CSotD: On the Eve
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Zyglis is correct that Gen Z’s (18-29) vote at a lower rate than older Americans, though his comparison is problematic, since French youth arose over market basket issues and he’s comparing that with Gen Z people here facing more abstract concepts.
As a Dutchman, Wolterink has a seat closer to the disturbances rocking France, and suggests that the rioters get media coverage while the less militant protesters are, by comparison, ignored.
Thus was it always — as I’ve often said, if a photographer turns in 50 pictures of people sitting listening to speakers at a demonstration and one shot of the guy in an Uncle Sam costume toting a plastic rifle and covered in fake blood, we know which photo the editor will choose. True in the Vietnam days, true now.
Today’s headline, On the Eve, is the title of an 1859 novel by Ivan Turgenev, which involves two Russian students — a sculptor and a poet — a young Russian woman, and a Bulgarian revolutionary. Elena elopes with the Bulgarian, joining him in attempting to free his country, and the sculptor complains to his uncle:
“We have no one yet, no men, look where you will. Everywhere—either small fry, nibblers, Hamlets on a small scale, self-absorbed, or darkness and subterranean chaos, or idle babblers and wooden sticks. Or else they are like this: they study themselves to the most shameful detail, and are for ever feeling the pulse of every sensation and reporting to themselves: “That’s what I feel, that’s what I think.” A useful, rational occupation! No, if we only had some sensible men among us, that girl, that delicate soul, would not have run away from us, would not have slipped off like a fish to the water! What’s the meaning of it, Uvar Ivanovich? When will our time come? When will men be born among us?’“
Zyglis asks much the same question, though I suspect neither he nor Pavel Yakovich are actually calling for violence, but, rather, for passionate, active involvement. I doubt either one of them wants to hear Uvar Ivanovich’s response of “Give us time,” and Turgenev’s novel was attacked by young readers who felt he was doubting their sincerity and involvement.
It’s true that Gen Z’s have a lower registration rate than older cohorts, but having seen a number of them voting for the first time in the primaries here, I expect to see even more at my check-in station Tuesday, when they don’t have to declare a party and the issues are more definitive than “Who’s going to run?”
According to this study from Tufts, it’s natural for cohort participation to rise over time, even in midterm elections, which never have the participation rates of a presidential election. Looking at rates for the pop-culture cohorts starting with their first opportunities doesn’t make Gen Z look so bad, though I suppose that suggests I’ve turned into Uvar Ivanovich since I was first eligible to vote and since I first read On the Eve: “Give us time.”
There are practical barriers, including not just intentional barriers but their own lack of anchors. My own state, New Hampshire, has outlawed using student IDs at the polls, a transparent attempt to squelch the youth vote, though minor: At the primaries, several young people used passports and they could have used out of state drivers licenses to vote, though they’d have to prove residence to register.
And when North Carolina politicians tried to lower student participation in the primaries by closing polling places near their colleges, students defiantly marched to places where they could cast a ballot.
I still think people that age take their own pulses more often than is necessary, but I trust they’ll become more engaged in their communities as they settle into more established roles, both personal and professional.
Granted, it might help if the beer companies would stop celebrating eternal adolescence.
I don’t think Gen Z’s are as burdened as other voters by the issue of dark money because I don’t think they watch network television and get swamped with partisan advertising, and they’re not all on campuses breathing in the relentless politics there.
I will grant that I opposed the ID issue, not because it’s unfair on its surface but because IDs can be hard to come by for the poor, particularly in rural areas where motor vehicle offices are distant and there is no intercity public transportation. But several years into the process, most who want to vote have found a way.
However, if anything, Dear Leader seems determined to motivate opposition voters. I’m hardly alone in pointing out that Obama’s Cheesecake Factory wisecrack might be forgotten by now, if Trump and his acolytes weren’t keeping it on the front burner for late-night comedians, political cartoonist and social media wiseacres to keep laughing over.
Juxtaposition of the Day
And all the Happy Talk in the world — whether from Trump or Bessent or anyone else in his coterie — can’t cover up the way the economy is impacting people at the street level.
I don’t think young people give a damn about stock prices or the GNP or any of that distant stuff when they’re just trying to make it to the next payday without digging themselves deeper into debt, and when we talk about Gen Z, let’s remember that we aren’t just talking about college students.
That 18-29 bracket includes a lot of young people flipping burgers as well as a lot of young families just starting out. At 29, I was a married father of two and could echo the words of Jimmy Carl Black, “I’m not living very extravagantly, I’ll tell you for sure.”
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Yet Trump seems determined to motivate people to vote against Republicans.
His sociopathic lack of empathy is fully on display, and his party is so used to clicking their heels and saluting that they can’t rouse themselves to buffer the insults he dishes out, not only about how much he profits from gas prices but how those grubby peasants in red ball-caps could never afford to sit down to dinner with him.
Not that he’d let them.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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