Speaker 1: All media.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, howdy, welcome back to it could happen here
Speaker 2: a podcast about about those wacky gen Z kids and
Speaker 2: how all of the things that the mainstream media used
Speaker 2: to say about millennials I have now embraced to say
Speaker 2: about gen Z who are destroying the world through their
Speaker 2: through their greed and evilness and good knees comparatively. Yeah, Miah,
Speaker 2: how are you doing? You're you're gen Z?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm on okay, I am on the exact
Speaker 1: borderline of I am either the oldest Zoomer or the
Speaker 1: youngest millennial.
Speaker 2: So you're you're a day walker, right like you're the
Speaker 2: you're the Blade of gen Z. Yeah, yeah, okay, so
Speaker 2: you could go out in the sub onions, but you
Speaker 2: still blood. Yeah, I get it, I get it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: who's the Chris Christal I guess I'm the Chris Christofferson.
Speaker 2: If we're doing the original Blade movie, which I watched
Speaker 2: over Thanksgiving break pretty good. I hadn't seen it in
Speaker 2: like fucking twenty years, but solid movie, solid movie.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's kind of downhill from the Blood Rave.
Speaker 1: But the Blood Rave is pretty sick. It's all every
Speaker 1: everything in culture was downhill from blood rave. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got some it's got some good bits to it. Still,
Speaker 1: you know what doesn't have good bits to it.
Speaker 4: The institution of marriage.
Speaker 2: That I mean, I don't disagree with that, but I
Speaker 2: was going to say the Washington Post editorial board, Ah,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, so we are talking is that this
Speaker 2: is an episode about some gin z panic shit that
Speaker 2: came out recently. That thought I felt was worth digging
Speaker 2: into because of the pretty interesting ways in which it's
Speaker 2: wrong if you were, you know, celebrating being with your family,
Speaker 2: eating turkey or just shooting up Heroin alone in the bathroom.
Speaker 2: Last week, on November twenty second, twenty twenty three, the
Speaker 2: Washington Post Editorial Board published an opinion column with the
Speaker 2: provocative title, if attitudes don't shift, a political dating mismatch
Speaker 2: will threaten marriage.
Speaker 4: Hell yeah, yeah, I love this. Vitally destroy the institution?
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, we're doing this through a political dating mismatch.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: I think an article with roughly this premise drops every year,
Speaker 2: sometimes a couple of times a year, on a couple
Speaker 2: of different places. This time it came in through the
Speaker 2: Washington Post editorial Board, and the basic premise of this
Speaker 2: specific article is that gen Z and millennial men are
Speaker 2: growing more conservative while women are growing more progressive. This
Speaker 2: threatens marriage as an institution because all these closed minded
Speaker 2: gen Z lib broads won't date report opplicans. Right. That
Speaker 2: is literally like the point of the article is a
Speaker 2: gen Z liberal women, they are less willing to date
Speaker 2: outside of their political beliefs, and men are getting more conservative.
Speaker 2: So it's really a danger for marriage.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: I understand if your first impulse is to say something like, well,
Speaker 2: when has the Washington Post editorial board ever been right
Speaker 2: about a single goddamn thing? And that is a correct
Speaker 2: attitude to have.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they make the decision not to publish an article.
Speaker 1: There are some days where they don't write anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to, that is a good decision. If
Speaker 2: they made that decision every day, I would be fully
Speaker 2: supportive of the Washington Post editorial board. And if they'll
Speaker 2: hire me, I can make that decision for them every day.
Speaker 2: I'm very good at not doing anything. That said, even
Speaker 2: though it is correct to say the Washington Post editorial
Speaker 2: boarder basically always wrong, I've still run into overwhelming numbers
Speaker 2: of my peers who think this article is silly but
Speaker 2: still buy into the basic point in this piece. This
Speaker 2: is generally married to a widespread belief which is actually
Speaker 2: cited in the article, that toxic male influencers like Andrew
Speaker 2: Tate have tilted huge numbers of young men to the right.
Speaker 2: So even though people will be like, well, it's stupid
Speaker 2: to expect people to date, you know, folks who believe
Speaker 2: horrible political things that would hurt them, it's true that
Speaker 2: men are getting more young men are getting more conservative right,
Speaker 2: and this is I think generally down to this belief
Speaker 2: that has I don't think people examine often. They just
Speaker 2: sort of like they get concerned about the popularity of
Speaker 2: guys like Tate, which is valid, he's concerning, but assume
Speaker 2: that does mean that like, yeah, we're losing the young men.
Speaker 2: They've all been tilted towards these guys. And so, without
Speaker 2: discounting the damage of dudes like Tate, I wanted to
Speaker 2: give a breakdown of how common the so called right
Speaker 2: word tilt of young men actually is because spoilers, this
Speaker 2: is a pernicious bit of disinformation, and I think it
Speaker 2: kind of blackpills a lot of people unnecessari Let's start
Speaker 2: with the obvious point here. Young men are not growing
Speaker 2: more conservative across the board than men of other generations.
Speaker 2: So first off, I want to read you a quote
Speaker 2: from this Post editorial. Since mister Trump's election in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: the percentage of young women ages eighteen to thirty who
Speaker 2: identify as liberal has shot up from slightly over twenty
Speaker 2: percent to thirty two percent. Young men have not followed suit.
Speaker 2: If anything, they have grown more conservative. Now that claim
Speaker 2: is based, you want to guess, did they cite a
Speaker 2: bunch of different sources to prove like that it's a
Speaker 2: really widespread problem, or do they have a single statorial.
Speaker 4: Board they have?
Speaker 1: Those people could not find a second study if you
Speaker 1: nailed it to their face, they share, couldn't they share?
Speaker 1: Couldn't they googled real quickly? Or I'm not even going
Speaker 1: to give them credit for googling. One of their friends
Speaker 1: who works at a right wing think tank sent them
Speaker 1: a survey from that right wing think tank, because that
Speaker 1: the entire statistical base of that claim is a study
Speaker 1: by the American Enterprise Institute, which is a center right
Speaker 1: think tank that tends to produce center rights surveys. And
Speaker 1: even then, the study that they are actually citing doesn't show.
Speaker 1: With the Post editorial Board claims again, their claim is
Speaker 1: young men have not followed suit. If anything, they have
Speaker 1: grown more conservative, right, young men. So they are talking
Speaker 1: across the board about gen Z and millennial males. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from that study. Previous research identified
Speaker 1: a growing gap and ideological orientation between young men and women.
Speaker 1: The gender gap in liberal identity is notable among members
Speaker 1: of Generation Z, but it's relatively modest. Forty three percent
Speaker 1: of gen Z women identify as liberal compared to thirty
Speaker 1: five percent of gen Z men. However, the gender divide
Speaker 1: among white, non Hispanic gen Z adults is considerable, close
Speaker 1: to half. Forty six percent of gen Z women are liberal,
Speaker 1: a far greater share than white gen Z men, among
Speaker 1: whom only twenty eight percent identify liberal. Among gen Z adults,
Speaker 1: white men are significantly more likely than white women to
Speaker 1: identify as politically conservative thirty six percent versus twenty six percent.
Speaker 1: So you see what number one of the study is
Speaker 1: doing there is it's saying forty three percent of gen
Speaker 1: Z women, all gen Z women identify as liberal, whereas
Speaker 1: and then it goes to thirty six percent of white
Speaker 1: gen Z men identify as an app it's switching it
Speaker 1: on them.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: And while it does eventually acknowledge the differences, where because
Speaker 2: it says that like across the board, all gen Z
Speaker 2: men thirty five percent or conservative, forty three percent of
Speaker 2: gen Z women are liberal. That's not a massive gap, right.
