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    Young Americans Can’t Keep Funding Boomers and Beyond

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    You know the expression “OK, Boomer”? Better said as “Boomer OK.” That’s because the social safety net in the United States is increasingly favoring the old over the young. And this affects our political views and the security of future generations.Younger Americans have valid reason for disgruntlement: Big shifts in income and wealth are dramatically favoring their elders. Under almost every president since 1980, 80 percent of the real growth in domestic spending has gone to Social Security and health care, with Medicare the most expensive health program, according to calculations based on federal data. As a share of GDP, all other domestic outlays combined have declined.Our current tax system also largely does not help Americans, most of whom are younger, pay for their higher education. That wasn’t as big a deal in the 1960s or 1970s, when the average college graduate most likely had little or no student debt. Today, the average taken out each year is about seven times that in 1971, in part because state governments have stripped colleges and universities of funding. This is happening at a time when owning a house is increasingly out of reach. The median price has risen from about 3.5 times median annual income in 1984 to 5.8 times in 2022.So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that today, younger generations are more likely to fall into lower-income classes than their parents or grandparents. Nearly a half century ago, it was the reverse. And in 1989, the median net worth of Americans aged 35 to 44 was nearly 75 percent of those aged 65 to 74. By 2022, that ratio had fallen to one-third.The why is simple. Unlike most other spending, Congress effectively designed Medicare in 1965 and Social Security in the 1970s in such a way that outlays would increase forever faster than our national income. That’s partly because Medicare costs keep rising along with medical prices and new treatments and because Social Security benefits are designed to increase for each new generation along with inflation and wages. And we’re living longer, which means more years of benefits.Today, tax revenues are so committed to mandatory spending, largely for older Americans, and to interest on the national debt (which has quadrupled as a share of G.D.P. since 1980) that few revenues are left for everything else. So, unless we borrow to pay for it, there’s little for education, infrastructure, environment, affordable housing, reducing poverty, or the military.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Landon Y. Jones, Who Made People a Star Among Magazines, Dies at 80

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      An unapologetic champion of the newsworthiness of celebrities, he also drew attention to teenage pregnancy and helped popularize the term “baby boomer.”Landon Y. Jones, who was the top editor of People magazine in the 1990s, when its profits increased fourfold, and whose fascination with popular culture inspired him to write a 1980 book that helped popularize the term “baby boomer,” died on Aug. 17 in Plainsboro, N.J. He was 80.His son, Landon Jones III, said the cause of his death, in a hospital near Princeton, N.J., where he had lived for more than 50 years, was complications of myelofibrosis.An unapologetic champion of the newsworthiness of celebrities, Mr. Jones was perpetually eager to learn about the next famous person. As a writer for People, he interviewed a young Bill Gates in 1983 and brought along a colleague, one of the few he knew with a personal computer, to help him understand the Windows operating system.During his stint as People’s managing editor, the top editorial job, from 1989 to 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, appeared on the cover dozens of times. Mr. Jones would say that People, a publication of Time Inc., was about the “three D’s”: Diana, diet and death, specifically that of celebrities.“There were other people at People who dreamed of being on the big book — on Time,” Jeff Jarvis, a colleague of Mr. Jones’s, said in an interview. “But I never sensed that Lanny was chagrined about being on People. It was the pathway that led to the things that fascinated him, like baby boomers and celebrity. He did it with pride.”During Mr. Jones’s tenure, People introduced color printing; moved its newsstand date from Monday to Friday to capture weekend supermarket sales traffic; and made women its primary target audience.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Do With an Inheritance

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      A sudden windfall while grieving can be an emotional minefield, particularly for younger adults. Experts share ways to handle it wisely.Michael Hay knew his mother was financially secure, but he didn’t fully know her situation until she was admitted to a hospital in August and he was granted her power of attorney. Even then, it wasn’t until his mother’s unexpected death, about a month later, that Mr. Hay understood that he and his two sisters were about to inherit a sum that would make a real difference in their lives.Nine months later, Mr. Hay, 47, says he’s still processing the shock of suddenly losing his 78-year-old mother while gaining an inheritance he wasn’t prepared to receive.“I still call it ‘my mom’s money’ even though it’s legally in my name,” said Mr. Hay, who works at a tech start-up and lives in Madison County, N.Y.Mr. Hay’s reaction to his sudden wealth is not unusual. “It is a big shock both emotionally and financially, and I don’t know that anyone is ever prepared,” said Kathryn Kubiak-Rizzone, founder of About Time Financial Planning in Rochester, N.Y. She recommends that beneficiaries not make any financial decisions for the first six months because they’re likely to still be grieving.Research shows that more adult children may find themselves unexpectedly inheriting wealth over the next two decades. The silent generation, or people born roughly between 1928 and 1945, and its successors, the baby boomers, are expected to transfer significant wealth to members of Generation X and millennials over the next 20 years, according to the Wealth Report, a publication from Knight Frank, a London global property consultant.Federal Reserve figures show that half of all inheritances are less than $50,000, but with boomers reaching 80 and beyond, members of their family may begin to inherit more wealth. More than half of millennials who are anticipating an inheritance from their parents or another relative expect to gain at least $350,000, according to a survey by Alliant Credit Union in Chicago. (Whether they actually receive that much is another question.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Are You Having a Millennial Mom Midlife Crisis?

