Millennials
Wondering why Obama and his message of youth corps and mandatory volunteerism and the like with its use of old communist art styles struck a note with the younger folks? The answer could partly lie in their generation. They grew up after those historical examples of bad outcomes had been pretty well scrubbed from public discourse.
“Millennials,” says Beale, “might look at politics and say ‘these people suck,’ whereas Gen Xers and baby boomers before them were more likely to say, ‘Man, these people suck and the system sucks.’” The new attitude may make Millennials dangerously susceptible to that old utopian mantra: “If only we had the right people in charge…” As Strauss observes, boomers and Gen Xers were “raised not to follow Hitler or Stalin; Millennials were a post-consciousness raising generation.”
Once those cautionary examples begin to fade, so does the skepticism of power they engendered. Strauss posits that the next decade may see the emergence of a new “middle class populism” if the jobs available as Millennials begin to graduate from college don’t match the high expectations set by the tech boom of the ’90s.
Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff confesses alarm at the new mind-set he’s seen in his visits to American colleges, a trend he half-jokingly describes as “fascism in youth culture.” If that characterization seems hyperbolic, we can at least say that Millennials are a highly nationalist and communitarian generation.
And it isn’t just the kids who don’t go to church. In fact, I have seen personally a disturbing rise in autocratic, fascist tendencies and acceptance thereof – along with the corresponding fundamentalist – in the religious Millennials I know.
Tags: Life
