I feel the elderly angle is exaggerated, in a self-defeatist way. People in their 60’s aren’t elderly.
I’ve still to go to reach 50, and while I know I’m in the younger section of the group here, I’m not nearly the youngest active user, and most really active users are in their 50’s to 60’s, not elderly.
Maybe lurkers skew older than that (I don’t know), but that isn’t really relevant, as lurkers dying of old age does not a discussion death make.
Too late. Everything you’ve said is already on the net.
May as well keep saying what you think till they come to get you – and then, for that matter, as by that point (if they get there) they’re gonna get you anyway. Surrendering pre-emptively is only going to save you temporarily. Not surrendering, if enough people do it, just might help (though these boards are unlikely to make much difference.)
Yeah, this.
If we reach a point where Trump makes every website except Fox News illegal and AI bots are stealing my socks to make my life hell and society is reduced to code-using people desperately trying not to get sent to the camps, then I have far larger things to worry about than MPSIMS anyway.
Our very existence stands on our ability to not make waves and thus be noticed by the the powers that own us. The people that run this place have to take that under consideration when making decisions about what and who to allow here. Yes, we are just a tiny concern in a forest of giants, but that means that what it would take to shut us down would only have to be just as small…just enough for someone to say “Times are tough and getting tougher and we already have enough shit on our plate to deal with. We sure as hell aren’t dying on this hill.”
I’ll add to the votes that we’re a lot more likely to be destroyed by neglect/cost-cutting by the powers that be than any sort of directed takedown, though it’s certainly a non-zero chance. The reason though for the second to be slightly more likely than the norm isn’t (IMHO) because of our screeds against Trump, but because we have a number of obsessive love-hate Trocks that might make it a point to try to whip up (negative) interest in us. And even then, I consider it a low order priority.
For that matter , it’s been mentioned in many other threads that in the event of us losing the SDMB, some of our members are able to create a (hopefully equally moderated) Reddit, or other forum, though given the example of losses due to the migration to Discourse, it might be a fatal blow anyway over the medium term.
And there are of course other options in terms that many of us are thinking loudly be being too polite to explicitly mention out of deference to board rules.
Back to the motivation and political futures of social media and message boards… while I’m not sanguine about the future at all, my hopes revolve around two facts so far. One, the Republican fervor for Trump seems largely focused on him and him alone. Sure, there are plenty of smarter, and just as evil bastards out there that would do more deliberate damage, but none of them seem to have the universal appeal he does. And, following on to that, Trump is old, and his mentality and actual health are very open to doubt. If we’re luckier than we’ve been to date, he could drop dead or into a vegetative state soon (to your noodlely sensors oh FSM) and the infighting over who would wear the mantle could give us a chance to claw back from the edge.
Honestly, I don’t think we’ll manage. As said in many other threads, the magic of democracy is that a critical mass of citizens believe in and want it, and it sure looks like the critical mass is in the other direction. Whatever grows out of the infighting I mentioned above isn’t going to unlearn the fact that far too many people want a popular dictator and our traditions are zero effective protection to someone who doesn’t care.
And that’s leaving out (and back to the OP) that another factor to make Democracy work is at least a basic agreement on a shared reality. And social media bubbles in general, along with a bloody-minded willingness to ignore it in favor of “secret knowledge” and general lack of curiosity, may have killed that factor as well.
I very much concur with your post.
And here is still another serious point here: Trump has asked his staffers to make up lists of people they consider not loyal to Trump or have participated in legal action against him. Staffers complied enthusiastically, made up lists with photos and addresses of people they considered illoyal. This is very subjective, no possibility of objection by the person concerned. Old personal conflicts and vendettas might play a role. How can you be sure that what you write in a blog or in the SDMB for that matter is not considered under such aspects? Can you be sure that your posts are not used for such actions?
