Opinion: Talk of 'angry old men' is pubescent nonsense — Estonia's future belongs to all generations

Reformierakond member Ivo Känd pushes back against dismissive rhetoric targeting conservative-leaning older Estonians, arguing that wanting to preserve a healthy Estonia for future generations is not a sign of reactionary politics. Writing as a new grandfather, Känd contends that the nation-state is not a passing natural phenomenon but a deliberate choice.

Ivo Känd, a member of [Reformierakond](/politicians/reformierakond), has a new title to add to his name: grandfather. And it is precisely from that vantage point that he takes issue with a strain of political discourse that has crept into Estonian public life — the casual dismissal of older, tradition-minded citizens as «angry old men» whose views can be safely ignored or mocked.

Känd did not attend his party's general assembly, where he says the framing of people like him — sports enthusiasts and daily politics watchers of a certain age — as «conservative octopuses» was apparently doing the rounds. The implication, as he reads it, is that anyone who wishes to hand down a spiritually and physically intact Estonia to the next generation must be suffering from some form of reactionary nostalgia rather than expressing a coherent political conviction.

## Not nostalgia, but responsibility

The author argues that this kind of rhetorical shorthand is not clever — it is, in his words, «stupidly pubescent.» Reducing principled concern for national continuity to a generational personality flaw does a disservice to political debate and, more importantly, to the younger Estonians whose futures are supposedly at stake in these conversations.

At the heart of Känd's piece is a pointed philosophical claim: the nation-state is not like a sunrise. It does not happen on its own, guaranteed by the rhythms of nature. It must be actively chosen, defended, and renewed by each generation. To treat it as something that will simply persist — or, alternatively, as something only bitter elders cling to — is to misunderstand what sustains a country.

## A grandfather's stake in tomorrow

For Känd, becoming a grandfather makes this concrete rather than abstract. The question of what kind of Estonia a child born today will inhabit in twenty or thirty years is not a theoretical exercise for older politicians — it is, he suggests, exactly the kind of long-term thinking that politics too often lacks. Dismissing that concern with a snappy label about angry men of a certain age does not make the concern disappear; it just makes the dismissers look shallow.