Bombs & The Mirage of "Generational Change"
Why You Might Want To Read This: I have not been moved especially by the call for “generational change” in political leadership. The recent massive, obscene Pentagon budget vote gets to the nub of the issue.
I look across the landscape of politics and too often what comes to mind is a very sophisticated analysis and observation: we are totally fucked.
Not because the majority of people are not ripe for embracing serious economic and political upheaval. I’m convinced that, with intricate and detailed planning, a national general strike could be pulled off that would upend politics, in no large part because support for the two major political parties is built on an increasingly, shaky, rickety foundation (for better or worse, the upheaval about to come crashing down on the UK Labour and Conservative parties is a look into the future...you will soon see).
The fuckery is:
The easy part—the wheel of the ship of state is in the hands of someone with malignant narcissistic personality disorder whose incompetence is manifested in the equally incompetent cast of malevolent characters he’s chosen to run multi-billion dollars agencies who are shallow human beings, dumb, way out of their depth and whose guiding principle every day seems to be a singularly focus on: what cruel thing can we do today to hurt people?
A disorganized opposition—this makes my head hurt. I can tick off the vast numbers of organizations who are expending humongous resources (time and money) in a flurry of demonstrations, lawsuits, new websites, outraged pronouncements, postcards (postcards don’t work, hello…but are comforting), all with too little coordination. I will dutifully participate in this Saturday’s No Kings rally—even as I’m certain it’s a symptom, not a solution, of the unfocused opposition. In fact, an unbiased observer might conclude the disorganization is intentional, if subconscious, inattention by leaders who are careerists to the hilt—good folks who are just too comfortable, banking nice paychecks with pensions, taking the annual vacation, and hanging out in vacation homes, who don’t seem in a hurry to do much, rose to their perches without the kind of struggle that built their organizations and are falling back on the usual safe playbook (yes, I’m especially thinking of unions). The lack of creativity and urgency is astonishing.
Which brings me to the relatively narrow focus today of this cry for “generational change”. I think it misses the point by a wide margin. And actually risks amplifying the general rejection of politics.
Age, for sure, should be a factor. Call it the Feinstein test: if someone is thisclose to drooling, it’s time to vote that person out. And: we need to hold accountable—fire them all!—the staffers, consultants and insiders who cover up creeping dementia principally to ensure they can all hold on to their cushy jobs.
But, “generational change”, if one looks closely, mostly comes across as a political sugary high—it jolts the nervous system of people who are fed up with a broken system and are looking for anything, please, anything, to repair the mess. But, like every sugary high, anchoring revolution on “generational change” will leave most folks crashing back down, eventually, to reality, once they see that the people who might slip into office on the back of “generational change” might not be much of a change at all.
This is not the first “generational change” rodeo in recent history. A very brief recounting: Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a similar pining for leaders who were not products of the World War II generation. The 1984 election, for example, featured the creaky, past-his-prime, uninspiring Walter Mondale, who won the Democratic Party presidential nomination mostly as a kind of gold watch prize for sticking around for decades—he, then, proceeded to lose to Ronald Reagan in an epic landslide.
That was followed by louder cries for “generational change”, coupled with a vague idea that the defeats in 1980 and 1984 meant jettisoning any sniff of New Deal-ish-Great Society ideas. A passel of younger candidates ran in 1988 (including a younger Joe Biden) mostly promising a broadly defined “centrist generational change”, with the notable exception of Jesse Jackson who ran as the progressive alternative and would eventually take second place in delegates behind Michael Dukakis. Dukakis, a mere 54 years of age, went on to lose to George Herbert Walker Bush (I mean, you really have to spell out all four names to get the full measure of the silver-spooned Bush)
So, from the ashes of defeat and despair built up over three presidential elections, up popped Bill Clinton. When Clinton first ran for office, he was 46—and would be the 3rd youngest president ever elected at the time. By today’s Chuck Schumer ancient standards, Clinton would be considered a spring chicken, and be seen in 2025 as an agent of “generational change”. In fact, he was the first “baby boomer” president.
What did the people get with the “generational change” Clinton-Gore Administration?