Yes, he could, but I am sorry to inform you that it is less probably than you think. Here are the actuarial life tables for the US population in general, and he may eat awfully and be somewhat overweight even after his ozempic spree, but to reach a probability of death within the next year of more than 50% you have to be 107 years old (for men, 108 for women). He is 78 and is being taken good care of, despite his pick of Robert Kennedy Jr., his chances of dying in the next four year are a priori, without taking his life style & choices into account: 5.3229%, 5.8778%, 6.4617%, and 7.0947%, which in total adds up to less than 30%. His life expectancy (defined in that page as the average remaining number of years expected prior to death for a person at that exact age) is 8.95 years. The odds of him surviving his regular term are over 70%.
That does not take murder into account, in this regard his chances of dying may be higher than average, despite the Secret Service’s efforts. But other people being murdered is also included in the table’s numbers, so it is probably not such a relevant factor.
No argument, which is why I added a ton of qualifiers, such as “If we’re luckier than we’ve been to tdate”, and didn’t assume his health was terrible, just that the reporting on such is subject to major doubt, and lastly calling upon a unfeeling unverifiable deity to make it so. 
I join you in that call, if you don’t mind. Costs nothing. Seldom works. Godott is a right wing bitch.
BTW: This board has a game called Celebrity Death Pool that shows clearly how improbable it is that someone dies. At least if you play like I do. Still no points this year for me. 
There’s no such thing as “too small to bother with” for fascists; everyone and everything must submit and conform.
There are no firm definitions, but the IRS tax counseling program for the elderly starts at age 60. Some states, likewise. Just saying.
There should be nothing pejorative about being called elderly - you can’t cling to youth.
I agree with this. For most of human history being called ‘grandfather’ was a term of great respect.
I am a new poster indeed and I am very much interested in global politics. All Trump All The Time is exactly what politics are at the moment. The new president Trump has upended not only the American politics and society but is going on to do this to the global order too. The Musk guys got access to the most sensitive data of American people, can use (and change!) them at will. This is a serious question. As long as SDMB is allowed to exist with free speech this topic is a very interesting and essential one. I cannot imagine that people interested in the fate and future of their own country as well as their individual future fade away from this kind of discussions. But I acknowledge that I probably should have posted this thread in ‘Politics and Elections’.
This.
Please allow me to ask you a question: your poster name read backwards is Red Shirt. Is there a message in it?
It’s the name of a mercenary character in the webcomic Schlock Mercenary. In turn, his name was a reference to the “Red Shirts” of classic Star Trek, who had a reputation for dying a lot.
And he did end up a casualty multiple times, including being reduced to a head in a jar. He’s just lucky their medical technology is better than Star Trek’s…
Or maybe not.
As Garry Kasparov once put it, in Putin’s Russia, some critical press coverage is allowed to give him just enough credibility to tell his critics “See, we allow dissent here. You have it all wrong.” These are platforms that are small, out of sight, and not consumed by the average person. SDMB fits that description, I think. We’re more likely to see the more serious crackdowns on major social media platforms such as X, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, etc. Popular critics’ channels will be shutdown without warning due to ‘TOS violations’ or shit like that.
OK. Let me ask you this: do you (the 60-something SDMB member in general) feel elderly, or feel like you live the life of the elderly? I know many people in their 60’s and none of them do.
Age-wise, things are not how they used to be, and how the IRS etc. might still draw the lines.
Oh, thank you so much, that is interesting!
Yeah, it just seems like when people hit their late 70s, the health wheels start to really wobble, if not outright fall off. And this is exacerbated by poor health in most cases.
And FWIW, that’s 2021 data, and he’d have been 75 then. So 10.95, which is about 7 more years from now.
The question really isn’t whether he’ll drop dead, but rather be messed up by age-related stuff to the point where he can’t do the job anymore. And I suspect he’s pretty close, just by his age. Most people start to have the health wheels wobbling pretty good in their late 70s, if not actually coming off. He’s also in prime stroke territory, due to age and sex.
I walk a couple miles a few times a week. So, no.
However, I have two medical diagnoses, both communicated to me, in the past five years, that would sound disqualifying to the average voter. One of them is chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and the other is a heart valve disease.
My guess is that these elderly politicians have something wrong with them, but we do not know what. Their physician’s loyalty is to their patient, not the public.