It’s frustrating, but this helps explain why the progressive victories of the Obama presidency -the ACA, gay marriage, the Paris Agreement, the JCPOA, getting out of Iraq, etc.- count for so little to some younger voters. They can’t imagine a world where those things aren’t real. https://t.co/4Vi3fu8bcr
— Gary Winslett ?????? (@GaryWinslett) May 20, 2024
Heck, if you’re an Old Person like me, you can remember the head-spinning swiftness when the AIDS crisis moved American public opinion from “I’ve never even *met* a gay person, have you?” to “I know a dozen people with this new ‘gay plague’, including my favorite parish priest, and I don’t think they could *all* have caught it from a toilet seat.” I remain convinced that Obergefell happened, not just because so many people fought so hard for it, but because ‘ordinary Americans’ were made to realize that the much-touted One in Ten included individuals they knew and cared about…
We were all the same when we were young. Remember this, young voters are just young, not dumb. They have the same memory history you do. https://t.co/528RcxlejG
— Erik Loomis (@ErikLoomis) May 20, 2024
Supporting democracy means accepting that citizens can vote for whomever they want, or not vote at all, for whatever reasons they want.
If anyone chooses to opt out of “who will be the next president, Biden or Trump,” that’s up to them.
But when you say that, people believe you.— Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) May 20, 2024
Not only does that kid need to know that Obergefell v. Hodges was decided in 2015 by a 5-4 vote, but he and his voting peers need to know that 1. The same court that overturned Roe could absolutely overturn Obergefell. 2. Joe Biden passed a law to minimize the effect if they do. https://t.co/4zf9LDIBcq
— That Well-Adjusted Biden Guy (@What46HasDone) May 19, 2024
War for Ukraine Day 817: The Butcher’s Bill from Kharkiv
Cathie from Canada
It struck me the other day that the last two Democratic presidents are illegitimate as far as MAGA Repubs are concerned – Obama because he isn’t really American, and Biden because he didn’t really win the election. Therefore all their accomplishments and the policies they support would be considered illegitimate or un-American too. So overturning them might well be considered patriotic, in this view. It’s Bizzaro-world.
Mai Naem mobile
I don’t know how you fix American politics without forcing social media to police the accuracy of stuff that any rando puts up. Teaching media literacy to grade school/HS students would help but these people don’t even want students to read To Kill A Mockingbird.
KrackenJack
The repetition of the worst parts of history is due to the majority of people being unable to believe anything they haven’t personally experienced. The Gilded Age, epidemics, Great Depression, Fascism, Women’s Rights, Civil Rights, Gay Rights. Complacency opens the door for malefactors to erode those gains.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cathie from Canada:
Rethuglicans in general believe that any election won by a Democrat is “rigged”. I mean, how is it even possible that the White House fell into Clinton’s hands in 1992? It belongs to Reagan and his heirs!
Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, Republicans actually accepted electoral defeat. That all changed in the 80s.
Ohio Mom
Years ago when I was having my hair done, the conversation in the salon turned to smoking. My young hairdresser could not believe the descriptions of how widespread smoking was — in airplanes! In hospitals! In schools!
I told her my first boss smoked constantly and I came out of meetings reeking and thought nothing of it.
That was my first inkling that I was beginning to turn into an old, that I came from a time with customs that would be lost to memory.
However, one thing hasn’t changed, young people continue to believe there will be be no Social Security for them, just as I once did.
Ishiyama
I’m too old to be cynical about today’s youth. They are their own generation. Nobody in power listened to our voices when we spoke the truth, way back in prehistory.
wjca
If that causes them to do some serious long term financial planning, rather than spend like there’s no tomorrow, that’s all to the good.
piratedan
I think part and parcel that some of our issues is the fact that when the GOP was losing at the ballot box, they invaded the school boards and have been attempting to not just rewrite, but also erase history.
Sure the kids may not even know about this, but if its not being taught, how will they know otherwise? Just like how deep racism is in the US and generations of us grew up unaware of Tulsa? The Central American issues with United Fruit being the de facto government thru the early 20th century?
kind of like our search engine fiascos, too much crap obscuring real relevant data searches.
