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Comment by Mtinie | Hacker News Reader

I'm hesitant to consider the next presidential election's results as a harbinger of the state of politics during the 2020 or 2024 races.

The Baby Boomer generation's influence is waning and I'm optimistic that the next generations who did not grow up in a period of extreme mutual distrust like we saw post-WW2 and during the Cold War will be better suited to lead.

It's going to take us, as a global group of people on the planet, a long time to unwind a lot of the hawkish and nationalist policies that have evolved over the past 150 years. Certainly there will be periods where charismatic leaders with latent agendas drag us backwards and temper the progress, but ultimately if each successive generation is even just a bit more inclusive and globally considerate than the last, we'll find a way to make this work.

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That sounds nice. It won't happen, but it sounds nice.

Every generation has felt they could do things better than the previous (old people shouldn't be allowed to vote has been stated lately), until they learn what it was the previous generation had to deal with. The mutual distrust among certain parties do go away after time, look at all the countries that were at war in WW2 that are now allies. But there is always somebody that jumps in to take advantage of the newfound peace and harmony to further their agenda. Sometimes it leads to a return of mistrust, sometimes it leads to war.

What you are describing is every agency of authority agreeing with each other across numerous nation-states, economies, cultures, and more. Some of which are directly opposed to each other, possibly violently.

The human race is simply not ready for that level of cooperation and will not for a very long time. Losing sight of that will only lead to hardship and suffering. Likely the only way for such a thing to happen is for it to be forced among people with violence. Then that status maintained for multiple generations until the old ways have been forgotten.

But your way is a nice thought and should be attempted at least.

> old people shouldn't be allowed to vote has been stated lately

Really? I'd be interested to see a source on that. Not questioning the validity, I so many of these college aged kids calling for restrictions on speech and political organization of people they disagree with. I'm not surprised that this would come up.

Looks like we can expect a mommy-state as much as we can expect a liberalization of out-dated baby boomer policies.

I've seen it in connection with the Britain leaving the EU vote.

I wasn't implying I've seen it here, so I hope it didn't come across that way.

1) Global trade was not as established prior to WWII - there is a market incentive to maintain alliances. We don't even have the production means to make everything we need anymore - we're too inter-dependent.

2) Facebook and Snapchat and other social venues made possible by the Internet make it hard to sew mutual distrust among the nations of the world. If the Cold War happened today we'd see the propaganda from both sides on Twitter - I think it would be harder to mislead people with 2+ perspectives.

Every generation does think it can do better than the last - but I personally think there are a few major differences to set us apart. :>

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