Joel Kotkin at the Daily Beast has a new article up about Millennials: The Screwed Generation Turns Socialist. And they appear to be the most leftward since the Great Generation.
In this past election, those over 45 strongly favored Trump, while those younger than that cast their ballots for Clinton. Trump’s improbable victory, and the more significant GOP sweep across the country, demonstrated that the much-ballyhooed Millennials simply are not yet sufficiently numerous or united enough to overcome the votes of the older generations.
Yet over time, the millennials —arguably the most progressive generation since the ’30s—could drive our politics not only leftward, but towards an increasingly socialist reality, overturning many of the very things that long have defined American life. This could presage a war of generations over everything from social mores to economics and could well define our politics for the next decade.
And some broad political generalizations ensue about the voting patterns of the existing generations. For the sake of brevity we will skip this and get right to the meat of the article:
Millennials’ defining political trait is their embrace of activist government. Some 54 percent of millennials, notes Pew, favor a larger government, compared to only 39 percent of older generations. One reason: Millennials face the worst economic circumstances of any generation since the Depression, including daunting challenges to home ownership. More than other generations, they have less reason to be enamored with capitalism.
These economic realities, along with the progressive social views, has affected their voting behavior. Millennials have voted decisively Democratic since they started going to the polls, with 60 percent leaning that direction in 2012 and 55 percent last year. They helped push President Obama over the top, and Hillary Clinton got the bulk of their votes last year. But their clear favorite last year was self-described socialist Bernie Sanders, who drew more far millennial votes in the primaries than Clinton and Trump combined.
And Socialism – everyone’s favorite zombie ideology lives on:
Roughly half of Millennials have positive feelings about socialist, twice the rate of the previous generation. Indeed, despite talk about a dictatorial Trump and his deplorables, the Democratic-leaning Millennials are more likely to embrace limits on free speech and are far less committed to constitutional democracy than their elders. Some 40 percent, notes Pew, favor limiting speech deemed offensive to minorities, well above the 27 percent among the Xers, 24 among the boomers, and only 12 percent among silents. They are also far more likely to be dismissive about basic constitutional civil rights, and are even more accepting of a military coup than previous generations.
But fear not there is some hope:
Other factors could slow the lurch to the left. There is a growing interest in third party politics, not so much Green but libertarian; 8 percent of Millennials voted for Third Party candidates, twice the overall rate. Overall, Tufts finds that moderates slightly outpace liberals, although conservatives remain well behind. Millennials, note Winograd and Hais, also dislike “top down” solutions and may favor radical action primarily at the local level and more akin to Scandinavia than Stalinism.
As Millennials grow up, start families, look to buy houses, and, worst of all, start paying taxes, they may shift to the center, much as the Boomers did before them. Redistribution, notes a recent Reason survey, becomes less attractive as incomes grow to $60,000 annually and beyond. This process could push them somewhat right-ward, particularly as they move from the leftist hothouses of the urban core to the more contestable suburbs.
As the old saying goes, read the article for yourself to get all of the details. There is also a warning to the Republican Party, suggesting they abandon socially conservative ideas that offend Millennials.
My analysis: Political generalization are often broad, and many writers assume that the parties are static and will only become fossilized as the next generational wave comes roaring in. And maybe there is a lag in time before the voters trust an ostracized party again, one that I believe the Democrats are going through now, and the Republicans went through after Bush the Second. Of course, Trump’s election may be a political outlier; we shall see how much he upsets the DC apple cart. Based on past history I don’t give him much chance against the Bureaucratic State.
Regarding Millennials – I see some of them drifting rightward as time and their incomes rise. Some may keep their idealism, but reality has a funny way of destroying that. Perhaps this is a chance for libertarians or even the Big-L Libertarian Party? I have little trust in the latter, but some distant hope for the former. We have to find ways to educate, and dare I say, gain some political leverage during this strange Trump intermezzo. It remains to be seen whether that means the slow take-over of the Republican Party, or splitting off on our own. Based on the current two-party dynamic, I’m guessing the first. But if that brand image is forever tainted, then maybe a strong Libertarian party is the way to go.
Comments
216 responses to “Millennials and Socialism”
This is a perennial pattern. I tend to be reminded of the Churchill quote “If you’re not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart, if you’re not conservative at fifty, you have no brain”. Mind you, he was british, so there are only two philosophies in his viewpoint.
Yeah, comparisons in the now aren’t much help – what about the past? Are today’s yutes more liberal than yesteryear’s were? That’s the interesting question, and I don’t see it addressed in the quoted parts of the article.
So according to Churchill, I have no heart – because when I was young I thought the liberals were a combination of wrong and evil. Everything since has confirmed it.
*hands over wind-up alarm clock*
And that drift “rightward” continues until it’s time to say “HANDS OFF MY MEDICARE!,” then you’re a frothing at the mouth socialist again.
I’v noticed in my peers that there are far less moderates. The left are very left, while the right is actually very libertarian.
Good, you can’t trust neutrals.
I guess I prefer it, but the progressive side is getting pretty extreme. I suppose people can say the same thing of ancaps though.
Off-topic: Is that your ride in your avatar? Are you, perhaps, a fellow enthusiast?
yeah, it’s my 74 fj40.
Nice.
Mildly tuned ’97 Trans Am currently, ’78 Chrysler Cordoba before that, ’76 Stingray before that, ’92 MR2 before that, and a crappy ’07 Avenger first.
You exclusively an off-road guy?
Right now, it’s my Daily. I enjoy the off road thing. I grew up in old British cars, and am looking for an E30 bmw casually.
Is that you, Uncle Joe?
Joe’s probably put 10k on his since he left the white house.
