Aileen Cannon Calls an Investigation into “What’s Literally a Stolen Diary” … “Politicized”

This is a minor point, but one that deserves more attention. Plus, I plan to use it in future posts about the unlawful assault on property rights that Judge Aileen Cannon has mounted in her opinion appointing a Special Master to stall the investigation into Donald Trump’s suspected theft of classified documents.

In a footnote of her opinion, Judge Cannon pointed to the Special Master appointed in the Project Veritas case as a precedent of a judge (Analisa Torres, in this case), appointing a Special Master “in politicized circumstances.”

Moreover, at least one other court has authorized additional independent review for attorney-client privilege outside of the law firm context, in politicized circumstances. See In re Search Warrant dated November 5, 2021, No. 21-Misc-813, 2021 WL 5845146, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 8, 2021) (appointing a special master to conduct review of materials seized from the homes of employees of Project Veritas for potentially attorney-client privileged materials).

To be fair, I kept waiting for Trump’s lawyers to raise this precedent (though not for the principle Cannon did).

But they didn’t.

Not in the original complaint (in which they relied heavily on the Lynne Stewart and Michael Cohen precedent). Not in their supplement (in which they added the Rudy precedent to those they relied on). Similarly, it didn’t come up in the hearing (in which Rudy featured prominently).

This was Judge Cannon going out of her way to find what she believed was a precedent on her own, one that she said supported an, “independent review for attorney-client privilege outside of the law firm context, in politicized circumstances.” But the opinion isn’t about attorney-client privilege. It was, explicitly, about press privileges.

In light of the potential First Amendment concerns that may be implicated by the review of the materials seized from Petitioners, the Court finds that the appointment of a special master will “help[] to protect the public’s confidence in the administration of justice.”

The opinion further holds there is no basis of law to do what Cannon did–intervene because of leaks (more on the leaks Cannon made up later).

Project Veritas and O’Keefe request that the Court order the Government to conduct a search for alleged leaks related to the Government’s investigation. O’Keefe Mot. II at 1. Petitioners do not provide a legal basis for their request or allege that the Government violated any specific rule, law, or policy

Crazier still, there’s no mention in the opinion, at all, about politics.

Nor should there be. This is a case about theft. We know it’s about theft because the two people who’ve already pled guilty in the case acknowledged it in real time (and pled guilty to transporting stolen goods across state lines).

They are in a sketchy business and here they are taking what’s literally a stolen diary and info . . . and trying to make a story that will ruin [the Victim’s] life and try and effect the election. [The Victim] can easily be thinking all her stuff is there and not concerned about it. .  . we have to tread even more carefully and that stuff needs to be gone through by us and if anything worthwhile it needs to be turned over and MUST be out of that house.

We know, too, that it’s not just about a stolen diary. In addition to the diary (which by the way included Ms. Biden’s extensive accounts of her own addiction treatment, the most personal kind of medical record), the thieves stole,

tax records, a digital camera, a digital storage card containing private family photographs, a cellphone, books, clothing, and luggage.

Aileen Cannon believes that the investigation of this theft — the culprits have admitted it!! — is politicized.

Presumably Aileen Cannon believes an investigation into stolen property must be about politics because she believes James O’Keefe’s claim that this was an investigation started under Joe Biden. Had she done as much work to fact-check O’Keefe as she did to find precedents for Trump, though, she would know that this investigation was not started under Joe Biden.

It was started under Donald Trump.

The first call records in this investigation were obtained in November 2020, while Bill Barr was Attorney General (under Merrick Garland, such a step might have required the AG’s approval, but Barr was less interested in such protections). The first warrant targeting people purporting to play the role of journalists was obtained on January 14, 2021. That one, I imagine, did require Main DOJ approval, hopefully even from then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.

Aileen Cannon argues that the investigation started under Bill Barr and Jeffrey Rosen into the theft — this is not contested! — of things including medical and tax records is politicized, mostly because the victim is the current President’s daughter.

Effectively, then, Judge Cannon is arguing that private citizen Ashley Biden can have no recourse for when someone literally steals her medical and tax records, but Trump must have special judicial interference to prevent the FBI taking medical and tax records in the process of investigating 11,000 stolen records.