Martin
I’d argue the difference is that the rate of social change is MUCH faster now. There’s a lot more backfilling to have to do, and a lot of their information comes from international sources, that aren’t necessarily going to toe the US policy line (for good or bad). I mean, no US college student was motivated to demonstrate for Gaza due to CNNs coverage (perhaps in spite of it).
But this is why I get so mad that the instinctive response to young voters is to shit on them rather than talk to them, reinforce their right to have an opinion on these things and fill in the bits they might be missing. (I suspect some of that due to the need to counter some arguments that are very difficult to counter). But that’s how you turn them to your cause, not getting pissed that they might not show up over Gaza or TikTok or whatever. For instance, here’s a handy bit of information you can use to talk to young people around you who might be upset about the TikTok thing: It’s not the first app the federal government forced be sold from Chinese owners to American ones. The previous app? Grindr, back in 2020.
Exact same argument then. Young people might appreciate a bit better why the feds felt Grindr users needed protection here.
Trivia Man
I give a lot of credit to Dan Savage. IMHO he really helped “normalize” gay people. I don’t think there is any question that it is easier to hate “the gayz” when you “don’t know any.” Once people found out they DID know some, and were often related to one, it became much less scary to admit they exist.
bbleh
No disagreements in general, BUT. On the one hand we’re supposed to believe that huge masses of potential voters, especially but not exclusively young ones, are either completely ignorant of history or are like goldfish who don’t remember the last trip around the bowl, and on the other that the Gaza crisis has irrevocably poisoned them against Biden and we’re dooooomed. Kinda funny too how almost nobody mentions gas prices anymore, and not nearly as much mention of Old since the SOTU.
Jayzus H W Christmas people, put down the keyboards and go volunteer at yer local Dem HQ. Or if yer in a place like WV, work for a local issue or candidate less bad than the alternatives.
RaflW
I am heartened that (most) kids today just take same-sex marriage for granted. That’s great. Hopefully they can also see that by the end of October same-sex marriage, and a whole lot of other things they think are normal and decent could vanish in an instant just like the right to seek an abortion did. The bad news that may not sink in for a while is that, if the GOP manages to nuke any more of these had-fought expanded rights, it will likely take many many years to win them back. And a lot of people’s lives will be seriously impacted in the interim.
opiejeanne
@KrackenJack: I’m old enough that I remember when birth control was finally made legal in every state, I think the holdout was Connecticut but I’m not sure. I tried to look up the date and only found 1965 for the pill to be legal, but I remember reading about the last block to fall in the early 70s, after I was married.
In the 1990s I worked with a young woman who when I brought this up did not want to hear about it. Settled law, she said. Not her problem, didn’t need to worry about abortion rights because it was also settled, and besides that she intended to never need it.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Ohio Mom:
In bars! In dance clubs! In baseball stadiums! In movie theaters!
The movie theater was always weird because the rising smoke from people in front would obstruct viewing.
opiejeanne
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: I grew up in the 50s and 60s , and never saw anyone smoke in a movie theater, but I did grow up in California so it may have already been outlawed there.
RaflW
@KrackenJack: I assumed that the wild overuse of antibiotics in livestock would lead to major, bad societal health outcomes at some point (and that can still also happen). I didn’t bank on our country’s citizens voluntarily welcoming back preventable diseases like measles. How long does polio really stay in abeyance at this rate?
A couple generations grow up not seeing these scourges that our parents or grandparents were so incredibly pleased to see controlled and even basically eliminated.
Maybe some of it is BC’s super sad news, but I’m just bereft for our idiotic nation these days.
Gretchen
I remember saying in grad school that I didn’t know any gay people. I was corrected: « you don’t know anybody that you know is gay. « . That was accurate.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@bbleh:
the media always does this with Dems. When Obama was president they desperately tried to manufacture a “Katrina” moment every ten seconds so they could say “both sides”.