I’m massively into muscle, and this Trans Am is my keeper, but my fiancee loves trucks. When we’ve got the money saved for further luxuries, I’ll be looking to get her a good, solid F250 to play with.
One of the guys I’m friendly with on my street (I’m residing in England, for context) has a beautifully restored monster of a Jaguar XJS. The sound that V12 makes genuinely puts the last few Lamborghinis I’ve seen to shame. You’d like him.
Bacon-Magic: Here’s footage of me last Saturday –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4qMR5Csv-0
My dad still has his Austin Healey 3000 he got in HS, his uncle left us a TVR Vixen.
How soft was the Corinthian leather?
No leather, Ricardo.
https://s17.postimg.org/7fn5unnfh/20161116_075240.jpg
The Dean family is currently working two FJ Cruisers. There is a vintage FJ40 that parks in the doctor lot – looks totally original and “survivor”. The bastard even has a matching trailer. I haz an envy.
at some point I’ll be replacing the front bumper and getting jump seats.
some pictures of it.
Semi-OT: Nicest engine bay I’ve seen recently –
https://s27.postimg.org/qlocad5td/Chevy.jpg
Good, you can’t trust neutrals.
You both make good points…
What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
Rufus?
I expect some sort of stare here.
*narrows gaze*
Mine tend to be lukewarm, nondescript leftists. /Solitude.
This is roughly my experience as well, living in Worcester county, Massachusetts.
Older folks are mostly Trump supporters, but folks in their late twenties and early thirties are that socially liberal/fiscally conservative mix that are most easily swayed by libertarian ideas. Unsurprisingly, the women I know in that age range are Clinton supporters, even if they are otherwise socially liberal/fiscally conservative.
I only know a handful of people in their late teens/early twenties, and most of them are not college indoctrinated, but they seem strangely apolitical. I wonder if this generation can be the first to finally kill the media stranglehold on acceptable views and discourse.
Considering Millennials seem to be more inclined to embrace fascism, I doubt it.
I don’t know, I know my eyes were opened recently. I’ve been proselytizing with my good friend Brawndo.
Define fascism. I’m honestly not trying to troll, I just think that word has gotten so overused as to lose all meaning.
From Webster on definition of Fascism:
I felt like the term actually fit properly in this context.
folks in their late twenties and early thirties are that socially liberal/fiscally conservative mix
that abandon any pretense of fiscal conservatism when there is a socially liberal handout or bureaucracy to fund.
That’s my experience with “socially liberal/fiscally conservative” anyway. Whenever the two aren’t in perfect alignment, the socially liberal wins. Its just a long-winded way of saying “liberal”.
while the right is actually very libertarian
say wut now?
Personally, I started out on the left because that’s where my artsy high school friends were, and I didn’t know any better. Many of them went on to liberal arts schools where their views were reinforced, but I got a “normal” office job with a steady paycheck and my views moved right. Eventually I found that I liked the libertarian point of view.
So I would expect the same type of thing to happen to this generation, with one caveat. If they are still going to grad school, and/or living with their parents later in life, they will probably linger to the left a lot longer.
I’ve already drifted rightward. It happened the day I was told to I had to take a diversity class and couldn’t schedule a Biology lab in college.
As a millennial, I have found my friends slowly creeping rightward on social issues. They’re still cool with gay marriage, abortion (mostly) and the rest of the traditional liberal social positions, but they have grown quite tired of the terms “racist”, “bigot”, “Nazi”, etc. I was very, very surprised to hear several of my friends start to make fun of ideas such as non-binary genders, white privilege and feminism over the past couple of weeks. I keep a close eye on this to see how subtle political attitudes of my friends change over time. It’s all anecdotal of course, but its very interesting — they let me get away with a lot more politically incorrect jokes these days and they’ve started to find them quite funny too. I have exposed them to the likes of Dave Rubin, Milo Yiannopolis, Thomas Sowell, Sam Harris etc. and have found their reactions to be much more reasonable than I expected.
As for economic issues – my friends that work in retail are very much for wealth redistribution and a huge regulatory state, but they pay plenty of lip service to exempting arbitrarily-defined small businesses. My friends that have jobs that pay in the ballpark of $70k – $100k tend to be much more wary of additional government programs. I think the Daily Beast article is spot on regarding millennial’s attitudes adjusting with our incomes.
I used to be for wealth distribution but I was forgetting my managers worked more hours and had longer tenure at the companies I was at. They also always helped me out when I needed it. It made me not want to demonize these corporations any more when I put a face to it.
I may be odd (nor am odd) but even when I was poor, I didn’t like the idea of redistribution. Having people take what I’d earned was something that drew ire, and the thought of getting something unearned was shameful.
It may have had something to do with growing up around a lot of people of poor work ethic living off handouts and seeing how they were at once utterly broken and utterly entitled.
I mean Russel brand said that he was in favor of it when he was poor and rich, I think there can be people rich and poor who don’t think it’s right. I find it immoral, it has nothing to do with where I am in life.
Brand is the worst example for any position. “Hey, this drug-addled idiot with a Messiah complex thinks it’s right”.
(Not saying that’s what you’re saying)
100%
Well, I’m also dumb. But once I started working and earning more I didn’t want to give anything out to my shitty coworkers in any scenario.
Interesting you felt this way too, UCS. We got there through different paths though – I always had this attitude because its what I was brought up to believe. I grew up in a lower middle-class family without a dad, 3 kids and mom was a teacher. My mom was always a small government constitutionalist, so she was always talking about the importance of the individual and property rights. She told me I could do anything as long as I was intelligent enough and dedicated my time and effort for delayed gratification.
My upbringing was similar, +1 kid. Except my mom was more-or-less apolitical. Voted Carter, then Reagan. Etc. But looking back all these years later it’s obvious to me that she was no lefty. She got us off welfare as soon as possible, for example.