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      Mothers have been exhausted since the beginning of time, but some difficulties are specific to the millennial generation.There was dog urine on the carpet, vomit on her blouse and a queasy 7-year-old to look after, but Dr. Whitney Casares had just a few spare moments to clean up and change so she could resume the keynote presentation she had been giving when the school nurse called.Dr. Casares, 42, a pediatrician in Portland, Ore., tried to clean up both messes and race back to her computer. “But I was completely unnerved and underperformed,” she said. “When my husband” — who hadn’t picked up when the school called — “and younger daughter came home a few hours later, the first words out of their mouths were ‘Didn’t you get anything for dinner?’ and ‘Why does it smell so bad in here?’”In that moment, said Dr. Casares, the author of “Doing It All: Stop Over-Functioning and Become the Mom and Person You’re Meant to Be,” she related to a Taylor Swift lyric: “I did all the extra credit, then got graded on a curve.”It has always been exhausting to be a mother, but each generation has had its particular pressures and ways of coping. Boomer moms didn’t expect motherhood to be anything but difficult, though the lack of social awareness around anxiety and depression meant most would never openly discuss it. Generation X moms had to prove that they could do everything men could do — and then come home and work a second shift. Some Gen Xers were children of divorce, manifested an ironic detachment from their troubles and were prescribed Prozac to deal.And then came millennial moms, the women raised on “You go, girl!” in the 1980s and ’90s and who today are in their 30s and early 40s. On average, they enrolled in college in higher numbers than men, married later and delayed having children, sometimes to prioritize careers and other times because — with student debt and less wealth than previous generations — it felt impossible not to.Still, it seemed like some things had worked out in their favor. Perhaps they could juggle work and motherhood more successfully. Maybe their male partners, if they had them, would be more attuned to gender imbalances at home.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The DeSantis Campaign Is Revealing What Republican Voters Really Want

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      If Ron DeSantis surprises in Iowa and beyond, if he recovers from his long polling swoon and wins the Republican nomination, it will represent the triumph of a simple, intuitive, but possibly mistaken idea: That voters should be taken at their word about what they actually want from their leaders.It was always clear, going into 2024, that a large minority of the Republican primary electorate would vote for Donald Trump no matter what — including, in the event of his untimely passing, for the former president’s reanimated corpse or his A.I. simulation. A smaller bloc strongly preferred a pre-Trump and un-Trump-like Republican; this has become the Nikki Haley constituency.This left a crucial middle bloc, maybe 40 percent of the party in my own guesstimation, that was Trump-friendly but also seemingly persuadable and open to another choice. These were those Republicans who mostly hadn’t voted for Trump in the early primaries in 2016, who had regarded him as the lesser of two evils during his tilt with Hillary Clinton, but who had gradually become more authentically favorable toward him over the course of his presidency — because of the judges he appointed, because of the strength of the economy, because they reacted against the hysteria of his liberal opponents, or just because of the alchemy of partisan identification.I talked to a lot of these kind of Republicans between 2016 and 2020 — not a perfectly representative sample, probably weighted too heavily toward Uber drivers and Catholic lawyer dads, but still enough to recognize a set of familiar refrains. These voters liked Trump’s policies more than his personality. They didn’t like some of his tweets and insults, so they mostly just tuned them out. They thought that he had the measure of liberals in a way that prior Republicans had not, that his take-no-prisoners style was suited to the scale of liberal media bias and progressive cultural hegemony. But they acknowledged that he didn’t always seem entirely in charge of his own administration, fully competent in the day-to-day running of the government.So their official position was that they wanted a version of Trump with less drama, who wasn’t constantly undermined by his generals or his bureaucrats, who didn’t seem confused about the difference between tweeting about a problem and actually addressing it. They didn’t want to go back to the pre-Trump G.O.P., but they also didn’t just want to replay Trump’s first term — especially how it ended, with Trump at war with his own public health apparatus over Covid while a left-wing cultural revolution surged through American cities and schools and mass media.Ron DeSantis’s entire persona as governor of Florida seemed to meet this ostensible demand. He had a strong record of both political and legislative success, having moved Florida rightward at the ballot box and in public policy — a clear contrast with Trump, as a one-term president who presided over notable Republican political defeats. DeSantis was a cultural battler who seemed more adept than Trump at picking fights and more willing than many pre-Trump Republicans to risk the wrath of big donors and corporations. His Covid record was exactly in tune with the party’s mood; he exuded competence when a hurricane hit; he fought