It's ALL the Millennials' Fault

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXUqwuzcGeU]

Millennials are to blame for Hillary Clinton's failures. If Trump succeeds in getting into the White House, it will be their fault. Just ask James Kirchick of The Daily Beast:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/16/if-america-elects-a-pre...

Yet despite running against a candidate who combines the racial divisiveness of George Wallace with the pro-Russian sympathies of Henry Wallace, Hillary Clinton has barely been able to break 48 percent in any national poll. She does significantly better in head-to-head match-ups than in the actual four-way race, thanks to the not insignificant number of voters expressing support for Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party standard-bearer Jill Stein. Support for these minor candidates is most pronounced among a crucial demographic, my demographic: millennials. Twenty-six percent of voters aged 18-29 say they will vote for Johnson; 10 percent back Stein.

Why do these millennials back third-party candidates? Well some of it is just because they're haters and sore losers:

What explains the millennial willingness to risk a Trump presidency? A lot of it stems from cynicism towards, if not downright hatred of, Clinton and everything she represents. Seventy-seven percent of voters 18-34 find Clinton untrustworthy, compared to 65 percent of all likely voters. There’s also not a small degree of lingering bitterness from those who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, only 52 percent of whom, according to an Economist/YouGov poll, plan to back the party’s nominee (Sanders won millennials overwhelmingly, and Saturday will be in Ohio to try and convince voters there to hold their noses with one hand and pull the lever for Clinton with the other).

[...]
But that's not all. Let Mr. Kirchick lead you deeper into the labyrinth of the millennial psyche, and reveal the Minotaur within!

But there’s something deeper, and darker, about millennial opposition to Clinton and the attendant blitheness towards the prospect of a Trump presidency. It’s best described as a mix of moral relativism, historical ignorance and narcissism.

Moral relativism. Narcissism. That sounds scary. Of course, it also sounds like Hillary Clinton, who would I think, by now, have the moral relativist vote and the narcissist vote locked up.

By the way, Boomers, isn't this the same thing they said about you when you were young?

Millennials are the first post-war generation to have come of age after the Cold War.

Oh, well that explains it---wait, what?

Baby boomers, by contrast, grew up listening to their parents’ tales of American heroism in World War II and read about the depredations of international communism every day. Throughout their formative years, the United States was locked in Cold War struggle against an expansionist Soviet empire, and the world lived under threat of nuclear holocaust. The anti-Vietnam War movement may have bred skepticism about America’s global role, but the notion that American power was necessary to protect freedom in the world remained a majority one.

As I recall, "reading about the depredations of international communism every day" made the Boomers, in their youth, charge their own government and culture with hypocrisy. It made them point out the depredations committed by the United States. You can't be the good guy with dirty hands, was the general idea, and the Vietnam war abroad (which you dismiss very easily for someone so concerned with history) and lynchings of Black people at home made it rather difficult for the United States to righteously harangue the Soviet Union about "depredations" in Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. I also recall the Boomers having a problem with the United States' contributions to the threat of nuclear holocaust, which were being touted as necessary for that "Cold War struggle against an expansionist Soviet empire."

Millennials, by contrast, spent their early years blissfully unaware about the world and its dangers. That changed, of course, on 9/11. But unlike other age groups, over half of us believe U.S. actions might have provoked those attacks. “Older people think, ‘We’re a great people, we got attacked by these crazy people, and now we are dealing with it and we have to be careful,’” Trevor Thrall, co-author of a study on millennials and foreign policy, told Voice of America last year. “Millennials are the only generation the majority of which think the U.S. must have done something to provoke 9/11.” Thrall’s study concluded that millennials “perceive the world as significantly less threatening than their elders,” “are more supportive of international cooperation than previous generations,” and “are also far less supportive of the use of military force.” Millennials are also deeply skeptical—like Trump—of American exceptionalism. A 2011 Pew poll found that only 32 percent of millennials believe America is superior to other countries, compared to 64 percent of baby boomers.

"Blissfully unaware of the world and its dangers?"