Speaker 2: The Washington Post editorial board just makes the claim that
Speaker 2: young men have grown more conservative, which is not supported
Speaker 2: by the study. And also the study is specifically talking
Speaker 2: about how gen Z white men have gotten more conservative. Right,
Speaker 2: very different things being claimed here. So the Post just
Speaker 2: ignored what was actually in the survey to claim all
Speaker 2: young men, not just young white men, are more conservative,
Speaker 2: not just Z white men are more conservative. Now, this
Speaker 2: is weird. But even if you take the study, which
Speaker 2: is misrepresented by the editorial board at its face value,
Speaker 2: that study does not gel with all of the other
Speaker 2: data that we have. Now, when I went through this,
Speaker 2: it was hard to find good data on just gen
Speaker 2: Z men that is not broken down in most of
Speaker 2: the studies that we get. But we do have some
Speaker 2: information on how gen Z adult men voted as a
Speaker 2: group in the twenty twenty two midterms, and that data
Speaker 2: is telling based on the twenty twenty two midterms seventy
Speaker 2: one percent of young women. That's a that's gen Z
Speaker 2: mostly gen Z eighteen to twenty nine. So I think
Speaker 2: gen Z taps out at twenty six right now. So
Speaker 2: presumably a percentage of the people in this are technically millennials,
Speaker 2: but they're like you, they're day walkers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like what, like, oh my god, I can't
Speaker 1: I can't do math live on air.
Speaker 2: I think it's like twenty seven to forty something is
Speaker 2: the millennials.
Speaker 4: But I'm going to say it's close enough to this.
Speaker 4: This is closes.
Speaker 1: It's only like three years of people right exactly, and
Speaker 1: they're the three years that are that are right in
Speaker 1: the middle.
Speaker 2: But of that of these voters in the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two midterms, seventy one percent of young women voted for Democrats,
Speaker 2: twenty six percent voted for Republicans, fifty three percent of
Speaker 2: young men voted for Democrats, forty two percent voted for Republicans.
Speaker 2: And among LGBT, and again this is not broken down
Speaker 2: male or female, ninety three percent voted for Democrats, and overall,
Speaker 2: among non LGBT youth, fifty eight percent voted for Democrats,
Speaker 2: thirty eight percent voted for Republicans. So again, not massive
Speaker 2: discrepancies here. And one thing that may help to explain
Speaker 2: this that again is not really broken down in the
Speaker 2: Washington Post editorial is that while gen Z white men
Speaker 2: have are more conservative compared to like gen Z millennial
Speaker 2: white men, gen Z itself is a lot less white
Speaker 2: prior generations, which means overall gen Z men are not
Speaker 2: really getting more conservative. About fifty five percent of gen
Speaker 2: Z is white compared to about seventy percent of boomers. Right,
Speaker 2: So this is one major reason why. Again because again
Speaker 2: if you actually factor in all of gen Z, there's
Speaker 2: not this huge worry about like a marriage discrepancy as
Speaker 2: long as you assume that people. You know that interracial
Speaker 2: dating is not a problem for most people the way
Speaker 2: it is for apparently the Washington Post editorial board. Now
Speaker 2: there's a couple of caveats here. One is that midterm
Speaker 2: voters are historically more engaged and educated than voters of
Speaker 2: other generations. However, that may not necessarily hold true with
Speaker 2: gen Z or millennial voters today due to a variety
Speaker 2: of factors. One worthwhile point is that young people tend
Speaker 2: to be driven far more by what they encounter through
Speaker 2: social media, which is probably part of why gen Z
Speaker 2: and millennial voters consider abortion to be a more important
Speaker 2: thing to vote on than the economy by a margin
Speaker 2: that bears no resemblance to older generations. This is why
Speaker 2: we've actually seen unless for elections, soaring youth voter turnout,
Speaker 2: particularly during the midterms, record levels of youth voting, Which
Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's completely wrong that midterm voters may be
Speaker 2: a bit more engaged and educated, but that's probably less
Speaker 2: of a factor for young voters than it is for
Speaker 2: older generations. Right, some of the conventional wisdom about who
Speaker 2: votes when is not as accurate when we're talking about
Speaker 2: younger people. This is not something that you can prove objectively,
Speaker 2: but there's significant, sort of circumstantial evidence around this. Speaking
Speaker 2: of circumstances, you know what circumstances get me to spend
Speaker 2: my money?
Speaker 4: Is it being served products and services?
Speaker 2: It's well, it's when those products and services advertise on
Speaker 2: this podcast and only this podcast. So check that shit out, homies.
Speaker 3: Dah and we're back.