A Democratic-themed attack on government—“The era of big government is over” and Al Gore’s “Reinventing Government”, which was just fancy word salad to mask free market de-regulation and the handing over of the keys to the vault to big corporations. It was really that generation’s ideological surrender to Republicans that ushered in Newt Gingrich and what we are now seeing in spades today with the Trumper torching of agency after agency (and the loss of, to date, union protection for 500,000 federal jobs);
The North American Free Trade Agreement which Clinton bribed and brow-beat Democrats to support to make his corporate donors happy. NAFTA barely passed a Democratic House (it passed much more easily in the Senate, which has always been populated by far more “free market” voices) and was the template for future trade deals that undercut decent wages and, not for nothing, expanded sweat shops in low-wage countries. I maintain to this day that NAFTA’s passage in 1992 oiled the pathway for the rise of Newt Gingrich, whose band of government arsonists fed on the fury of the voters in industrial communities who were told by organized labor, correctly, that NAFTA would end their working lives and witnessed a Democratic president crow about his role in cramming NAFTA through Congress;
If you hate media consolidation and your absurdly expensive cable bills, you can thank Bill Clinton who, along with his Wall Street Citibank-alum Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, engineered the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which swept away anti-monopoly regulations, ignited massive media consolidation and, effectively, created the framework of all the bad things you see today in the media landscape;
And, not for nothing, we got the kind of slick, ad-based political campaigns that have turned into a multi-billion dollar selling of high office every cycle (an aside: I will pay good money to a person who can stuff a sock in that idiot James Carville’s mouth… a one-hit wonder who, but for his Louisiana accent, would only be holding court for the five drunks left at 1.a.m in the corner bar)
The way in which “generational change” is an empty slogan is, as telegraphed earlier, most apparent in the treatment of the money spent on the Pentagon, whose budget sweeps in most of the entire national security state (but leaves out, notably, the Department of Energy which oversees significant military-oriented work, including the development of nuclear weapons).
You can pick any specific issue you deem most dear to you, or one that determines who you vote for. From where I sit, the view of American Exceptionalism’s justification for global military power is paramount because it touches on life and death, here and abroad, both in actual war and violence and the money that isn’t spent on healthcare, jobs, and every corner of society’s needs.
So, let’s turn now to last week’s vote to approve a $925 billion budget for the Pentagon for fiscal 2026. For what it’s worth, that’s $33 billion more than the House version, so there will still be negotiations on what the final number looks like, and whether the final bill contains wing-nut House provisions including banning gender-affirming care and bathroom access.
Here are the only Senators to vote NO on that utterly immoral funding for an agency that will, within the next several years, suck up one TRILLION dollars, based on the steady trajectory of funding for war:
Baldwin (D-WI)
Booker (D-NJ)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Duckworth (D-IL)
Durbin (D-IL)
Kim (D-NJ)
Markey (D-MA)
Merkley (D-OR)
Murphy (D-CT)
Murray (D-WA)
Padilla (D-CA)
Paul (R-KY)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schatz (D-HI)
Schiff (D-CA)
Smith (D-MN)
Van Hollen (D-MD)
Warren (D-MA)
Welch (D-VT)
Wyden (D-OR)
Ironically, Trump isn’t wrong to rename the “Defense Department” the “Department of War”. Though he did so, principally, so he can illegally order boats be blown out of the water and kill people extra-judiciously, the bloated monstrosity of the Pentagon stands as a testament to this nation’s singular, decades-long, unshakeable, bi-partisan mission: to wage endless war.
As for a few of those those who voted “yes”, with their ages noted: Arizona’s Ruben Gallego, is 47 years old; Georgia’s Jon Ossoff, 38; Maryland’s Angela Alsobrooks, 54; and New Mexico’s Ben Ray Luján, 53. All are considered “new faces” who represent “generational change”, although, yes, it does say a lot about the geriatric Senate that people in their 50s qualify for “generational change” status.
In other words, a fair number of the “youth” in the Senate who represent “generational change” still embrace the unbridled madness of unloading peoples’ hard-earned tax dollars on the Pentagon.
I’ll pick one example of a simmering “generational change” primary party battle to illustrate the point: Ed Markey, who is 79, would be 87 at the end of his next term if he wins re-election in 2026. He is being challenged by Congressman Seth Moulton, who is 46, just shy of half Markey’s age. Moulton’s fundamental campaign theme is, as he said in his official announcement today: “Senator Markey’s a good man, but it’s time for a new generation of leadership.”
Markey voted, per the above list, “no” on the Pentagon bill, as did Moulton in the House. I suspect Moulton’s negative vote had more to do with (a) the bonkers wing-nut House provisions on gender affirming care and (b) because he needs to position himself for the far more liberal Senate primary voter in Massachusetts.
A fair assumption, I believe, because just two years prior, Moulton voted “yes” on the $886 billion Pentagon monstrosity, while Markey voted “no”, one of just 13 Senators to vote “no.” Moulton has also fashioned his entire persona around his Marine Corp service, and joined in 2023 just nine House Democrats to vote in favor of a Republican-led amendment prohibiting the teaching of “race-based theories” in schools operated by the Department of Defense Education Activity, a wing-nut amendment introduced by chief leading wingnut Chip Roy.
Now, in fairness, I am cherry-picking a bit the records of these two dudes. And, hey, if Moulton’s politics are your politics, that’s fair as well.
But, he, like many of the candidates I read about running for Congress or other elected office, are reading from the same script: it’s a content-less “we need generational change” with very little there, there.
It’s dishonest.
And dangerous: voters are being asked, under the call for “generational change”, to buy a nicely-packaged product with little idea of what the consequences might be. And, as important, if all voters are getting, in real policy and actual votes, is the same shit they already have, it will only deepen the alienation from politics—and that is prime feeding ground for darker days.
We should expect and demand more.