(04-26-2022, 04:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(04-26-2022, 03:42 PM)David Horn Wrote:(04-26-2022, 02:40 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Knocking Biden is not an accurate appraisal. Don't underestimate him, nor Trump for that matter.
As of today, Biden's approval among the three youngest generations (X, Millennial and Z) is about 20%. They are pissed-off that they have been screwed -- often directly by government -- and their concerns continue to go unaddressed. They are Progressive, so they aren't likely to vote against Democrats; instead, they'll just stay home. That's a textbook recipe for disaster.
I have heard it is low, but not that low. If they have that opinion, and don't vote, that is on them. They will be the sole cause of the disaster. Biden is good enough, and he is not responsible for them getting screwed over or having their concerns unaddressed. I'm not sure what you mean by this, but had Senator Manchin voted for the BBBBB, and for the voting rights bill he proposed and then scuttled along with senator Sinema, then the concerns of many young people would have been addressed as fully as they ever could be today. Young Millennials need to learn civics and listen to Obama's speech. If they think they should get everything they want all at once, if they want perfect and not better, and if they think the president alone can deliver without a congress, then they are the victims of their own ignorance about what kind of government they have and about what kind of society they live in.
For life to have meaning it must have some struggle. People who have everything given to them on a silver platter must create their own struggle lest life be meaningless. This said, for those who struggle simply because they are poor in a plutocratic or crony-capitalist society, some reasonable means of achieving their dreams (not merely consumption -- winning the lottery is not a struggle) must be available. The peasant, let alone the slave, was damned to be a loser in the economic order that he knew.
The President can achieve little on his own. The President has weak powers unless Congress gives them to him. If one is Lincoln, FDR, or for a short time Obama one gets them. If one is Eisenhower (close to the best) or Reagan (close to the worst for long-term results) one must rely upon persuasion. Trump may have assumed that the President has dictatorial powers, but he was wrong.
High-school civics have been a snooze for many students. Maybe one Trump-like President can change that by a contrast between himself and the past. Another one can turn high-school civics into a snooze-fest for the reason that the mandatory courses in Marxism-Leninism were irrelevant bores in "socialist" countries. Most American youth would be indoctrinated in a fatalistic reverence for tycoons and executives while being told that they will choose between burning in Hell for disobedience or achieving Pie in the Sky When They Die as a reward for dying as cannon fodder in wars for profit or living miserably in This World in deference to the whims of the Master Class while denying their own pangs of deprivation and the constant demeaning of life. Protestant fundamentalism and the pseudo-Christian wealth cult offer much the same effect.
If you think that science or artistic creativity will refute the official ideology that will entrench itself, then think again. The elites will deny the effects of rational science with pseudoscience such as racism and young-earth creationism. Authoritarian regimes cannot afford independent thought or even a market economy if they are to maintain power. Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 can warn us of what awaits us if we let the economic elites decide that stupidity and ignorance are fitting controls of the masses. Someone might read All Quiet on the Western Front and decide that war ad militarism are pure wastes of youth who deserve better, Crime and Punishment to realize how criminal deeds can destroy one even before one gets caught, or 1984 to see how things are done.
One thing is sure: the Hard Right has nothing better than what some liberal consensus can achieve -- but it does have poverty, repression, and hierarchy.
Let's remember that Civic generations get the vote out, and generally for the most collectivist and communitarian expression possible -- at least when young. Remember that the 2018 midterm election had the highest turnout for a midterm election for a very long time. It is less likely that 2018 is an anomaly in the pattern of Millennial voting than that 2020 was a fluke because of the plague of COVID-19. Democrats could canvass again as they did in 2022. Canvassing works. Most people want to know that the Parties care. The shadow of Donald Trump still falls upon American political life in 2022.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.