What is Wrong with You?

This is my geezer rant of the week.

A couple of days ago I ran across an op-ed in the LA Times penned by Robin Abcarian in which she examined the mindset of some Gen Z/Millenials asked about this year’s elections and how they feel about Joe Biden.   These younger voters told NBC News they’re upset about the country’s slow pace on reversing climate change, Biden’s failure to fully cancel student loan debt, his inability to federally codify the right to abortion, and his handling of Israel’s war against Hamas.  The latter issue has sparked ongoing protests that are being covertly encouraged by our enemies, Russia and China. 

“I mean, he made a lot of really big promises in his campaign and virtually none of them were followed through on,” one poll respondent, Austin Kapp, 25, of Colorado, told NBC News. 

“I don’t think the presidency has too much of an effect on what happens in my day-to-day life,” said Pru Carmichael, who supported Biden in 2020 but says she will not vote for president at all this year if she has to choose between the disappointing incumbent and former President Trump.

“A Republican getting elected isn’t the end. It is the beginning of a much larger fight,” a 23-year-old Wisconsin Starbucks worker and union organizer who is considering withholding his vote from Biden told NBC News. “I want to show the Democratic Party as a young person that you still need to earn our vote and if you don’t, the consequences will be your career.”

Well, I sort of get it.  But not really.  These are the same young people who spent the entirety of their school years doing active shooter drills.  Two days ago, there was yet another one in Iowa.  So, I must ask these snowflakes:

·      Do you think electing Donald Trump is going to solve any of these problems—ones he’s either created or exacerbated?

·      Do you understand that while Joe Biden can be the leading advocate, he can’t singlehandedly solve these problems?  Have you ever heard of Congress?

·      What is the matter with you?  Grow the f*** up. 

When I see the kind of naïve, self-absorbed reasoning in the examples I noted, it makes me think of one of the great lines from The Shawshank Redemption when Andy Dufresne asks the warden,

I have to think there are a lot more young people who understand the stakes, rather than some of these vapid fools.  One can only hope.