So, republicans are starting to wake up and realize they have a huge problem. Millennials don't like them, as a matter of fact, Millennials hate them. This severely damages the future of the party. They're noting that Millennials are flocking to Bernie Sanders and "socialism", and that this is the fault of "liberal academia."
Now, I have mixed views on the idea that Millennials like "socialism". I definitely think we are seeing a progressive pro Bernie movement here, but Millennials are also a fairly finicky generation that has not really found its place yet. Some millennials are fairly conservative and vote libertarian in my experience. And data suggests that Millennials' support for socialism is tied to employment status and income level. They tend to have weird contradictory views that make perfect sense through the lens of self interest. They want big government and social programs, but they don't want to pay for them, is the gist I get from it. I don't think a lot of people in my generation really do have solid convictions, but at the same time, speaking as one, I think that some of these contradictions make sense in practice and I've discussed some of them on my blog before (for example, the concept of millennials supporting social programs but thinking government is wasteful). Generally speaking, there's little doubt that millennials are liberal socially, but there's still a lot of debate over economics and that's difficult to dissect. Generally speaking, I think some millennials are liberal and some are conservative on this subject. Overall, on political affiliation, millennials lean liberal, but they are largely independent from the political parties.
Overall, it's hard to know what their views are as a generation demographically, and what their overall legacy will be, but it's not good for the current republican party. I mean, millennials, by and large, reject conservatism. I'm not sure they reject fiscal conservatism, but they reject the brand pushed by the modern republicans. A lot of millennials lean liberal, but it's unclear if this will change as they get older. Again, the only real piece of information I can find is republicans are screwed. But why are they screwed? As a millennial, I'll try to explain it in my own mentality. This may be biased, but I'll try to apply several lenses to it.
Reason 1: Rejection of the political status quo
Millennials are, by definition, born after 1980. We have lived solely within the party alignment of Reagan. We grew up with fiscal and social conservatism. I, myself, I read Rush Limbaugh books as a teenager and was very conservative pre college. I'll get to the college thing later since that's important. But ultimately, political views are ultimately developed in people based on their birth year and their experiences with politics in their teenage and young adult years. Previous generations leaned more conservative, because growing up in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, people witnessed the downfall of conservatism and the rise of the era of Reagan. They grew up with Eisenhower, Nixon, Johnson, Reagan, and this ultimately spelled a pretty dismal view of the democrats, leading them as a generation to vote more conservatively. However, people born after 1980, especially those born in the late 80s and early 90s, these are the people I identify with most (I'm 28, born in 1987), we grew up with Clinton, Bush, and Obama. I barely remember HW Bush at all. I have vague childhood memories of Clinton. I tend to remember Bush and Obama more. That article, it points to the ages of 14-24 as being the prime years for events forming political opinions. I turned 14 not long after 9/11. I turned 24 in 2011. Seeing how the name of this blog is based off of my massive ideological shifts in 2012, I think it's a fairly accurate approach to politics. But generally speaking, what influenced my views most? Well, the Bush administration, and parts of the Obama administration.
Let me give a narrative of what a lot of people my age think. We grew up in relatively prosperous economic times. We remember our parents being fully employed, having a good middle class salary, and generally having positive childhoods under the Clinton administration. When we become teenagers, 9/11 happens, the towers go down, we react and rally behind the president. Bush then betrays that trust and gets us in all these pointless wars and enacts all these crazy surveillance programs. We get budget deficits, we get incompetence, and at the end of his presidency, right around the time most of us are in college, or going to college, or graduating from college, the recession hits. Our experience post college is awful. We deal with the most hostile job market in decades, we're taking minimum wage jobs after being told all our lives college was a way out of dead end jobs, and we generally have been crapped on by the economy. As the torch gets passed on to Obama, the republicans sabotage him in every way they can, while Obama comes off looking like the only reasonable person in Washington. Even then, many of us aren't happy with his approach. After years of recession, and unhappiness, we reject the democratic party's vision, but still favor it to the republican's vision. Also, we're very socially open because there's no point in being jerks to people who think or do things differently than we do. If it's none of our business, we shouldn't be involved in it.
