Several recent diaries have all suggested, in one form or another, that there's something wrong with kids today. Irishwitch's is the best of these - perhaps the only good one, really - as she rightly recognizes it's a specific group of young folks, fundamentalists, who refuse to acknowledge the evils of the Iraq War.
But commentors on that diary, and on others, tend to make broader claims. They say we young folks are ignorant, apathetic, uninvolved. They say we need to be shook out of our assumed complacency. Some folks - deeply immoral folks - even say we need a draft.
Since it's always older folks who make these claims, I figured it's best to put it in a way you might understand. As Roger Daltrey once sang...
The Kids Are Alright
People try to put us down
(yeah, I know, different Who song. sue me.)
It's not uncommon to see folks on Daily Kos disparaging the young anytime the subject of protest, activism, the draft, the war comes up. From irishwitch's diary comes this example, which I've seen stated by many other people over the last two weeks:
You are talking about pervasive laziness among youth about internatonial affairs in general, a near total lack of historic perspective and knowledge base, coupled with the lack of direct consequence for there advocacy you point out.
Or this:
kids today, in general are selfish and lazy beyond belief.
Now those of you who are actually under 30 are laughing at the absurdity of this, as am I. But there are good people out there, good liberals and Democrats, who honestly believe this stuff.
The argument generally goes, since we're not out in the streets raising hell (because of course EVERYONE under 30 was protesting in the 1960s, weren't they?), we are therefore apathetic and uninvolved. We're not awake. We don't get it.
Of course, ours was not the first generation to have these charges made against them. People said the same thing about the kids who are now adults and telling US we're lazy and apathetic. In 1960 and 1961 newspapers and magazines were full of articles bemoaning the apathy on college campuses. Many were taken by complete surprise in 1964 and 1965 when protest emerged on campus.
So while I'm tempted to discount these charges as just more of the same, the same crap every young generation has to face from embittered elders who don't know what they're talking about...these are serious people, making serious charges.
Talkin' bout my generation
But is this actually the case? Are these claims of youth apathy and ignorance valid? Are folks my age (I'm 27) really asleep and inert?
Let's look at the numbers.
In 2004, this is how the presidential vote broke down by age bracket (via MSNBC:
18-29: Kerry 54, Bush 45
30-44: Kerry 46, Bush 53
45-59: Kerry 48, Bush 51
60+: Kerry 46, Bush 54
Funny, that doesn't look like an asleep and ignorant generation to me...
But wait! There's more!
TN-SEN (via CNN:
18-29: Corker 49, Ford 51
30-44: Corker 54, Ford 44
45-59: Corker 55, Ford 44
60+: Corker 46, Ford 53
Hmm, maybe it skipped a generation or two. In TN it was us and the old folks who nearly put Ford over the top.
What about Montana? (CNN again):
18-29: Burns 44, Tester 56
30-44: Burns 51, Tester 45
45-59: Burns 44, Tester 53
60+: Burns 51, Tester 47
So far the only group consistently pro-Dem has been us under 29. Pretty good for being asleep and ignorant, eh?
The same holds true for VA, MO, and CA (where we gave DiFi 65% of our votes, significantly more than any other age group). In short, without us young people, you wouldn't have a Democratic Senate.
In the 2006 election young people made their voices heard with great frequency. Here at dKos you had PsiFighter37, georgia10, hekebolos, thereisnospoon, and many others whose names I am regrettably forgetting doing the work of raising consciousness, attention, and getting the vote out.
Their efforts here were more than matched by the efforts of young people in the field. The Tester campaign in Montana had young people, under 29, at its core. Across the country we worked on college campuses, in cities, malls, suburbs, rural areas, anywhere we could to turn out our own vote and to get others to do so as well.
We are awake. Wide awake.
Just because we get around...
Now some folks make complaints about this generation - mine - being somehow uniquely consumerist, absorbed with trivialities, not paying enough attention. Again, this was said of every generation that preceded us, and the world hasn't yet gone to hell. And really, can we help it if the world we're born into already is consumerist, disengaged, alienated? Do you truly believe we make this shit up ourselves? Did we invent the iPod?
irishwitch rightly saw that the problem wasn't youth, but ignorance. And as she understood, and as many of you also understand, the young have no monopoly on that. If you wish to awaken America, begin around you. The middle aged white men who make up the core Fox News demographic - they need to be waken up. The suburban middle class needs to be waken up - and judging by the trends in the 2006 election, they're beginning to stir.
Some think that because we're not out in the streets, we're apathetic and asleep. But who exactly said that protest is the only way to be politically effective? The '60s were fun, it worked for its time. But not every political movement has to look like the 1960s. Give us more credit than that. Just as the '60s created their own forms of activism, so too are we.
Are some young people asleep? No doubt about it. But so too are millions more Americans of all age groups. Being ignorant doesn't have a specific age to it. There are deeper reasons - fundamentalism, political persuasion, moral failings. The answer isn't to whine about those damn kids. The answer is to work to change society, to awaken everyone who sleeps.
No, the kids really are alright. We have your back. We're looking out for the rest of you. We're going to build a better world.
But do you have our back? Do you support lowering the interest on student loans? Do you support making them less necessary? Do you support job creation programs? Universal health care? Do you support doing something about the credit card companies? Do you support affordable housing? Do you support better schools?
The fault, dear elders, is not in our youth, but in all of us. All of us have a responsibility to fix this country. It's not the special duty of the young to do it - though we are already carrying more than our share of the burden.
It takes a nation to do it. Let's work together, instead of wasting time complaining about kids. It's old. It's so 1950s. Time to move on and fix this country.