Speaker 2: So yeah. One of the overall points to make that
Speaker 2: I think goes against this kind of panic a lot
Speaker 2: of people have that gen Z is somehow being like
Speaker 2: pilled away from progressive politics is that as a result
Speaker 2: of stuff primarily abortion, gen Z voters supported Democrats over
Speaker 2: Republicans in the midterm elections by and astonishing twenty seven points.
Speaker 2: This is again a large part of this came down
Speaker 2: to abortion, which gen Z voters prioritize by a higher
Speaker 2: amount than any other generation. One of the things that
Speaker 2: was noted in one of the studies I found is
Speaker 2: like a potential line of hope for Republicans is that
Speaker 2: while this and this is part of where I think
Speaker 2: some of the fear mongering and the these Washington Post
Speaker 2: articles comes from, although I don't think it says what
Speaker 2: they think. It says is that lower numbers of young
Speaker 2: people support specific parties. Right, so only about thirty percent
Speaker 2: of gen zs align with Democrats compared to twenty four
Speaker 2: percent of Republicans. And if you just look at that,
Speaker 2: that's way less of that seems like you're seeing like
Speaker 2: these numbers sort of kind of tighten up. But again,
Speaker 2: they still voted over Democrats of Republicans by twenty seven points.
Speaker 2: It's just that gen Z is less loyal to political parties,
Speaker 2: which doesn't necessarily mean that progressivism is in danger just
Speaker 2: means that most young people hate the Democrats too, and.
Speaker 1: That could and the other thing is like the thing
Speaker 1: that actually legit and I think this is legitimately. A
Speaker 1: part of it is like, well, okay, so what happened,
Speaker 1: what's happening to all those people? And the answer is
Speaker 1: they're becoming socialists And it's like, well that doesn't help
Speaker 1: the Republicans either, yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and it's it's I mean, part of it
Speaker 2: is that more young people identify with like kind of
Speaker 2: more politically radical chunks of progressivism. Part of it is
Speaker 2: that a lot more of them identify as independent and
Speaker 2: may not may not identify themselves super much as a
Speaker 2: specific political chunk, but in general, like they vote progressive,
Speaker 2: they just don't have any faith in like the ossified
Speaker 2: political structures in our society, which is a rational thing
Speaker 2: to do as a young person.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So I also want to address kind of the elephant
Speaker 2: in the room with this piece, which is that the
Speaker 2: Washington Post editorial Board's obsession with political divide among the young,
Speaker 2: harming marriage specifically, is also kind of gay panicky, right,
Speaker 2: because one of the reasons why there seems to be
Speaker 2: this divide that they see as like this threatens marriage,
Speaker 2: is that a higher percentage of Gen Z kids are
Speaker 2: less interested in straight marriage. And these gen Z kids,
Speaker 2: male and female, are not getting more conservative, but they're
Speaker 2: also presumably not going to do the kind of marriage
Speaker 2: that the Washington Post editorial board was right. I'm going
Speaker 2: to quote from a Time magazine rite up here. In
Speaker 2: late twenty twenty and early twenty twenty one, gen Z
Speaker 2: was the only US generation in which a majority believed
Speaker 2: there are more than two genders. As recently as the
Speaker 2: first half of twenty twenty, this was a minority opinion
Speaker 2: even among Gen zs, remarkable amount of change over just
Speaker 2: six months. In contrast, there was only a small uptick
Speaker 2: in this belief among older generations. That type of data
Speaker 2: is finally available. Starting in June twenty twenty one, the
Speaker 2: US Census Bureau offered four options on its Household Pulse
Speaker 2: survey question about gender male, female, transgender, and none of
Speaker 2: these The last a rough gage of those who identify
Speaker 2: as non binary, gender fluid, or another gender identity.
Speaker 4: With that more a terrible way of phrasing that court
Speaker 4: It's not a great way.
Speaker 2: It's better than nothing, but yeah, it's not God more
Speaker 2: than With more than a million respondents, the survey is
Speaker 2: large enough to provide accurate estimates. The results are clear.
Speaker 2: Gen Z young adults are much more likely to report
Speaker 2: identifying as either trans or non binary than other generations.
