They love luxury.

They have bad manners, contempt for authority, show disrespect for elders, and love chatter in place of exercise.

And they are now tyrants.

If you’re thinking I’m talking about millennials, you’re wrong – they didn’t have millennials when Socrates was walking the earth between 469 and 399 B.C. That is when it is supposed that he uttered those words about the youth of Greece at that time.

If that is in fact true – if he did say those words about the young people of ancient Greece – then it goes to show that every generation has always looked down on the ones that followed them as being far worse than they actually were.

So when it was announced that the City of Manteca had formed a Millennial Advisory Committee to get the input from the group that will very soon become the single largest tax-paying block in the city – and, hopefully, the largest block of homeowners with a stake in the community – the response was relatively predictable.

But those look-down-their-nose people are missing all of the relevant context when it comes to what Manteca is actually trying to do – trying to bring people into the fold ahead of the curve.

Say what you will about millennials – those roughly between the ages of 23 and 40 depending on who you ask – but they are very soon going to be the people that are in charge of things.

It’s already happening on the local level.

I’m technically a millennial, and I have people that I went to high school with that are on the city council and likely very soon the Manteca Unified Board of Education – people who have been put down excessively because of the supposed “laziness” of their peers for as long as they can remember.

Is that really the message that we want to send our future leaders?

This is a group of people that have almost exclusively without the threat of the Soviet Union – I still faintly remember the idea of the USSR being an issue in my youth – or communism ravaging the world at large.

These are digital natives that grew up with technology in a way that kids today don’t – we remember what it was like before it was as simply as opening the portable computer in our pockets to find out the answer to any question. We used encyclopedias, know what the Dewey Decimal System is, and can commiserate with those pining for days long gone by.

We know what a busy signal sounds like, can perfectly imitate the sound of a dial-up modem, and don’t have to wonder what older folks are talking about when they mention the sound of a “needle scratch” across a slab of vinyl.

We remember that it almost required a PhD to program a VCR before the days of TiVo or other DVR services, and can remember having keep a box of tapes or a visor fold of CDs in our cars to listen to the music that we wanted to enjoy while we were running errands, taking a road trip, or commuting to work.

Is that really the generation that people can’t seem to understand?

The other day I mentioned a floppy disk to my students and only one knew what I was talking about and that’s because their father is a computer programmer that is – you guessed it – a millennial.

So before scoffing at the idea that the “Millennial Advisory Council” is a bad thing, maybe stop to think that this is the last generation that has any semblance of connection to those that preceded it – they’re the last bastion of hope for the very people that have consistently complained about the “participation trophy” generation for going on two decades.

While the City of Manteca likely realized this out of self-preservation and with a financial incentive to do so, it’s something that in my opinion is long overdue.

Keep making worthwhile recommendations guys – nearly everybody your age can agree that it’s ridiculous that Manteca doesn’t have a marijuana dispensary yet, and maybe soon you’ll be able to bridge the gap in a meaningful and important way.

Just don’t expect any respect.

I don’t think that’ll ever come until we’re the ones complaining about the generations that followed us.

Stopping voter fraud by

committing voter fraud?

It’s unbelievable to me that the California Republican Party didn’t know that placing official-looking ballot boxes at strategic locations to collect ballots sympathetic to their ideals was against the law.

If they didn’t know that, then it’s a matter of concern. If they did, and did it anyway, it’s absolutely a matter of concern.

And to know that candidates that want to represent Manteca – candidates that apparently have a hard time keeping control of their social media passwords – are having their campaigns participate in such a movement is even more troublesome.

It’s one thing when somebody in Orange County wants to drop a box in a gun store, but another entirely when somebody that wants to be your Congressman is behind the move.

Say what you will about the Democrat-sponsored movement of “ballot harvesting” but at least that requires the person who picks up your ballot to sign who they are on the actual ballot envelope itself.

There is no way of knowing who is collecting the ballots if these unofficial boxes, or whether they’re actually delivering them as they are supposed to. There is no chain of custody. There is nothing preventing somebody from looking up the name of the person on the envelope, checking their social media accounts to see if they publicly support the candidates or movements that coincide with those doing the checking, and ditching those that don’t align.

That’s why the law exists in the first place.

If you don’t like ballot harvesting, then do something about it – there is a manner of recourse.

Simply breaking the law because you don’t like it is never acceptable.

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.