But yeah, generally speaking, what does this look like to you? We look at the 1990s and the liberalism in it the way the boomers look at the 1950s and those "good old days". We think the 2000s were crap, we reject Bush, we reject the ever increasing conservatism of the republican party, and as I'll get to in a minute, many of us know that what the republican party is selling is BS. Even if many of us aren't happy with the democrats, they still come off as a fairly good alternative to the republicans. Although in general, many of us aren't happy with anyone.
Another thing I want to bring up that will be relevant later on is something we weren't taught. Keep in mind where I begin my personal political narrative. It's around the early 90s. Around, say, 1992-1993. What happened right before this? The end of the cold war. We are the first generation that has grown up in a post cold war world, and we generally haven't had as strong of an ideological indoctrination as previous generations. Yes, we grew up with fiscal conservatism and stuff. But as we got older, and as we saw the republican party start to come apart at its seams, we didn't have the hardcore ideological cold war indoctrination to keep us there. This allows us to be more left wing as we start questioning our system.
Now, reason 2.
Reason 2: We're too smart to vote republican
The republican party appeals to the stupid and the uneducated. Read the quote above from the first link that brought up this topic that I mentioned I would get to later again. That later is now. The republicans bash so called "liberal" academia, and they are generally anti intellectual. Look, I know conservatism. I was a conservative, and I know how conservatives think about academics. It's generally not good. They view them with skepticism, because they often contradict their values. I'm not going to deny that academic disciplines can be value laden at times, but they also...well...teach you things. I studied political science and sociology. I have first hand experience with "liberal" academia. And while many of the arguments and conclusions and underlying philosophy lean left, they do so because they have to. How can you view the world sociologically, looking at different cultures, looking at different ways of doing things, while being conservative? Conservatives are ultimately pro native culture, pro status quo. They're not as open minded as liberals. Doing academics requires an open mind. It requires some level of being able to understand different people and different cultures. It requires being able to understand power relationships in society. It ends up requiring a fairly liberal outlook. The fact is, after being educated, after understanding the facts, after being able to understand my own research, look at statistics, interpret data, draw my own conclusions, conservatism is a stupid, stupid philosophy.
Many people in my generation have gone to college. We're very educated. We're relatively smart for our age. The republicans appeal to stupid people, and this is why they go over with Millennials like lead balloons. We recognize just how cultish and crazy and out of touch they are. They're living in the 70s and 80s, and appealing to people who remember the 70s and 80s as youngish adults. This is why they appeal to older people but fail to win over younger people. They're out of touch with us culturally, and their message is beneath us.
Many people in my generation end of leaning democratic by default because at least democrats have that open, tolerant, multicultural, reason and evidence based perspective. They have a monopoly on it. And again, while many people don't even like the democrats either, they will remain independent and end up lean democratic, even if their ideology is out of sync. Even the more conservative Millennials I know tend to lean toward libertarian politics. They embrace the social openness of the democrats, while retaining fiscal conservative ideology. This is probably why Gary Johnson has 8% of the vote right now or so. And many of us actually do lean so called "socialistic" (I have trouble using that word because very few millennials advocate for what I would define as outright socialism). Some of us are mainstream democrats. Although a lot of us like Bernie. We like his convictions, we like his honesty, we like his personality, and some of us do like his platform. Which brings us to point 3.
Reason 3: For many of us, economic conservatism does not work for us
Look, we grew up with fairly conservative values, and as I've pointed out many times, even the Clintons and the like are still fairly conservative. The big facet of our life, going back to point 1, that drives our views on economics, is essentially, the recession. We grew up believing if we just worked hard and did everything right and go to college, we would get a good job and live better lives than our parents. But that just isn't happening for many of us. Many of us graduate into the post recession economy. Some before, around, say, 2005ish. Some of us later around 2013ish. Some of us right smack dab in the belly of the beast around 2009ish. And let's be honest, we are SCREWED. We scramble to find jobs in a hostile economy that tells us we're too inexperienced to get anything. We're told to be grateful with the dead end jobs some of us have been working since high school. Republicans, they talk of hard work and the American Dream, and we just don't see it.
