Wyden has been spectacular on actually understanding tech issues for a very long time at this point. The gerontocracy needs to stop acting like they have any clue how the internet works.

It’s not a dump truck; it’s a series of tubes.

  • Snot Flickerman
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    62
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    The gerontocracy needs to stop acting like they have any clue how the internet works.

    Ron Wyden is seventy-four.

    Age isn’t the problem.

    Upton Sinclair named the problem a long, long time ago:

    It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

    Apply that to large swaths of congresscritters who are too busy counting the money they get from lobbyists to give a shit what we think.

    Nancy Pelosi: “We’re capitalists, and that’s just the way it is.”

    Money in politics is the problem.

    • Pete Hahnloser@beehaw.orgOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      10 months ago

      That’s a very fair point. Much as I’d like to think I haven’t aged in the past 20 years (when we were covering him as one of our senators), I’ve made the same error in assessing his age.

    • derbis@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      Yes thank you. I’m pretty worried about what happens without this guy. We still have Ed Markey but he’s up there too.

      Much as a lot of the worst people in government are relics from another time, age discrimination doesn’t behoove us, IMO. Some of the best are also the most venerable. I’d take Bernie in a heartbeat.

      • Snot Flickerman
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Some of the worst Republicans are pretty youthful! Matt fucking Gaetz, for example. Ron DeSantis for another! So yeah, exactly, age discrimination won’t help.

        Kyrsten Sinema is also universally hated as a Democrat by this point, for good reason, she’s the worst, and she’s only a few years older than DeSantis. It’s not just the old people fucking us.