They haven’t used the word “Katrina” with Biden, but its breathless attempts to create a false equivalence with the former guy: eggs, baby formula, silicon valley bank, chinese balloon, etc. were individually supposed to end the country and yet here we are.
NotMax
@Ohio Mom
Obligatory.
:)
Mike in NC
Fat Bastard has made it abundantly clear that the GOP fascist party plans on making him dictator for life.
Peale
One of the things that popped into my head about the youth experience was that despite all of the concerns about Trump, socially, nothing much happened to reverse Obama on gay rights, probably because Amy Coney Barret wasn’t appointed until late in Trump’s presidency, even though they probably had the votes to do something when Kennedy retired. The current backlash especially at the state legislative level and all the shouting at school boards didn’t start really feeling noticable until Biden was elected. I mean its always there, and was always humming around social media. So just like those voters who apparently blame Biden for Roe v. Wade going away, there’s probably a set of people who think that Biden is responsible for Moms of Liberty showing up and picketing the school board looking for groomers.
TS
@opiejeanne:
My part of the world, I was at college mid 60s when birth control (the pill as we called it) first became available but most doctors would only prescribe it for married woman – or engaged women – I faint at their morality. Anyhow one of the girls had a diamond ring that was her mother’s engagement ring & that was lent to anyone wanting to visit a doctor for birth control.
I do remember my mother telling me a few years later how lucky we were to have this available. The thought that it could be removed sends a shiver through me, the young ones may not realise the difference it made to so many lives.
CaseyL
This not knowing history thing just baffles me. Never mind that history is “important” to know: it’s a fascinating subject! Why wouldn’t you want to dive in? (And I’ve been that way since my teens.)
I do comprehend the generational divide. I’ve often wondered what it’s like to be in the head of people born after 1990. Their formative years happened in a Zeitgeist I can barely imagine; the things that form the basis of their belief systems even more so.
All the traumas of 2000-2020, the shattering-of-norms… but only for those of us who are over, say, 50. Or 60. The things that drive us crazy are what post-Millenials grew up with.
It’s normal for them for politics to be a disgusting blood sport; it’s normal for them to live in a society where the predators and oligarchs have snapped up so much and left so little; it’s normal for them to see entire communities become shrieking banshees terrorizing and driving out anyone who is the “wrong” religion, color, gender. They may hate it, but they take it for granted.
Even trying to explain how disastrous a Trump/GOP victory would be is difficult, because they grew up in a US shaped by GOP policies. Telling people who don’t want to or plan to vote in the first place that a Trump/GOP victory means no more elections ever makes them shrug, since they don’t care about elections anyway. At least we’ll stop nagging them to vote when their votes really are worthless!
Our belief in a US that, for all its manifest and manifold faults, at least tries to improve itself… is a relic of an age they didn’t experience, can’t remember, and have no emotional connection to. I don’t know how to overcome that. When I think of the great leaps forward that happened in my lifetime – Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, environmental victories, SCOTUS decisions that served the greater good – even I’m beginning to think of those things as fairy tales. So much of it has already been undone.
gene108
@RaflW:
Outside of Pakistan and Afghanistan polio has pretty much been eradicated. It could go the way of smallpox.
https://www.who.int/news/item/08-04-2024-statement-following-the-thirty-eighth-meeting-of-the-ihr-emergency-committee-for-polio
Carlo Graziani
@CaseyL: The “Don’t Know Much About History” problem among new voters is an old, old issue. Newly-energized teens are perpetually injected into the electorate believing that US and World history began on the day they began reading news. Latter-day conversations about Biden, Trump, and Kennedy are farcically reminiscent of actual conversations that I had with Y2K teen-agers about Gore, Bush, and Nader. Similar conversations have occurred since involving Howard Dean, or Bernie Sanders.
There is always some symbol of alternative politics that ignores both real human politics of real humans who aren’t you, as well as any sense of how we got to the present pass, and what might be learned from that history. The kids are, undoubtedly, The Future, but they are also frequently a relentlessly self-involved, militantly ignorant pain in the ass.
Many of them tend to grow up, though.