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81 replies
  1. StevenL says:

    Did anyone else find odd the references in today’s order to the white house counsel and to the current president?

  2. prostratedragon says:

    Typo?: The first call records in this investigation were obtained in November 2021, while Bill Barr was Attorney General should I presume be 2020.

  3. Rugger9 says:

    No doubt Tuesday will have the appeal to 11CA in progress from the DoJ for precisely the reasons noted here and by others (Eichenwald, Popehat, etc.). My sense is that Garland’s DoJ anticipated this ruling after Judge Cannon signaled her intentions earlier in the week, only needing the ruling and footnote details to flesh out the brief. Wednesday at the latest, IMHO.

    The other thing that needs to be pointed out is that Judge Cannon was a lame duck appointment (and IIRC was one of the ones that were ‘problematic’, ahem) so the Ds need to hammer away about how Trumpist MAGA judges throw the rule of law out the window to protect their self-anointed king. Eichenwald notes correctly that only Individual-1 will be protected, all other white collar criminals will be left out (unless of course they are ‘friends of TFG’). If the GQP and MAGA take control of the government again, we’ll get more of this. Just look at FL where the head of the election police was apparently the very same one who signed off on three of the felons who were busted for voting after being told by the state of FL that they could. I hope they sue and their lawyers work pro bono until the state coughs up the money for wrongful prosecution.

    • Rugger9 says:

      I would expect this to go eventually and pretty quickly to SCOTUS and I’m pretty sure Roberts would vote for cert along with the 3 sane ones. If the other five support Cannon they’d repudiate their prior ruling on EP which made clear EP resides the the current POTUS, not FPOTUS. Thomas would be the exception since he voted with TFG last time too.

      We need both Houses in November, and we need to expand the court.

    • civil says:

      It’s a crappy ruling, but it’s not binding precedent on any court, and the DOJ’s choice may be determined primarily by their guess about what will be faster: a time-limited review by a special master or an appeal. They may well choose the former.

      In the meantime, they can pursue the criminal investigation based on the earlier documents, surveillance video, etc.

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        Unless and until it’s overruled, Cannon’s order is a persuasive precedent for every federal and state court.

      • timbo says:

        I can’t wait to see how this seditionist judge decides should be the Special Master here… it seemed like Trusty was gunning for the job himself in arguments so, you know…

  4. StevenL says:

    Or the opinion’s bizarre (and I would say simply improper) substitution of ‘former president’s home’ in:

    ‘“[T]he [G]overnment chose to proceed by securing a search warrant for [the former President’s home and office] and seeking and obtaining [a] magistrate judge’s approval of the [f]ilter [p]rotocol. The [G]overnment should have been fully aware that use of a filter team in these circumstances was ripe for substantial legal challenges, and should have anticipated that those challenges could delay its investigations.” In re Search Warrant Issued June 13, 2019, 942 F.3d at 181.’

    Where the cited opinion actually says:
    “the government chose to proceed by securing a search warrant for the Law Firm and seeking and obtaining the magistrate judge’s approval of the Filter Protocol. The government should have been fully aware that use of a filter team in these circumstances was ripe for substantial legal challenges, and should have anticipated that those challenges could delay its investigations.”

    • timbo says:

      Link to No. 19-1730 opinion from the 4th Circuit:

      https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/191730.P.pdf

      Good catch on the paren substitution by this Twisslering judge. I’m sure DOJ will be appealing some of this ruling at the very least.

      (I’m going to read all the comments here before commenting further I think. Obviously, Cannon’s ruling is going to have upset some of the principle/principled contributors to Emptywheel.net so…)

      [FYI, link edited to point directly to US Courts. Please do not lift the link from your Google Search results as it includes all the tracking from your device and session; copy the link from your browser after you have opened the site. Thanks. /~Rayne]

      • timbo says:

        I tried to do that but, alas, the .gov site requires that one login with a pacer or government registered account to do meaningful opinion document searches, let alone download them. The Google LLC encapsulated link gives one direct access to the PDF. I do not have a pacer account nor an account at the .gov site so this is the only quick way I could quickly find to present people with the immediate download to the information at the .gov site. Google does have those privileges and it is good that they’re sharing them with the rest of us IMO, even if it does result in crazy annoying URL glop to gain public access to the PDF.

  5. joel fisher says:

    The Justice Department has all the documents and, more importantly, images of the documents. If the Special Master gets up to any funny business, there’s back-up. This is a stall to get the matter inside the 60 days prior to the election. But the process will move forward. So what if there’s no indictment–and I’m someone who felt an indictment was warranted February 2021–until November? As long as the venue is DC, no problem. I’m pretty sure the JD gets the jury pool issue.

    • Mister Sterling says:

      Either November or January will bring the indictments. And given how sensitive the documents are, I think the Friday after the midterms would be the day. At last. There’s now way this fizzles out. Delayed by a pro Trump judge? Sure. But only once. This doesn’t stretch into 2024 without indictments.

      • Rugger9 says:

        Note also that Individual-1 is not on the ballot anywhere, and Cannon’s ruling made it clear this was about FPOTUS’s reputation. DoJ is not hindered here by the 60-day rule even if the RWNM tries to conflate the issue.

  6. Kevin Bullough says:

    Would I be naive to speculate that the Judge is simply proving her MAGA bona fides, knowing that her decision will be appealed and overturned? Afterwards, she can shrug her shoulders and say, “I did what I could,” ensuring the crazies don’t target her career and/or life?
    Or am I just writing the next chapter in a bad political thriller?
    I only ask because I have written four thrillers (none published- no one will read them- nothing – nada – not a sausage) so I fear my speculative mind may be horribly biased.

    • Mister Sterling says:

      I fear it would take longer for the DOJ to appeal the ruling than just give the Special Master 30 days to do the work, whateber the hell that is. This gives the DOJ plenty of time to draft those indictments.

      • Rugger9 says:

        The Special Master needs to be agreed to by both sides. For Individual-1 the key qualifications are loyalty to TFG, willingness to do what TFG asks, telegenic looks, clearance and perhaps a bit of competence.

        The government won’t be tolerant of a biased SM especially one who may not be cleared for the materials. There are probably other issues as well depending on who it is (i.e. Trusty might be conflicted as a potential witness).

        What this sets up is a built-in delay to fight over the details about the SM, and FWIW the order from Cannon does not specify the time frame at all (certainly not 30 days) except to say that the SM review must be completed before the government can proceed with its case.

    • Ginevra diBenci says:

      And her husband interrupted his marriage proposal to point out a giant turtle. So cute. It seems to be a requirement for (especially) female Fed Soc judge appointees to come up with adorable affirmations of their family and marriage bona fides. So much their peers appointed by Democrats anxiously struggle to prove they too share “our American values,” to little avail as the Hawley/Cruz/Graham badgering of Ketanji Brown Jackson showed.

  7. Trevanion says:

    A broader contemplation of this “minor point” along with all the other gymnastics propping up the various elements of this decision quickly becomes so damn soul-draining.

  8. TXphysicist says:

    Sorry, a little OT, and worse; speculation.

    Let’s presume DoJ moves to indict, either late this year or early 2023. Trump will bank on being tipped off a few days or weeks in advance, which seems quite likely, considering the large size of the investigation/prosecution. That’s when he’ll declare candidacy for 2024, so that when the indictment is announced soon thereafter, he can claim that it’s simply the DoJ wrongfully attempting to prevent his presidency. That’s probably how he’s planning for maximum incitement via TRUTH Social, where Nunes will almost assuredly allow Trump to deliver *multiple* explicit calls to target specific places, people, institutions, etc., with violence.

    Is there even any sliver of a chance that Trump will be convicted and imprisoned after trial before the 2024 election? Further attempts at delays after a possible indictment are imminent. That’s why Aileen Cannon’s specious maneuvering pisses me off so much. Is my perception that time is of the essence incorrect?

    • Mister Sterling says:

      I think Trump will screw up that strategy. I think he will declare he is running before the indictments come in November. It shouldn’t have gotten this far. If Trump knows hebeing indicted, then it’s time for him to either flee the nation or lose again to Biden in a desperate attempt to save himself from the DOJ. And if we let that happen, we should all hang.

      • TXphysicist says:

        I’ve also wondered about him fleeing the country. That might be conceding defeat, though, he has to understand that his messaging potency would be diminished if he’s excommunicated to Moscow. But I’ve also played the “Surely This Time He’s Gone Too Far” game with Trump about 1,000 times.

