By Patti Johnson

April 29, 2026

The New York Times just published another masterclass in Marxist division. In his April 21, 2026 opinion piece, Yale professor Samuel Moyn argues that while ageism exists, America’s real problem is “gerontocracy.” Older Americans are supposedly “hoarding” wealth, power, housing, and opportunity at the expense of the young. He calls for seniors to “give more” through forced downsizing, higher property taxes on long-term homeowners, mandatory retirement ages, and reweighting political power toward younger voters.

This isn’t thoughtful analysis. It’s deliberate brainwashing aimed at college youth, designed to turn sons and daughters against their parents’ generation. It stokes jealousy and resentment where respect and gratitude should exist. And it follows a very old Marxist playbook.

I’m a Baby Boomer, and everything my husband and I have today we earned through decades of hard work. We started in a one-bedroom apartment. When our baby came, we moved to a two-bedroom. Later we bought a modest trailer and felt fortunate. We camped when it was free, and I rode our baby around on my bicycle, feeling truly blessed. I never felt deprived. We never took welfare even when eligible. We weren’t starving. We had a roof over our heads and food on the table.

When Jimmy Carter destroyed the economy and interest rates hit 14 percent, we scrimped and saved even more and managed to buy a townhome. Years later, when our son was in high school, we finally purchased a modest house and felt grateful. I bought all our clothes at garage sales. Our furniture came from curbside pickups or yard sales. I clipped coupons religiously and never once went to a hairdresser or nail salon. I worked as the babysitter in a health club so I could bring our child with me.

When my husband started his business out of our house, I took a job with the airlines because he was then able to be home when our child came home from school. That job gave us affordable travel and good insurance.

Now Professor Moyn and the New York Times want to paint people like us as selfish hoarders blocking the future. They claim older Americans hold too much wealth and too many homes, and that society must force us to yield them. This rhetoric creates artificial conflict between generations. It tells young people their struggles aren’t caused by decades of bad policy, inflation, runaway debt, open borders, and regulatory strangulation, but by their own grandparents and parents who worked their butts off their whole lives.

This is straight out of the Marxist tactic of divide and conquer. Marxism thrives on pitting groups against each other: bourgeoisie vs. proletariat, then race against race, and now generation against generation. The goal is to fracture families and communities so people demand “redistribution” and stronger state control instead of fixing real problems.

History shows where this leads. During Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China, the regime mobilized millions of young Red Guards to attack the “Four Olds”: old ideas, culture, customs, and habits. Youth were encouraged to denounce their teachers, elders, and even their own parents as counter-revolutionaries. Families were destroyed, millions suffered persecution, and cultural heritage was ravaged, all in the name of progress and clearing the way for the young revolutionary generation.

Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia took it even further. In their radical push for a classless agrarian society, they targeted professionals, intellectuals, urban dwellers, and anyone associated with the “old” order. The elderly were not spared.

Millions, including the sick and older generations, were forced on death marches to rural labor camps. Families were split up by age and gender into brutal work brigades. Those seen as tainted by education, property, or traditional authority faced execution or starvation. The regime’s goal was Year Zero: wipe the slate clean by eliminating anyone who represented accumulated knowledge, stability, or success.

Lenin perfected this strategy even earlier. After seizing power in 1917, he deliberately inflamed hatred between the young and the old, the educated and the uneducated, and the workers and the “bourgeois” classes. He labeled older generations and anyone with property or traditional values as enemies of the revolution. Lenin’s famous slogan “Who, whom?” captured his ruthless mindset: who will destroy whom? He encouraged youth to see their elders not as people who had built Russia, but as obstacles to be swept aside so the new Soviet order could rise. This generational warfare helped justify the Red Terror, mass executions, and the destruction of families and traditions that stood in the way of centralized Bolshevik control.

Today’s softer version dresses up the same poison in academic language. Moyn’s piece doesn’t call for killing fields, but it does call for policies that punish thrift, home ownership, and lifelong contribution. It tells young people their elders are the enemy standing in the way of housing, jobs, and power. This creates envy instead of inspiration. It shields the real culprits: globalist elites, central banks, captured institutions, and decades of destructive policy, while turning natural generational respect into class warfare.

Marxists have always understood that unified families and generations who respect hard work are difficult to rule. By manufacturing animosity between youth and their elders, they shift blame away from failed ideologies and toward ordinary people who simply built a life through sacrifice.

I hate these blanket labels like “Boomer” precisely because they enable this kind of lazy, hateful categorization. We fought the same deep state forces that hollowed out the economy. We paid into Social Security and Medicare our entire lives, money that could have grown far more if we had been allowed to keep and invest it ourselves. Now some want to call us a drain while ignoring the real costs of open borders and endless government waste.

Americans must reject this manufactured generational war. Honor those who worked hard and built what exists. Teach young people the value of personal responsibility instead of grievance. Fix the actual problems: sound money, secure borders, and reduced regulation, rather than pitting one generation against another.

The New York Times and Professor Moyn aren’t offering solutions. They’re sowing division. Don’t fall for it. Families that stand together are far stronger than any ideology that tries to tear them apart.

© 2026 Patti Johnson – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Patti Johnson: pj4charis@gmail.com

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