On the The Need to Slap our Aging Parents and Grandparents

The younger generation of progressive minded Americans need to start slapping our aging parents, grandparents, and senior citizen neighbors upside the head until they wake the fuck up!  Why?  Consider this well known fact of which The Nation editorial brought to the front of my conciousness:

Consider Ryan’s approach to Medicare. One of the most fundamental tensions in our politics is that senior citizens are, simultaneously, the demographic group that most benefits from the welfare state and the one most sympathetic to the right-wing push to abolish it. The only age group in which McCain beat Obama was voters 60 and older. Part of the reason Democrats fared poorly in 2010 is that voters 60 and older made up 34 percent of the electorate, up from 23 percent in 2008. Senior citizens were also the group most opposed to Obama’s Affordable Care Act, with 58 percent now in favor of repeal.

This produces all kinds of bizarre, contradictory results, like the iconic Tea Party protester who warned the government to keep its hands off his Medicare. Welfare state for me, not for thee.