It was an amusing piece on the May 1st edition of 60 Minutes. College-aged young adults, railing at the explosion of clearly inane “conspiracy theories” dominating contemporary politics, decided to approach this populist trend with a very effective tool: satire. “The creators of the fake conspiracy theory Birds Aren’t Real say they are highlighting the current wave of misinformation by fighting ‘lunacy with lunacy.’ What started as a spontaneous prank by 24-year-old college dropout Peter McIndoe in Memphis in 2017 has since turned into a popular youth movement designed to shine a light on the absurdity of ‘real’ conspiracy theories.
“The central claim of the parody, which has spread to billboards and number stickers, is that the US government deliberately killed billions of birds and replaced them with hi-tech surveillance drones.” YahooNews.com, May 2nd. What this “movement” illustrates is a growing frustration and disillusionment with the willingness of those seeking elective office to lie, create solutions to problems that just do not exist and pander to gullibility and confused desperation of American voters who just want to go back to a simpler time, find folks to blame for their woes and not have to deal with the roiling instability that defines modern life.
But this rising trend of younger voters finding absurdity in so many populist messages does not mean that they are automatically swinging into the Democratic Party. As noted by David Lauter in the May 2nd Los Angeles Times: “A Harvard survey indicated President Biden’s job approval rating among those 18-29 had fallen from 59% last spring to 41% now… [And] Americans 18-29 say news is bad for their mental health. Will they stay engaged?” What voters in general see is real problems, like inflation, rising crime, unaffordable housing, accelerating climate change, out-of-reach costs for higher education and immigration pressures building at our southern borders. Democrats made promises to get elected in 2020… but they failed to deliver on most of these pledges.
Voters don’t care if Putin’s war spiked up the cost of gasoline and diesel (with a severe impact on the supply chain), that the uncheck proliferation of guns has increased our murder rate and sent folks in cartel-dominated countries (where US guns have empowered the ultra-violent narco trade) to our borders looking for safety or that Dems can’t overcome the GOP filibuster gridlock. They hate the rising prices, the crime rate and the threat of too many immigrants seeking asylum. And while the overwhelming majority of younger voters have no stake in the culture wars, find the anti-CRT movement and intolerance of the LBGTQ community absurd and decry the rising anti-abortion movement that impacts them most of all, they are losing hope that their votes are creating the solutions they seek. They care, passionately. But political America seems to be unable to deal with they believe must be done. Their issues have been marginalized. As the explosion of young voter support that helped Biden win the presidency is accordingly fading, mental anguish is rising. Lauter continues: “[The] students also told Biden about another aspect of the poll which, in the long run, may matter more: A majority of young Americans, 52%, reported feeling ‘down, depressed, or hopeless’ for several days or more during the prior two weeks, and nearly 1 in 4 have had recent thoughts of hurting themselves or that they would be ‘better off dead.’
“Those indicators point to unusually high levels of mental or emotional strain, part of the youth mental health crisis that Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warned of in a formal health advisory in December. From 2009 to 2019, the share of high school students who reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness increased by 40%, to more than 1 in 3, Murthy reported. Between 2007 and 2018, the suicide rate among Americans ages 10 to 24 increased 57%.
“A year ago, when the Harvard poll found similarly high levels of mental stress, many people, including about a third of the young people polled, attributed much of the problem to the stress of lockdowns and the isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. But COVID-related restrictions are largely gone now, and the high levels of depression and anxiety persist.
“Asked what aspects of life are harmful to them, the young people Harvard polled had a clear answer…: Politics and news are hurting their mental health, nearly half said — making those two the most frequently cited as harmful… By contrast, about three-quarters of those surveyed said that their work had a positive (45%) or neutral (33%) impact on their mental health. Most said the same for social media.
“Few viewed politics or the news media as positive factors. Overall, 45% said politics was having a negative impact on them. The level was even higher among people who identify as LGBTQ — roughly two-thirds of them said that politics was having a negative impact on their mental health… There are at least a couple of different ways of interpreting that finding, and they are ‘not mutually exclusive,’ said John Della Volpe, the polling director at the Institute of Politics.
“Substantively, many young people care intensely about issues such as climate change, student loan debt, LGBTQ rights and racism. Given that progress on those fronts has been slow, at best, it should be no surprise that many young people look at the state of American politics and despair… Young people ‘have this weight they carry related to their ‘concern about these systemic issues they see as holding them back and their peers back and holding the country back,’ said Della Volpe. There’s a ‘mounting frustration and disillusionment with the way politics is being practiced at this moment.’…
“Beyond disappointment over issues, however, the poll points to something else that doesn’t involve the content of American politics so much as its form… A large share of American young people say they feel “under attack” because of their racial, ethnic or sexual identities… One in five Americans between 18 and 29 identify as LGBTQ, and nearly half of them, 45%, reported feeling under attack ‘a lot’ because of their sexual orientation, the poll found.
“Nearly 6 in 10 young Black Americans said people of their racial background were under attack ‘a lot.’ So did 43% of Asian American and Pacific Islander young people and 37% of Latino youth. Almost half of young Republicans, 46%, said they believe people who hold their political views are under attack ‘a lot.’ Religious minorities, including Jews, Muslims and evangelical Christians, were also more likely than others to say they felt under attack for their beliefs…
“The question on which the next few elections could turn is how young people respond to that feeling: fight or flight?.. . Over the long run, the inevitable generational shift in the electorate poses a challenge for Republicans.. The sorts of fights that excite the party’s voters — the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ measure that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law in March, for example — put the GOP sharply at odds with a large majority of people younger than 30. Currently, ‘there are about as many LGBTQ young people as Republican young people,’ Della Volpe noted — 21% versus 27%.
“In the near term, however, it’s Democrats feeling the pinch. Older voters reliably show up to cast ballots; younger voters are more easily disillusioned…” If those younger voters simply withdraw and do not vote… Will a probable Supreme Court reversal of Roe v Wade bring them back into the political process? Elections approach. We shall see.
I’m Peter Dekom, and if frustration with the political process keeps those younger voters from even trying, Donald John Trump and is sycophants will win… and, with the mid-terms approaching, rife with voter suppression… win big.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment