[Vexx]

Many of them are in my age group ... I rather like the moniker for them: "Left Behind" ... Ironic but on target. I was more sympathetic to my peers in the '90s but I am not now. They've had twenty five years to get on the train and there has been no end to attempts to help them adjust. (not that they aren't infecting or undereducating younger age ranges)

My wife and I were talking about a recent trend of people who got anxiety attacks if their cellphone is taken from them (lost or confiscated, whatever). At first it sounded stupid, but the more I thought about it, it wasn't. In the current day, it is roughly akin to being put in black box isolation. You can no longer hear the "whisper of the Borg", you are cut off from social contacts, you don't have your maps, you don't have your information sourcing, etc etc. So no, it isn't necessarily silly. I have people my age who don't understand why a house might need more than one computer and turn their cellphones off unless they're making a call. o.O.

As for social framework issues, again I have no sympathy. The sorts resisting change now are largely the very same people who resisted it in the 60s and 70s.

They never signed up for it and over the last twenty years or so, the US is experiencing a backlash as this faction gets more and more panicked. I got called a long-haired hippy the other day by someone in a grocery store parking lot when I smiled at a barking dog in the car next to me. The man was 15 years my senior - so he would be the exact same age as the adults who called me that in 1975.

To me, racial equality, feminism, choice of fashion, anti-corporatism, choice of who you sleep with, IS conservatism because it implies leaving other people alone and having control over your own destiny. The authoritarian patriarchal bunch (be they white, black, whatever) are the ones lashing out in anger/fear because the trends in demographics aren't on their side.