One of the complaints about the baby boomers is they let themselves be distracted by culture war issues and as a result they ended up getting conned on economic issues. Culture war issues are things like abortion, racial tension, gay marriage.
But aren’t millennials at risk of the same thing? Is marijuana legalization, or ending the drug war, or prostitution legalization (I think this is coming next) going to end up being issues that distract voters long enough to let them ignore more pressing economic issues?
Or is what happened to the boomers a fluke because their economy was much better? Millennials have student loan debt, insane health care costs, fewer retirement resources, unaffordable real estate, higher taxes, fewer jobs and jobs that offer lower pay/benefits compared to the boomers. So maybe they can’t afford to let themselves be distracted too much.
So abortion rights and civil rights for African-American and LGBT people are meaningless? Only economic issues have any substance?
Not only does each generation get to choose for itself what issues it finds meaningful, but you can’t separate the social issues from the economic ones. Ending the drug war for example, would have a major impact on the economy.
But ultimately, the Millenials will have to decide for themselves whether they’d rather fight for reduced income inequality, further healthcare reform and other primarily economic changes, or if they want to make other changes to society.
I don’t see whole generations being conned, then or now. I see people choosing to make the changes that they feel are necessary.
Yes.
The trivial has a greater appeal than the worthy. ( See Daytime TV. ) Plus dictatorial regimes have always known the value of ideals in sleight-of-hand distraction: “Shiny ! Shiny !”
My whole dumb-ass generation wastes their time being social justice warriors on social media.
They don’t know shit about the economy, or foreign policy, or how the immigration system actually works. They don’t want an intelligent, balanced discussion.
They will learn, like most people do when they become adults.
Well, if conservatives would STOP trying to defund an organization that advances health care for women, applauding when cops beat up an unarmed suspect for no reason, and condemning homosexuals as sinful abominations under the Lord, and trying to do all that as government officials, I’m sure millennials will happily move on to economic issues.
And like post 2 above, I’m not quite sure how to take the OP. I’m looking kind of side eyed at the implications, but I’m not quite sure how to react.
ETA: And arguably, focusing on economic issues is how some of those social issues got so bad, at least from a liberal voters standpoint. (“Why should I care about whether gays can get civil rights when I could vote for someone who’ll cut my taxes?”)
Oh, yeah, and to add what I wrote above, why is it the millennials who are being “distracted,” and not the shrill elderly white people whose policies and politics they’re fighting, especially since they’re the only ones left fighting one of the examples in the OP (gay marriage)? Is that more okay for them, because they’re dying anyway and will be covered by the social safety net they’re trying to dismantle?
Speaking of gay marriage, a lot of activists interested in that are interested in a lot of related causes, such as homelessness among transgender youth. Are ALL those issues meaningless? I mean, it’s kind of hard to care about student loans when you’re out on the streets because your parents booted you out.
But then, as posts on this very thread show, I guess it’s easy to dismiss as meaningless something you never experience, and thus don’t think is a problem at all.
Nah! They’ll continue bitching because some young woman posts pictures of her very fit body two months after giving birth, or bitching because someone used the wrong pronoun when talking about Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, or bitching because Kermit’s new girlfriend is thinner than that well known feminist Miss Piggy. How I long for the days when substantive and appropriate issues like civil rights (including racial, sexual and LGBT) were pretty much most of what anybody was bitching about.
Now it seems like everyone believes they have a constitutional right to be protected from offense, or to protect everyone else from offense (even proactively), and everything is offensive. It’s ridiculous! And it’s one of the primary reasons Donald Trump is doing so well. People are fed up with that shit.
I was thinking of a more ‘whats the matter with Kansas’ scenario where the business class uses cultural wedges to distract people into voting for the interests of the business class.
Given the entrenched system it’s not clear what millennials, or anyone else, is supposed to do if they’re not “distracted.” Hey man, don’t blame me - I voted for Kodos.
As for people complaining about other people complaining about things on the internet the first people doesn’t approve of or finds trivial, how many people do you think that is, really? It’s a thin slice of the total population and in the grand scheme of things is pretty meaningless. Everything seems bigger on the internet, but it’s actually fairly niche. Like when some quirky movie or TV show has massive internet hype and it comes out and doesn’t break any reocrds, just does middling to OK. Or you see some crazy petition with 100,000 signatures. Amazing, right? But that’s out of a country of over 315 million.
The government exists to force bakers to serve at gay weddings and to pay for birth control, and maybe occasionally to block construction of a pipeline. But national defense, foreign policy, economic policy, monetary policy, transportation, infrastructure, labor law, criminal justice, international trade, entitlements, and pensions? That’s all boring stuff that old white guys in suits care about. I mean this is the 20th century LOL
Everyone on the internet likes to pick on millennials, I guess because complaining about kids these days gives people some primal satisfaction. But remember Occupy Wallstreet? Sure, it didn’t actually change anything, but it did spread the message out there that income inequality is a serious issue that young people care about. Given the state of the economy and student loan debt, I would say that young people are more focused on (and affected by) economic issues than any other generation alive today.
Look at who the millennial heroes are right now. What do Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders spend most their time talking about? The overwhelming power of money in politics. That’s what it all comes down to for young people right now.
Political efforts can influence things like marijuana legalization and abortion more than they can on change the price of real estate or or student loan debt. The “pressing economic issues” are not as susceptible to a political fix (although there are things that can be attempted.) You can’t legislate a better economy.
I’d just like to note that those “trivial distractions” are pretty meaningful issues to those who are actually affected by them. The fact that YOU might be privileged to not be affected by something doesn’t make that thing meaningless.
Are millenials actually distracted? As Leaper said movement, most of the focus on the culture wars is coming from the tea party types which has a very low overlap with the millennials. The exception is the Black Lives matter movement which is fueled by a racial sub group. These are sexy emotionally charged issues so they get lots of media coverage, but there is no indication that these are the primary focus of the millennials. I bet if you asked them what’s most important to them you would probably get tuition cost, student loan debt, intern exploitation, and the availability of jobs to recent graduates. Which are issues being focused on by the Democratic candidates. But since the Republican primary is so much more riveting, you don’t hear nearly as much about what Clinton and Sanders are saying as you do what Trump and Huckabee are saying.
It’s all argument from emotion and derision. As a rationalist, it sickens me to turn on Facebook and see a feed of inarticulate, non-reasoned emotive imploring.
Social media is for the lazy fanatic seeking a platform to shriek at other fanatics.
Millennials won’t really start to come into their own for another decade, give or take. Early to mid 40s seems to be the time when people start to reach senior positions in the workforce, and with that comes some degree of policy making authority. The next few years will be the ones that most significantly affect their world view, and thereby influence the policy choices they will make.