My mother was immovable in her belief that taxation is theft, and that nobody deserves anything unearned by labor. With the exception of a largely apolitical outlook during prepubescence, I’ve always been a patriot and a libertarian.
People who work in retail tend not to pay any income taxes.
How does a helpdesk call center compare to retail? Admittedly I made $12.32/hr when I worked there, but even that was enough to not get everything back. (Let alone those darn FICA taxes.)
I worked in retail for 4 years and paid income taxes. I made $9.75 – $11/hr. Granted, I also got $600 back around tax time each year, but there’s no way that covered all of the income taxes I paid.
I guess it depends where you are. In places like Buffalo, “retail” = “minimum wage” and usually “part-time”. Those people don’t pay income taxes – I remember those days well. I never paid any income taxes until I moved to an expensive city and got a full-time (still entry level) job.
Not all retail jobs are the same either. A lot of businesses will pay two or three bucks more/hour than minimum wage even at a basic level customer service job. As someone who has to interview people to work in my department, finding someone who can handle dealing with customers 8 hours a day and still be polite is a rare commodity worth paying for.
That’s what I thought but for some reason the many jobs I had in that field always paid shit. Not that ever worked any joints that were classy-like.
I know in cellular phone company call centers they’ll pay like 15 an hour starting out. Not too shabby.
Part of it might be the state of the national economy. As the economy improves, more people are probably moving out of low level customer service type jobs, leaving a smaller pool for us to choose from, thus we need to actually pay for it. When the economy is in the shitter and places are laying off folks, and they come looking for a job, our pool of applicants grows and we can probably afford to pay people less.
Yeah, I do find that the stores I worked for that paid more had better employees. That being said, they also had products and prices that could support those better-paid retail workers.
I work in retail and the sense I get from my coworkers (I’ve never asked them directly) is that they mostly don’t like redistribution because they know they end up paying for it and not getting much, if anything, in return. The best illustration of this is when they see customers using food stamps to buy “luxury” food, when they’re usually unable to get on welfare and have to live modestly.
Most of my co-workers are pretty anti-union as well, especially the ones who used to work in union stores like Stop and Shop. They say it just makes it harder to fire shitty employees, meaning they have to work harder to cover co-worker’s ineptitude.
When I first got a job, I tried to get into the housing that would actually be affordable (35% or whatever). They asked if I had a kid, then hung up. I paid 800 a month in rent in that town, when I made about 1100 a month.
I think you very nicely sum up a trend, or several converging trends, that are very important to the future of libertarianism. More and more people are accepting libertarian social views and civil liberties, and of course everyone pays lip service to fiscal responsibility, but most otherwise-sympathetic liberals balk very quickly when you start to talk about economic issues like deregulation and reduction of the welfare state. I think it would be immensely beneficial for sites such as this (and libertarians as individuals) to drive home the benefits of economic liberty, the perils of excessive state involvement in economic matters, and the ways in which economic liberty is essential to civil liberties. This would go a long way toward bringing people around to a liberty-minded way of thinking.
I think it’s this need Millenials have this weird need to make a change, have a cause, or DO SOMETHING! I used to be a proggy environmentalist and when you hang around these groups after a while you realize they don’t actually care about the issues at large just participating in them is enough for them.
This is definitely true – I think this type of thinking is also what drives twitter wars, stupid facebook posts and pretentious gofundme campaigns. “Look! I’m doing something! (I hope someone is seeing how good I am)”
*like*
Yeah I gave up on social media because of that weird campaign where you changed your Facebook avatar to a cartoon character to show awareness for child abuse. I made my picture into Homer choking Bart and lost a lot of friends because of it. I pretty much now just lurk thicc bitchez on Instagram.
Good on you, that’s actually pretty hilarious. I also quit social media after I saw my brother post something about how 50% of all Americans are racist because Trump. I just left, no post about how I was leaving or anything. I just left and I am so much happier for it. It took about 2 weeks to end the habit of pulling my phone out and tapping the facebook app every time I had a minute of down time.
That being said, my awareness of how many websites/apps require a facebook in order to login has grown considerably.
Can you still make dummy accounts?
Good lord, I can’t imagine ever doing that. Maybe it’s generational. By the FB came out I already didn’t a shit about anything my friends or family were doing.
^^this^^
Yeah, I grew up with Myspace during my teenage years, so it was already part of the culture by the time I was formulating opinions.
WE WANTS YER FREE TIME TAPPING TO TAKE YOU HERE!
For 30 years I had jobs that never felt there was a limit on the time they demanded. I sure as hell was not going to give anybody another platform to intrude on my time. Like Edward Abbey said: I like certain people but in general dislike mankind. (I paraphrase)
Lol, I love you
🙂
I used to be a proggy environmentalist and when you hang around these groups after a while you realize they don’t actually care about the issues at large
Ex-communist, worked within the NDP and lefty student groups for awhile, can confirm. Very few people actually care about the workers’ revolution, many are just there due to social trends and status. Others have psychological issues they project into their politics.
^ So much this. I also started out ideological adult-life as an anarcho-communist (before realizing it was an oxymoron), and even worked with an underground press and a group or two for a little while. But getting involved leads to meeting the people up close, and you find that many are just in it for the group identity, many are there to show that they’re “rebels,” many are downright dishonest and are just in it for power, and a disturbingly large number are just crazy people.
The “workers” who need help are always someone else – I remember a particularly off-putting phone conversation with a guy from one of the groups who was trying to needle time and/or money out of me while I was working my way through college as a minimum wage night guard. He was laying on the story about how there’re these people who work these jobs for minimum wage and they don’t even have benefits and stuff. I sat there and thought “that describes me perfectly. Why aren’t you offering me help rather than asking me for help?” The answer: this is all very, very abstract for this person.
