May 30, 2020

A Modest Proposal

I have just a couple of wee changes to propose.

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I have a constitutional amendment in mind:

Section 1: No person born before 1965 shall be eligible to vote in any federal, state, or municipal election.

Section 2. No person born before 1965 shall be allowed to hold any elective office of the United States or any of the States thereof.

Section 3. That is all.

Sure, I’m joking. Or am I? I don’t really care what else us oldsters do. We should still get our Medicare and our Social Security. We can retire or keep on working. We can take our cruises, or we can sit around watching Fox News and bitching about the kids these days. We can write newspaper columns or compete for Nobel prizes or catch up on Netflix. Whatever. But we no longer get to tell the rest of you what to do.

This is not because I think boomers are responsible for everything bad in the world. We aren’t. But God almighty, I am sick of every last thing turning into yet another replay in our endless battle over the ’60s. Climate change. Pandemics. (Pandemics!) Artificial intelligence. Civil rights. Marijuana. Income inequality. Cold wars. LGBTQ rights. The Oxford comma. Everything. And it won’t end until every last one of us is finally hauled off to the afterlife to continue arguing about it there while Jesus rolls his eyes at us.

Donald Trump is, perhaps, the final, panicked version of this. But it’s not his world anymore. It’s not my world. We boomers will be dead by the time most of these things finally start to irreversibly ruin the country and the planet. It’s time for us to turn things over to the Xers and Millennials and get out of their way.

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DECEMBER IS MAKE OR BREAK

A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

With only days left until December 31, we've raised about half of our $400,000 goal—but we need a huge surge in reader support to close the remaining gap. Whether you've given before or this is your first time, your contribution right now matters.

Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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