The last four years have laid bare some surprising divisions—not just in our country or our political parties, but all the way into our homes. Increasingly, I see a generational divide between baby boomers like my parents, who identify as progressive but are generally pro-Democrat, and millennials like me, who no longer feel that the Democratic party represents progressives at all. This schism has already caused its fair share of tension in my family and Facebook feed, but now that Biden has officially been elected the 46th President of the United States, I’m convinced that it’s more important than ever to address it head-on. It is my personal belief that as members of the American left, how we respond to Biden’s presidency—and more importantly, how we communicate with each other—will determine our success and happiness long after he’s gone. With that in mind, here are five political pleas for all the baby boomers I love.

1. Stop seeing Donald Trump as the disease. Start seeing him as a symptom. Listen, I’m not trying to say that Donald Trump isn’t a bad guy. He’s horrible by any account—a spoiled child who feels entitled to everything from media attention to women’s bodies. One thing he is not, however, is very smart. The problem with a media narrative that’s obsessed with painting Trump as a monstrous evil is that it has no satisfying way to explain how he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, or why the supposedly democracy-loving American people are happily throwing away their lives and rights by voting for him in even greater numbers this year. Sexism? That probably plays a big factor—but Trump also overwhelmingly won white women in 2016. White supremacy? Yes, definitely—but if that’s all his campaign has ever been about, what’s up with voters who flipped from Obama to Trump?

   It’s inarguable that Trump’s campaign combines some of the nastiest elements of American society with highly effective marketing tactics. But unless you believe that more than 70 million Americans are deeply sexist and racist (which I would argue is different from tolerating sexism or racism), none of that explains how he won over such a broad portion of the American electorate. The answer, I believe, lies in what history can tell us about fascism.

   Historians struggle to define fascism because Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy were such different places; the two leaders had distinct goals and tactics, as did the movements they led. One thing that is common to both major historical examples, however, is that the fascists came into power during situations of political upheaval and economic failure. This makes sense with what we know about human nature: when people are in a situation of great scarcity and uncertainty, people tend to long for a savior—whether that’s a god, or a man they can dress up as one.

   We can see this principle play out if we take a look at a very particular moment in American history: the Great Depression. In historian Jon Meacham’s words: “The loudest cheers during Roosevelt’s inaugural address on Saturday March 4th, 1939 didn’t come from his assurance that the only thing Americans had to fear was fear itself. No… the greatest ovation greeted the new president’s assertion that the present emergency might require him to assume extended wartime executive powers.” Americans went on to elect him for four presidential terms—a grand total of sixteen years, had he not died partway through the final one. You might see what I’m getting at here. The 2008 financial crisis was bad, but not nearly to the level of the Great Depression. It doesn’t explain why citizens of the wealthiest country in the world felt like they were on the verge of drowning.

   The answer lies in political developments over the last thirty years. After the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 80s, people around the world had a feeling that everything was going to get better. There were no wars between major world powers, and without the balancing presence of the Soviet Union on the world stage, America was free to spread liberal democracy around the world, and with it, a new style of capitalism: neoliberalism (well, actually an old style repackaged for a new age). A form of laissez-faire economics (AKA “free-market” capitalism), under neoliberalism the market is king, government regulation is kept to a minimum, and anyone advocating for the rights of workers is villainized (if you’d like to learn more about neoliberalism check out this series). Sound familiar? It should. Neoliberalism has been the de facto economic philosophy of the United States for close to thirty years now, and contrary to what you might expect, at least in the U.S., it knows no political party. Although this philosophy has its roots in so-called “Reaganomics” and its values more closely align with the ideals of the Republican Party—mainly, having a smaller, weaker government—the majority of Democratic politicians today have embraced neoliberalism, including both Clinton and Obama. This can be clearly seen in a tendency to champion the interests of the business class at the expense of the working class (e.g. Obama’s bailout of Wall Street or Clinton’s, well, entire government).

   So, what does this impromptu history lesson have to do with Trump? Well, remember what I said earlier about how fascism rises in situations of economic and political uncertainty? It turns out that even though the originators of American neoliberalism believed their system would help everyone, the actual result was an economy where medicine and education prices are artificially high, collective bargaining is strongly discouraged if not outlawed, and survival is entirely tied to one’s job as there is no social safety net. All it took was a global drop of 1% GDP in 2008, tiny in comparison to the 15% nosedive of the Great Depression, for the millions of American workers living in already precarious situations to be driven into a corner. Considering the vulnerability and absolute fear that came about as a result, can we really be surprised that workers would vote for a candidate who promised them affordable healthcare, economic success, and a return to a better time?

2. Don’t expect Democrats to save us. We’ve already talked about how the Democratic Party leadership was complicit in the creation of a neoliberal system that thrust the working class into economic uncertainty, uncertainty that Trump was then able to capitalize on. It is not difficult for a manipulative leader to redirect a scared person’s ire towards some other group—even less so when the public senses that they have been wronged in some ineffable way. The Democratic Party cannot take full responsibility for this; the Republican Party has been just as bad if not worse. Still, it raises the question: if neoliberal Democratic policies got us into this mess, how exactly are they supposed to get us out?

