When Trump brought the cat and dog thing up at the debate, I thought he was cooked and that nobody in the right frame of mind, not even the average chud, would believe it, but the next day people at my work were talking about how true it is and that it needs to be stopped. It's amazing and scary how easily people are quick to believe something without a shred of evidence.
Even my mom texted me a mugshot of a woman who was arrested for killing and trying to eat a cat. But when I replied that it happened in a completely different city and the suspect was a US born citizen with mental issues, she said that the suspect was actually Haitian, it happened in Springfield and the police are pretending it happened somewhere else to make their town look good.
I don't even know how to respond to a take like that. Just a year or so ago she was happy to see Alex Jones getting canceled for threatening families of the kids who died at Sandy Hook. Now she's believing and forwarding Jones-grade conspiracy shit, and she couldn't care less about school shootings anymore. It's depressing as fuck.
the lead thing is so real. my parents are boomers and the cognitive/emotional decay is exponential. the decline in the last 10, 5, and 1 year is remarkable.
luckily they aren't chuddy, but they do not seem to understand complex things anymore. meanwhile, they feel their mental faculties and critical analysis skills are at their peak and that they should absolutely be in charge of things and still be allowed to drive.
when it's pointed out, with evidence, that they don't seem to have that capacity anymore and that they're just repeating things they saw on their favorite TV shows as facts, emotional disregulation quickly manifests.
personally, I've been planning my sunset years since I was 30, around the central organizing concepts that I will have a very meager fixed income, increasingly limited mobility beyond shuffling around, and be kind of slow upstairs. none of those things precludes happiness and satisfaction.
but so many boomers are on some other kind of shit where they gotta stunt on their cohort, travel all over, drive nice new cars, and have big homes (that they can't maintain). it looks exhausting and so expensive.