The Kids Are Fine — Old Commie Hippies Are the Real Problem
Top O' the Briefing
Happy Wednesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Zwoötybressk always was wary of what he felt were heightened levels of eagerness among fondue enthusiasts.
There are a lot of conservative friends and colleagues of mine who like to portray Gen Z as a politically problematic generation. It's understandable, as the young'uns are often not very helpful when it comes to doing what's right for the country. The fact that, from afar, we only see the worst of what college campuses have to offer only serves to reinforce curmudgeonly attitudes towards America's youth.
There are a lot of reasons that I'm not writing off Gen Z, and we'll touch on a few of them this morning.
One is that my daughter is Gen Z (at the older end of it) and while she leans left, she also has a lot of fiscally libertarian or centrist beliefs. I also know for a fact that she's not a woke psychopath like the kids we see at the protests. Because she's my kid, she has a great sense of humor.
There was some evidence after the 2024 presidential election that young Americans weren't the Dem-voting monolith that they're supposed to be. In March of 2025, I lead off one Briefing with the headline "2024's Big Message — The Kids Are All Right." It highlighted a couple of posts that examined the MAGA appeal to young men and the fact that young voters are thoughtful about their choices. Here's something I shared in that MB:
I heard and saw a lot — and I do mean a lot — of anecdotal evidence about the youth of America moving to Trump and the Republicans last year. When he came to Tucson for a rally in September, the crowd was filled with university-aged kids whose enthusiasm gave the appearance of rock-concert energy. It was over 100 degrees and they were cheerfully standing in line and acting like they were waiting to get into the party of the year.
Yesterday, Tim wrote a post that checks in on the current state of youthful energy in this midterm year:
The buzz around this week’s convention is starting to become palpable, as people on the right will be treated to two consecutive nights of President Donald Trump in rally mode, which is arguably his most potent and lethal mode. While he is not on the ballot, officially, the Democrats have put him there. They aren’t running on anything other than their hatred of Trump. Trump appears to have said, “Challenge accepted,” and it’s now game on.
What no one could have predicted is that he and the Republicans are getting a huge assist from this year’s crop of college undergrads on campuses across the country. MAGA is back, baby! But not just anywhere. It’s back on college campuses, and you can feel the energy.
Young people value authenticity. The elders of the Democratic Party village are all B.S. and artifice, which doesn't go over well with Gen Z. When President Trump shows up to speak in public, everyone knows he's not putting on an act. He says what's on his mind, rather than what he thinks a politician should say. The stuff that makes the older "Harumph!" Republicans uneasy makes younger voters cheer louder.
Of course, some young voters are an unfortunate mix of naive and idealistic, which is why they fall for the Democratic Socialists of America lunacy. Zohran Mamdani and his ilk seem authentic to them, largely because they're being compared and contrasted with hapless political performance artists like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.
Still, the ones making more informed choices aren't as swayed by the leftist lies about Utopia as the young people of decades past. As someone who lives in a deep blue college city and also spends a few months every year here in Ann Arbor, I can assure you that the most mindless, reflexive Dem voters are the hippie retired academic types who are older than I am. The first "No Kings" protest here was full of people who looked like they might have actually known George III.
These are people who have done quite well thanks to capitalism but had their brains polluted by the radicalism of the 1960s. They have spent over half a century building up powers of denial that are so strong they're incapable of seeing that they've been full of crap all along. They hijacked public education and Academia, which spawned a new generation of knee-jerk Dem voters. (I wrote about all of that in Don't Let the Hippies Shower.)
It is easy for those of us who spend a lot of time paying attention to politics to despair about the future of the Republic. I don't though, because I see signs of hope in some of the young ones out there. One of the strongest voices in the GOP right now is Texas Representative Brandon Gill. At 32, he's technically a late Millennial, but he's just a few years shy of being Gen Z.
I'm not saying that all of the kids are making good choices and doing the right things, but I am saying that none of the Boomer hippies are.
No comments:
Post a Comment