COVID-19 and American Ageism

yellow t-shirt with a design that includes the covid molecule and the words "boomer remover"
A “Boomer Remover” t-shirt for sale on a website.

This post was written by Dr. David Papke and Dr. Elise Papke.

In periods of social strain, assorted societal biases are more likely to come in play. That seems to be the case with American ageism, and as a result it has become even harder than before to be an older American.

Ageism is a multifaceted phenomenon that includes micro-aggression, inattentiveness, harmful stereotypes, and, of course, bias and discrimination. Ageist people often claim that they are trying to help seniors or that they are only joking. Seniors usually see through this, but ageism nevertheless leaves many feeling inferior or even worthless.

One example of ageist rhetoric that has surfaced in the midst of the pandemic is “Boomer Remover.” Offensive and even a bit frightening, this meme or catchphrase refers to and implicitly endorses the notion that the virus will reduce the number of annoying Baby Boomers.

For some time now, Baby Boomers have been thought to be a drain on society’s resources, especially because of their uninsured medical expenses and need for financial support.

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Trump’s Willingness to Destroy Culture

the Pink Mosque in Shiraz
Nasir al-Mulk Mosque (the Pink Mosque) in Shiraz

In the midst of our recent, deadly skirmishes with Iran, President Trump at one point threatened to bomb 52 sites that were “important to Iran and the Iranian culture.”  Commentators quickly pointed out that doing so would violate the UNESCO World Heritage Convention as well as the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.  (For just a sampling of those responses, see here, here, here, here, and here.)  For my own part, I was struck by the President’s understanding of “culture” and his willingness to destroy it.

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An Anti-Labor Secretary of Labor

Given the never-ending political tumult within the Washington, D.C., Beltway, it was easy to overlook the Senate confirmation on September 26, 2019, of Eugene Scalia as Secretary of Labor.  The party-line confirmation vote irritated workers and their representatives, who pointed out that Scalia’s claims to be a neutral advocate of his clients’ interests helped obscure his long-standing anti-labor politics.

The Department of Labor was established as a Cabinet-level agency on March 4, 1913, the last day of the Taft presidency.  The Department’s purpose was to foster the well-being of wage earners by improving their working conditions and protecting their work-related rights.  Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, nobody doubted the Department of Labor’s job was protecting working people.

Eugene Scalia’s career, by contrast, has been devoted to fighting workers and their unions on behalf of big business and the rich.  The son of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Eugene Scalia was employed for twenty years in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.  He represented, among others, Boeing, Chevron, SeaWorld, UPS, and Walmart, not to mention assorted Wall Street banks.

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