What a fucking load of shit you're spreading, Mr. Kirchick. That goes for Trevor Thrall too. By the way, Dr. Thrall, (who works here: http://www.cato.org/people/trevor-thrall), I want to see your raw data and how your study was designed before it gets used by any more witnesses to the Holy PNAC Gospel of Washington Consensus. (Also, the organization you work for is comprised of fucking hypocrites--"libertarians" opposing Net Neutrality, pffft.)

You think Millennials are unaware of the world's dangers? How about the danger of catastrophic climate change, you bastard, you Cold War nostalgia hound? How about the dangers of worldwide famine and poisoned water?

Oh, wait. It occurs to me I've been talking to you all this time and haven't introduced myself.

I'm Gen X. You know, one of the two generations you media access types always forget, because obviously America consists of Greatest Generation, Boomers, and Millenials, and nobody else.

I'm one of the two Cold War generations in this country. Born into it, grew up in it, saw it end. That's what we share with the Boomers.

So I think I'm in a pretty good position to discuss the relative value of knowing it's a Big Bad World Out There, Full of Dangers Like the Red Menace. I know all about the Monroe Doctrine, OK? I know there's a bear in the woods.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpwdcmjBgNA]

But guess what? I don't fucking care that there's a bear in the woods, because people like Hillary Clinton are clearcutting the woods, poisoning the water, and salting the earth. That's what she's doing in my part of the woods. On the other side of the woods, where other people live who speak different languages and worship different gods than me, she doesn't bother with clearcutting and poison--she just bombs the woods out of existence, leaving rubble, smoking wood fragments, and large piles of dead bodies (She says it's all in the good cause of stopping the bear, but I see a lot of guys in expensive suits behind her smirking, and I think somehow they must all be making money off the wreckage). She, and they, are also doing a lot of crap that seems to involve pushing most people down the economic ladder as far as possible, so that the people who *do* survive end up with much worse lives than their parents or grandparents had.

And you want me, or more accurately, you want my niece, to be afraid of the Red Menace? Or, if not them, who? Scary Arab terrorists? China? North Korea?

Why should I (or my niece) be more afraid of them than of my own ruling class? What makes the American elites better than the Russian elites or the Chinese elites, or the Korean elites or even the rich Gulf State Arabs who are funding a lot of those scary terrorists? What makes my ruling class better? Is the American aristocracy better because, while it has obliterated the legal differences between the United States and those other, more forthright police states, it hasn't yet obliterated entirely the customs of a civil society with guaranteed rights?

I know how conversations with Hillary surrogates work, and this is the point where you talk to me about how Black people and others were denied those rights, so it makes the very idea that those rights could ever exist a bunch of elitist garbage, and it makes objecting to the violations of those rights a racist act. This is where you tell me I have to be OK with a system that disregards the Bill of Rights and the Geneva Conventions and other statements of humanitarian intent because for 400 years those rights haven't been extended to Black people.

Because obviously it was the idea of basic human rights that caused the problems Black people have been facing for the last 400 years in this hemisphere. Obviously, racism and slavery made Black people's lives hell on this continent not because some American bastards wanted to make boatloads of money without paying people for their labor, and defined a whole bunch of people as not really human so that they could get away with it, but because some Americans came up with the idea that people have rights. If we only hadn't written the Bill of Rights, everything would have been roses for Black people and other people of color on this continent! Because, if only you could treat white people the same way you've been treating Black people all along, there would be no racism! Everything would be equal. Everything would be fair. No preferential treatment, see? We're all equally under that rich guy's foot.

And obviously, Black people are doing so great in this Brave New World your chosen candidate has spent the last 25 years helping to build! With fewer pesky "rights" being accorded to white people, everything has gotten better for Black people. After all, only two of them are being murdered a day, right?

Am I supposed to be grateful that I can still write this without being hauled off to jail? Am I supposed to be grateful that I know of only one detention center in the United States that kidnaps and tortures people (outside the law, with no due process), and that it focuses mainly on Black people, so that many of us can go about our lives still pretending that we live within some tolerable legal and ethical framework?

Take your fake morality into your bomb shelter and watch reruns of Red Dawn, and stuff this attempt at generational warfare up your ass, you bootlicker of war profiteers, you smirking opinion-manager-for-pay.

