Temperatures going up, California is in flames, big weather events are becoming larger, fisheries are depleted or destroyed, reefs are bleaching, pigeons and coyotes are invading American cities, and the poles are melting. Who’s inheriting what appears to be destined to be a world whose ecology is damaged enough to endanger wildlife populations and, therefore, a badly overpopulated humanity?
Not me.
No, it’s folks like the members, if involuntarily[1], of the Millenials and Gen Z and whatever other generations have garnered as names. And, as I’ve written before from time to time, all these younger generations have a key advantage over the Boomers and Gen X folks, and that’s this:
They’ve observed the status of the world’s ecology and economy, and they’ve observed, close up and personal, the philosophies, practices, economic theories, and all the other paradigms by which we operate these days. Because of their age, and I might argue the advent of The Age of Skepticism & Rationality, their investment in those paradigms is not nearly as high as that of the predecessor generations, such as the Boomers. In fact, disaffection with some of
But, uniquely, from nearly their beginnings they’ve had telecommunications and social media at their fingertips, and even better, or worse, pick your adjective, it’s unmediated by communications gatekeepers. That is, publishing is unmediated by those who think, and sometimes do, know better. In some ways, it’s like evolution, which is notorious for exploring solution spaces by trying all of them until one works.
What brings this up is a couple of articles in WaPo. First up is Jennifer Rubin, discussing the recent successful effort to unionize an Amazon Corp shop:
The newly formed Amazon Labor Union won the day on Staten Island not with the help of traditional union behemoth such as the Teamsters Union. Instead, the New York Times reports, the Amazon organizers “relied almost entirely on current and former workers rather than professional organizers . . . [and] turned to GoFundMe appeals rather than union coffers built from the dues of existing members.” It was an intensive person-to-person effort using everything from social media to employee barbecues to win over the support of the workers.
Given the success of these campaigns, major unions and progressive politicians (whose appearance in a failed Amazon organizing effort in Alabama proved ineffective) might want to steer clear. Instead, progressive groups and donors can lend financial support.
I’ve bolded the part that really caught my attention. If senior progressives cannot move the needle for a unionizing matter, what does it mean?
And then there’s this article by Philip Bump on the puzzling loss of popularity by President Biden in the face of economic success and a Republican Party positively packed with fourth- and fifth- raters who have little allegiance to democracy or to competency – but only broken ideologies:
The first poll was from Quinnipiac University. Released on Wednesday, it measured Biden’s approval with those ages 65 and older as about even — as many viewed his job performance positively as negatively. Those under 30, though, were more than twice as likely to view his performance with disapproval.
That’s Quinnipiac, the pollster that Biden’s team once went out of its way to disparage as an outlier. Then, early Thursday morning, new polling from Gallup showed a similar pattern. It was among the youngest Americans, not the oldest, where Biden was struggling most. What’s more, it was with those Americans that his approval had fallen the most over the course of his presidency.
Here’s that Gallup poll:
For me, what we’re starting to see is the rejection of the ways of the previous generations. Old wisdom, particularly that which does not fit with reason, as well as that which does not fit with the spewings of “social influencers,” is likely to be disputed and, often, discarded.
And there’s going to be a lot of anguish and gnashing all along the political spectrum as the American youth, watching disaster unfold, observing their wishes are not immediately satisfied, and communicating thoughts, pictures, and video in real time, begin to come together more and more cohesively than ever before.
1 I am, technically, a tail-end member of the Boomers, who are somewhat reviled for greed, selfishness, and such things as First World problems. Much like some small percentage of the Millenials, et al., towards their own imposed group memberships, I have felt not one iota of kinship with the Boomers.