        If DeSantis is elected… yikes. But if DeSantis loses, I just don’t think he’s charismatic, animated, and/or daring enough to foment violence sufficient to depose Biden or whoever. Even then, would Trumpism die? LOL we only have like one or two narrow sets of circumstances wherein the American fascist movement _might_ be stomped out of existence. Super.

        • Rayne says:

          You need to spend some time with younger people, the ones who’ve been forced into precarity their entire lives by the stranglehold the Fed Reserve and Congress have placed on the minimum wage. Which is really nearly all Americans under the age of 40.

          They’re not going to be anywhere near as conservative as their parents and grandparents. They’re also far less white, far less straight, and they’ve been raised under constant gunfire since Columbine. They also grasp the enormity and urgency of the climate crisis.

          A whole new world is coming. What we’re confronting is the last gasp of Boomerism. How ugly this last gasp will get we can’t know but it will end. DeSantis is a late Gen X but he’s clinging to Boomer values — he won’t succeed when he’s already 5 years older than the national median age and acts like he’s 20 years older than that.

        • P J Evans says:

          This boomer understands that stranglehold entirely too well, having worked for minimum or barely more for a couple of years in the mid-90s. It’s way too low, and so is everything based on it.

        • TXphysicist says:

          Yep. Wages and productivity began to diverge in about 1980, with wages more or less stagnating as productivity increased.

          Betcha the rich are tasty

        • TXphysicist says:

          I’m young people, yo :).

          And you’re absolutely right about the death throes of boomerism. My boomer, southern baptist parents are completely unable to parse what’s going on in the world. Still, I got lucky: they’re not Trump supporters, and only dad stigmatizes LGBTQ+ people. My side of the relationship is a constant exploration of where willful ignorance ends and outright hatred begins. Their side is a constant regret of over-educating me, because now I’m going to hell. We’re remarkably close, considering.

          The state of things will get better eventually, I agree, but if we can avoid throwing the LGBTQ+ folks into interment camps in the meantime? Yeah, I might fight for that.

        • George says:

          DeSantis is very short and has ballooned to near-obese proportions, I saw him recently as he was entering a Hotel in Palm Beach County. It would be difficult for someone like that to get elected in today’s physically conscious America.

        • BirdGardener says:

          Obese & Orange Trump won the presidency (with a little help from the electoral college, of course).

          Since then, the effort to end discrimination against people who are overweight has grown even stronger.

        • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

          A day late and a dollar short to this thread, but wanted to highlight and reiterate this:

          What we’re confronting is the last gasp of Boomerism. How ugly this last gasp will get we can’t know but it will end.

          And FWIW, according to [what appears to be the correct Wikipedia page], Judge Aileen was born in 1981, in Cali, Columbia (where her mom went after ‘fleeing Castro’). She holds degrees from Univ of Seville (Spain), and then after that Duke, followed by a law degree from Univ of Michigan.

          With respect to Judge Aileen’s Wikipedia page — highlighting that: “This page was last edited on 6 September 2022, at 16:58 (UTC).” — the casual reader will not find any obvious, highlighted Federalist Society associations.

          I assume all those Gen X and Gen Z’ers are fully capable of drawing their own conclusions about Federalist Society omissions on a Wikipedia bio. Like DeSantis, she seems to be looking backward to an era of fossil fuels and oligarchs. You’d think someone whose mother fled Castro would have more sense, but I’m with Rayne in thinking this ‘last gasp of Boomerism’ is ugly, and could get even worse.

        • Rayne says:

          Cannon wouldn’t be in a position to weigh in on Trump if Trump had not been elected by Boomers — the large wave of babies born after WWII who grew up feeling incredibly entitled because their parents and grandparents had faced down fascism.

        • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

          Much truth in your statement, IMVHO.
          Tragically. And naively.

          Americans need to grasp much more of history, not simply war movies, but how much hangs by threads and human quirkiness.

