Faculty Writing: OK, Boomer and Billionaire Presidents

In N+1, Patrick Blanchfield challenges the aesthetic distinction between Michael Bloomberg and Donald Trump, confronting the false choice between two racist, authoritarian candidates and the systemic effort to holding voters hostage. Blanchfield writes: “[W]hen these billionaires run for President, and everyone downticket scrambles to figure out how to either play nice and get a slice or resist and get crushed, such ordinary people must wrestle not just with whether to hold their noses and vote, but, much more urgently, how they are going to survive.”

Ajay Singh Chaudhary, in Dilettante Army, uses the “OK Boomer” meme as a jumping-off point, complicating generational conflict with class analysis and discussing the historical material, ideological, and emotional terrain of contemporary angst. Chaudhary writes: “It’s not Boomers that OK Boomer really aims at per se but at a “Boomerist” “structure of feeling” which has long outlived not only its material foundations but even, in some cases, its ideological armature.”