[This essay would not exist without the essay written by cloudy_skies, who alerted me to this wretched, history-mangling chicanery, to whom I extend a major h/t. Here is the original essay: http://caucus99percent.com/content/victim-blaming-has-begun]

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Bollox Ref's picture

I guess the Millenials get their own basket.

One way to garner support I suppose. Tell a large number of potential voters that they're ungrateful, selfish, know-nothing shitheads.

(Edited)

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

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gulfgal98's picture

are sooooo last century. Millennials see right through her campaign bullshit. And Millennials will not be bullied into voting for her.

I have never seen a worse campaign in my life. Her freaking campaign slogan is "Stronger Together" and yet she is waging a very divisive campaign against the voters. Insulting and bullying voters does not win votes. The only thing that is stronger together is her bank account and the corporatists who donate to her.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

wilderness voice's picture

Accusing Bernie of racism and writing diaries about how "all progressive men" were the problem. Worst campaign / worst Dem condidate[sic] ever. Her sheeple supporters in denial at TOP bemoan her poor polling and tell themselves it's all the media's fault.

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Shahryar's picture

similar playbook, say nothing except "I'm better than he is", drop in polls, lose election.

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ThoughtfulVoter's picture

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thanatokephaloides's picture

We don't need either clone in the Oval Office, gramercies!

Diablo Bad

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

my honey is haranguing me to come to dinner--

Back later!

Add your own rants at your leisure.

That little scapegoating fucker. How dare he insult my niece.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

k9disc's picture

These are the children that Hillary "helped" her entire career.

"But the Children..." has taken on a new meaning.

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

The very children that it took a village to raise? The INGRATES!

Those children that she years ago supported by insisting that it takes a village to raise them (a sentiment I agree with in theory) are now voting age, and somehow they aren't showing their gratitude by electing her president. I wonder what (NAFTA) might make them (CHARTER SCHOOLS) make them so unruly (FOR_PROFIT PRISONS) that they don't love their Political Mommie Dearest (NO VIABLE FUTURE) enough to give her incredible power (MASSIVE NON-DISCHARGEABLE STUDENT DEBT) over them now??

What does this suggest about her?

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Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.

wilderness voice's picture

Pocketed over $14 million of that non-dischargable debt, so hey, it's all good. /s

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since the 1890's.
There are a significant number of people in their 20s and 30s moving back in with their parent(s).
People have student debt unpaid into middle age.

I could go on with depressing stats like this but the point I want to make is that the economy has gotten worse for most people, especially for people looking for the first career job, and people in this position are understandably upset with this state of affairs and know it doesn't have to be this way.

$5 Trillion has been spent on war during the past 15 years and a million Iraqis are dead and millions are displaced. The horror.

Obama, in addition to endless war, has promised Israel $38 Billion over the next ten years.

TPP will make the situation much worse. Only 57,000 factories closed since NAFTA? TPP will finish that neoliberal job.

You can't drink the water in Flint and many other American cities and wells are being contaminated by fracking.

How are we supposed to show our gratitude for having the net worth of the 1% being greater than the first 50%?

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Millennials are backing a future they want to see. It's one I happen to want to see as well, and I'm a 2nd-half, post-peak Boomer.

The only way we can ever see such a thing is to VOTE FOR IT! Making compromises with frauds and liars will never deliver the desired result, for no promises made to any groups which aren't completely on board with the candidate's agenda prior to an election are remembered afterwards.

Right, Barry?

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Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.

MsGrin's picture

Sounds like this guy only sees first world problems, and there's a lotta second and third world going on in this country which is apparently invisible to him.

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Damnit Janet's picture

You nailed it. Love the essay. I was thinking Scooby Doo earlier today in another essay around here about the Demorats blaming people like my kids.

Obama started the awakening for my kids with his betrayals. And then of course the comments about us Lefties and Liberals with the "r" word.

My daughter marched long ago against Bush and then Obama's little fucking war crimes. So my Mils are wide awake.

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"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

He made me mad.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Damnit Janet's picture

and my kids were raised watching you BURN one village after another.

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"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

Millennials are also deeply skeptical—like Trump—of American exceptionalism. A 2011 Pew poll found that only 32 percent of millennials believe America is superior to other countries, compared to 64 percent of baby boomers.

like it's a bad thing.