Sister Golden Bear
As an Elder Queer/Trans ™, having queer/trans youth not know about, let alone remember, the bad old days can be both heartening and maddening at times.
Yes, I’m all too aware that trans folks are facing the bad new days right now, but the lack of perspective can be frustrating.
There’s an unfortunate tendency among some youth trans people to look down on late-life transitioners — who also tend to be more binary trans people — there’s just not an understanding, nor empathy, about 1) why there’s so many fewer of us (<narrator voice> we’re the ones who survived), nor 2) why we just didn’t we transition in their teens like they did.
Definitely #NotAllTransKids though. On Saturday I had a lovely conversation with three 20-something trans women who were genuinely curious about, and appreciative of, those who went before them.
Now get off my lawn…
Yutsano
@Carlo Graziani:
Gee…just like we were when I was in college. It seems to be a perennial problem with every generation and somehow things tend to happen. I personally believe if the US is ever going to get single payer* it’s going to come from these generations who have talked to other people in other countries and know how fucked up our system is.
*or whatever the fuck universal health care survives 218-51-1-5.
gene108
A bit of “the kids these days” quip from my cousin’s daughter a couple of years ago, when she was 17 and a senior in high school.
She told me kids in elementary school don’t even know what DVD’s are! They just think everything was always available on a streaming service.
The thing with the Obama era accomplishments is gays openly serving in the military didn’t get a lot of coverage and was overwhelmed in the media by the TEA Party backlash, Republicans were able to lie about the ACA because it took four years to be fully implemented, and Trump reversed the JCPOA and Paris Climate Agreement before there was enough time to evaluate the effectiveness.
There was significant change roiling through the Democratic Party during Obama’s two terms which eventually became mainstream Democratic positions, like the problems with income inequality, the economic problems aren’t getting fixed by free market solutions, the rapid acceptance of gay marriage, and shortly after the ACA went into effect some level of guarantee health insurance could be accessible.
The reason withdrawing from Iraq in 2011 isn’t remembered is U.S. forces went back in a few years later when ISIS gained power.
*******************
The collective punishment Israel is dishing out in Gaza since October 7 has been widely broadcast and is terrible. Any other country doing such a disproportionate response would be facing some sort of sanctions regime.
The death toll among Palestinian civilians is several times greater than the death toll Ukrainians suffered in the first six months of fighting.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/24/1119202240/ukraine-russia-war-by-numbers
Martin
My sense overall is that one of the things that this generation carries more than previous ones is that they got to peek behind the curtain at a much younger age, and to a much larger degree. Maybe I could believe Columbus was this noble figure until I got to college, when I could access information that would challenge that view, young people never got to be lied to long enough by the establishment without being challenged to ever really accept that the establishment was telling them the truth.
So history for them is a very different endeavor because the base assumption is that all authority is lying to you – that includes the Democratic Party. The Democrats have this whole narrative that we tell about DADT, or why we dallied on various civil rights matters, or why no Dem would give a full-throated defense of abortion until the Dobbs decision. This is Biden’s problem right now with Israel/Gaza. The ‘please don’t mind the gap between our moral view of this and our foreign policy view’ doesn’t really work on this crowd because it requires a century of dissembling institutional norms and whatnot against the thing you can plainly see right this second.
One of the biggest problems Democrats face right now is that defense of capitalism is part of that history often to a greater degree than it is for the GOP right now who at least from voters expresses much more anger against corporations and economic systems than Democrats do. And that defense permeates everything else. They wish Democrats were as pissed at Exxon as Republicans are at Bud Light.
NotMax
@gane108
The planet thanks you, Dr. Salk.
gene108
@Yutsano:
I don’t think they appreciate the reality that these countries built their post-WW2 healthcare systems around affordable universal healthcare. The bureaucracy existed to integrate healthcare care changes into their model.
The U.S. didn’t do this. I don’t see how we get from where we are to some sort of universal healthcare where people aren’t sweating bullets over the possible cost of treatment without a major disruption somewhere along the line or significant government subsidies.