        • Ravenclaw says:

          Partially true, but please, a high proportion of us boomers are very left-leaning and environmentally aware – always have been. In my experience, it’s the ones who came right after us (the Xers) who are more likely to lean ‘conservative,’ as they came of age during the Reagan years and drank the Kool-Aid of that first iteration of what became Republican dogma. However, age tends to make us more conservative, and I suppose some once-liberal boomers (especially those ‘early’ boomers who had it easiest) have shifted into the right lane over the years.

        • Rayne says:

          Yeah, I hear you — I’m bleeding edge Gen X and I can see where some folks in my cohort were and are conservative. But we also grew up worried we’d be drafted to serve in Vietnam which had obviously been a futile exercise by the time we were in high school. We reached adulthood with Reagan’s threats to bomb the USSR while funding Afghanistan’s “freedom fighters.” We also grew up latch key kids and more often with single mothers without adequate resources. Government didn’t help us much leaving Gen X more disaffected. Grunge aesthetic expresses perfectly what Gen X felt (and still feels): “social alienation, self-doubt, abuse, neglect, betrayal, social and emotional isolation, psychological trauma and a desire for freedom.” Grunge would never have been as popular as it was if it had mirrored its audience.

          I should point out here Marcy is also a member of Gen X.

  9. Tim L. says:

    DOJ must appeal this as a matter of principle. Yes, the 11th is in the bag for Il Douche’ but appeal it all the way to USSC, and let them all put their corruption on display for the nation to see. Or maybe they’ll surprise us and do the right thing?

        • Yorkville Kangaroo says:

          Unfortunately, many on the bench are proponents of Executive power. That means anything that goes to SCOTUS could wind up blowing up in our rragile democracy’s face.

          Hoever, on this matter, I doubt it would hold much weight and it would seem that there would need to be a huge degree of topological contortion to give The Donald the benefit of the doubt on moving, possessing and altering documents that should be nowehere near his person on leaving the White House.

          Though, I wonder if SCOTUS would attack the PRA in the first instance to dilute some of the shit show.

    • TXphysicist says:

      Exactly! Just like states making it “technically legal” to send a slate of electors for the electoral college tallying opposite to how the people of a state voted.

      I remember learning in grade school that only a minority of 1930’s Germany supported Hitler, and some of the tactics he used despite that to seize power, both legally and via violence. And learning the quote “All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”, or however it goes. Well, there are farrrrrrrr too many Americans currently doing nothing, and this is like a Hitler speedrun.

      So vote, obviously. Pray that it’s enough. Ugh

  10. Peterr says:

    From the NYT Pitchbot:

    New York Times Pitchbot @DougJBalloon 1h
    We wanted to understand the reasoning behind Judge Aileen Cannon’s unprecedented special master order. So we talked to three unvaccinated QAnon members at a Jack in the Box in Flagstaff.

    Flagstaff? Paging bmaz . . .

    • TXphysicist says:

      I was surprised, NYTimes managed to put out an article a couple of hours ago quoting a handful of legal experts saying (and I’m paraphrasing here) – “WTF, Aileen?”.

      But yeah the ongoing enlightened centrism garbage has me closer than ever to pulling my subscription.

      It’s really, really sobering to realize that the people steering allegedly “liberal” (center-right, in most EU countries) corporations are basically like “OK, OK, fascism does seem kinda bad, but it does offer the best tax rates for my personal wealth… Tell you what, I’ll eenie-meenie-miney-mo for it”. Most of Capital in the US seems to realize that fascism is their quickest ticket to perpetuate and extend the wealth gap. Disgusting.

  11. Nick Caraway says:

    OT if I may. Timothy Snyder just posted the first lecture of his Ukrainian history class for Yale freshmen this term. After some basic definitions of: what is history, what creates a nation, what is the deliberate destruction of a nation (ie., genocide)… and making his case for Ukraine’s centrality in European history, he throws out some stats I seem to have missed. 100,000 civilians murdered at Mariupol. 3 million Ukrainians (including 250,000 children) forcibly deported to Russia. Just for openers, one might suspect.

    Which makes Snyder’s case that Putin meant it when he announced a genocidal war (a rare thing to do at the outset). Somehow the scale of the horror is not getting the press it merits, imo, notwithstanding the occasional outrage about discrete but spectacular atrocities such as the killings at Bucha or the maternity hospital bombing. Okay, we hear about the large numbers of buildings destroyed and the millions of refugees displaced, but still… I don’t think it’s reported enough, that Putin wants to wipe Ukraine off the map, and yes, destroy the Ukrainian people. And despite the brave Ukrainian resistance, Putin has achieved a substantial piece of that goal. Regardless of whether he ultimately succeeds in “winning” the war, whatever that may mean.