Millennials will acquire those experience just the same way the rest of us did.
I recommend research into “The Fourth Turning” and reading the book Pendulum.
Worldviews seem to cycle over generations, with a “Me Generation” giving way to a “We Generation”, which gives way to a “Me Generation”, and so on.
According to both theories, the Millenials are a “We Generation”, so they look for ways to improve social cohesion. The Gen-Xers are a “Me Generation, which is concerned about individual achievement.
This is, of course, an overgeneralisation…
I vaguely recall seeing an article about how Generation Z (up to 17 year olds) tend to have more negative views about topics like tattoos, abortion, non-binary genders, discrimination laws, etc. The point was that the pendulum will swing back to some new form of conservativism as a way to rebel against the establishment millennials and Gen-Xers.
My 14 year old is even more cynical than I am.
sweet.
This gives me hope. I’m also fairly certain that half those pro-Trump meme warriors on the alt-right are actually 13-17 year olds fucking with the rest of us. That kind of makes me die on the inside a bit, but still makes me laugh.
That one there is a perfectly natural cycle, as about 20-25 years after tattoos become fashionable, there comes a generation that sees what tattoos look like 20-25 years later.
I keep trying to warn everybody. No matter how cool they looked when you first get them, 30-40 years later they look like horrible blue birth marks and that’s even when they don’t go through girth enhancement.
Millenials seem like a classic “Me” generation to me. “Look at me! Look at my new tatts!” etc. etc.
But yeah, you can’t read too much into these things.
Look man Snapchat is both a blessing and a curse.
Snap-who?
Seriously, the whole ‘social media’ thing leaves me baffled. And I’m not that old. I have older friends whom I had to “un-VIP” because I was getting so much tedious crap from them via emails.
I made a Facebook account recently purely to keep informed of what’s going on in the local car scene, and to follow my club’s events. That’s it. Nobody talks to me, and I talk to nobody. That’s just the way I like it. And I’m 23.
Age isn’t always relevant.
I’m pretty sure there are no active Facebook users these days who are younger than 35. Except for those working in click-farms.
Lots of my friends (all 40-42) use it. I don’t. I had to quit ~8 years ago for work reasons.
Around here, it’s all the rage.
My kids all dropped off Facebook because they were being stalked by my mother. I never joined because I’ve never seen the point of putting my personal private shit on the digital equivalent of the world’s largest truck stop bathroom wall.
If your friends have a camera, a lot of your personal life is up there whether you like it or not.
Heh. Your assumption that I have friends amuses me. I am also renowned for my useless super power: the Bigfoot like ability to not be captured on film clearly.
Sigh. I’ve used social media a lot in recent years, and I still can’t get over my initial impression that Snapchat is a ridiculous waste of time.
I still have no idea why I would even want to visit that site. At least Facebook, I get it. I use it for invites and that’s pretty much it. My friends use it to keep track of the boring minutia of each other’s lives, well good for them but at least FB is good at that.
Wait until you’ve tried Tinder!
Rhywun: “hi. i’m female, from ny.”
MammothRod69: “m/25/nj lookin 2 get bung”
One of those things is not accurate.
Not from NY?
Guess again.
MALE!!1!
Then you’ve never gotten a midday nude from your lady.
I get those hourly in person. And I squeeze shamelessly. 😀
I would rather get that in an email than share it with Snapchat’s servers and employees.
Keep in mind that the Boomers proudly self-identified as the “Me Generation.” But “individual achievement” was not the thing – it was just fetishized “individuality” as a valued end-in-itself. People in the ’70s were all about “do your own thing” and “this is my thing – that’s not my thing,” etc.
Every 20 years or so we come up with a new term for “self-absorption” and pretend that people in their 20s are changing.
I worry a great deal about the Millennials and their politics. The college campus culture has drifted pretty far left over the last generation, and unlike when I was in school, you couldn’t go home and turn on the news each night to see new revelations about just how bad life was under Russian Communism. The profs seemed pretty absurd when the reality was on the front page of the paper every day and everybody knew that the Berlin Wall wasn’t to keep the West out but to keep their own people in. Today’s college kids don’t have that reality to be a counterweight to the bs propaganda being shoved on them in the classroom.
I know I’ve not been in college in the past few years, but the faculty was far to the left of the students when I was there, and the impression I’m getting these days is that there is a shrieking tiny minority on thiese campus backed up by their professors and most of the students would rather they just shut up and grow up.
I remember going to Occupy Atlanta and it was the dumbest fucking thing I ever went to. Nothing was accomplished, nothing. It devolved into so much infighting it fell apart at the seams.
Occupy Ottawa was the same deal. I’ve never seen lefty university students, Ron Paul fans, communists, 9/11 truthers, left-wing anarchists, the homeless and Gaddafi supporters in the same place since.
I think its starting to backfire, especially as these people eat their own. No one is ideologically pure, not even the people that are demanding it from their fellow citizens.
The problem is that the shrieking minority has no place to go in society other than government. They’re highly motivated to screw with your life.
I think the absurdity of the far left on college campuses is actually creating a “silent majority” opposed to them out of pure spite. I have no data to back this up. I also graduated college 6 years ago.
Here’s a piece from a few years ago that explores this thesis on a personal level. The guy finds he hates the left way more than he used to, and wonders why. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/22/right-is-the-new-left/
This is a fantastic blog.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
is a great read too.
You managed to say all that through a hockey mask? Impressive.
