Thankfully only SOME young people (a declining number?) made it sound like the voting process in ’24 was so onerous! A chore akin to scaling a summit in the Himalayas…
One young voter said she’d have to smoke lots of weed to ease her electoral anxiety. Another in Georgia spouted fears of racism, but for what reason she didn’t specify. Like others, the latter made the 2024 vote sound Herculean as well.
Then of course came … the results! Those, too, were as tough for some to handle as a hot hunk of metal. At a private school in New York, where Seinfeld offspring attended, students were given a day off to handle jitters related to Mr. Trump’s victory. Others at even elite colleges got the same kind of privilege, or at least, prolonged venting sessions.
An old Italian lady once told me that certain 22-year-olds seem currently to be verging on 10! This puerility (from the Latin “puer” for boy) in one swath, but thankfully, not ALL of the youth contingent has, it feels, reached its peak and is set to ebb? Let’s hope…
Especially if such types encounter a real crisis in their lives, and true hard times. Then their anxieties might be belatedly warranted? Of course no one wants life figuratively to mug them, but it could happen, making previous fears sketched above feel picayune by comparison.
For a while now I’ve stopped reading self-help books, but one comes back to me with a good way of explaining such phobias (and hey, I have mine, too). The author said that this type of sufferer is often in thrall to what he called mythical fears and faulty conclusions.
Bringing in a paranoid ingredient here, too, which seems central in those who think the winners come late Jan. will take away all their toys (including God forbid, smartphones!) How have they been so coached to find “triggers” under every bush?
And I don’t mean just via classroom education; but rather, education in a wider sense, i.e., general nurturing and breeding. (Some of the coachers having, in fact, been parents.)
Speaking of paranoia, we can’t leave out the searing abortion issue, which, however, somewhat repels me. But during her brief campaign, Kamala did hype it, including for youthful worry-warts, feeding their paranoia by declaring that the GOP would remove all rights in that realm as well!
However, the paranoia goes deeper and wider than this or that isolated issue. To the point where quite sick pups deem a significant swath of the American electorate as utter enemies. When mainly, they aren’t. After all, weren’t there four previous years under a Trump administration? Aside from COVID, how much did that period negatively affect your or my private worlds?
The former Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a book years ago called “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” This collection of essays wasn’t his best tome, but the title was prophetic, given what’s transpired through the decades.
Too much grade inflation in the widest sense, consolation prizes for all and sundry, have certainly played a role here, it seems. With the 2024 electoral tilt of Kamala vs. the Donald only shining a more powerful light on this general trend.
Making a civil war of sorts still possible, and within the youth cohort itself? Think contrastively of the many young people who’ve already mastered difficult trades, started families, and basically, have feet on the ground. Vis-à-vis these often coddled “snowflakes,” there does seem to be a real gulf, indeed. Additionally, one could point to types who’ve joined the military, making themselves grow up fast in the process.
On that check out Mat Best’s salty memoir, “Thank You for My Service,” by a man deployed five times to Iraq and Afghanistan, seeing and doing amazing things at a very young age; then returning to a California campus and being puzzled by … some of the puerile he encountered there.
Thankfully again, many in today’s youth contingent are anything BUT; and my crystal ball says that they may well become an overwhelming majority, as hopefully trends turn in a healthier direction over the coming years.