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Why Millennials Support Bernie Sanders
Having access to a left-leaning, reasonably articulate Millennial, I was able to ask, “Why are you guys so crazy about this Bernie Sanders fellow?” The answer basically boils down to two things.
1. Millennials perceive the current system to be corrupt and stacked against them. They have completely bought into the line that too few people control too much wealth and that they are disadvantaged as a result. They like Sanders because he is going after “the wealthy.” This is a particularly potent attraction among those who have accumulated lots of college debt and have no prospects for paying it off. The idea of the government mandating paid paternity leave and a living wage sounds great. How could more money and paid time off not be great?
2. They think the free market has failed, and point to examples like the fellow who bought the patent for the AIDS pill and jacked up the price to $750 per pill. (They have no idea that this was enabled by Government regulation and not the free market, because Reddit didn’t tell them that.) They know Sanders is a Socialist and they don’t care. When they think of Socialism, they think of Sweden, not Venezuela. And when they think of Sweden, they think “free college and IKEA,” not 70 percent tax rates and Muslim rape gangs.
Many Millennials have had little or no exposure to the intellectual case against socialism. To them, conservatives are people who don’t want gay people to get married, and that’s about it. When the GOP talks about “tax cuts,” they see no benefit to themselves. The conservative right largely talks among themselves, and are terrible at explaining the benefits of free market capitalism to those who have been indoctrinated by 12-16 years of education in government schools.
In the pre-Reagan Era, the media was just as left-leaning and reluctant to discuss the poverty and oppression that permeated the Soviet Union. But there were enough people willing to talk about it outside the media for the truth to get out. The pervasiveness of social media should make it easier, not harder, for conservatives to get a message out around the media gatekeepers.
Millennials should be told what happened in Venezuela after Sanders’s ideological brother Hugo Chavez took over; they should be told how toilet paper became a black market commodity and supermarket shelves became bare. And they should be made aware that Sweden is not quite the utopia they’ve been taught it is.
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Thanks. I wish that I knew them. That’s at least somewhat encouraging, and indicates that there will be a group who carries the flag into the future. Hopefully they’ll have the will and intelligence to outwit the bitter self-entitled/slacker members of their generation who have all the hallmarks of a new welfare class (with college degrees).
My hope has always been that Europe will decline rapidly and be a cautionary example for the US. Perhaps younger people do not understand how bad things are getting in Europe yet; if the decline is severe enough everyone will understand. It’s a race to the bottom. I hope Europe wins that race.
I’ve always figured that we could get the young people, if we’d just actually act like conservatives.
I think there is a very big opportunity to win a minority of them in the short run and compete for the balance over the haul.
You are correct though. There can’t be a smokescreen and generational welfare, crony capitalism are good starting points. Something the republicans should lead on, but sadly choose not to.
Unless it’s Jeremy Corbyn. In which case he actually does mean pretty explicitly “the means of production are owned by the state.” And they’re just fine with it.
If by “they” you mean American millennials, then I have to disagree. I don’t think they know who he is. Further, I don’t think that most of the grass roots supports of what they believe to be socialism would support what socialism actually is. Certainly some would. But not most. I could be wrong…
Let me join Spin in respectful disagreement.
Socialists, like Marxists are very good at selling their version of the merits of central control and conveniently disregarding the downside.
We have an opportunity to highlight the downside of those systems and explain a better one grounded in individual liberty.
However, we can’t fake it. We can’t talk about cutting government and then put a plan on the street that grows it by a 1/3 or more and call it a cut because that is less than Hillary wants to grow it.
I think it is actually worse than it was when I was kid. I grew up in a very liberal wealthy town north of Boston, and I attended very Democratic Party oriented schools.
But back then there was a healthy concern even among teachers about (a) the Communists and (b) the power of propaganda. In and among the anti-Vietnam War and anti-Richard Nixon we-hate-all-Republicans rhetoric, I had a few teachers who knew the truth and gave us some perspective and decent reading materials.
When my kids went to school twenty-five years later, it seemed to me that that older viewpoint was all gone. My oldest daughter attended a private Catholic high school, and I popped in one afternoon and glanced in her history class to see, to my horror, posters of Lenin on the wall. Her teacher saw the look on my face and looked down quickly. And the literature my daughter got in English and French classes was very socialist.
In her world religions book, I was shocked to find a chapter on the wonderful Aztecs. I said, “Honey bunch, this is not a nice religion like Christianity. These people sacrificed children.”
I felt like I was fighting every day to save my kids from the Democratic Party machine in education.
So I am not surprised to see so many young people become enamored with Bernie Sanders.
I was slightly unclear. I didn’t mean American millennials. I’m sure only some single-digit percentage has any idea who Corbyn is. (Sanders does.) But Corbyn won similar enthusiasm from young people, and that is relevant to the discussion.
As is typical in British and American politics the movements are far from identical but run parallel, and that shouldn’t be ignored.
Corbyn is left of Sanders, certainly. He calls for, explicitly, renationalization of various industries (and of the railroads). Literally state ownership of the means of production. His supporters (young and otherwise) know that and are fine with it — that and a few other crazy things. Now to what extent that’s because they don’t think it matters (as Trump supporters don’t care that much about his position on healthcare), or because they actually support the policies I can’t say — there are elements of both. At the ballot box, it doesn’t matter.
I assume most young Americans would oppose Corbyn’s policies, presented so starkly. But not that long ago, you’d have said the same in the UK, too.