    If this lecture is any indication, he’s a professor I would love to have had… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8

  12. Marika says:

    “The idea that Cannon felt obliged to reassure MAGA Republicans that Trump is being treated fairly, rather than the rest of us that the rule of law is being protected, redefines the American public and American principles. ” – astute observation from historian Heather Cox Richardson.

  13. Ewan says:

    What if judge Cannon wasn’t thinking of a short term delay tactic, but had something in mind when she said she believed the executive privilege question wasn’t so clear cut? By this I mean, do legal minds see an argument that could prevail after a successful appeal and subsequent involvement of the SCOTUS?

    • TXphysicist says:

      Yeah hopefully this gets appealed all the way to SCOTUS ASAP so they can rule that Trump’s the true president.

      Uh oh, is my lack of faith in the judicial system showing?!?

    • Rugger9 says:

      Read Neal Katyal’s thread from the link in the post. If the rule of law is followed, then no hope for Individual-1 especially considering this SCOTUS already ruled 8-1 that EP didn’t exist for FPOTUS if POTUS said no.

      DoJ will have to go through 11CA, but it depends which three judges are empaneled. I would expect to see an en banc attempt as well and then SCOTUS. I do not see things dragging into summer 2024, when Individual-1 would next be on the ballot.

  14. Leu2500 says:

    I’m just your average person, but I thought the big deal with the PV case is that they claim to be journalists with 1A protections

    I’m not aware of FPOTUS claiming to be a journalist

    You’d think a judge would pick up on this when she’s looking for examples & precedents

    • Doctor Biobrain says:

      Conservatives don’t understand context. Every decision is made case-by-case depending on their preferred outcome, and evidence and prior court decisions are weapons you choose to defend your position, not the basis for your position. If they have the law on their side, they’ll argue the law. But if all they have is a banana, then that banana is the most important thing ever.

      That’s what we saw in the Dobbs decision, where they had to go back centuries to find famous misogynists who supported their position. They don’t need to defend why that’s the right argument. They just needed to find something.

  15. Doctor My Eyes says:

    As a boomer myself, I have to take issue with the easy proclamations upthread that what we are seeing is merely the last gasp of boomerism. Such a view strikes me as stunningly misguided as well as reflecting a shocking ignorance of history. What we are seeing is the effects of the reactionary politics set in motion when the boomers mounted a serious challenge to the status quo, a challenge that changed America dramatically in the direction of equality and individual freedom. The culture wars were not started by boomers because we resisted the changes. Just to take a couple of examples hard to imagine today, when I was in high school, all college dorms were segregated by gender and women had strict curfews as well as countless other restrictions on how they could behave and what they could wear. Hair longer than a flat-top could be grounds for harassment by authorities. Every adult I knew would use the N word unselfconsciously. And on and on. Blaming the boomers for these assholes who are trying to undo every bit of progress made during our lives, progress which we ourselves embraced and worked for, reflects a very poor understanding of the historical forces that have brought us to this moment. I’m not defending my generation as perfect–I’m just saying that we changed the national landscape with respect to racism and sexism. We are not seeing the last gasp of boomerism–we’re seeing the culture war near its pivotal moment. It is not yet clear whether the more liberal society we boomers worked to create will be allowed to stand.

    I was so surprised to see that discussion on this site that I keep feeling I must have misunderstood what was being said.

      • Doctor My Eyes says:

        Ha ha. So you’re saying the boomers are the force behind climate denialism, racism, and generally every conservative meme? Setting aside the fundamental offensiveness of dismissing an entire class of people as indistinguishable from one another, at least the generalizations should have a grain of truth in them. What a wrong-head destructive, historically ignorant view! I’m not defending myself–I don’t care what people on the internet think of me; it’s that the parameters of the conflict should be better understood. What we are seeing is a continuation of the fight between my generation and my parents’ generation. If you don’t understand this history, then you can draw inaccurate conclusions, such as that the conflict will die a natural death with the changing of the generations. That’s what we boomers thought when we were young. Like you, we used to think that they would die off eventually and we would be free of their backwards ways. Events have proven that authoritarians are more stubborn than that. Historical accuracy matters when it comes to making decisions today. No, the old fogies will not die off leaving the land free of bigotry, as the history of the boomers proves.