As I've stated before, I recognized around 2013-2014, we need to do better than we're doing. The republicans are clueless and the democrats are timid and incrementalist. We need serious change. Sweeping change. FDR like change. And here comes Bernie Sanders, talking of free education, free healthcare, and making the economy work for people who aren't 1%ers or filthy rich. As I mentioned above, we are the first generation to be in a post cold war world. Older generations will tell us, you can't question wealth and income distribution, you can't question who gets what, that's class warfare! That's Marxism! The older generations are so brainwashed against anything left wing that they won't even be willing to entertain the idea that maybe Marx was right about something once in a while. It's the ideology of our enemies, therefore everything is wrong, and everything we do is right. America, love it or leave it.
But, combining our educations with the events of the times, this once again comes off as very outdated and tone deaf. We're being told, by culturally indoctrinated older people that we can't question our system, when our system isn't working for us. Even worse, these people, these republicans, they blame us for our problems. They call us lazy, they say we're entitled, they say our lack of success is our fault. They won't let us question the system, they refuse there are any problems with the system, etc. Gee, it's no wonder so many of us go over to the left, that actually wants safety nets to be a think, that actually thinks we need to focus on income inequality. If support for "socialism" is linked with income, our crappy post recession economic lives have done a lot to drive us there.
And even then, I don't think a lot of us like the democrats' vision either. I've repeatedly said it does not go far enough, and I think some people, like Bernie supporters, who are popular among Millennials, agree. Which goes back to some of those so called economic contradictions mentioned above. We want safety nets (left wing position), but think government is inefficient (right wing position). When we have these overly bureaucratic approaches to our safety nets is it any surprise this is how millennials think? I think millennials want more efficient approaches to the economy, and that's why we support Bernie Sanders over Clinton. These contradictions make sense in context.
Millennials and the future of political parties
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I think the republican party as it exists is done. It's toast. It's so woefully out of touch with the modern generation, that even the more conservative among us want nothing to do with it. It mostly has the support of older people, and millennials who just go along with it as a "lesser evil", while really wanting something more libertarian.
The democrats, it's hard to say. I think the millennials support it now, but they're growing tired of it too. Once again, it fits an older, outdated baby boomer outlook of the world that arose as part of the Reagan revolution, and I think that while some millennials do support it, others among us do not.
It's hard to know what the ultimate fate of Millennials will be. Some of us might be more bitter and conservative over time like the older generations, turning into our parents who says stuff like "that's life, deal with it", and "I worked so hard for all of this, I dont want it redistributed". I mean, as we get older and hazed by American corporate/capitalist culture, this could happen. Especially if people eventually do earn more money and work their ways up. I think that the future of the conservative movement in America is a libertarian one. One that throws overboard much of the religious, social, and foreign policy based conservatism in favor of fiscal conservatism.
I think many of us, especially the less economic privileged, will ultimately remain liberal and in strong support of social programs and the like. I think Bernie Sanders is the future of the democratic movement, after all the Clintons and other "new democrats" are too old to run any more. Heck, 2016 could've been our year if not for Clinton. Bernie Sanders had the potential to be our generation's Reagan. I hope we just didn't make a grave mistake in pushing for Clinton, the equivalent of Gerald Ford or Richard Nixon instead.
The only thing that is clear to me is that America is running full speed toward a political tipping point that will result in some form of party realignment. I don't know when it will happen, but I'm guessing some time in the next decade or two, if not sooner. And I'm guessing ultimately, the two factions driving it will be libertarians on the conservative side and progressives on the democratic side. Who will be the dominant party? Who knows. It really depends on who gets elected and under what circumstances and which party breaks from their old, outdated ideologies first and sells us something we can enthusiastically get behind. FDR won voters for generation. Reagan won voters for a generation. But no one has won the millennials yet, and someone eventually will define our politics for a generation.
No comments:
Post a Comment