constantly with the media and still won over Florida’s swing voters. If Republicans wanted to keep key elements of Trumpism but joined to greater competence, if they wanted a president who would promise to build a wall and then actually complete it, DeSantis was clearly the best and only possibility.Those voters still have a chance, beginning in Iowa, to make the choice they claimed to want. But if current polls are correct and they mostly just return to Trump, what will it say about how political identification really works?One argument will be that DeSantis failed the voters who were open to supporting him, by failing to embody on the campaign trail the brand that he built up in Florida and that had built him solid national polling numbers before he jumped into the race.For instance, it’s clear that the ability to wrangle happily with the liberal media is a crucial part of the Trumpian persona, and having showed some of that ability in Florida, DeSantis unaccountably tried to run a presidential campaign exclusively via right-wing outlets and very-online formats like his disastrous Muskian debut. His lack of charisma relative to Trump was always going to be a problem, but he still made it worse by cocooning himself, initially at least, from the conflicts that should have been a selling point.Or again, any Trumpism-without-Trump would presumably need to copy some of Trump’s flair for ideological heterodoxy, his willingness to ignore the enforcers of True Conservatism and promise big — new infrastructure projects, universal health care, flying cars — whatever the indifferent follow-through. And again, while the DeSantis of Florida seemed to have some instinct for this approach — attacking woke ideology in schools while also raising teacher salaries, say — as a presidential candidate he’s been more conventional, running the kind of ideologically narrow campaign that already failed to deliver Ted Cruz the nomination in 2016.But allowing for these kind of specific critiques of how DeSantis has failed to occupy the space he seemed to have carved out, his struggles still seem more about the gap between what voters might seem to want on paper and how political attractions are actually forged.Here DeSantis might be compared to the foil in many romantic comedies — Ralph Bellamy in a Cary Grant vehicle, Bill Pullman in “Sleepless in Seattle,” the boyfriend left behind in the city while the heroine reconnects with her small-town roots in various TV Christmas movies. He’s the guy who’s entirely suitable, perfectly sympathetic and yet incapable of inspiring passion or devotion.Or again, to borrow an insight from a friend, DeSantis is an avatar for the generation to which he (like me, just barely) belongs: He’s the type of Generation X-er who pretends to be alienated and rebellious but actually has a settled marriage, a padded résumé, a strong belief in systems and arguments and plans — and a constant middle-aged annoyance at the more vibes-based style of his boomer elders and millennial juniors.The Republican Party in the Trump era has boasted a lot of Gen X leaders, from Cruz and Marco Rubio to Paul Ryan and Haley. But numerically and spiritually, the country belongs to the boomers and millennials, to vibes instead of plans.This might be especially true for a Republican Party that’s becoming more working-class, with more disaffected and lower-information voters, fewer intensely focused consumers of the news, less interest than the Democratic electorate in policy plans and litmus tests. (Though even the Democratic electorate in 2020 opted against its most plans-based candidates in the end, which is why an analogy between DeSantis and Elizabeth Warren has floated around social media.)And it’s definitely true in the narrative context created by Trump’s legal battles, all the multiplying prosecutions, which were clearly the inflection point in DeSantis’s descent from plausible successor to likely also-ran.If a majority or plurality of Republican voters really just wanted a form of Trumpism free of Trump’s roiling personal drama, a version of his administration’s policies without the chaos and constant ammunition given to his enemies, the indictments were the ideal opportunity to break decisively for DeSantis — a figure who, whatever his other faults, seems very unlikely to stuff classified documents in his bathroom or pay hush money to a porn star.But it doesn’t feel at all surprising that, instead, voters seem ready to break decisively for Trump. The prosecutions created an irresistible drama, a theatrical landscape of persecution rather than a quotidian competition between policy positions, a gripping narrative to join rather than a mere list of promises to back. And irresistible theater, not a more effective but lower-drama alternative, appears to be the revealed preference of the Republican coalition, the thing its voters really want.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      The Hidden Moral Injury of ‘OK Boomer’

