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Millennials shouldn’t be disillusioned by outlier election By Gregory Block
Let’s say there’s a club downtown that you’ve been dying to go to for years. It has a big, flashy entrance with bouncers in suits standing outside. In past years, it has had the best new performers. But thanks to their strict ID policy, you’ve never been able to get in. Let’s call it the 2016 Voting Club, and until you’re eighteen, despite your strongest wishes, you just can’t get inside. So you watch jealously for years as your elders talk glowingly and patriotically about the club and the civic engagement that it represents. You desperately want to go inside, to check your boxes, stand in your very own booth and receive a sticker indicating that you were finally there! But unfortunately, you can do nothing but watch from the sidewalk as people around you excitedly discuss the happenings of the club. Finally, though, your time has come, and on your 18th birthday, you grab some friends, call an Uber and head to the city. You pregame on the way there (by reading up on some of the state propositions, of course) and before you know it, you are standing in front of the club. There are millennials and senior citizens pouring out of the doors with smiles on their faces and stickers on their shirts. Nervously, you approach the front door. The bouncers check your ID, and after years of wondering about what the club was like, the moment has arrived. You walk inside with the legacies of millions of Americans who had entered those doors before you on your shoulders, expecting a whole new world of red, white and blue, majestic eagles and fireworks. But it doesn’t take long for you to realize that the glitz and glamor of the club was nothing but a façade. After all, this is the 2016 presidential election. Inside, the walls and floors are dirty. TVs blare debates full of hateful rhetoric and undignified behavior, a cacophony of interruptions and insults. Media outlets compete to see who can deliver the most biased and sensationalized coverage. And a trip to the restroom reveals a wall covered in Donald Trump’s tweets, as if a bathroom isn’t dirty enough. Your first trip to the Club was the ultimate letdown. Your expectations were crushed and so was your patriotism. After an experience like this, why would you want to go back to the club? The 2016 presidential election was the first in which the Millennial generation had a higher proportion of the voting populous than the Baby Boomers, according to a 2016 Pew Research study. In other words, there’s a whole lot of people who went to the Club for the first time last Tuesday. And there’s probably a whole lot of people who don’t want to go back.
What does this mean for the future of American politics? The lasting legacy of this election remains to be seen, and it may be another four years until we can truly gauge the figurative damage done to the American political system and to Millennial voters. But there’s no denying that the absurdity of this election has affected the way the Millennial generation will view politics, whether it’s because of the behavior of the two candidates, the failures of media coverage or the outlandish rhetoric instead of grounded policy. Many Millennials, the most impressionable of voters, were most likely disillusioned by what they saw this election cycle, regardless of their political views. This was because there wasn’t a problem with just one side of the spectrum, but a problem with the system in general, from the primaries down to Election Day last Tuesday. I hope that in four years, my peers will be excited for the election and for the opportunity to vote, as they should
Illustration by Eileen Bettinger
be. After all, elections should be inspiring times, a chance for people of all different backgrounds to do their part in deciding what the future of their country will look like. But this 2016 election is the opposite—where people aren’t voting for a candidate they are proud to represent, but instead one who they see as a lesser of two evils. And that’s assuming that people are even voting. It is important to remember that this election’s Voting Club is not the norm, but an anomaly. If you look down the street, there’s another club being built. It holds the promise of an election with legitimate candidates, unbiased media and a focus on policy. When 2020 comes around, I can only hope that people go clubbing instead of staying home.
gblock@redwoodbark.org
How do we cut the link between patriotism and nativism in America? By Maxime Kawawa-Beaudan The wall. Shutting down mosques across America. Banning Islamic immigration. Disparaging Mexican immigrants indiscriminately. All of these are textbook examples of the nativism Americans have seen in this year’s election season. They’re examples of the type of rhetoric Donald Trump has normalized in American politics and the type of speech he uses to appeal to the nationalistic fervor of his constituency. But Trump’s comments are just symptoms of a bigger sickness, one that we each have to address ourselves. He has brought to light the hidden xenophobia that many Americans harbor toward foreigners, using them as escape goat for every single problem in the United States today. Too often today, Americans practice a constrictive type of patriotism. We seem to link the concepts of xenophobia and patriotism, as if by saying we are American we say equally that we can be nothing else. We deny our own diversity and denigrate other nationalities. In other words, we feel that excluding other cultures is a way of preserving our own, inaccurately passing our problems off onto the shoulders of others. Trump’s comments are emblematic of this larger problem. People today often feel comfortable displaying subtle or extreme racism towards Muslims or Latinos, believing in some way that being
American and being patriotic are tied to opposing Islam and excluding foreigners. This phenomenon stems partially from a mindset of American exceptionalism, the idea that America is separate from and
Illustration by Maxime Kawawa- Beaudan
better than the rest of the world, ignoring both the interconnectedness of modern nations and the variety of American citizens. And there is variety. The United States was 13.3 percent African American,
5.6 percent Asian and 17.6 percent Hispanic or Latino according to the 2015 census. This country is a m e l t i n g pot. That’s what makes it so great. America is, after all, a country of immigrants. Now, that “America is number one” mentality isn’t necessarily a bad thing or an inaccurate one. The United States leads the world in Olympic medals, billionaires, top research universities and military size. We’re a country with a lot to be proud of. What’s more, most immigrants see America as a haven. Immigrants come from all over the world to live within our borders, demonstrating their patriotism not through nativist displays, but through the sheer will and force that is required to gain citizenship in the United States. The
person who leaves their home country, displaces their family, flies overseas and fights through the naturalization process just to become an American citizen may have more claim to say, “I love America” than the person who just happened to be born in one of the fifty states. Immigration is what makes America so great. Tolerance is one of this country’s founding principles. Diversity is its strength. So to claim to be a patriot while simultaneously speaking ill of Muslims or any other ethnicity creates a paradox.The real American patriot welcomes diversity. The real American patriot isn’t so easily scared and swayed by popular opinion, and doesn’t sink so low as to spread hate to those who pray to one god or another. Many people masquerade as patriots while simultaneously hating immigrants who feel nothing but patriotic fervor for the United States. That’s why it’s so important for us to ask ourselves: are we really patriots? Are our friends and peers really patriots? And if the answers are yes, then we have to call out those who make passing racial comments about Islamic terrorism, Trump’s wall and Mexican immigration. American patriots know that change is progress, and progress is strength, and strength is embodied in every core principle of our nation.
mkawawa-beaudan@redwoodbark.org