Martin
@gene108: MA and HI have single payer systems. It can be done.
gene108
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
My brother lives in NYC. Back in 2002, we had a late lunch at some bar, after Bloomberg’s smoking ban (he deserves so much credit for making it happen). I was meeting friends after lunch to go out that night. I told him we’ll need to make it a short lunch, because I’d need to go back to his place to change.
Why? He asked.
Because I don’t want to go out stinking of cigarette smoke.
Can’t smoke in NYC bars anymore, he said.
I sniffed the air, I sniffed my clothes, and nothing smelled of cigarette smoke.
It was a revelation.
sab
@Sister Golden Bear: I live in Ohio, which is not a trans friendly state. I have a thirty something trans niece who moved to California as soon as she could. Back when she was a boy we knew something was off about her. When she came out it all made sense to us.
My 99 yo dad died a month ago. We had a funeral. She wanted to come but was afraid to come back to Ohio. She finally decided to come. Many cousins we haven’t seen in decades decided to come to the funeral. Every last one of them welcomed the trans niece.
Many things in this world are phucked up, but apparently my Ohio family is not one of them.
Baud
I hope young people aren’t a lost cause, because if they are, Biden must move right to try for other voters. This is not a rebuilding year. This is Game 7 of the World Series.
Jeffg166
It is surprising how much young people don’t know history. Of course I know little about what they think is vital to know.
brantl
@gene108: Polio is starting back up among Hassidic, anti-vax Jews in New York.
satby
History isn’t taught (if it’s taught at all) as the stream of events that continues to affect people and the world events we’re living through today. Gaza is a good example; the relative lack of saber rattling by Arab countries around the issue is due in large part to Biden’s diplomacy, but also due to the problems those Arab neighbors also had when they allowed Palestinian refugees into their countries. It’s been an intractable problem for longer than I’ve been alive and I’m 69 years old. But to a young person it seems like it should be simple for Biden to declare a cease fire as if he controls those combatants.
History affects everything today, and not knowing it makes solving the problems worse and harder to accomplish.
satby
@brantl: yes, it’s been detected in wastewater there. Polio, in 2024.
satby
@Jeffg166: hey, sorry to read about your health challenges. Keeping good thought for you.
BellyCat
Young people are smart enough to know that abortions are now being banned and being LGBTQ+ is almost certain next on the chopping block.
They are also smart enough to recognize that Israel is largely being given a pass on Gaza massacres.
The most astute will hold their noses and vote blue. Few will vote red. Many will stay home.
Biden wins if the youth turn out. He knows this and still has time to stand up to Israel’s naked aggression before the election. Will he? If not, this will be his biggest and fatal mistake, quite possibly costing us democracy as we know it.
Bostondreams
I took my queer daughter and their gay best friend out to dinner the other night. They are almost 16, and he is graduating high school. I asked him if he was going to vote, and he said yes, third party, because Trump and Biden are the same, and they are old. I talked with him about all the reasons why that was a bad idea and not true, but he has absorbed this messaging from somewhere. And this is a fine young man that is planning on joining the National Guard. I told him that if Trump wins, he potentially could not be ALLOWED to join the Guard…or marry…or have kids. That queer life would take a huge hit, that the life of his best friend, my daughter, would take a huge hit in even more ways. It was like talking with a brick wall. I was so disappointed.
Uncle Cosmo
Try “the last N” where N >> 2. Clinton would’ve lost to Bush Sr. if not for Perot**, Carter won because of Watergate, and both of them were illegitimate because they were Southron and seduced voters with their ability to ‘splane thangs simply and obvious Christianity, respectively. LBJ bought votes by the bushel with Medicare and Great Society handouts. JFK would’ve lost to Nixon if not for Mayor Daley’s electoral shenanigans in Chicago. Truman became POTUS only because FDR died less than 90 days into his 4th term and only won in 1948 because the GOP was overconfident. FDR’s Presidency was a product of the Crash, Great Depression and WW2. Wilson was President due to Teddy Roosevel’t’s third-party challenge and stayed President (barely) because he lied about not getting into the Great War (which he did barely a month after his second inaugural)…
Maybe Grover Cleveland’s interrupted Presidency was legitimate? Naaaah, probably not. That leaves the last legitimate Democratic POTUS as James Buchanan…8^O
** Though retrospective studies most all suggest he would’ve won a two-way contest.
Baud
@Bostondreams:
You might as well have been talking to CEO about the harm his corporation is doing to society. As Kay has pointed out, young people tend to be immune to concerns about potential harm. They are risk takers.