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      Mourners gathered around San Francisco City Hall this week to remember Senator Dianne Feinstein, one of the most formidable politicians of her generation. Her passing meant not just the end of her political career, but also the end of a furious argument over her age and condition. Why did she stay in the Senate for so long? And even so, as one argument ends, others continue: about Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump and many others.I can’t remember the last time our country had a longer or more agonizing conversation about age. It kicked off in the most morally troubling way possible, in the early days of the pandemic, when a number of politicians, celebrities and even ordinary people minimized the severity of the disease in language that diminished the value of older Americans.Notoriously, in March 2020, Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, went on Tucker Carlson’s television show and suggested that senior citizens should be “willing to take a chance” on their survival to preserve the American economy. In New York, nursing home deaths were deliberately concealed, an act that publicly minimized the magnitude of the loss.The right-wing influencer Candace Owens dismissed the seriousness of Covid, because, in her words, “people think it’s novel that 80 year olds are dying at a high rate from a flu.” I heard similar sentiments from members of my own community throughout the lockdowns. I can’t tell you how many times someone said, when an older person died, “How much time did they have left anyway?”This debate unfolded as the term “OK Boomer” was taking off, both as a silly mockery of tech-ignorant grandparents and an angry battle cry against an older generation that younger Americans believe failed them. Worse still, they just won’t get out of the way.It’s impossible to ignore the advanced age of key American leaders. Joe Biden is 80. Donald Trump is 77. Mitch McConnell is 81. Chuck Grassley is 90. Feinstein was 90 when she died in office. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was 87. Age was on 76-year-old Mitt Romney’s mind when he announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election to the Senate. “At the end of another term, I’d be in my mid-80s. Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders,” he said.I don’t equate all these situations. Some of the sentiments expressed at the start of the pandemic were monstrous. Concerns about aging and often infirm leaders at the highest levels of American politics, in all three branches of government, are far more understandable and much less grotesque than asking senior citizens to court death in the midst of a pandemic. The generational dismissiveness inherent in “OK Boomer” lies somewhere in between. Nonetheless, there is a common theme — a shift to viewing older people in America not as assets, but rather as obstacles. They’re barriers to our own dreams and ambitions.One column is insufficient for teasing out all the reasons for this shift, but I want to explore one aspect that bothers me greatly. The centrality of work and career to our sense of self and identity — especially in America’s educated classes — is damaging old and young alike. In 2019, Derek Thompson popularized the term “workism” in The Atlantic to describe how our careers have “morphed into a religious identity.” Earlier this year, he summed up the “history of work” like this: “from jobs to careers to callings.”In January, the Pew Research Center released a startling report describing parents’ priorities for their children. An extraordinary 88 percent said that financial independence was extremely or very important. The same percentage placed the same priority on their kids having careers they enjoy. In contrast, only 21 percent said it was extremely or very important for their children to get married. A mere 20 percent said it was extremely or very important for their kids to have children.Workism tells older Americans who might think otherwise that their job is core to who they are. Likewise, workism tells younger Americans that their job will define them. It is core to who they’re becoming. Read in this way, it is easy to see why older Americans are reluctant to simply “step aside.” If they feel able — and it’s easier to feel able when your job centers on your mind rather than your body — then the demand to leave is an attack on their essential identity.At the same time, for those who are seeking to forge their identity, the obstacle of aging leadership can be maddening. Young professionals do seek mentorship, of course, but all too often mentors are seen as valuable only so long as they keep giving. And then, when they’ve given all they can, they must decrease, so that their protégés can increase and take their place in the sun.It’s necessary to think hard about our first answers to a deceptively simple question: “Who are you?” If my honest first response is “I am a columnist” more than a husband, a father, or a grandfather, then when I get older I will wrap my arms around that identity and refuse to let go. If that first answer is centered on faith and family, then the sunset of my career will not be the sunset of my purpose. I will be more willing to release that which I value less because I still preserve that which I value most.But just as older Americans can have an obligation to let go of professions and power, young Americans can have obligations to hold on to their elders, to treasure them rather than shove them aside. Ancient wisdom can speak to modern conflicts, and ever since the onset of the generational conflicts during the pandemic, I’ve pondered a key part of the Westminster Larger Catechism, an almost 400-year-old statement of Protestant theology. It takes an expansive view of the Fifth Commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” The catechism asserts that father and mother don’t merely refer to your biological parents, but to “all superiors in age and gifts.”And what duties do we owe to the older people in our lives? The catechism outlines a beautiful balance. We are called to the “defense and maintenance of their persons and authority” at the same time that we are “bearing with their infirmities, and covering them in love.” In a true ethic of respect and care, the spirit of “OK Boomer” is nowhere to be