I’m a boomer and the Gen Zs are grandchild age so I suppose it’s natural that I relate to them. That whole “skip a generation” thing is often true. Certainly, when it comes to politics it seems to me that the Democratic new guard is much savvier than both their immediate predecessors and the old guard my age. They see the opposition for what it is in a way that many liberals my age took forever to recognize (and that’s assuming they ever have.) I’m not sure why I could see the truth when so many couldn’t but I’m super relieved to see the younger generation in electoral politics is moving beyond some of the more parochial types of infighting that has so often characterized the Democratic party to form a popular front against the fascist tide on the right. Maybe we’ll get through this after all.
Note that I’m speaking specifically of elected politicians. The campus wars are something else and I would guess it’s at least partially attributable to the fact that these young people are not exposed to the right while the elected politicians are. Much like the right wing bubble, that left wing bubble thinks it fully reflects the whole world so they end up fighting amongst themselves because they know, on some level, that there is a fight to be had. Maybe this is a good division of labor… they press cultural change while the more overtly political types wage the partisan political fight. (Maybe ….. I’m not actually sure about that. Some pretty toxic stuff is happening in left wing institutions.)
This article by Greg Sargent about the first Gen Z in Congress Maxwell Frost illustrates my point:
Rep. Maxwell Frost, the first Gen Z member of Congress, had numerous breakthrough moments this week during hearings run by House Republicans. The Florida Democrat’s performance did more than unmask the folly of GOP investigations, though it certainly did that. Subtly but unmistakably, he signaleda generational turn in the Democratic Party.
Young, rising Democrats such as Frost and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — whose own big moment this week revealed Twitter’s special treatment for Donald Trump — are putting their stamp on the party by modeling how to break through the informational clutter.
“Oftentimes, our party has a problem with having a simplified message that’s able to cut through all the noise,” Frost told me in an interview. “This is something I think Republicans are actually good at.” He added: “It’s something we can get better at.”
During a Tuesday hearing on border security, Frost used his backbench seat on the Oversight Committee to gettwo border police officials to overturn the entire premise of the GOP argument on immigration, that Democrats want “open borders”:
Note the “Dick and Jane” quality here, as though Frost were asking these officials to explain these truths to a child. This highlights a key move: While Democrats sometimes respond to things like the “open borders” claim with high dudgeon, here the tone is one of mockery and contempt.
Asked about this, Frost said he calibrates the tone of his responses to the seriousness of the underlying assertion.
“You match the energy of the claim,” Frost said, noting he hopes to “dismantle the other folks’ arguments but also really show people how absurd they are.” Outrage risks “elevating” weak claims, whereas mockery “diminishes” them, he said.
Similarly, Frost mocked Republicans for obsessing over Twitter’s treatment of a 2020 story about Hunter Biden. Frost pointed out that Republicans are angry that the story didn’t help Trump win in 2020, dryly noting: “That’s the point of this hearing.”
To drive home this idea, Frost also questioned a Twitter executive about the Trump White House’s pressure to take down a tweet by model Chrissy Teigen that attacked Trump in a highly colorful phrase:
Frost went out of his way to get the explicit phrase “p—y a– b—-” into the congressional record. This made the moment viral and underscored the absurdity of the whole affair.
Older Democrats sometimes seem beholden to a picture of the GOP as it existed in the 1980s (or earlier among certain much older Democrats). In their nostalgic vision, bipartisanship was an ideal that could be maintainedthrough outrage and shaming.
By contrast, younger Democrats came of age in the aftermath of Newt Gingrich’s scorched-earth politics, conspiracy theories about the Clintons, the partisan Supreme Court’s handing of the presidency toGeorge W. Bush, Karl Rove’s Iraq War propaganda, and the deranged “birtherism” directed at Barack Obama.
Frost also chalks up this generational difference to younger Democrats’ experience of defining events such as police killings and mass shootings “via social media,” which he described as “unifying moments” of national “trauma.” Previously, Frost was an activist in the segment of the gun control movement organized by social-media-savvy young people.
He uses a harder-edged approach when warranted, such as when he went after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s reactionary use of government power to limit free expression. During the Twitter hearing, Frost underscored the absurdity of the GOP’s stated concerns about free speech with this detour into DeSantis’s suppression of it:
The generational difference goes only so far. Frost’s safe Democratic district in Orlandoliberates him to adopt an approach oriented toward viral information warfare. Other youngish Democrats who represent tougher districts — such as Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia — are moving the party forward in a more conventional way, stressing bipartisanship and national security experience.
What’s more, older Democrats have had their ownviral moments, such as when Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (Md.) offered Republicans a brutal lesson on the First Amendment. Even here, though, you can discern a difference between Raskin’s party-elder-like approach and Frost’s archly detached internet-savvy mockery.
As media critic Jay Rosen notes, the sheer absurdity of these GOP hearings poses a challenge to our discourse: It’s hard to talk about them at all without lending them more validation than they merit.
If so, perhaps Frost’sapproach offers an answer: Treat the hearings with the ridicule they deserve while marshaling the viral reach that this contemptfacilitates to supplant bad information with good.
This person is so good she sends chills down my spine: