The generations need each other, need to empathize with and work together, to save the country from the real problem: far-left Democrats.
he Republican base voted for President Trump three times because they wanted change.
But the base says, I am tired of Republican sloganeering and clip farming at hearings while doing nothing of substance. Young adults look at the power that the Republican Party was given in the 2024 general election and see that they don’t even care enough to pass a simple election security bill. Republicans who do care tried to sneak it into other bills, however, even that strategy (which always seems to work for Democrats) didn’t go anywhere.
One major divide within the base seems to be seething resentment between different generations of voters, amplified by a click-driven social media ecosystem, though the grievances are real. We can’t let these attitudes eat us alive, because the stakes are too great, especially as we approach the midterm elections.
To head some complaints off at the pass here, let me say that we must be able to make generalizations about generations to study patterns and trends over time. Some people are extremely sensitive to their group being generalized. “You can’t say Gen Z loves socialism, I’m Gen-Z and I hate socialism!” or “Boomers aren’t entitled! I’m not entitled!” But if we can’t have these kinds of discussions without getting our feelings hurt, we can’t have any macro-political dialogue at all.
Readers have been warned; I am now going to generalize.
Socialism is gaining popularity with young voters, along with some very disturbing anti-American social baggage, and the response from older generations is usually to accuse them of being simply entitled. Time and again I have seen conservatives point to GDP growth or the fact that inflation is rising more slowly now than a few years ago (which is good and true) and then declare that young people have it easy. This is not productive.
It’s true that young people today are technically more materially wealthy than their parents were at their age in terms of consumer goods, but the ability to achieve the milestones that they see as success is harder.
Immigration, offshoring, DEI, and social media all have contributed to a different ecosystem than the 1980s Reagan era. For example, young men today are applying for hundreds of jobs with no callbacks whatsoever, not because they have a bad resume, but because all major job boards are flooded with thousands and thousands of applicants, many of which are outright fake. This will only get worse, potentially, with AI being more accessible to the scammers of the world.
The response from young people is to blame the Baby Boomers, who, to be fair, make up a large portion of our electorate, and voted as a block for many of the squishy politicians and policies we suffer under today. Older generations do bear some responsibility in this. But the broad resentment from young people while refusing to take responsibility for their own choices is also unfair.
Read the rest at American Thinker.
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.
