“Sanctimonious, Sensitive, Supercilious Snowflakes”

Polarization has infected every level of American society. We have the highest income inequality, by quantum leaps, over any other developed nation on earth. Yet those in power can see the writing on the wall: white traditional incumbents are watching the clock ticking down to their rather dramatic removal as the political force that runs America.

They are going down kicking and screaming, rolling up as many benefits for the plutocrats at the top of the economic pile as they can before the inevitable “big change” in who will control the ballot box – rich-folk benefits from absurdly unjustified tax cuts for the richest in the land to pretending to believe that climate change is a hoax so they can ignore costly environmental regulations meant to save most of and even to assure safe drinking water and non-toxic air.

Non-whites, beware. Voting restrictions, inconvenient ballot boxes and registration requirements, census standards and funding, gerrymandering, and even cutting back on survival level social benefits are aimed at diluting your power and cutting you out of the voting process so the old-world incumbents can continue to rule even as a contracting minority. Their primary champion, Donald Trump, is president despite losing the popular vote by millions! Good work plutocrats! You did it! Made the majority vote-winner lose!

That the Democrats are running in circles, biting each other in the posterior, seems to be dumb luck for conservatives. Progressives, who are slowly winning over younger voters who actually understand that a society driven by economic growth is unsustainable on a planet with obviously limited resources, still cannot get over the fact that their platform is not yet ready for the masses, that this position terrifies not just conservatives but those who are truly undecided and in-the-middle… the people who currently decide elections.

Traditional Democrats – championing equal rights and justice as their prime objectives – seem to miss the obvious economic priorities of their once-staunch blue-collar supporters that economic issues are what have shifted their loyalties to woefully-impossible populist pledges. The Nancy Pelosi Dems who do not understand how toxic their message when the cost of living is exploding just as those older jobs are being replaced by machines.

But what incumbents seem to be missing is that no matter how much they may want to distort the playing field to favor the rich and traditional white Christian voters, the flood of “minorities” are such a growing force in this country that they already outnumber traditionalists by droves. Those conservative white voters, the backbone of Fox News, are an older constituency that is slowly dying off. Each year, there are fewer and fewer of them, until ultimately no voting manipulation is going to stop “minorities’” rising tide towards political domination. And the move to shove immigrants out the door to keep them from grabbing that political power… well, it is simply too little too late. That transition is inevitable. Sorry white traditionalists. Racism is losing.

That title quote above? It’s how our right-wing Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, describes college students. It’s a pretty universal viewpoint among so many in Trump’s base. But there’s a catch. About 60% of our college-aged youth… are or have received at least some college education. So, you see Mr. Sessions, those “snowflakes” are slowly taking over from their coddling but-often-inept parents. Like you. Meet your replacements, Jeff!

What’s more those Generation X and Y folks are definitely different from their parents and grandparents. They just do not understand how those older folks so miss the obvious. From the obviousness of climate change to the stupidity of our guns laws to the rather clear vaporizing of old-world notions of privacy. They wonder why their elders care about gender and sexual preference or why being black or brown is seen as inferior. Why can’t people just be who they are, they wonder.

Barry Glassner, a professor of sociology and former president of Lewis & Clark College, and Morton Schapiro, professor of economics and president of Northwestern University, had a few comments about these college students in their recent (August 20^th) editorial in the Los Angeles Times: “Witness how comfortable they are with difference. Fears and hatreds that have plagued this nation from its founding are unacceptable to today’s college students.

“They have trouble understanding prior generations’ obsession with differences in sexuality and sexual expression, in race and ethnicity, and in gender… Gay or straight? Black or white? Male or female? They reject labels and dichotomies and how they’re used to oversimplify and do harm.

“Do we know students so arrogant and hypersensitive that they resemble popular stereotypes of their generation? Sure we do; they typically come from doting parents and school administrators who celebrated them ceaselessly and, as the cliché goes, gave them the same size trophy for coming in last as for coming in first. (But who’s to blame for low standards? Obviously the people who set those standards, not their children.)

“Strikingly, though, even the worst of today’s college students tend to be more caring and respectful of others than were their egotistical counterparts of an earlier generation, who put advancing their careers above everything… Which is not to say that we see nothing that concerns us in present-day college students. Their clear-eyed, accepting outlook, while a model for the rest of us in some domains, leaves them disturbingly passive in others.

“During a recent class session, one of us suggested that we have given up our privacy rights in order to protect our safety. The government, with good intentions or bad, has stepped up surveillance in the name of security. In the past, this argument has sparked some spirited discussion. Not this time.

“One student said that the very notion of privacy was an illusion cherished by technologically naive adults. ‘Don’t you know,’ he said, ‘that not just the government, but companies are monitoring our every move?’ It is impossible, he concluded, to protect something that doesn’t even exist.

“In a follow-up discussion, the poor old professor posited that after the students experience the harsh reality of having their digital footprints evaluated by potential employers, they will rethink their attitudes about keeping some things private. But a student replied that they all have embarrassing things online, so who are employers going to hire?

“We’re dubious about those claims and will continue to implore students not to give up on protecting their own and others’ privacy. But this generation of college students is far from the caricature posited by the attorney general. They came of age in a time of challenges, and they already recognize what today’s world is about and embody much of what is best in it.

“Maybe it’s us elders who are the sanctimonious snowflakes. We’ll close with a reference from Sessions’ college years: As the Who put it in ‘My Generation,’ we ought to stop trying to put them down.”

It is my privilege, every now and again, to lecture at various universities… to meet the next generation that will very rapidly replace everyone in my generation at every level. The process is well-underway. And when I listen to how they feel and what they want, I really wish they would just hurry up and get rid of the inept elders who raised them… a lot faster. My pasture is looking mighty green.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in my constant critique of the world around me, the one great hope I have for my country is based on the rather incredible and caring generations rising to replace the old, manipulative dead wood in power.