   Trump could not have risen to power without the actions of Obama’s administration—and yet, many of you seem to believe that Joe Biden, Obama’s vice president, will somehow fix things. This sounds alarmingly similar to Trump supporters’ desire to return to a better, simpler time—the last time that things were “great” for “people like them”. The difference is that where Trump supporters tend to imagine getting back to a time that was great for white men, but not very good for anyone non-white or non-male, Biden supporters imagine a time that was great for college-educated city-dwellers, but terrible for working class people in areas of low opportunity. While one candidate is obviously better than the other in terms of the immediate, short-term health of our democracy, neither provides a positive, future-facing vision for addressing America’s problems. It’s a big part of why people in my generation have lost faith in the Democratic Party.

   Personally, my journey from born Democrat to, well, whatever I am now has been long. I was raised in the wealthy liberal stronghold of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Growing up, voting for Democrats was the norm. We didn’t understand politics, but we understood inherently that it was about taking a side, a team—and almost all of our parents were on the same one. I recall a friend who was teased by classmates for supporting George Bush in our school’s 2004 mock election. We would have been around nine years old then. (On another note, can you imagine schools holding mock elections in 2020? They would be bloodbaths.)

   When you grow up surrounded by liberal values and are told that the Democratic Party is the only one representing them, voting Democrat seems like a no-brainer, and the few Republicans you meet—rarely seen outside of television—seem inscrutable and alien. Add in having a queer best friend, to whose very existence I was told all Republicans were staunchly opposed, and you have a recipe for a very dogmatic way of viewing our country.

   This remained true until I graduated high school and headed off to Vermont. I had just turned seventeen years old. The small liberal arts college that I attended there had its own politics problem—a homogenizing bubble of left-leaning secularism that left little room for disagreement or nuance—but at the very least, it exposed me to people from other parts of the country, and taught me that just because someone votes differently from you doesn’t always mean they want different things. Traveling to Japan was another eye-opener: ironically, it was there that I first met and befriended people from the American south, and realized probably for the first time how many aspects of my behavior—from my quickness to judge others to my discomfort with religion—have been influenced by my immersion in American liberalism. Life opened my mind bit by bit, letting in a confusing flood of difficult questions and conflicting ideas.

   But like many millennials, the event that truly opened my eyes was the 2016 election. Seeing how the Democratic Party treated Bernie Sanders, a man whose honesty and consistency are recognized even by his opponents, I was forced to ask myself a question: was it possible that the Democrats weren’t actually the “good guys”? The simplistic vision of American politics I’d unwittingly absorbed during my first sixteen years—heroes vs. villains—crumbled, and was replaced with a second question: if the Democrats weren’t representing the voice of the people in Washington, and the Republicans certainly weren’t, was anybody?

   My disillusionment is founded in facts. So please, don’t expect Joe Biden to start coming up with his own solutions after running an entire campaign based on rejecting Donald Trump. Don’t expect Kamala Harris to change the game when she spent her entire time as DA of San Francisco prosecuting black drug users rather than the tech monopolies right outside her window. Our current political parties have failed us, so whether it’s action on climate change, dismantling the police state, ending American imperialism, or fighting for healthcare as a human right, the change we need will have to come from us. From us organizing, campaigning, striking, and maybe even fighting. Because if it doesn’t—if even half of the people incensed by Trump feel they can relax and go “back to brunch” thanks to a Biden victory—then whether it’s in four years or twenty-four, there will come a day when we look back on 2020 with fondness and longing.

3. Do not confuse a politician’s identity with their political agenda. Even though the media characterizes my generation as obsessed with identity, many of us are now standing up against identity politics. What gives?

   Well, I can only speak for myself here, but my “a-ha” moment came after the 2016 election, when I started paying more attention to the way that newscasters from liberal channels (MSNBC, CNN, ABC) speak about politics. If you take what they say at face value, then you should be happy anytime a person is elected who comes from a disadvantaged group—as long as that disadvantage isn’t related to class or political beliefs. “That’s progress”, we were told when Hillary Clinton ran for president. A woman in the white house! Can you imagine? And yet, no mention of the fact that she comes from a political dynasty and represents a group that has long held significant power in this country.

   I would argue that this way of looking at politics misses the entire point of diversity. If the first woman president, for example, governs in exactly the same way as the men who came before her—the same foreign imperialism, the same disrespect for the environment, the same heartless capitalism—then what exactly have we gained? The opportunity to be oppressed by a woman instead of a man? That would certainly be progress, but not diversity. And yet liberal media encourages us to think of diversity in this way. Why?

   In my opinion, that’s because when we engage with a politician’s identity, we’re much less likely to engage with their policy or ideology. We’re encouraged to identify with our leaders, to think that they’re somehow “like us”, so that we won’t notice how scandalously rich they are, or how they all tend to vote for the same things. Whether it’s the droves of white women who profit from a “marginalized” image while ruthlessly supporting existing power structures (e.g. Nancy Pelosi) or a black woman who claims trailblazer status but promises to maintain the status quo abroad, we must reject this simplistic understanding of diversity. Real diversity is one of the most important factors we can consider with our votes, and it starts with one simple rule: the only thing you can really judge a politician by is their actions.