And maybe they wouldn’t, if they really understood. But they are not going to read or listen to the things that would make them understand.
I’m an older millennial. This post strikes me as right on. Many of us have grown up in a post-scarcity society where our economy is plenty rich enough to indulge such ideas as mandatory paid paternity leave. Our consumer and employment base is robust enough to survive the distortions caused by an artificially high minimum wage. These policies only put a small dent in the prosperity of the country as a whole (especially the “rich”), while the beneficiaries get to enjoy luxuries unheard of just a few generations ago. Most of us have never experienced a society where living irresponsibly would result in sickness, destitution, injury or death, rather than just temporary inconvenience or even, in the most perverse cases, fame and riches.
I guess what I’m saying is, shared sacrifice will be mandatory.
Today’s Ricochet winner.
We should also be talking about sustainability. Start by asking our friends on the left what the concept means to them, and explain how it applies to economics every bit as much as to ecology and the environment. (And maybe we should care a little bit about what it means for the environment, too.)
I know, I know, “sustainability” is a leftwing word and we can’t stand to hear such words. Bad Reticulator. No biscuit.
I usually clarify by explaining that I’m actually not a conservative. I’m an extreme, right-wing conservative.
Your closing sentence is interesting. Does that mean you expect others will have to sacrifice for you to share or that you are fine sacrificing for others?
Do you think the current utopia outlined in the first paragraph of your comment is sustainable given the premise of your closing sentence?
I am just old enough to consider myself not a millennial (Thank God). But this analysis resonates greatly with me. The US is so rich that obesity is associated with poverty. The millennials are so pampered that their #1 issue is student debt – Oh the poor babies, they owe so much money because they spent four years partying. Until things crash hard (Venezuela hard, not Greek hard) the millennials will support socialist policies like Sanders’.
No worries though, although the millennials are a large voter cohort, a Sanders nomination won’t draw enough of them to counteract his cratering with the blacks and Hispanics.
?
It’s *all* about the crappy economy.
If we ever start getting some economic growth again, the socialist nonsense will fall back to the fringe.
I usually go with “Mean-spirited right-wing extremist”.
Regarding the bright millennials who rejected the Progressive indoctrination that they were loaded down with while schooling.
They have not become conservatives. When they hear “conservative” they immediately assume “corrupt crony capitalist rigging the system in favor of the wealthy.” See, while they may consciously reject progressivism, they still have a lot of ideas that come from there.
Many have given up on all politics as a rigged game with no hope.
Many others have become libertarian, though few can really defend a libertarian argument.
I was speaking with a millennial guy just last week, one of the bright young near-libertarians. He said that the choices on the GOP side were all ‘fronts for a Chamber of Commerce that rigs the system in favor of the Fortune 500 at the expense of everyone else.’ He said that the choices on the Dem side were for either a dishonest socialist or an honest socialist.
He did not make his plans clear, but my guess is that when our primary race rolls around he will vote for B. Sanders.
I hope to see him again, and try to persuade him to support the GOP nominee in the general. He does at least have a beginning of an understanding that his future is imperiled by our government debt.
He is overstating his case. They’re not all like that, even if most of them are.
I don’t especially mind the concept, but the word itself, leftwing or not, does annoy me because of its overuse and nature as a buzzword.
I’m not sure if it was you or someone else that was suggesting conservative alternatives to liberal words and phrases, but I think sustainability would definitely fall in that category.
I might qualify myself as all of the first three, but it’s because of those things that I don’t want the government to take care of me. I’m not going to speak for them, but I have the feeling that at least a couple of my friends would say the same.
Do you know why this is? Because the GOP Leadership will not attack the Democrats from a Conservative position. They will not defend themselves against the nonstop slander by the Left. They won’t make the case because doing so will cause a “shutdown.”
You also assume that the majority of republicans have fundamental differences with the positions emphasized by the left.
I’m opposed to developing a separate conservative phrasebook. That only plays into the left’s game of isolating and marginalizing us, which is a process that is already too far along.
We should instead coopt their language. Help them to think about the meaning of the words they are using, and how they apply to concepts like state and federal spending (in the case of the word “sustainability.”)
In the case of those who are not capable of learning anything, play with their minds.
And don’t do it by explaining that “Sustainability applies to the federal budget, too!” No. Assume that the ordinary, obvious meaning of the term is as applied to federal spending.
What you assume is more important than what you argue. Let them use their own minds to figure out the rest from there.
Don’t mistake my description as support for the ideas therein. No, I don’t think it’s sustainable, but the mindset I’m talking about has never seen otherwise. We have grown up during the largest economic expansion and steady technological advancement in human history. Combined with the ideology of progressivism, with its inherent belief that history has only one direction, it’s hard to imagine the world could be any different as a result of these policies. It’s the consequence-free life.
This to me is the key bit. Like probably everyone here I’ve been struck by how often I get into a debate with a liberal young person who generally has no idea what they are actually advocating for and supporting. (Including two in my own family)
They are liberal because they were told to be in school and it all just sounds so nice and the only thing they know about conservative viewpoints are what the media or their teachers told them.
The father of my two stepsons has told them that conservatives are evil. That is the extent of their understanding of conservatism. When they were old enough to engage on these topics I could see how difficult it was for them to reconcile the fact that someone they loved was conservative. “How can that be, conservatives are evil and you aren’t evil?”
(Edited to remove a couple unnecessary words. Gotta go reread Strunk and White)