Speaker 2: Will Only one out of a thousand boomers report they
Speaker 2: are transgender one tenth of one percent. Twenty three out
Speaker 2: of one thousand gen Z young adults two point three
Speaker 2: percent identify as trans, twenty times more. By this estimate,
Speaker 2: there are now more TRANSI young adults in the US
Speaker 2: than the number of people living in Boston, which is
Speaker 2: great because I have long felt that what we need
Speaker 2: to do is arm trans people to take over the
Speaker 2: city of Boston. I believe this for years, and I
Speaker 2: think we can finally make it happen.
Speaker 1: Okay, but here's the problem, though, you still have to
Speaker 1: live in Boston afterward. Well, I guess we could take
Speaker 1: the city.
Speaker 4: Of Boston and live somewhere else and then sort of like, yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Can use from it, Yeah, presumably, yeah you could. You
Speaker 2: could basically become like collectively the landlords of Boston and
Speaker 2: then use it to afford rented in a better place.
Speaker 4: This is viable, I believe. I believe in our lifetime.
Speaker 2: So we can tell this and this will finally increase
Speaker 2: gen z's like home ownership numbers. Right if collectively all
Speaker 2: of the transnd non binary people own Boston. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is a workable plan. I think I'm gonna continue that quote.
Speaker 2: Fewer than one percent of boomers identify as non binary,
Speaker 2: compared to more than three percent of gen Z young adults.
Speaker 2: Combined with the more than two percent to our trans
Speaker 2: that means one out of eighteen young adults identified as
Speaker 2: something other than male or female in twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: or twenty twenty two, which is again, it's not true
Speaker 2: because half of Note that's not it's not it's not
Speaker 2: the time because again two percent are trans, which presumably,
Speaker 2: based on this survey and how it's asked, presumably means
Speaker 2: identifies either male or female, whereas three percent are non
Speaker 2: binary of some sort, may not, may not identify as
Speaker 2: either mail or It doesn't say that this is this
Speaker 2: is this is not well written, but the data is interesting.
Speaker 2: It suggests five to six percent of gen Z are
Speaker 2: trans are non binary, which is a wild departure from
Speaker 2: previous generations. Right, And also that's a significant chunk of
Speaker 2: this these gen Z numbers that are not being included
Speaker 2: in this Washington Post because presumably a decent chunk of
Speaker 2: these people will want to get married.
Speaker 4: They just don't.
Speaker 2: I identify in a way that the gen Z that
Speaker 2: the Washington Post editorial board respects.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And again, one of the things that's interesting about this,
Speaker 2: and contra to all this fearmongering about Andrew Tates destroying
Speaker 2: all the men, is that male or female gen Z
Speaker 2: and millennial voters overwhelmingly support LGBT rights more than they
Speaker 2: support almost anything else. And this is consistent across the board,
Speaker 2: and markedly higher than it is for other generations.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Presumably this seems to include even like more independent or
Speaker 2: even more conservative gen Z and millennial voters.
Speaker 4: Right, They're just.
Speaker 2: Across the board less shitty on this, I'm guessing presumably
Speaker 2: because a lot of their friends are our trands or
Speaker 2: non binary or just queer, and that that makes them
Speaker 2: less bigoted about this stuff. And again doesn't really fit
Speaker 2: into this this narrative. Right, And this is again part
Speaker 2: of why I'm not as doomor about you know, there's
Speaker 2: this there's this big fear, oh, you know, progressives are
Speaker 2: desert young people are deserting progressivism, which is going to
Speaker 2: do must electorally, and I'm just not seeing that in
Speaker 2: the numbers.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Again, everything that's been going on with like the Biden
Speaker 2: administration's you know, support of Israel certainly may and probably
Speaker 2: will have an impact politically, but it's not necessarily, it's
Speaker 2: not very clear, not a result of young people getting
Speaker 2: pilled by Andrew Tate, Right, that's not why that's happened.
Speaker 1: And there's there's a thing I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: with the Andrew Tate stuff too, because like everyone's treating
Speaker 1: this as like a completely new phenomena and it's like
Speaker 1: most of the people who are talking about this should
Speaker 1: be old enough to remember gamer Gate, Like this stuff
Speaker 1: has all happened before, and it was like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: gamer Date did produce a bunch of fascists and also
Speaker 1: the millennials were still unbelievably further left than like the
Speaker 1: generations that came before them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so like it's like this is this.