found.The Mitt Romney Christmas card is legendary in some niche circles in Washington. Every December, he sends out a simple picture of his growing family. You can Google it and see it expand, year by year. First, he and his five sons could field a Romney basketball team. Then, when the sons married and had children, they could field a Romney football team. But that picture is also a declaration — this is who I am.Skeptics might claim that Romney let go of his power because holding it would be hard. In these polarized times, he was vulnerable to a challenge from the Utah right. Perhaps, but it’s also true that he retains immense purpose, and the picture captures that purpose. An ethos that locates our meaning in those relationships can tell the young to value the wisdom and experience of the old and tell our nation’s older generations that great blessings can flow from the end of even the most rewarding careers.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      At 'The Villages,' the Party Never Ends for Boomers

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      THE VILLAGES, Fla. — “Which side are you on?!”A highly animated older gentleman named Ray-Ray is shouting in my ear, demanding to know my political orientation. “You still haven’t told us!”I am tucked into the outdoor bar of City Fire, a popular watering hole in the Villages, the massive senior-living community in Central Florida that has gained notoriety as a MAGA stronghold. After a couple of cold, drizzly January days — very un-Villagelike, residents keep assuring me — people are eager to fraternize once more.Inside, the restaurant is crowded, with patrons nodding along to the live music or cutting loose on the small dance floor. Outside, where heaters and plastic sheeting hold back the chill, folks are packed together watching golf on the TVs, taking advantage of the $3 happy-hour beer and swapping stories at top volume. It’s a boisterous crowd. Villagers, as the community’s 130,000 residents are known, tend to be an outgoing bunch. They are perpetually coming up to introduce themselves and then quiz you about yourself. These folks love a good party — and a good argument.An enclave of homes in the Villages.Damon Winter/The New York TimesA Saturday farmers’ market draws residents and visitors to Brownwood Paddock, one of three town centers.Damon Winter/The New York TimesI’m talking with a small gaggle of veterans — all men, all supporters of former President Donald Trump — about voting rights and voting fraud. This is a hot topic in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has become a crusader for voting restrictions — or “guardrails,” as he calls them. It is also a topic with fresh relevance at the Villages, where four residents have been arrested in recent months on allegations of voting twice in the 2020 election. (Three of the four were registered Republicans.) Legally speaking, double voting is a no-no, the kind of fraud a certain former president and his followers might consider worth fretting about.Not my City Fire companions. “You’re talking about four votes out of more than a hundred thousand people!” objects Ray-Ray. In fact, around the Villages, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than two to one, I haven’t run across many conservatives perturbed by the possible fraud in their midst. Some profess to know little if anything about the arrests. Others, like Ray-Ray and his buddy Marty, are fired up about voting fraud generally — just not the kind where a few of their neighbors may have done something careless or stupid.During the 2020 presidential campaign, supporters of Donald Trump waited to see him at a rally at the Villages Polo Club.Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the contrary, these vets say they know what real fraud looks like. They hail from places like Michigan and Pennsylvania, where the cities, they say, are rife with electoral malfeasance, some of which they claim to have seen firsthand. (Marty insists Detroit is a disaster.) The piddling, isolated incidents that maybe happened here? Pfft. They could not care less. And the fact that I am asking about the issue tells them which team I root for in the great blood sport of American politics. As if being part of the Fake News media weren’t bad enough. The men have already warned me that there is a gun-toting regular whom I should avoid tonight if I don’t want trouble.Marty and Ray-Ray are, of course, joking. Even in the midst of a political rant, the residents here are an overwhelmingly helpful, friendly bunch. That is, after all, the motto of this place, as trumpeted on the banners hanging all around the town squares: “The Villages: America’s Friendliest Hometown.”But for many people, “friendly” is not the first word that springs to mind to describe the Villages. The conservative community has long been a campaign stop for G.O.P. politicians, but the rise of Trumpism dialed up the tribalism. The enclave became known as a hotbed of partisan brawling during the 2020 campaign. Public screaming matches erupted. Property was vandalized. Neighbors stopped speaking to one another. Mahjong groups and golf foursomes broke up. That summer, a video went viral of a Villager shouting “white power” during a golf-cart parade celebrating President Trump’s birthday. The episode introduced the Villages to the broader public — and not in a good way.This senior Mecca — the nation’s largest — emerged from humble roots. In the early 1980s, H. Gary Morse, a onetime ad man, took over his father’s mobile home park in an unlovely patch of Florida cow country. (Some of the mobile units can still be seen in the northern end of the Villages, which