April 25, 2023

Biden’s Lost Generation

Progressives have created a mentality of despair among young Americans.

The Biden era is turning America’s youngest voters, the “Zoomers,” into doomers.

They’re depressed and fearful — and their confidence in the nation’s institutions, from the police to the Supreme Court, is weakening. So is their support for Joe Biden.

Only 36% of Americans aged 18-29 approve of Biden’s job performance, according to a new poll by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics.

Biden has only himself and his fellow progressives to blame.

They’ve created a mentality of despair among young Americans, who look on as crime soars but hear nothing but a drumbeat from liberal media outlets about how bad the cops are.

As a result, 48% of the Zoomers polled by IOP say they have felt unsafe in the past month — in shopping malls (16%), on public transportation (15%), in their neighborhoods (13%), and on their college campuses (21%).

More than 1 in 5 report feeling unsafe elsewhere in their city or town, too.

Citizens of all ages have reason to feel less safe as murders and carjackings surge.

But even heinous yet relatively rare crimes have become a source of persistent fear for young Americans, especially college women.

The political use to which Democrats put mass shootings, coupled with the wall-to-wall coverage these atrocities inevitably attract, has led 53% of college women to believe that they or someone close to them could be a victim of one.

Ordinary criminal violence is the far greater risk. But only 43% of the young people in IOP’s survey say that having police officers in their community makes them feel safer.

The media glare upon every police-involved killing, sensational coverage utterly disproportionate to the primary sources of violence in any community, is having an effect.

If young Americans don’t look to police as the solution to the violence that haunts their fears — and if they’re more likely to support gun control than to own guns for their own defense — then what hope do they have?

Little or none. IOP finds that 47% of young adults report “feeling down, depressed, or hopeless.” Nearly a quarter — 24% — said they had thoughts about hurting themselves or that they’d be better off dead.

The survey paints a grim picture of young Americans’ mental health. Fifty-four percent report “feeling nervous, anxious or on edge” for at least “several days” in the past two weeks. Forty-six percent said the same about taking “little interest or pleasure in doing things.”

“Loneliness” was the self-reported state of 44% of Zoomers; 42% felt “afraid as if something awful might happen”; and 34% were specifically worried about a mass shooting in a public place.

Progressive ideology is making great gains among Generation Z. Over the past decade of IOP surveys, young Americans’ support for stronger government measures against climate change, even at the cost of economic growth, has expanded from 29% to 50%.

There’s been double-digit growth in support for universal government health insurance (from 42 to 65%) and government guarantees for food and shelter (44 to 62%).

Unsurprisingly, in light of these other trends, the survey finds that only 42% of young Americans who grew up in conservative homes identify as Republican today, compared to 60% of those from liberal homes who identify as Democrats.

If Democrats are winning the war for the hearts and minds of America’s youth, however, the price of victory may be the poisoning of those same hearts and minds.

The party of hope and change has become the party of despair. For now, the Democrats have the votes of America’s young, yet those voters deem Biden a failure.

When the Roman historian Titus Livy judged his own time, as the ancient republic came to its end, he wrote, “We can endure neither our vices nor their cures.”

Having to live with the consequences of liberal policies, yet holding fast to left-wing beliefs, young Americans have created a similar paradox for themselves. One result is the widely reported fact that young liberals tend to be significantly more depressed than conservatives of the same generation.

Unless the next generation changes its mind, conservatives will lose a lot of elections. The Zoomers themselves will only lose hope.

COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.