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Comment by JimDabell | Hacker News Reader

It’s definitely gotten worse in politics over the last decade. It used to be the case I could look at politicians and hate their policies and values, but know that they were genuinely trying to shape their country into what they thought was best. Now it seems to be overtaken by shameless grifters who will happily tear everything down if it profits them in some way.

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This is commonly attributed to Vonnegut, but apparently wasn't written by him:

``Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.''

It was Mary Schmich and later Baz Luhrmann turned it into a song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_Sunscreen

It's from an an essay written as a hypothetical commencement speech by columnist Mary Schmich, originally published in June 1997 in the Chicago Tribune.

Then released in several versions as a spoken word song by the Australian director Baz Luhrmann.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_Sunscreen

It reached peak parody when further mangled and released by John Safran as Not The Sunscreen Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YwqFz14xY4

Vonnegut had nothing to do with it, and it doesn't preclude that there really are changes that slide one way or another, in fact when I was a kid compared to the wages of the day many prices were more reasonable than they are today, many politicians were in fact much more 'noble' (though that word doesn't really fit) than they are today. As to whether children respected their elders or not I have no opinion on but the other two definitely have shifted where I live, the kind of rabble that sits in parliament here today would never have gotten a pass in the 70's. FFS we have a guy here that believes that lizards rule us.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/10/21/d...

The fact that enough people vote for these characters has me more than a little bit worried. Democracy is super fragile and to wave away the observable fact that in the past things were quite different by quoting some random text seems to be a bit too glib and easy.

While I share the same feeling (and we likely are not thinking of the same politicians) it's worth noting every age has had people complaining about

* The current government/politicians, which are worse then the ones we had

* The youth, who have it easy and are not as good as the old generation

We have actual texts from ancient civilizations saying this, so _maybe_ it's just a seesaw, or _maybe_ it's just getting old.

I’m not sure that’s true? There are certainly people complaining about politicians from every era, but specifically shameless grifters? In similar volume to today?

For instance, you can find no end of people who utterly despise Margaret Thatcher and think that she’s the worst thing to ever happen to the UK. But as far as I am aware, even the people who hate her tend to think that she genuinely believed in what she was doing. The idea that she was wrecking the country for her own personal gain isn’t a mainstream belief is it?

Now contrast that with somebody like Boris Johnson. A politician who is hated in similar volume to Thatcher. But you can’t say that the accusations levelled at Johnson are anything at all alike to those Thatcher received, can you?

The same goes for American politics. Take a look at the criticisms directed at Trump compared with those directed at either Bush. There is a qualitative difference.

One thing though, one difference. The media.

Newspapers and TV were much more limited and gated. I remember having no access to cable, and thus only 3 TV channels, and two "national" newspapers available easily.

So news was textual, and the TV news was only on at 7am, 6pm, 11pm.

Then came the rise of cable news, and 24 hours news. And they needed to have more news to fill the gaps.

So people turning molehills into mountains is a thing, misconstrued interpretation of actions, unproven allegations, and more is now far more common. And before a thing would vanish quickly from the news, but with 24 hour networks they would come back to it for months.

This took time to develop, so the 90s 24 hr news networks weren't like this instantly. They evolved into this.

Then came the internet. Twitter, facebook, etc. Now more news was needed.

From what I can see, this is a large part of the change.

And as an aside, quite literally "enemies of democracy" work to amplify this. And it's so easy to do.

Pick the nuttiest nut, the least tolerant of boneheads, and donate to their foundation or cause.

The nut doesn't need to even know, they are the ultimate "useful idiot", feed them and they grow into an influential nut.

Nation-states don't need to use bots, they can just donate to causes which cause the most internal friction. Then these characters run around, pointing out every flaw.

grift seems to wax and wane with the seasons. It was certainly complained about at equivalent levels to today during the Grant administration.

Indeed - to me it seems there are politicians, politicians using populism, populists becoming politicians, and the new class: populists milking politics. That is, populists without political goals entering politics and finding fertile soil.

Admittedly, Boris J. is more of a populist politician that keeps dialing up the populism and down the politics until it's pure populism, while Donald T. is more of a narcissist that took the "normal" path to that point.

I don't know, I was little when Thatcher was around and not British, but I do remember her being criticized for stuff like "Margaret Thatcher had a deal with Rupert Murdoch to get elected in exchange for granting him more media control".

The Bush administration was deeply criticized for the Iraq war which was considered just a big money grab for friends and family.

Or consider JFK, which is now rated as one of the best US presidents and his actual legacy.

I am Italian, and people are now saying "you know Berlusconi was bad, but at least he had some business knowledge and charisma, compared to the idiots today".

Just give it ten years and people will say that Boris Johnson was pretty honest compared to these guys..

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/201...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/06/jfk-accomplished-lit...

"The youth, who have it easy "

Is this still currently a thing? I would think, with Covid lockdowns, social networks designed to manipulate them from early age and a future prognosed of climate change and war, not many people could think the new generation has it easy.

I think there's a lot of handwaving by older generations as to the issues younger generations are having, yes. Children who try to become interested in social/political issues who realize their future is bleak are often dismisses as immature or idealistic and have their (usually valid) concerns ignored, etc.

From what I've seen the youth's complaints are usually "heard", but not recognized. There is definitely an arrogance to many positions from older generations and a tendency towards dismissiveness for too many reasons that do not address the concerns from the youth at all.

I don't wish ill on anyone, but it does seem that many of these issues that the youth are aware of and even want to change will not go away until the ideas die along with the older generations that continue to do everything to maintain a status quo that the youth have openly said "nah we're not going to do that anymore" -- often just because the older generation's have it so ingrained that there is no other option besides the former status quo for whatever reason.

>but know that they were genuinely trying to shape their country into what they thought was best.

But _were_ they? (That's rhetorical, they were not.)

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