residents euphemistically refer to as “the historic district.”) Mr. Morse soon realized that, to draw people to this landlocked region en masse, he needed to give them amenities — and lots of them. Soon followed the golf courses, swimming pools, shops, restaurants, movie theaters, sports facilities, rec centers (of which there are more than 100) and endless clubs (2,900-plus).Pickleball has become one of the dominant pastimes in the Villages.Damon Winter/The New York TimesPrime housing options offer easy access to the many golf courses in the Villages.Damon Winter/The New York TimesToday, the Villages isn’t so much a retirement community as an empire, a collection of dozens of neighborhoods covering more than 32 square miles spread over three counties, with the bulk in Sumter County. It boasts more than 60,000 households and is expanding. Fast. Dump trucks and excavators swarm the developing areas, and new buildings spring up practically overnight. Housing prices are out of control, gripe residents. (I checked out a lovely but modest home in the Village of Chitty Chatty that was priced around $460,000.) Thanks to the thousands of new Villagers who arrive each year, the Villages was the fastest growing metro area over the past decade.The Villages’ bellicose politics has made it a subject of fascination (and horror) for many. But its portrayals as a MAGA circus miss the core of its appeal, especially among the tsunami of retiring baby boomers, who are aiming to redefine aging, much as they reshaped every aspect of the culture. Seniors don’t move to the Villages for the politics. They come for the golf and the pickleball, the softball and tennis and polo. They come for the concerts and casino nights and the Senior Games (think of them as a more mature Olympics). They come for Boozy Bingo at Lazy Mac’s Tacos, karaoke night at City Fire and the line dancing taught by a D.J. called Scooter.The moment the music starts, Villagers hit the dance floor with abandon.Damon Winter/The New York TimesJust ask the Democrats.Judi Bessette is one of several members of the Villages Democratic Club who have gathered in the Tea Room of the Colony Cottage rec center to share the trials and tribulations of voting blue in this deep-red community. Ms. Bessette had her Biden flag vandalized during the campaign. Twice. The first flag lasted less than two weeks before it was torn and left hanging by a thread. She put up a new flag, only to have someone replace it with a Trump flag swiped from her neighbor’s place.It’s not just conservative neighbors who make Democrats here uncomfortable. They grumble about the family-dominated enterprise that owns and controls so much of the Villages, which they refer to simply as The Developer. Mr. Morse, who died in 2014, had been a big-time Republican donor with formidable political clout in the region. Democrats complain that he and his heirs long sought to cultivate a conservative climate here. TV sets in the shops and hotels are typically turned to Fox News. Along with local programming, Fox News Radio plays in outdoor spaces. Democrats dismiss the community paper, The Villages Daily Sun, as a propaganda machine for The Developer, which owns it and other media properties. And during election season, say the Democrats, The Developer makes office space available for the Republicans but can’t seem to find space for their team.To keep the peace in their daily lives, people of all partisan persuasions learn to keep their political views to themselves in mixed company. “I run a book club,” says Laura Goudreau, “and our No. 1 rule is: nothing political.”When Judi Bessette flew Biden flags in front of her house in 2020, someone vandalized them.Damon Winter/The New York TimesMike and Sue Faulk. Mr. Faulk is president of the local Democratic club.Damon Winter/The New York Times“If I were to not talk to any Republicans, then I wouldn’t have many acquaintances,” says Mike Faulk, the Democratic club’s president, who notes that, in his golf group of 16, he is the only Democrat. Chris Stanley, the immediate past president of the Democratic club, says she gets asked why on earth a Democrat would want to live in the Villages all the time. Her answer: Because life here is amazing, and she loves it.Dancing is very big in the Villages. Line dancing, two-stepping, twisting, awkward head-bopping — the moment the music starts, Villagers go at it with abandon. Here is a place where the over-55 set can cut loose, flaunting their Jagger-esque moves without being judged by younger, more limber folks.“I came to party!” a snowbird named Jim quips to me at City Fire. (Yes. I spent a lot of time there, and I highly recommend karaoke night.) Having raised four daughters back home in Pennsylvania, Jim spends his winters here, enjoying the fruits of his labor. He was not the only Villager to express this sentiment. These people have made their contribution to society and now intend to have themselves some fun.The enclave has been called Disney for retirees. The comparison is apt, not only because of the nonstop amusements. Its entire aesthetic is too studied and precious to feel like the real world. The three quaint town squares and main retail areas were developed around themes: Spanish Springs, Lake Sumter Landing and Brownwood Paddock. The streets and public areas are spotless and beautifully landscaped. And everywhere you look, there are golf carts.Residents dancing to live music at Edna’s on the Green.Damon Winter/The New York TimesHomes under construction in a new development in the Villages.Damon Winter/The New York TimesGolf carts are key to understanding the Villages. There are over 90 miles of cart paths