Kay
The problem with the patronizing (and untrue) scolding that young people don’t know “history” or “nuance” and that’s why they’re opposing US support of the slaughter in Gaza, is that a lot of experts also oppose the US support of slaughter in Gaza. You won’t read any of these experts on Balloon Juice, that’s for sure, but they think the Biden approach to Gaza is a complete failure and is harming the United States. The Arab-language speaking US diplomat with a phd who resigned said the Arab-world parties no longer trust the United States to negotiate anything – that we have bent so far backward for Israel that we’re discredited at the table. She also said both the Obama and the Trump administration allowed more discussion and dissent on this issue than the Biden Administration does.
Joe Biden has a big fat blind spot and someone has to get thru to him. I don’t know who can. But tut tutting the students on how they’re ignorant of history when Gen Xer’s and Baby Boomers are the biggest Trump constituency is a little silly. They’re not the people electing these fucking fascists – we are.
There will be more and more experts dissenting as this slaughter continues unabated. Bank on it. They’re not going to want their name on it.
Kay
Here’s an international law expert who says the US should stop opposing the ICC court:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/20/opinion/palestinians-israel-international-criminal-court-justice.html
It wil get harder and harder to dismiss the opposition to this as stupid or uninformed. How many of you knew that the families of the Israeli hostages requested that the ICC bring charges against Hamas? The students knew that. Does Hillary Clinton know it? How much do the college managers having the students arrested know about this issue? I’d bet my house they know less than the student protestors.
Kay
I don’t know- what if we focused on our own demographic? White Baby boomer and Gen X Trump supporters – our demographic are his biggest supporters, yet somehow he has become the fault of 19 year olds. Fucking ridiculous.
Maybe leave the student outreach to people who don’t have absolute contempt for them.
Kay
18-29
17
60
36
30-44
23
52
46
45-64
36
49
50
65 & over
16
45
52
I think I found the poorly educated group who elect Donald Trump. It’s middle aged and old white people! The people (I am told) who “know history”.
It’s not the job of young people to save you. Save yourselves. They have enough on their plate managing the mess we left them.
satby
Oh hell no, they don’t know it either, most of them 😂
Ruckus
@KrackenJack:
All this is true but really, think of the world 100 yrs ago. Any discussion took place in person or by written word. I’m not 100 but in my lifetime so much communication and even ability to travel has changed rather significantly. How old is what we are doing right now? How long ago did even the ability to do what we are doing right now even exist? The telephone became available just over 100 yrs ago and most people did not have one for quite a while after that. The concept of a computer is about 100 yrs old, personal computers became available around 50 yrs ago and were not near what we have today. A current home computer or cell phone has far more power and ability than the first computer. The first cell phone was created 51 yrs ago. I haven’t had a landline for about 2 decades. My point is that communication in my lifetime was a vacuum tube radio, telegraph and written word and yes telephones but even the telephone and it’s communication level has changed significantly in the lifetime of people communicating on this blog. Electronics has changed our lives, most of our jobs, phones, cars, TV, social life, communications, and as above what we are doing right now. The amount daily life has changed in the last 50-75 yrs is more than it changed in centuries before that. Hell I personally have known 4 people with polio, 2 of them my age because there was no vaccine, which came out not long before I turned 6.
Ruckus
@sab:
Families can be complicated, my oldest sister was gay and I am so lucky to have met her partner and so many of her friends. The world of humans can be wonderful, painful, strange or remarkably similar no matter what sex a person was born or lives. One just has to accept that it is their life and their right to be who they are.