        • Rayne says:

          Source: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/do-younger-generations-care-more-about-global-warming/

          Look, I sleep with a Boomer, been married to his sorry butt for +30 years. As he’s gotten older he’s become far more conservative and he still thinks he’s an independent. Most of the people his age are as bad and often worse mostly because they still consume old school broadcast news and goddamned Fox. This isn’t a generality, this is what I’ve observed between the cohort my age and older, and my kids’ ages (40-25); the younger people don’t lap up the crap Fox/OANN/right-wing talk radio push.

          Christ, even CNN gets this; they’re going hard right because they’ve got no young demographic left to chase, only the olds still watching Fox.

          ADDER: 7:26 PM ET — It’s as if Victor Shi knew exactly what I needed Gen Z to tell the olds.

          https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-generation-z-voting-midterm-elections-20220906-vvjgb7j33ngodlgz4vlzw2rwsy-story.html

        • punaise says:

          Tiptoeing into this conversation as a decidedly non-conservative trailing edge boomer. I wonder how does one correct for white privilege, in which many boomers are soaking? Or is that even germane?

          Anecdotal point: for some reason when some of us say to our kids’ generation “sorry we f*cked up the planet, good luck fixing it” it isn’t well received.

        • Rayne says:

          Addressing voter suppression would do a lot to correct for white privilege — I mean, the way much of this country has been systematically disenfranchised is white privilege.

          Eventually demographics will address it but the transition *waves around* could be rocky. This report from the U.S. Census spells it out, that the U.S. is increasingly not white and a youth wave is about to hit the polls.

          https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/demo/p25-1144.pdf

          What this report doesn’t do, though, is tell us how the pandemic changed and is still changing these demographics. We know more white conservative voters have died but the toll on indigenous people over the last 2.5 years has been steep. Population hasn’t shifted physically so red states remain red even if their populations have been self-reduced. Which means we still need to push for voter rights and fix suppression.

        • Doctor My Eyes says:

          Most of the people his age are as bad and often worse mostly because they still consume old school broadcast news and goddamned Fox.

          If we’re going anecdotal, I live in aging Vermont surrounded by boomers, and not a single person I know fits your “most of the people his age” description. It would be much more enlightening, I suspect, to break down your charts along regional lines. None of my friends from high school–exactly zero–can bear to live in the town we grew up in because that’s where people who watch Fox live. My friend sold the dairy farm that had been in his family for generations because he could no longer stand to live among the haters. I find this heartbreaking, and I see it as the result of very successful propaganda. Meanwhile, my experience with this propaganda and how I saw once-sensible friends turned by it will be of no interest to you younger folks who, like us 50 years ago, think you have it all figured out. As you age, you will see the same thing. You confuse a natural tendency to become more conservative with age with the effects of propaganda.

          Rather than give me pleasure, it makes me sad to imagine you in 20 years trying to explain to the younger folks that it’s not your fault that the nation went fascist on your watch. You did what you could, as did we. But propaganda works and the uber-rich control that propaganda. It would be nice if your understanding of what is going on now would be of interest to young people in 30 years, but it’s much more likely that you will be thought an ignorant dinosaur.

          As for white privilege, as far as I can tell there is no defense against an accusation of being wrong by virtue of suffering from white privilege. To defend oneself is to prove how blind one is, so to make the accusation is to win the argument.

          I’m not feeling defensive–I could write an essay on the flaws of my generation and how we failed in our duties to the next generations. What I am feeling is extreme sadness over the fact that the propagandists seem to have won and that here even on this site, my entire generation is being blamed for it. To my way of thinking, putting generation against generation has the same destructive effect as pitting black against white or rich against poor. The battle is between the authoritarians and the rest of us, and its roots are economic.

          Oh well, I’m trying to adopt Greg Brown’s attitude: It’s your town now. Don’t let’em take the whole damn deal.

          https://youtu.be/GjGlehRoEpI

        • Rayne says:

          You’re in Vermont. No fucking wonder.

