If you don’t know, you don’t care
From Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance, A Warning:
One morning before Christmas, I was working out with a friend who I adore, and workout with regularly. She’s young, smart, and a recent college graduate. In the middle of our session, my phone started going off incessantly and I finally picked it up. It was, of course, breaking news. That day, it was about the Giuliani bankruptcy.
I apologized to her for taking the call. I got off quickly and told her, by way of explanation, “Rudy Giuliani just filed for bankruptcy.”
“Who’s Rudy Giuliani?” she asked.
Vance realizes that her friend born after 9/11 has no idea that Giuliani was once “America’s Mayor.” And has no reason to know.
I decided to get a gut check from my 21-year-old. “Do you know who Rudy Giuliani is?” I asked. He rolled his eyes. Of course he does. He reminded me he’s my son. But then, he schooled me on how it works for his generation. College kids, or most of them, don’t watch TV news or read newspapers. They get it from their social media feeds.
Intellectually I know this.
“Giuliani and Trump are all over your newsfeed Mom but now newsfeeds are customized. The only news I’ve seen today is about chess and rap music. [editor’s note: have I failed as a parent?] The algorithm generates your feed based on what you’re interested in, and over time, you just get what you’re already into.” So it makes sense that my friend hadn’t seen anything about Rudy Giuliani. She’s not a politics junkie or a news junkie.
This explains, in part anyway, why youth turnout in elections is so low. Remember the excited reports of a big percentage jump in the level of youth turnout in 2018 and 2022, the first election after Trump’s ascendance? The stories don’t emphasize where that level started or how far it has to go to match the turnout of voters over 45.
You can run this joint
Vance urges readers to discuss with younger friends urgent matters like, oh, the impending collapse of American democracy if Donald Trump gets reelected in 2024.
Not everyone watched the January 6 committee hearings or has been exposed to the overwhelming evidence of Donald Trump’s perfidy. Take the time to start the conversation, whether it’s over a cup of coffee, in line at the supermarket, or in the gym. One voter at a time.
The youth vote is both democracy’s salvation and its Achilles heel. Younger voters lean left and unaffiliated. They just don’t turn out like us oldsters (see by-now familiar graphic at top). Where is the greatest potential for increasing turnout that favors Democrats? In the blue-shaded area to the left of the white vertical line. I tell the young’uns: If you and your friends just vote, you can run this joint. But not if you aren’t sitting at the table.
Republicans know this. It’s why they make it as hard as possible for younger Americans to vote by splitting university campuses, limiting on-campus voting sites, and passing voter ID laws. And that’s why we’re fighting back.
Vance’s conversation yielded benefits:
I got lunch with my friend after we worked out today. She told me she’d read a few articles about Giuliani and realized what it was about. She asked a couple of questions about the election interference case against Trump. Apparently, those few articles she’d looked at piqued her interest—and influenced her algorithm.
Donald Trump will end American democracy if he’s reelected. He will corrupt our country for his own benefit. He has not made a secret of it. The only question is whether enough of our fellow citizens will be aware of what the 2024 election means for the future and care enough when we go to the polls to prevent Trump from returning to power. The small steps that we take during the next few months will pay big dividends.
One voter at a time.
(h/t KS)