I’m a weirdo. Despite being a misanthropic atheist whose life was consumed with punk rock, I was pretty much a by-the-numbers Young Republican type until my late 20s, at which point I started to realize “Hey, George W. Bush really does kind of suck” and that the ideals the GOP professed that I believed in – civil liberty, limited government – were nothing more than empty slogans for them. At this point I don’t know exactly how I’d characterize myself other than despising the left and the Democratic Party. I’m mostly libertarian, I’d say, but I know I’d fail many a purity test because I don’t believe in open borders, nor am I a pacifist. I’ve certainly moved much closer to non-interventionism, but I don’t have a problem with maintaining a powerful military since it actually IS one of the powers of the federal government specified in the Constitution.
Pacifism is an abominable, malefic doctrine. Adherence to pacifism can never be a valid criterion for libertarianism, unless one subscribes to the incomparably foolish notion that malicious actors, entities, and states don’t exist, or that they aren’t a threat.
Free men must always be ready to fight for the liberty of themselves, their families, and their countrymen. Evil must be battled. That’s the reality of the world we inhabit.
I’m looking for the thicc Thursdays link…
So in other words, Millennials are going to make a mess by embracing socialism when they’re young, stupid and have nothing to lose and then will change the minds, complain about all these dumb taxes and regulations and still vote left because cognitive dissonance.
yes. funniest part is we all say we want out of SS. or at least all say we won’t ever see it. and yet, they still think the next idea will be Hunky Dory.
One reason: Millennials face the worst economic circumstances of any generation since the Depression, including daunting challenges to home ownership. More than other generations, they have less reason to be enamored with capitalism.
Oh, bullshit. They have been brought up in a system run by “progressive” educrats who have taught them to fear and revile entrepreneurial capitalism and vilify profits.
The entitled generation.
Yeah it’s not that bad. I just think of all the cool start ups that younger people have been creating. It’s a myth.
I do remember an article by the Jacket at TSTSNBN talking about how millennials don’t like capitalism but like “entrepreneurship”.
Love both of those things. I love that I have 10 different choices for lunch around where I work. I also love that I have the freedom to do whatever I want for extra work and be moderately successful. My generation loves to virtue signal against capitalism because it’s the best liberal meme.
I said this once and I will keep saying it. About 90% of the time you can replace the word capitalism with materialism and it all makes sense.
Capitalism and fascism are both words devoid of objective meaning anymore.
True. But the same mentality has been running the government for at least the last ten years. And that probably has delivered them challenges to homeownership and employment and building a career. Sure, some of them (the loudest complainers inevitably) truly do deserve their fate. They just might have wanted to have a backup to their plans to get a degree in Womens’ Studies and build a multinational non-profit social media empire. But, it seems that there is no shortage of young people who really genuinely would like to get a job, get out of the house and move on with their life who don’t have that chance.
There are challenges yes, but hard work will set you free.
Are these people Millenials? 3,380 members of Duke University’s Class of 2007 denounces a fellow member of their class who works for Trump.
“Open Letter to Stephen Miller
“To Stephen Miller, Duke University Class of 2007,
“Our class’s upcoming ten-year reunion serves as an occasion to reflect [wank wank wank]…
“…As a Senior Advisor to President Donald J. Trump, you have ascended to the very peak of American policy-making and have gained the power to influence not just hundreds of millions of Americans, but the lives of people around the world. And yet we find it impossible to see in your words and actions any glimmer of the university values we so cherish, nor the slightest suggestion that you spent four of your most formative years at the same dynamic, diverse institution of higher education we did….
“Surely you lived, as we did, in the same Duke quads as migrants and refugees, people who came to our school after childhoods of horrific hardship [wank wank wank]…
“Surely you had classes where young women were the leading lights of seminars and discussions [wank wank wank]…
“Surely you rode the campus bus with members of the LGBTQ community [wank wank wank]…
“Surely you ate lunch alongside students of color, people from all manner of socioeconomic backgrounds and locales. [wank, wank wank]…
“Surely as a columnist for the Duke Chronicle you saw the invaluable benefits of a rigorous, open-minded newsroom [wank wank wank]…
“We, the undersigned members of Duke’s Class of 2007 and beyond, see nothing in your actions that furthers the values of intellectual honesty, tolerance, diversity, and respect that we seek to promote in the world. But you can rest assured we will continue to champion those very values and serve as representatives of the Duke we want the world to see—for the next ten years and for the decades to follow.”
Anyone who gives a shit about a school reuinion is stuck in the past and hasn’t accomplished anything worth bragging about to their former peers.
I wanted to go to my 25 year just so I could gloat about how fat they all got when I was still thin.
I attended a large university as a method to get the needed credentials to start my career. My friends were the people I climbed with so I have ever had an interest in attending my university reunions. I had a moderate interest in attending my 10th high school reunion but was living in Germany and busy with my career. Since then I’ve had no interest in attending my reunion or joining a high school re-connection social media group.
I do still have two friends from my high school days (74-78) and two more from college and consider myself lucky to have those friends for over a quarter of a century.
(please omit the ellipses between “we did” and “surely”)
Dear Random Duke University Alumni,
Don’t call me Shirley. Doing so Others me.
He lived at the Duke University that tried to lynch the lacrosse team.
So…has government gotten BIGGER, or SMALLER, since the generation of the Depression?
Fucking. Idiots.
and the economy is rough on them because we make it fucking impossible to start a new business.
Roughly half of Millennials have positive feelings about socialist, twice the rate of the previous generation.
This is, of course, because they have eagerly swallowed the codswallop fed them by the aforementioned educrats that “socialism” = “fairness”.
Complete and utter nonsense.
I’d say let them have it, good and hard, but I don’t want to be part of the collateral damage.
* Me collectivise-um good.
that’s why I’m cool with calexit, as long as cal releases those poor souls in Jefferson, and we have some easy travel for a number of years to let people escape. they aren’t all socialists in there.
Yeah! I’m 30 minutes drive to the Jefferson border from my camp in Sactown. I believe I will escape.
