Gen Z's Very Short Memory

For 1st Time Voters, When Trump was First Elected, They Were Only 10

Ah Gen Z. That demographic cohort that seems to have everything upside down.

• They were born between 1996 and 2012, meaning they can be as young as 12 or as old as 28.

• They have zero memory of 9/11, W. Bush or Hurricane Katrina, barely remember the Iraq War, and most were in their development years when Obama was President.

• Their #1 Job aspiration is to be “An Influencer.”

• During their teen years, Keeping up with the Kardashians was the most watched show.

• In the current Gaza War, they side with HAMAS and terrorists and lock themselves in Ivy League halls to make their point.

• They are the first generation in over 100 years more likely to still live at home after graduating college and have the lowest rate of sex/marriage in their 20s ever.

• They are steering away from Democrats and Biden in droves because 1) Biden is old and not fashionable, 2) he hasn’t forgiven every dollar of their student loans and 3) he sides with the country who’s citizens were attacked maliciously on October 7th, who they view as “oppressors.”

• They condescend to every other age group how unenlightened everyone else is, but get most of their information from social media and TikTok videos.

Yes, that young, ignorant, self-absorbed group who, if we were discussing this 40 years ago, much of the complaints would pretty closely apply to Gen X except we were more focused on just getting to college if we could, were bombarded with scenes of Middle East wars nightly and hostage videos throughout our formative years and actually knew who Steve Miller was. That and we had the Breakfast Club. And a crack and gang epidemic, but I digress.

I spent a lot of time recently just aghast at how far off the mark this generation is on things. How on earth can they be so far gone to the point that they would even consider not voting for Biden and the Democrats, ensuring victory to a party and Presidential candidate completely antithetical to all of their goals? What was the cause of this logical dissonance? I was perplexed! It made no sense! Then a thought entered my head and made sense of it all and I hadn’t thought of it since until I started writing this piece today.

They barely remember what life was like BB (before Biden) and were not even politically active BT (Before Trump).

Trump first came on the political scene as a candidate in 2015. Many Gen Zers were teens at the time. Did you know many politically active kids at that age? Were there huge issues that you took seriously when you were 10 or 13? Mostly I was just interested in watching movies on VHS, playing kickball with the neighborhood kids, turning on “You Can’t Do That on Television,” listening to MTV and heading down to Aladdin’s Castle to play Qbert, Frogger or Burgertime. I could care less about whatever was on CNN at the time. Just put on another Def Leppard video. The most difficult decision we had at the time was Pepsi or Coke.

That isn’t to say the 1980’s didn’t have their issues. They opened with the Iran-Hostage Crisis, turned into some hardcore Cold War scariness, airline hostage taking, talk about Reaganomics, tax cuts and inflation no tweener understood, and after Reagan was re-elected it soon got out that he had been dealing arms to those same Iranians we talked about at the beginning of this sentence. Reagan was so iconic an individual, that his image was ubiquitous, much like Kennedy’s was in the 1960s. When he went up against the rather bland Walter Mondale, the zeitgeist went along with him, regardless of how old he was. Politically, Gen X was as oblivous then as the Gen Zer’s were 10 years ago. The most political we ever got was Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” video.

Which brings us back to Trump. Trump may have been the shittiest candidate I have ever witnessed in my life. I don’t mean that what he advocated for was shitty (though it was), I mean, he really had no sense of how to BE a candidate and run for office. His speeches meandered and usually went off the rails. He would casually say something ridiculous that would get any other candidate run up a flagpole and into the dustbin of history. He clearly had no sense of any issues; to him they were just platitudes and canned lines, but that’s no biggie, most of the audiences (and most Americans generally) don’t know the intricate policy details of major issues neither. Many Gen Zers never saw this circus, and those that had seen it had no point of reference to compare it to a normal candidate; to them it was the way politics ALWAYS was, a circus.¹ Trump’s appeal is purely as a character in some sort of Cult of Personality; it doesn’t matter what he advocates for or against, his legions will just cheer him on regardless.

The first year of Trump’s Presidency was equally disastrous. Having eked into office, protest marches dwarfed Trump’s own speeches, including his Inauguration. Every event of his Presidency was one disaster after another, a neverending downward spiral right up until COVID hit. I’d love to say at that point it hit rock bottom, but it never bottomed out until he was gone and Biden was in office fighting the inflation that COVID and unfunded stimuluses started. I’d say it was entertaining but it wasn’t; it was more akin to the Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times.” The late 2010s were very interesting to say the least.

How much of this do Gen Zers remember? The older ones may remember some of the worse details, but the bulk of them? Not a lot. And what they do remember they probably didn’t care that much about. They were teens!

And then Biden got elected. You know how you can tell a competent politician? Because they’re boring. They do their jobs. Things get done. Progress is seen and not just talked about. But for these Gen Zers, coming of political age in the Biden years is just dull for them. Twentysomething youth want excitement. They want purpose. They want a cause to rail for. Trump gave it to them, Biden was solving them. They’ve never experienced boring boom times until now. What do you do when you lose your purpose? You start finding causes wherever you can find them. Like in supporting HAMAS. Or like whining Biden hasn’t done enough on Student Loans when he’s done more than every other President combined prior to him. It’s rhetoric toward something iconoclastic rather than a deeply held belief; if any of this led to any real consequences it would be dropped by the majority of them in a heartbeat.

Will Trump win because of this hollow vapidism of young voters today? I genuinely don’t know. I doubt it; young voters are notoriously unreliable to go to the polls even when there’s a candidate they like. What I can say is that if another Trump term does come to pass, they likely won’t take the blame for it. It’s just not in their personalities to.

Just like it wasn’t in our generation.

[Cue “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel]

PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner

A few random references in this one so I’ll elaborate.

“You Can’t Do that on Television” was a kids show on Nickelodeon that was played and replayed several times a day. Most noteworthy, Alanis Morissette was once a kid on the show and it is the source of the “Green slime” that is now emblematic of all sorts of stuff on the network (anytime someone said “I don’t know” they were dumped on with slime; if they said “water” they were dumped on with water).

The Genesis “Land of Confusion” video was made by the British “Spitting Image” puppetry group, and featured Reagan as it’s primary protagonist.

And lastly, Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” video.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Facts of the Day

Gen Z has developed a reputation for being the most environmentally conscious and digitally connected generation ever. Unfortunately, some of the biggest environmental disasters on the planet derive from mining for rare earth materials necessary for modern electronics and electonic waste that results in poinsonous runoffs and Minamata Syndrome.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word

Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. You could argue Hillary kind of was a point of reference, but the networks didn’t cover her campaign speeches from beginning to end like they did the orange felon.