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I don't have much to add other than I've also noticed that there are lots of old people at the big protests that get a lot of coverage. My impression of the previous century's protests is that they were attended by young people. Are they...the same protestors? Has the same cohort been bullying our politics for decades? Or does the timeline not match?
I have a sensitive distaste for old people who can't help but weigh in on the current outrage. Conservatives and liberals. All the old ones have very nasty ways of expressing their opinions. If it's not super cringe it's very ugly. I think people gradually lose the skill of persuasion as they ossify, or something. There's something there.
It reminds me of how the Hollywood studio system had grown stagnant in the 70's and 80's, which allowed up and comers like Spielberg, Lucas, and Cameron to innovate and eventually take over the studio system themselves. Only now, 40 years later, it's still a lot of those same up and comers from the 70's clinging to power and not letting up and comers displace them. I think there are similar trends in politics and activism.
From the more rightwingish side of things, a lot of people from the Nixon era (including Henry Kissinger) were still power players in the Republican party and various GOP administrations all the way up until the 2010s, and even if they hadn't aged out they were effectively forced out by Trump and the MAGA movement.
I have little doubt that there are similar dynamics on the progressive protest everything activist side of things.
I think that the issue is more that a lot of the up and comers who do replace them, come from within the same structure, having worked with the big directors, rather than having made their own way. Kathleen Kennedy never made something by herself. She was always the one who enabled others to do great things, but she didn't have a good creative vision of her own, nor was she able to spot new talent. Perhaps Dave Filoni will be better. At least he actual creative work on new IPs.
Perhaps that is because most of the elite is in the thrall of illiberal activism, so they are innately opposed to the idea that 'the people' get to have a say. So instead of giving a chance to directors/writers that punched above their weight on smaller projects, they select people that only appeal to them and their agenda. And even if these people turn out to be good by chance, they sabotage them with bad instructions, with bad advisors, etc.
Something similar seems to be true in politics.
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Your timing is off a bit there. The studio system declined in the late 1960s. "New Hollywood," incl. the Spielberg/Lucas class, got started circa 1967 and rose to prominence in the 1970s (Jaws / Star Wars), and then dominated the 1980s. Cameron rode their blockbuster wave a bit later, making his first big splash in the mid-80s.
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I don't think it's exactly the same cohort; somebody who was active in the Days of Rage would be in their 70s or 80s now.
Right. It's later boomers and first Xers larping as civil rights and anti-Vietnam war activists (who were mostly silents and older boomers).
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