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CIA and Gen Z

washingtonian.com

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Re: CIA and Gen Z

#51

Post by nebula8804 »

mcguire wrote: post #33
keewee7 wrote: post #13

I'm Gen Z. Most Gen Zs are socialists (we actually know what it means) with a small minority of libertarians. Very few would want to work for the CIA.

Wait, I thought all the Gen Z's were living with their parents, unemployed, and desperate for an income to pay off their student loans.

Thats Millenials. They got hit with the GFC as they were leaving college and then COVID hit as soon as they clawed their way out of the GFC to buy a house/start families. This is in contrast to Boomers(their parents) who had excellent financial prospects growing up. To make things worse, they pinned their hopes on Obama's "Hope and change" which was a complete sham.

Gen Z had no illusions that this was a fair world from the get go. They got converted to pessimism early since their parents (Gen X) were the first gen after boomers to have an overall decline. A large chunk supported Bernie and watching him get trampled and robbed in 2020 allowed them to see how the world really works early on! The rest of the non-Bernie gen-Z are typically rural(but not always) watching far right junk like Ben Shapiro. I see a lot of youtubers in riral areas that fight for Trump/newish right wingers to the party.

On the plus side while Gen X was a desert in terms of progressives(probably because Boomers stamped them out early on) Millennials and to a greater extend Gen-Z have a lot of energetic fresh blood in the pipeline to shift the country far left. I saw with my own eyes how hard they pushed during the 2020 primaries to replace as many incumbents as they could. They mostly fell short but that energy is still there. We are going to see a lot of amazing leftist Gen Z leaders in my opinion.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#52

Post by jjk166 »

handrous wrote: post #19
keewee7 wrote: post #13

I'm Gen Z. Most Gen Zs are socialists (we actually know what it means) with a small minority of libertarians. Very few would want to work for the CIA.

> Thirty-one percent of voters ages 18 to 24 supported Trump in November, according to exit polls, down from 37 percent in 2016. From NBC. Sure, 37% isn't "most", but I think it's a fair guess that if 37% supported Trump, well under 50% of the total are socialists.

In 2016, the oldest gen Zers were turning 18. Everyone 19-24 in that age range would have been millennials. Also many Trump supporters are libertarians.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#53

Post by mywittyname »

handrous wrote: post #39
thereddaikon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual socialists had secret police. Every government has intelligence services. What do you think being a socialist means and what does that have to do with working for the CIA?

Most folks throwing around "socialist" in a positive light in the US mean it like "social democracy", as in the Nordics or various European social-democratic parties. The socialist-socialists—having known a few—usually just say Marxist or communist to describe their position, in my experience. "Socialist" only means "like Venezuela or East Germany" when a Republican is saying it, not when people self-describe as soci…

> "Socialist" only means "like Venezuela or East Germany" when a Republican is saying it, not when people self-describe as socialist.

Republicans have a weird definition of socialism. They seem to conflate it with dictatorships.

Super fucking hot take here, but the former president would be called a socialist by any Republican if he was the leader of any other country. He every hallmark trait of a dictator of a failed state: populist, authoritarian, self-serving, cult of personality, strong man, bribes supporters with state funds, uses police power to crush political opponents, etc, etc.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#54

Post by jjk166 »

> If the whole point of being a spy is that nobody knows who you really are and no one can ever find out, how exactly are you supposed to achieve this level of anonymity when you’ve flung untold reams of identifiable content across the digital world?

When everyone has an online presence, the absence of such a presence raises huge red flags. I would expect every spy on earth nowadays has tons of pictures on social media showing them having fun with their friends, cool vacations they've been on, selfies with famous people they've met. So long as they don't tweet something dumb like "CIA's sending me to Belarus #Coup2022", anyone looking at their profile will most likely see a normal person who is probably here for normal reasons. Sure maybe if they went over the profile with a fine tooth comb they'ed notice some things that don't add up, but there isn't a reason to look closer. On the other hand the person without a social media gets scrutinized, and regardless of when you were born there is information on you out there that a sufficiently motivated individual can find.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#55

Post by cwkoss »

missinfo wrote: post #40
keewee7 wrote: post #13

I'm Gen Z. Most Gen Zs are socialists (we actually know what it means) with a small minority of libertarians. Very few would want to work for the CIA.

What does it mean?

CIA is infamous for using espionage and other tactics to overthrow socialist governments.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#56

Post by jollybean »

keewee7 wrote: post #13

I'm Gen Z. Most Gen Zs are socialists (we actually know what it means) with a small minority of libertarians. Very few would want to work for the CIA.

Socialism has nothing to do with one's propensity to be a part of security apparatus, and, I suspect you're basically wrong about 'your generation'. More than likely, all of your friends fit that description (and your projecting), and, you're failing to take into consideration that people change perspective as they get older and wiser. Also, GenZ are basically still children, they're not even out of school. So whatever they believe has to be contextualized strongly by that.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#57

Post by m0zg »

keewee7 wrote: post #13

I'm Gen Z. Most Gen Zs are socialists (we actually know what it means) with a small minority of libertarians. Very few would want to work for the CIA.

My son is Gen Z. From what he has shown me in his chats his (rather large) peer group is based AF. That's in the bluest part of a deep blue state. I can only imagine what they're chatting about in the Rust Belt.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#58

Post by noahtallen »

bitwize wrote: post #42
handrous wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most folks throwing around "socialist" in a positive light in the US mean it like "social democracy", as in the Nordics or various European social-democratic parties. The socialist-socialists—having known a few—usually just say Marxist or communist to describe their position, in my experience. "Socialist" only means "like Venezuela or East Germany" when a Republican is saying it, not when people self-describe as soci…

Then there are the democratic socialists, who are actually socialist (unlike the social democrats) but who disavow Marxism-Leninism. Problem is, assuming you set up a democratic socialist regime, if you want to keep the democratic bit, you risk losing the socialist bit (and vice versa). A lot of demsocs don't realize this; many believe that democracy and socialism are completely coterminous with each other.

One counterpoint is that a lot of social programs are hard to get rid of. Even though the right campaigns against new social programs sometimes, there’s no way they can convince their electorate to get rid of existing social programs. For example, there would be very little political will to get rid of government-provided unemployment insurance, even though right-wing rhetoric is often against that sort of program.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#59

Post by dang »

mcguire wrote: post #33
keewee7 wrote: post #13

I'm Gen Z. Most Gen Zs are socialists (we actually know what it means) with a small minority of libertarians. Very few would want to work for the CIA.

Wait, I thought all the Gen Z's were living with their parents, unemployed, and desperate for an income to pay off their student loans.

Please don't do generational flamewar here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

p.s. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29181413 was much much better. Talking about personal experiences usually is.

Re: CIA and Gen Z

#60

Post by mindslight »

mjevans wrote: post #46
humanwhosits wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like we should stop treating SSN user id like a password

SSN is current the _defacto_, unplanned, person ID and somehow also password. I agree this is insane. A National ID, that is designed to more strongly prove ID and also designed to be used as a secure form of Authentication for Authorization services... THAT is what I'd really love politicians to approve. I'm currently in the process of upgrading my enhanced ID drivers license to a Passport (done) and then applying f…

Until there are laws putting a stop to the ongoing abuse of the current identification system by commercial surveillance (ala GDPR), a stronger identification system is a non-starter.
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