I have yet to hear anyone adequately explain how it’s fair to steal from the hard working to pay off the slackers.
RACIST!!
Change “hard-working” to “privileged” and “slackers” to “non-privileged” and you have your answer.
Typically the answer one gets is about those who are un*able* to work. No effort is ever made to quantify or discuss what percentage of people on benefits are actually in this un*able* cohort. It also avoids inconvenient discussions about demand for labor at different skill levels.
The rhetorical usefulness of this frame is also the reason that discussion about wealth focuses around “income” … “income” is a relative measure and one which precludes discussion of outlays. Of course in the real world, absolute wealth per person has skyrocketed in the 20th century and earning and spending must balance…
You’re exactly right that the most retarded tic of “generational” analysis is the complete failure to recognize that there’s often more change *within* generations than between them, and that the caveat stuck in at the end where he says, “as incomes grow above $60,000” (and people have kids) opinions change. duh.
Simply put, what we call “millenials” aren’t going to stay this way forever.
Here’s my political analysis which encompasses everything in this article and more =
Both political parties are experiencing a generational transformation. And its less to do with younger-twats and how they vote = its to do with the die-off/retirement of the Baby Boomers, and the concurrent collapse/discrediting of many of their ideas
The real transformation of the political landscape is demographic, yes; but fuck the millenials. They might be one of the largest growing consumer groups, but they’re not the people in charge, and they’re not going to be for another ~20 years or so, really.
More significant, in my view, is the fact that the “Leadership” of the Democrats is getting pretty darn creaky
And as the Washington Post notes = there’s not much vigor in the bullpen either
Both parties are basically going to experience a transfer of power from their older, boomer-leadership, to a slightly younger group; and with that transition will come the opportunity to shift the way the respective parties have sold themselves to the public.
My argument is that Obama was cancer for the Democrats because he prevented any need for them to adapt gradually to this coming shift. The GOP isn’t necessarily much farther along in the evolutionary chain, but they *have* changed (by necessity). Basically, the Tea Party + Trumpism forced legacy postures to adapt.
I think what helps the GOP is that there is a menu of options that they can choose from to see “who they’re going to become” in the near future. The Dems, by contrast, face a major conceptual schism; the new blood all thinks the only way to go is to PROG-HARDER. And all the people currently *in* power – the people @ ActBlue, SEIU, NEA, etc. . all the institutional democrat locus of power… know that going too far left will be political suicide. So there’s this huge gap between Democrat institutional politics as it exists, and “Left” generational politics. And i don’t know how they’re going to fix that.
Basically, my argument is that the change that’s happening (and is going to happen) has more to do with the death/retirement of boomers, and the increasing lack of support for continuing their legacy politics, than it does the ‘future impact of socialist-leaning millenials’…. which as already noted – aren’t going to stay very-socialist as they start having kids and paying taxes.
who are they going to run in 2020??
My guess is it will be a bloody-struggle between various flavors of Identity Politics. With Kamala Harris and Corey Booker etc. types of people vying for the “They’re all we’ve got” prize.
I think Fauxcahontas might try and stay relevant but i think she’s got too much baggage. The Obama model sort of necessitates someone with very little real track record and basically a ‘blank slate’ that people can project their hopes onto.
All of the rumblings I’ve seen so far have the progressive wing of the Democrats wanting to run either:
1) Bernie Sanders
2) Elizabeth Warren
3) Michelle Obama
Won’t Bernie be in a home by then?
– Sanders will be ~80; no
– Warren suffers from closets full of dirt; she may give it a go, but i’m skeptical
– lol. she couldn’t run a lemonade stand.
DOOMco: We can hope…
Gilmore: I think all three are terrible candidates, and can’t see any of them winning unless something truly goes to shit in the next 3 years. But these are the names I keep seeing come up from the progs.
The people who get talked about this early are rarely if ever the people who wind up running. HRC was an exception, since she’s been campaigning since 1996.
Well, that’s just more evidence that there’s a huge lack of self-awareness of the situation they’re in.
The fact that no one can name anyone even *plausible* as a ‘next generation’ leader for the democrats…. reveals that they literally have (as the above WaPo article noted) ZERO farm-team.
Another stat that shows how fucked the democrats are; 40% or so of Democrats in congress come from 4 states = CA, NY, IL, and MA
The politics that work in Urban, Blue areas do not work in Purple states. The strategy that the Democrats have committed to does nothing except further entrench them in cities/states they already dominate. Which makes them less likely to win national elections; because they have to skew so hard-left to appeal to California, they can’t dilute themselves enough to meet the rest of the country.
I agree with you here Gilmore. I think the last chance for the Dems to wake up is going to be 2018. They’ve got a hostile election map, and yet these same people keep talking about taking back the House and Senate in the midterms. They think there’s a good chance of taking the Senate! There’s only 8 Republican Senators up for election in 2018, while there’s over 20 Democrat Senators up for election. This may be a midterm election in which the incumbent’s party actually picks up seats.
I wouldn’t be too sure about that.
At the moment the flailing on the part of Team Blue just comes across to non-members as desperate and pathetic. But with Team Red now operating most of the levers of power, Team Blue will eventually flail onto things large numbers of people are actually unhappy with the now-dominant party about.
That’s actually the only thing that either party cares about – peeling votes away from the other party. If they have to change their fundamental ideology in order to accomplish that, they will change it in a heartbeat.
It took the Democrats about two years to go from being the pro-business party resisting McKinley’s anti-business crusading to being the anti-business party standing up to McKinley’s pro-business cronyism. That sort of thing is ripe to happen again. By 2020 these two teams may realign completely.
I think ‘how long’ that ‘eventually’ takes may be long enough to still get slaughtered in the mid-terms.