(Very nice essay)

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

jwa13's picture

I do want to call attention to a potential disconnect in your otherwise fine post, to whit --

"I know of only one detention center in the United States that kidnaps and tortures people (outside the law, with no due process)"

The point is that NO ONE KNOWS. Blatantly unconstitutional, and completely outside of the (so-called) "Laws of War", "Geneva Conventions", and everything else that speaks to cogent morality. These BASTARDS need to go to jail -- forever --

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When Cicero had finished speaking, the people said “How well he spoke”.
When Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said “Let us march”.

ThoughtfulVoter's picture

From Salon News

Drum’s problem, then, is that Sanders inspired young people to dream of something much better for their future, and that it is Sanders’s fault that Clinton does not similarly inspire them? Is it wrong for young people coming of age during the Great Recession and the endless War on Terror to have a problem with six-figure speaking gigs from Goldman Sachs?

If Drum believes what he writes, then he does not simply have a strategic disagreement with Sanders and his supporters — he has fundamentally different political opinions. That’s his right. But he should know that he sounds pretty condescending arguing that youthful Sanders supporters are fundamentally like him and, if only they had not been misled, would think and act as he does. Drum, much like Gloria “the boys are with Bernie” Steinem, doesn’t seem to think that young people can think for themselves.

Liberal establishment figures would have hated Sanders were he running as a third-party candidate or independent too but that doesn’t matter: they hate the left whether it works inside the party or out. The only thing that would make liberals happy is if the left — and young people — disappeared. Since they wouldn’t disappear, the response has been to relentlessly demonize young people and their geriatric Pied Piper and to render invisible the fact that Sanders support came not just from young white men but also from young people of all genders and races (and many older people too).

http://www.salon.com/2016/09/16/what-would-mother-jones-do-probably-not-...

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Thaumlord-Exelbirth's picture

Let's see if I can find it again... yep, here we go.

I encourage people to give it a read.

And yes, it's not the entire generation's fault, but it's hard to argue against the message.

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According to wiki, Millennials are those born between the early 1980s to the early 2000s. In terms of voters, that means people between the ages of 18 and 34. So, supposedly, she's good with voters between the ages of 35 and 120? I don't think so.

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Early Millennial here (whatever happened to when I was Gen Y, anyway) who voted Nader in 2000. So it's all my fault that Bush won, even though Gore (narrowly) won my state. Voted Nader again in 2004, so it's all my fault that Bush won re-election, even though if Kerry had managed to win my state it still wouldn't have been enough. Then I finally had someone to vote for in Obama, so I guess I get the credit?

And now it's 2016, and it's back to feeling like 2000 or 2004. Somehow I'm not convinced I'm actually the one to blame here.

You know, we've been at war basically my entire adult life. (It depends a bit on how you want to define it.) I've yet to see what those trillions of dollars and thousands of lives spent overseas has actually accomplished to the positive.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Which makes it even worse.

We've been rigging elections since you were old enough to vote, probably.

and I don't know what happened to Gen Y--I vaguely remember a time when people split up the folks who are in their thirties now from the folks who are in their twenties and late teens.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

We're all equal under the rich guys boot.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

I'm not saying the white working class or white middle class have treated Black people decently over the years, but that's no damned reason to get behind Hillary Clinton and her infernal machine of perpetual profit.

They want to grind our bones to make their bread.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

and an excellent use of anger.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

BTW, I'll have something to send you soon, definitely this weekend--a project I want your eyes on.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

ggersh's picture

are far smarter than the boomers, so it should come as no surprise to the anointed one that they can smell her BS far better than she can.

And if the anointed should lose, then god bless the millennials (and I aint no god fairing soul) for helping in that cause, that's something I can be very proud of and it would give me so much more hope in the future of
humankind.

Yeah you go you millennials!!!

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Older and Wiser Now's picture

It might be my favorite out of everything you've ever written.

But guess what? I don't fucking care that there's a bear in the woods, because people like Hillary Clinton are clearcutting the woods, poisoning the water, and salting the earth. That's what she's doing in my part of the woods.

Brilliant.

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~OaWN

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Lenzabi's picture

Yep, Gen-x, served in Germany, grew up with the scares and other crap, I say eff it all and vote Jill!

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So long, and thanks for all the fish