here, and it is a point of pride that every corner of the community is cart accessible. The vehicles are an expression of residents’ individuality and independence. People are serious about tricking out their rides. They paint them with flames, name them and plaster them with bumper stickers. Those with money to burn splurge on carts that look like vintage autos. Even seniors who have no business driving anymore zip around like teenage joy riders, say residents. Crashes are not uncommon, and visitors are warned to watch out for bad drivers — and drunk ones. One afternoon during my visit, Marsha Shearer, a board member for the Democratic club, emails that a friend and fellow board member had witnessed a doozy of a wreck by what appeared to be a highly intoxicated driver. “She was also an anti-vaxxer and a very belligerent Trumper who kept screaming over and over again ‘I’m not vaccinated’” and cursing President Biden, the friend, Sue Dubman, reported. The police eventually came to deal with the mess.Golf cart parades are part of the culture. Villagers use any excuse to organize one: Christmas, Halloween, the start of a big Supreme Court case, delivering their ballots to the polling station. Andy Kleiman considers the parades the most fun part of the local political life. “You go by and see all these people giving you the thumbs up,” he beams. Of course, you’re likely to get other fingers waved at you as well.Michael Farrell took his dog Baby out on the town at Lake Sumter Landing.Damon Winter/The New York TimesGolf carts are key to understanding the Villages and its residents.Damon Winter/The New York TimesDamon Winter/The New York TimesIt is easy to mock all the clubs and events as boomer hedonism mixed with golden-years YOLO nihilism. Eat, drink and be merry, because tomorrow you may get diagnosed with shingles or need a double hip replacement! And the frenzied socializing can definitely veer in that direction. Residents mentioned that alcohol abuse is a real problem here. And for years, the community has fought its reputation (based in part on a 2008 book) as a den of sexual iniquity, where seniors get jiggy in golf carts and S.T.D.s run rampant. Many Villagers are definitely on the hunt for companionship, and the men are quick with the offer to buy a gal a drink. (At City Fire, you can send over a poker chip for someone to use as a drink token.) The surreal effect of living in a bubble where everyone is encouraged to act as if on perpetual holiday was a focus of the 2020 documentary “Some Kind of Heaven,” co-produced by The Times.But the parades and games and clubs, most definitely the political ones, also give people a sense of belonging and purpose — of still being able to make a difference. Whatever their ideological persuasion, residents are constantly reminded that civic engagement matters. That they matter. Like at all retirement communities, the social life at the Villages tackles head-on the scourges of isolation, despair and loneliness that are eating away at so many Americans as the nation’s social fabric frays. In a culture that can feel as though it is leaving seniors behind, the Villages is designed to bring people together. And despite the at times harrowing political warfare, the community largely succeeds in doing so — even if it isn’t always easy.People here feel responsible for one another. Marty Schneider — of Marty and Ray-Ray — is a longstanding member of the Band of Brothers, a group of mostly Vietnam-era vets founded over a decade ago to, as Mr. Schneider puts it, “give veterans who were having trouble somewhere to go.” People were really struggling and some died by suicide, he recalls. What began as a small gathering on Tuesday afternoons at City Fire has morphed into a 501(c)3 organization with several hundred members that puts together social outings (bowling, golf…) and community events and holds weekly raffles and other fund-raisers to support veterans and related causes. When the weather permits, the Tuesday social features a drive-by from a member who tricked out a golf cart like a tank. With a nod to “the ladies” who have joined, Mr. Schneider says the group recently discussed whether to change the name to the Band of Brothers and Sisters. “So that’s a possibility down the road.”Marty Schneider, center, at City Fire in Lake Sumter Landing with some of his fellow Band of Brothers members.Damon Winter/The New York TimesThe central problem, of course, is that this sense of belonging may flow as much from who is not a part of the Villages as who is. The populace here is 98 percent white, putting it increasingly out of touch with the broader nation. The entire place, in fact, has a time-warped quality. It is reminiscent of college or summer camp — but for people who no longer have to worry about what they’re going to be when they grow up or what their political choices will bring. For Villagers, the future is less of a concern than living their best life. Right. Now. Here, baby boomers still reign supreme, in a place that caters to some of their most self-absorbed, self-indulgent impulses. The culture, like the overwhelmingly conservative politics, can feel like a scrupulously maintained bulwark against the onslaught of time and change.In this way, the community is a distillation of the cultural crosscurrents at play in an America that is simultaneously graying and diversifying. Baby boomers, long accustomed to setting the agenda, are being eased out of their slot atop the sociopolitical ladder — especially conservative, white boomers. This shift can be painful. One of Donald Trump’s shrewdest political moves has been to exploit some people’s nostalgia for a bygone era where