So far, the Dems have made a lot of noise trying to oppose Trump over exactly the issues the general public actually sides with Trump on.
e.g. immigration, schools, etc.
If they were honking their horns about ‘climate change’ more, they’d simply be burying themselves deeper.
As long as the economy chugs along at an “improving’” pace, and the GOP version of ‘what we’re going to replace the ACA with’ means promising people less out of pocket expense…
…the Dems are screwed. Moaning about “Russia” isn’t going to get them anywhere.
If there’s some issue lurking in the wings that presents them some huge opportunity, i lack the imagination to figure out what it is.
I’m going with, as Gilmore mentions, Harris or Booker, possibly even Michelle Obama, or the wildcard of some random celebrity throwing their hat in the ring and everyone doubling down on them due to name recognition and branding. And even if they’re the biggest idiot imaginable the Democrats can say ‘but Reagan’.
I think there’s an off-chance Tom Steyr will throw his hat in and try to run a Trumpesque “Proggy Billionaire” campaign
Well aren’t the new Democrats in office young women of different ethnic backgrounds?
There’s definitely something going on with the generation of younger women and politics.
Also – at risk of beating the rotting corpse of a horse into something resembling Pâté ….
here’s that video i linked in the PM links last night where millenial guys explain to their millenial peers Why They’re Retarded.
If that’s the way they’re talking to each-other *now*, you really don’t need to worry much about the ‘future socialism’ of the Millenial generation. They already have voices among themselves saying, “people, get your head out of your ass”, and i suspect that sort of thing will just increase as they age. Self-correcting generationalism, basically.
Yeah being broke without a parental safety net makes you focus on what’s important. Also when he says “they have to feed their children cold chicken tendies” is the funniest thing I’ve heard all week.
There’s something not quite right about that link…
dear @#$)@(* god i can’t seem to link to that thing without screwing it up.
I used to be a die heart Democrat but living on the Southside of Chicago, you sort of start to see how Leftist policies adversely affects your neighborhood and schools. Also, sitting in a DePaul classroom with a bunch of Leftists will slowly start to make you reconsider your Progressive views.
But my full conversion to Libertarianism happened after the 2008 elections when a friend of mine gave me Atlas Shrugged to read and sent me some links of Ron Paul speaking.
Bully lover.
RP brought me to the libertarian wing in the 08 cycle as well.
This process could push them somewhat right-ward, particularly as they move from the leftist hothouses of the urban core to the more contestable suburbs.
Huh. I read that as “leftist nuthouses” on the first pass.
Silly me.
As I recall, the *original* (pre-warmonger) definition of “neoconservative” was a liberal who had been mugged by reality.
What’s the old joke? If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative at 40, you have no brain?
The whole “x party is done/won’t be in power for a long time” is way, way overdone. It’s been said about both Team Red and Team Blue multiple times in the past decade, and it seemed plausibly true each time. The left, even socialist-leaning millennials will naturally drift further to the right, while their children will rebel and take on left-leaning views, which will drift further right, while their children…
So it always has been, so it always shall be.
I didn’t even notice UnCivil had made the same reference in the first fucking reply. Don’t mind me, I’m dumb.
fucking Millennials and your ADHD.
As a millennial, I have found my friends slowly creeping rightward on social issues. They’re still cool with gay marriage, abortion (mostly) and the rest of the traditional liberal social positions, but they have grown quite tired of the terms “racist”, “bigot”, “Nazi”, etc. I was very, very surprised to hear several of my friends start to make fun of ideas such as non-binary genders, white privilege and feminism over the past couple of weeks.
Reductio ad absurdum, in real time.
I can’t match Mulatto’s aptitude on this front, but here’s some hotness to tide you over while you await his latest Thicc Thursdays post –
(No nudity): https://s14.postimg.org/f7v55uec1/2456.jpg
Do we prefer model-esque gals around here, or are fuller women also on the menu for some?
( Desire to see more intensifies)
One view every ass guy likes to see:
(No nudity, but consider it unsafe for work): https://s1.postimg.org/6ipeock31/2457.jpg
*sweats*
Until John finally crosses over, it’s probably safe to stick with the skinnies.
I was merely thinking of the differences in opinion I have with HM, but he certainly widens the variety of tastes even more…
heh, “wide”
There is a qide range of tastes represneted among the commentariat.
Tastes, huh? Fruity tastes, perhaps?
(Partial nudity): https://s11.postimg.org/gwbir9aap/2485.jpg
In my experience, that’s about 18 months.
I like my women thicc and Latina. But I’ll pull my mickey to most anything.
There are those who say Gen Z (whatever comes after Millennials) may be the most conservative yet. It remains to be seen but it’s pretty common to be all “yeah, fuck that noise” to whatever came before you.
At what point do you move from “decisively” to “mostly”? I mean sure, 55 percent is decisive in a sense, but I tend to think the word connotes more magnitude than that.
Anyway, I haven’t read the rest of the comments yet so someone may have said this already, but I also think there will be at least some change in economic views for the better as folks get (deeper) into the workforce and/or family life — though unfortunately, I think coming of age in a recession / “jobless recovery” will have a lasting impact on the way many people think about the economy.
But my fear is that the disrespect (and sometimes outright antagonism) towards civil liberties, especially free speech and due process, will remain — or perhaps get worse, when (some) millenial parents integrate “for the childrun!” into their worldviews.
In more Millennial news, it’s time for chicks with dicks, and guys with ovaries, to stand up to that bully, Donald Trump:
““We will not be silenced and that we will stand with and protect trans youth,” said Grimm, speaking through tears. “No matter what happens, no one, not even the government can even defeat a community so full of live, color, diversity and most importantly love.””
