When I think of Gen Z, I feel a strange mix of gratitude and anger. Gratitude that I got to experience the final halcyon years of pre-9/11, analog America, and anger that many of us old enough to remember those days have so often bent the knee—from the campus to the workplace—to the younger generation’s moralizing enforcers.
For my latest episode of the Swing State Debates, I sat down with three College Democrats who I suspected might represent these moralizing enforcers. Joining us were a trio of young conservatives working in Republican politics and a 23-year-old Libertarian, because I love nothing more than a wild card. We met in Michigan, where Kamala Harris held a rally yesterday to energize the youth vote.
But, after meeting these Gen Z voters, it seems my crabby expectations of The Youth were just plain wrong. While it’s true that Gen Z, whose oldest members are 27, skews Democratic in their party preference, a plurality identifies as moderates—just like the rest of us. That was reflected in the Democratic participants, who were hardly the rabid ideologues the internet had primed me for.
Though I expected our discussion to veer into the political gender divide, so often reported about with this cohort, we also spoke about race, jobs, foreign policy, and the parties’ competing visions for our country’s future.
But my chief takeaway from this debate: More than any other conversation in this series, the young people of Michigan showed me just how siloed we can be when it comes to the information we use to make sense of the world.
Sometimes the Democrats were dismissive of the other side. For example, the argument that women on average would prefer not to work if they had the option because of the primordial realities of womanhood was met with indignation—“women are ambitious and strong and fearless”—as if something utterly preposterous had been spoken. And when discussing the idea that divorce should be monetarily disincentivized, given the correlation between poverty and single-parent households, the Democrats admitted to having heard this argument “just in passing”. . . and it showed in their counterarguments.
Not that Democrats were totally alone in the dark. When Israel came up, for instance, one of our conservative debaters admitted to not understanding why the U.S. is so invested in the Jewish state: “It’s like, hmm. Makes you think.”
Overall, though, I was struck by how confidently the conservatives presented their point of view, and I suspect they were aided by the fact that, unlike the liberal students, they’d had a healthy exposure—in college and in their high-school classrooms—to ideas from the “opposing team.” I felt for the Democrats: It’s hard to be a good advocate for any ideology if you haven’t thoroughly examined the ideas you supposedly disagree with.
Just see for yourself.
This series is presented with support from the David Merage Foundation and Evoke Media. For more information, please visit WeAreEvokeMedia.com. Click here to watch episode 1 of the series, a debate on education in Florida.
In addition to hosting “Swing State Debates,” Ben Kawaller is the host of The Free Press series “Ben Meets America!” To learn more about that series, click here.
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