What do Millennials want?
"Don't you understand what I'm tryin' to say?
And can't you feel the fears I'm feelin' today. . .
And you tell me over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction."
P. F. Sloan, songwriter, sung by Barry McGuire, "Eve of Destruction," 1965
Boomers had their chance. We were warned.
We heard that song in our youths. The laments of the young are the same or worse now. The Eastern world is still explodin'. We can stay for more than four days in space, but when people return it's the same old place and the same human race, and now its Trump who hates his neighbor but when evangelical Christians and TV cameras are looking on, doesn't forget to say grace.
Rick Millward is a boomer. Most of the people holding political and economic power in this country are boomers, but that is ending. It will be the Millennials' turn to hold the seats of power, but in the meantime their votes were decisive. Millward tells us that they didn't vote for Trump. They voted NO.
Millward is a songwriter, musician, and music producer. He left Nashville and moved to Southern Oregon. He performs primarily in local wine venues.
Guest Post by Rick Millward
A Millennial’s View.
Botched Election. Israeli Genocide. Inflation. Student Loans. Climate.
I’m in conversation with a 30-something student, a Ph.D. candidate, self-described Progressive, a Millennial who feels, like many younger Americans, deeply disillusioned with Democrats and outright furious at Boomers. While some Democrats default to finger-pointing and blame-shifting, these younger voters reject policy nuance and strategic justifications that led to the rise of Trump and the GOP. To them, it’s not just a tactical failure—it’s a moral one. The Biden nomination was, they say, a betrayal; only Harris’s presence kept them engaged at all.
As we talk, I struggle to respond. My detailed explanations of geopolitical realities sound empty. Pointing out that Republicans are worse isn’t persuasive; they already know, but find the difference negligible. This isn’t youthful idealism. These voters came of age during 9/11, two recessions, COVID, inflation, and now see a system rigged for the wealthy.
They view Republicans as an unstoppable machine wrecking their future, and Democrats as ineffectual, if not complicit. The American Dream feels dead. Issues they care about, especially climate, are met with delay and denial. They see GOP cultural pandering around gender, performative patriotism, and religious posturing as absurd distractions, and they reject the idea that systemic racism is overblown. Their universities are compromised by investments that betray their values, all while trapping them in decades of debt. Many are incensed by U.S. support for Israel, which they equate with endorsing genocide.
Is it any wonder some are voting “against” their own interests? The shift of younger voters, especially Latino and Black men, toward the GOP may be less about alignment and more a protest vote, which in turn makes things worse. Republicans have the money; Progressives have the numbers. But numbers are powerless if disinformation overwhelms them. And conservative efforts to discredit media fuel a toxic online landscape where truth, lies, and fantasy blur.
The best arguments I muster aren’t convincing:
(1) GOP rhetoric aims to demoralize. Resisting it is essential.
(2) Being Progressive, by definition, requires optimism.
We do agree Democrats need a strategy to counter misinformation with facts, loudly and transparently. To win back youth and minority voters, they must stop taking them for granted and fully embrace issues like climate, justice, and inequality.
As we part, I’m left feeling unable to defend Democrats or my generation. The world is complex, and the torrent of disinformation favors simplicity. Still, that same difficult hope, though grim, requires that we try.
Update: Since writing this, youth support for Republicans is dropping. They’re paying attention.
Some differences between the parties are only differences in degree, but there’s no question that Trump has taken the Republican party to previously unplumbed depths of depravity. He’s a convicted felon, using our nation’s highest office for peddling Trump Junk to chumps and soliciting “gifts” like the $400 million flying palace from Qatar. His masked thugs are abducting people off the streets without warrants or charges and deporting them without due process. He launched a totally unwarranted military invasion of Los Angeles with thousands of troops. He’s trying to pass a butt ugly bill that the Congressional Budget Office has determined will redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich, take health coverage away from millions of Americans and dramatically raise health care costs for millions more.
Climate change is literally killing us, but Republicans refuse to even acknowledge it. And don't forget their blatant racism, their crackpot conspiracy theories, their anti-vaccine fervor, and the list goes on (and on). There’s plenty to protest before we’re deprived of the right to do it. I hope our youth recognize that before it’s too late.
Ezra Klein (in Why We're Polarized, and elsewhere) points out that it's tribalism, not reason or information, that determines many of the political outcomes (read: disasters) we see. We on the left are only slightly more resistant to tribalism than are fellow citizens on the right; that difference is slight and inconsistent, and is no reason for cheer. Countering misinformation with accurate data tends to solidify misapprehensions rather than dissolve them. Turns out, reason is a poor solvent.
I wish I knew how to address this conundrum. I want sweet reason to prevail, but we're fighting against millennia of evolution.