4. Filter your media consumption. It’s time to stop watching American mainstream media channels, even the liberal ones. I’m talking MSNBC, CNN, CBS, and ABC. You might think I’m bringing this up because of biased reporting. Well, it’s true that the channels I mentioned above are biased; MSNBC in particular is considered by some to be walking the line between news and propaganda (see: adfontesmedia’s Interactive Media Bias Chart). But no, bias is old news.

   The real reason I’m bringing this up has to do with fear and financial incentives. It’s because each of the channels I mention is operated by a large for-profit media conglomerate, and if we’ve learned anything by 2020, anything at all, it’s that financial incentives matter in a capitalist system. Because these companies have a business model that profits on views, shares, and engagement, they are not incentivized to give you the facts; they are incentivized to capture your attention. And for that purpose, we’ve long known that little is better than fear.

   Of course, the idea that anxiety and controversy sell is not a new one, so why bring this up now? Surely television has been using these techniques for over fifty years—what’s changed? Access and immersion. Fifty years ago, “media” referred mostly to newspapers, movies, and TV shows—sources of information that you generally chose to consume. TV was an object in a physical place that you sometimes sat with and watched (or so I’m told), and shows were limited to a set time, maybe a single hour or two each day.

   Today, TV is an idea, an inexhaustible wellspring you carry around in your pocket. News is flowing into your brain at all hours of the day, whether guided by the veiled hand of a FaceBook algorithm or the alerts set up on your iPhone. Media has entered every part of your life, and while humans have always been fascinated by violence, fear, and conflict, never before have the vast majority of us been so deeply submerged in them.

   Over time, these murky waters go to work on your brain, making you feel anxious, guarded, and overwhelmed. In a similar way, the controversy manufactured by large media companies tears away at the common fabric of American society, pitting social groups against one another and inflaming existing tensions. It isn’t surprising that this news cycle erodes our ability to feel trust and empathy for strangers, simply because these gentler emotions are the first to go once survival mode kicks in. Still think these channels are your friends?

   Let’s not forget that since its invention, television has been used as a tool to manipulate the public. In capitalist countries, that means it’s often employed to foment discord between two disenfranchised groups in order to prevent a unified coalition capable of seizing power (a very common strategy throughout history). We can see the same thing occurring today in 2020, and mainstream media channels are at the heart of it. Not only did their ultra-rich executives generously provide the platform to create “President Trump”, but their average anchor—who is wealthy to a level that should invoke disgust—has more negative things to say about “Bernie Bros” or Trump supporters than about those who hold power in this country.

   The liberal media insists that Conservatives are the problem, while conservative channels contend that liberals are the ones breaking the country. The truth is that there’s a third group, a tiny sliver of our population to the tune of 5-6%, that benefits greatly from this struggle. Whether it’s by design (my belief) or a simple accident of human psychology, the fact is that these structures distract us from the largest problems of our time and the net effect is to redirect our anger away from those in power. This may already have affected you! If you’re looking for a litmus test, ask yourself this: who triggers your hatred more, Trump supporters or the ultra-wealthy?

5. Keep listening, learning, and fighting. I imagine at this point you’ve probably had quite enough of being lectured by a much younger person about things you’ve probably been dealing with since before they were born. Your generation has lived through some amazing times, after all. You came of age during the summer of love, the assassination of JFK, the Vietnam War. You were the first generation of Americans to deeply question the actions of your own government, to reckon with historical and ongoing wrongdoing, to redefine patriotism. You were radicals who charted your own path with passion, boldness, and ambition. Doubtless many of you once felt the exact same way about your parents’ generation that so many millennials do now, and for your efforts you were probably rewarded with more than your fair share of eyerolls, dismissive comments, and patronizing remarks.

   But over the years, as technology evolved and events shifted in unimaginable ways, you grew older. You saw utopian communities repeat the societal ills they were created to avoid. You began to learn that the idealism of your youth came with its own dangers—that there’s a thin line between passion and zeal, between hope and naïveté. You saw firsthand the limitations of optimism: that there are no shortcuts, and that it’s better to fix one problem well than a hundred poorly. And all of this growth brought you back to the same moment, but now it’s different: in the spot where you stood before, asking your parents to listen, are your own children asking to be heard. “I’m too old for this shit!”

   Except, you’re not. And we need you. Not just because we need your votes—which this election shows we really, really do—but also because we need your wisdom if we want to avoid having the same conversation with our children thirty years from now. You did your time, you changed the world, and you deserve a rest. And for my part, I wish like hell that I could say yes, go relax on a beach somewhere and sip margaritas while we take care of this. But I can’t. Our enemies are too numerous. We are surrounded on all sides and we need every able man, woman, and nonbinary person on deck. We need more than just a passing of the torch. We need you to hold it with us.

   The good news? If you do decide to stay, I’ll whip you up that margarita. We have so many things to talk about, if you’re ready to listen.