the cultural hierarchy was clear and the world made sense. The Villages works overtime to maintain a replica of that fantasyland — a shiny, happy, small-town bubble where seniors can tune out the rest of the world and party like it’s 1969.Crowds gather for the nightly live band and dancing at Lake Sumter Landing.Damon Winter/The New York TimesSurrounded by people at a similar life stage, many with similar values, Villagers can maintain a distance from the demographic and cultural changes reshaping the nation and from many of its more intractable problems. Crime, inequality, homelessness, climate change, racial strife, the high cost of child care and college — these are challenges for other communities to grapple with. Other generations even. Big Government is eyed with skepticism, even as the aging populace commands an increasingly larger chunk of the federal budget for programs such as Social Security and Medicare. So long as taxes stay low and the golf courses stay open, Villagers can stay focused on living the dream. They have earned this retreat, dammit. The escapism is the point. And escapism, by definition, means separating oneself from unsettling trends and people.Early one evening, I settle in near the Sumter Landing bandstand to watch the Hooligans, a local favorite that plays all the classics — Pink Floyd, the Clash, the Police, Rod Stewart. At one point, a trim, relatively young woman sporting short dark hair and a golf visor wanders over to ask if I’m the band’s agent, noting that I look very official sitting there with my notebook. After quizzing me about who I work for and what I’m working on, she introduces herself succinctly: “Brenda. Strong conservative and strong Christian.” She and her husband are snowbirds visiting from Minnesota, spending their second winter in the Villages. They love it here. Except … Brenda has noticed a distinct lack of diversity, and she’s not entirely sure if that’s an OK thing. On the other hand, she adds, “it feels safe,” because “anyone here who doesn’t belong stands out.”And with that, she drifts back into the sea of seniors swaying as the band belts out Radiohead’s “Creep”: “What the hell am I doin’ here? I don’t belong here. …”Diners in the Brownwood Paddock Town Center seek shelter from the glare of the evening sun.Damon Winter/The New York TimesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Older Americans Fight to Make America Better

      by

      Neil Young and Joni Mitchell did more than go after Spotify for spreading Covid disinformation last week. They also, inadvertently, signaled what could turn out to be an extraordinarily important revival: of an older generation fully rejoining the fight for a working future.You could call it (with a wink!) codger power.We’ve seen this close up: over the last few months we’ve worked with others of our generation to start the group Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 for progressive change. That’s no easy task. The baby boomers and the Silent Generation before them make up a huge share of the population — more nearly 75 million people, a larger population than France. And conventional wisdom (and a certain amount of data) holds that people become more conservative as they age, perhaps because they have more to protect.But as those musicians reminded us, these are no “normal” generations. We’re both in our 60s; in the 1960s and ’70s, our generation either bore witness to or participated in truly profound cultural, social and political transformations. Think of Neil Young singing “four dead in O-hi-o” in the weeks after Kent State, or Joni Mitchell singing “they paved paradise” after the first Earth Day. Perhaps we thought we’d won those fights. But now we emerge into older age with skills, resources, grandchildren — and a growing fear that we’re about to leave the world a worse place than we found it. So some of us are more than ready to turn things around.It’s not that there aren’t plenty of older Americans involved in the business of politics: We’ve perhaps never had more aged people in positions of power, with most of the highest offices in the nation occupied by septuagenarians and up, yet even with all their skills they can’t get anything done because of the country’s political divisions.But the daily business of politics — the inside game — is very different from the sort of political movements that helped change the world in the ’60s. Those we traditionally leave to the young, and indeed at the moment it’s young people who are making most of the difference, from the new civil rights movement exemplified by Black Lives Matter to the teenage ranks of the climate strikers. But we can’t assign tasks this large to high school students as extra homework; that’s neither fair nor practical.Instead, we need older people returning to the movement politics they helped invent. It’s true that the effort to embarrass Spotify over its contributions to the stupidification of our body politic hasn’t managed yet to make it change its policies yet. But the users of that streaming service skew young: slightly more than half are below the age of 35, and just under a fifth are 55 or older.Other important pressure points may play out differently. One of Third Act’s first campaigns, for instance, aims to take on the biggest banks in America for their continued funding of the fossil fuel industry even as the global temperature keeps climbing. Chase, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo might want to take note, because (fairly or not) 70 percent of the country’s financial assets are in the hands of boomers and the Silent Generation, compared with just about 5 percent for millennials. More