But a Jape

“People may die, but ideas live forever.”

– An inspirational phrase, if you forget that bad ideas exist too

I’ve never been a huge fan of these “generational warfare” narratives that’s been so prevalent in the past decade or so – “Boomers are this, Millennials are that, Gen Z will do such and such” – it’s such an intellectually lazy way to examine society and I feel like it’s the reason why so many people act surprised when “outdated” ideas like, say, bigotry of any form, comes back into vogue.

The YouTube channel Jubilee had a video last month where progressive Sam Seder debated with 20 Trump supporters, and one of the biggest points of conversation about that video was how so many people were surprised at how young the Trump supporters were. And I was just thinking, “Yeah, no, there are young people who believe this shit too. That’s how they got into power.” Because despite all the rhetoric of, “Boomers are in power and that’s why the world sucks!” under our (granted, quite imperfect) democracy, Millennials and Gen Z also have some access to those levers of power. And significant numbers of us (not the majority, to be clear, but significant nonetheless) willfully ceded that power to the conservatives. Because they agreed with them. Because Boomers are not the only ones who agree with those ideas.

There were Young Republicans my age when I went to college. Charlie Kirk is younger than me and has spent the past decade actively building on that young conservative population. I personally watched GamerGate start out with some chronically online gamers angry about some guy’s drama blog about his ex, and somehow develop into a rightwing extremist movement about how woke SJWs are killing our video games. So yeah, I’m not surprised young people can be conservative. And I don’t think just waiting these guys out is the answer to anything.

– James