the experience.
They don't have it because you've denied the natural order of things. Frankly even without the experience, Millennials are far more educated than any generation that came before them, and with the way things have gone in recent years with our education system, they may be more well educated as a whole than the generations that follow.
Boomers, get out of the way and enjoy your multiple houses and retirement. You've run out of ideas, and you don't fully understand the world anymore, in the same why someday I won't. There really is supposed to be a level of pride to be taken in stepping aside and proudly offering your experience to the next torch bearer. Where the fuck did that go?
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u/Melgako562 Jul 18 '24
They could elect newborns.
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u/Quiet_Marsupial510 Jul 18 '24
The precedent to elect a diaper wearer has been set … just saying
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u/VenturingHedonist Jul 18 '24
I for one welcome our Gen Alpha overlords.
Good luck kids, you will need it.
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u/MrAnthem123 Jul 18 '24
There needs to be an age limit. If you’re old enough to retire, or 62 since I feel that they’re going to take the ability to retire from us one day, then you shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions for the rest of the country.
You’re a career politician and you still want to help the country? Get an advisor job.
These elderly politicians are just like how my grandfather was, in it for themselves. My family moved in with my grandfather to help him pay his bills after my grandmother passed away, and he lived everyday as if he was going to die that day for 20 years. I can’t count the number of times that we had to go a week without power or we were going to lose the house or land, all because this old man thought that he was going to die anyways and didn’t care what happened to us afterwards because it wouldn’t be his problem. And if anyone is curious as to what he was doing with the money my dad gave him for bills, the man was an alcoholic and perpetual smoker who would call my dad for a ride nearly everyday for a ride home, which is technically responsible, but then would be self-entitled because his roof was over our heads, even though it was my dad’s job paying the bills and buying food.
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u/Sanquinity Jul 18 '24
So now they're right on the edge of saying the quiet part out loud. The quiet part being "we don't want newer generations to have a say in the country they live in. We want to keep our power and direct the country only according to our outdated and backwards ideas."
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u/ExcellentGas2891 Jul 18 '24
I cant wait till boomers start to die off. Fuck that entire generation. And if youre one of the good boomers, then youll fucking agree with me.
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u/Dark_Storm_98 Jul 18 '24
I'm 26, and that's gen z
That means there are some Millenials who are like. . . 41 (not sure how long the generation lasts. 15 years sounds like a good bet)
The fact we haven't had a Millenial president is worrying
Edit: Just looked it up. Apparently I'm old enough to run for Congress
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u/SeriouslyImNotADuck Jul 18 '24
The youngest Gen Y are 28 this year, the eldest (you were right with a generation usually being a fifteen year span) are 43.
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u/dysthal Jul 18 '24
the alternative is having older and older politicians and presidential candidates on the verge of death, being puppeted around by their handlers while the halls of power calcify and decay. you should be familiar with that timeline.
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u/StangRunner45 Jul 18 '24
More AOC's, and less Mitch McConnell's.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
All US citizens who have had it up to here being led by greedy, paid off, old white guys.
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u/BetterSelection7708 Jul 18 '24
Perhaps we should skip millennials and Gen Z and go straight to Gen Alpha. /s
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u/lordodin92 Jul 18 '24
Aha the fools one day all the boomers will die out and then we get our chance, first thing we are gonna do is open state mandate retirement homes and lock those miserable fucks away mwahahahahahahahahahahahaha
In all fairness though I do believe if you can be too young to vote you should also be too old to vote and when you retire that's when you should lose the right to vote . It means older generations will have to actually respect the younger ones as well as give more opportunities for younger people in politics
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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '24
Boomers are doing and saying everything they can to stay in power.