          ~eye roll~

          You live in one of the least conservative states in the U.S., with a population the size of Detroit’s.

          You literally lost me at “I live in aging Vermont,” home to Bernie Sanders whose campaign team was nearly all Millennial or younger, most of whom cut their teeth campaigning on the internet for John Kerry or Howard Dean.

          Thanks for making my point about Boomers, though. Very out of touch.

        • Doctor My Eyes says:

          Generalities on generalities. It would be interesting to see how carefully you would avoid generalities if we were discussing POC. Oh well, you’ve got my number–an aging boomer living in Vermont and that’s all you need to know.

        • Rayne says:

          Tread carefully. I can snow you with data about BIPOC, LGBTQ+, disabled and more if you want to get snarky.

        • Belyn says:

          Gottta agree with you on the generalities. Seems a lot of arguments along generational lines are basing way too much on a four or five-fold analytical construction. The generations in my family or many other families (maybe even yours) will not fall neatly into these boxes.

          I strive not to “rank diversity.” Being different from a boomer does not automatically translate into better than.

        • Yorkville Kangaroo says:

          If I may, the debate about the ‘older’ generation vs. the ‘younger’ generation has been in play since at least the turn of the 20th Century let alone the 21st and neither cohort has ever been proven to be any more right or wrong than the other. It is the generation of hippies and free-love that are now the Mitch McConnells and Chuck Grassleys of this world.

          ALL people have different degrees of life experience upon which they draw their conclusions and, in a democratic society, voice these. In some instances one cohort will win a poltical argument and, in others, the second one will.

          It is true, however, that Boomer politicians of all political stripes and CEOs continue to hold onto the levers of government and business and, probably rightly, deserve much of the blame for many of the ills plaguing our society at the moment. After all, they’ve had 40 years to get something done if they really wanted to. You’ll note that I differentiate one class as different from average people. But it’s also true that the people electing these people and allowing the same CEOs to run roughshod over everyone have primarily been the people that now belong to the older cohort.

          I’m not sure that Rayne’s orginal, “OK Boomer,” was more than a jokey aside since most of us know the meme but I may be wrong. The fact that the Opthalmologist took it otherwise kind of plays into the stereotype however.

          The bottom line is really that one shouldn’t take statistics that show you belong to a certain cohort any more seriously than someone using the phrase, “Everyone says…” and then believing that they’re talking about you.

        • scoff says:

          “It is the generation of hippies and free-love that are now the Mitch McConnells and Chuck Grassleys of this world.”

          It’s also the generation of Bernie Sanders and me. My oldest brother was drafted to go to Vietnam but was classified 4F, although not through any efforts on his part. Additionally, the contention that people get more conservative as they age is not absolute. I’ve only gotten more liberal.

          I get the argument between Rayne and the Doctor, and they’re both right and both wrong. The fight isn’t between generations, it’s within.

          All my siblings are conservative (some more than others) while I’m a flaming socialist. I say (only half-jokingly) that Bernie ain’t far enough left for me. The brother who got drafted can’t stand Trump, and, while he’s been a Republican all his life, now refuses to vote for anyone who runs as one. He’s finally coming around to what I’ve been saying to him for the past 40+ years.

          This is a battle that goes on in every generation. Just like the Boomers, I’m sure a lot of the members of Gen X have different ideas and beliefs. No generation is monolithic. Making out that one generation is to blame while the other is blameless (not that either of them were arguing that point) is futile and self-defeating because it simply isn’t true.

        • Belyn says:

          Louis Menand writes about this in the October 18, 2021 Issue of the New Yorker: It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations”. From boomers to zoomers, he writes, the concept gets social history all wrong, and that treating age cohorts like cultural units confuses as much as it clarifies. He addresses many points raised in this discussion.

  16. punaise says:

    Tiptoeing into this conversation as a decidedly non-conservative trailing edge boomer. I wonder how does one correct for white privilege, in which many boomers are soaking? Or is that even germane?

    Anecdotal point: for some reason when some of us say to our kids’ generation “sorry we f*cked up the planet, good luck fixing it” it isn’t well received.

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