For the record, Grimm refused a single-occupancy restroom offer from the school district. The intention was to make this a political issue from the beginning. “He” has pissed off most of the school and parents. The local media, on the other hand, love him.
That’s the thing that rubs me the wrong way. These people could be quietly using whichever bathroom they choose, but no, that’s not good enough. It must be a cudgel to beat political opponents with. Bunch of savages.
It’s almost like Obama planned it that way.
He wants separate bathrooms for Wesen.
Their feeblemindedness astounds me, no matter how many instances of puerile behavior I witness.
This is a lot of bitching for 0.2% of the population, or whatever it is.
The numbers were closer to 0.03%
your decimal point is off.
the ‘low end’ is 0.3%, the ‘high end’ was 0.5% (recently pushed up to 0.6% by the Williams Institute)
anyone who looks seriously at the data and does any sanity checking (e.g. compare it to prevalence in similar populations like UK, EU, etc, or benchmark polling data against other types of more epidemiological collection methods like ‘completely sex assignment surgeries’) will tell you the number is probably in the lower end of the range. Probably about ~1million in the US. and that # itself includes a lot of ‘wiggle room’ to consider people who may never actually even transition formally.
*”Completed“, not ‘completely’
between 0.3-0.5%, if you lump in on the high-end estimates of the “in therapy for gender dysphoria” but who never seek reassignment
any higher than that, and they’re just making shit up and watering down the definition to anyone who feels “non-binary”
if you want sources/studies, this Rand Corp report includes a brief survey of all the attempts to quantify the population in its opening sections
“STAMFORD [Conn] — Hundreds of city students walked out of school Thursday to protest Betsy DeVos…
““This is not political,” junior Marco Pinto-Leite told the crowd. “This is not a matter of left or right, Democrat or Republican, Trump or Hillary. This is about institutions that made us who we are today.””
LOL keep telling yourself that
The F you receive today for walking out of school is not political, but it is permanent.
Hmmm, was it “mostly peaceful”? All signs point to YES!
That’s funny – I keep seeing this in shrieking diatribes about evil Trump and his evil lackeys – “This is NOT political!!”
No? Really?
Must be one of them alternate facts I keep hearing about, like all those LGBT people who killed themselves the night Trump was elected.
Until John finally crosses over
Gaaaah!
Hasn’t he already been here?
“Howard student activists held a rally Monday on the university’s main quadrangle days after the university president, Wayne A. I. Frederick, hosted Betsy DeVos, newly confirmed as education secretary. The students said they want advance notice from the university leadership of other visits by Trump administration officials and they want the president himself barred from the campus. Interacting with administration officials would diminish the values of the university while bringing no real value to Howard students, said Juan Demetrixx, a senior and representative of Concerned Students, 1867, the group that organized the rally….
“Howard students…renewed demands that the university declare itself a sanctuary campus, increase resources for underrepresented groups and establish a community center to engage with surrounding neighborhoods. And they added calls for the university to ban the president from all campus buildings and to “refuse to abandon its values in exchange for financial security.””
Footage of HU student:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS7nqwGt4-I
FFS. What would these cringing cowards do in the event of an actual threat to their safety? Say, an actual fascist president, not one who calls you a poopy-head.
Weep in abject terror as they’re loaded onto cargo trains. That’s literally it.
That’s unfair. A good chunk would start writing articles explaining why the trains are running on time, and that the cargo really, really deserved it.
There’s also applauding speeches, standing for delegates of the Party, submitting certifications of purity in order to acquire government jobs after purges….
“They’re deporting white folks mostly, so this shit’s all good. HEIL!”
““A first offense for most kinds of conduct will not result in an expulsion or any other removal from campus. A second offense won’t either. It is only when it becomes clear that after repeated attempts to help the student understand community expectations that a student will be removed from campus.”
I’m not quite sure what else they expect to university to do to hunt down people who spray painted graffiti. The school is offering a rather sizeable reward, $10,000. It’s not as if there are a lot of ways to find the offender short of catching them in the act. Yet, of course, to the mob this means that the president of the school is racist.
A silly movement comprised of silly people.
And they’ve surely received nothing but overwhelming support from all the students and staff. But it will never be good enough.
Nope. At this point, the word racist barely has any meaning left at all.
I’m totally sure this isn’t like exactly like Oberlin or U Missouri or… a half dozen other colleges where ‘graffiti’ turned out to be the work of some left-wing activist dipshit, who seemed to be fulfilling some version’s of Voltaire’s logic, namely “If (racists) don’t exist, it would be necessary to invent them”
If its not leftist trying to gin up excuses to protest, its often trolling-alt-righters doing it, not because they’re particularly racist, but (as Zero Sum said a few threads ago) because they know that the Campus Outrage by the identity politics crew serves only to make normal people more and more sick of their victim-mongering act.
“The rest of the message said “Leave,” followed by a racial slur for black people.”
Well, I for one don’t know any racial slurs, so enlighten me – what word was it?
Loved that one from SF recently where “Nazis” don’t know how to draw swastikas.
Millennials have no negative experience with socialism. It took place before they were born and history was ignored while they were growing up. It appeals to them for the same reason that it appealed to people before them: The promise of a better life at someone else’s expense.
I have to give Berlin residents a positive shout out for trying to connect the current generation with the horrors of socialism. Every time I visit family there I go visit the old Stasi HQ which is now a museum. Every time I have visited there are grandparents taking their grandkids and adult children there to see what socialists due to keep power. Nothing like hearing omma or oppa talk about relatives that were kept in those cells to make an impact.
If you are ever in Berlin I highly recommend a visit. As my son says it is the “anti-Disneyland” on Earth. Visiting a KZ Lager or other National Socialist site doesn’t have the same impact since the NSDAP is gone but socialists are still all around.