Speaker 1: Is this is just a thing, Like every generation has
Speaker 1: a a giant thing where there's like a bunch of
Speaker 1: right wing like yeah, push yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like this just happens periodically it's just like
Speaker 4: a part of it. It's a part of Baltics. It sucks,
Speaker 4: it's bad, but it's also like not a thing to
Speaker 4: be humored about. No.
Speaker 2: I do think another thing that is happening here is
Speaker 2: that the kind of people who become members of the
Speaker 2: Washington Post editorial board have this, have this brainworm, the
Speaker 2: sickness that infects members of the American media worse than
Speaker 2: almost anyone else, which is like they're always looking for ah,
Speaker 2: contrary to popular wisdom. You think this, but the reality,
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's Malcolm Gladwell syndrome, right where you've
Speaker 2: got to come up with some like clever thing that
Speaker 2: shows that you're smart because you know, buy into the
Speaker 2: standard wisdom, which is always wrong. And there's that, and
Speaker 2: so that they have to believe that whatever is really
Speaker 2: happening is the opposite of what's obviously happening, right, which
Speaker 2: is why this Actually young men are getting more conservative,
Speaker 2: and it's I'm the only one who realizes, and I've
Speaker 2: got to warn every one of the danger to marriage.
Speaker 2: Speaking of which, here's a quote another quote from that
Speaker 2: Washington Post article. In another era, political or ideological differences
Speaker 2: might have had less impact on marriage rates, but increasingly
Speaker 2: the political is personal. A twenty twenty one survey of
Speaker 2: college students found that seventy one percent of Democrats would
Speaker 2: not date someone with opposing views. There is i'm logic
Speaker 2: to this marriage across religious or political lines. If either
Speaker 2: partner considers those things to be central with their identity,
Speaker 2: can be associated with lower levels of life satisfaction, and
Speaker 2: politics is becoming more central to people's identity. This mismatch
Speaker 2: means that someone will need to compromise, As the researchers
Speaker 2: Limonstone and Brad Wilcox have noted, about one in five
Speaker 2: young singles will have little choice but to marry someone
Speaker 2: outside of their ideological tribe. The other option is that
Speaker 2: they decline to get married at all. Not an ideal
Speaker 2: outcome considering the data showing that marriage is good for
Speaker 2: the health of societies and individuals alike. And again, this
Speaker 2: is only the case that one to five number is
Speaker 2: ignoring queer people. Yeah, largely ignoring non white people, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's just not accurate, Like, yeah, maybe a lot
Speaker 2: more young white men are going to be single, and
Speaker 2: there's problems that will occur due to that. Right because,
Speaker 2: for one thing, that's the group that tends to like
Speaker 2: load up on guns and shoot up public places, not
Speaker 2: saying it's not a problem, but it doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: our society is doomed because no one's getting married. Is
Speaker 2: that there's some serious problems with young white men that
Speaker 2: we need to deal with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and there's there's there's two other things that
Speaker 1: I think are interesting there. One is, Okay, you can
Speaker 1: tell when these people like formed their political beliefs because
Speaker 1: they're complaining about the personal is political, which is this
Speaker 1: is ninety shit like that is that is like that
Speaker 1: is like like old school ass like this is this
Speaker 1: is like stuff people were like, I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: it's like, uh, it's like political correctness where it's like
Speaker 1: it's the previous version of the same panic that everyone's
Speaker 1: having now, but this is from the nineties, and so
Speaker 1: it's like all of these people are just like absolute
Speaker 1: dinosaurs who they've like dragged out to write this like.
Speaker 4: Weird fearmongering thing.
Speaker 1: And the second thing is I think is interesting too
Speaker 1: is like just the the deep, ingrained, sort of very
Speaker 1: conservative assumption here, which is that marriage is good for society,
Speaker 1: which I don't think is anywhere near as straightforward a proposition,
Speaker 1: as to Washington Post is making it seem like and
Speaker 1: you know, and they have racistical arguments. I mean, the
Speaker 1: cistics that I've seen, like you know, just just sort
Speaker 1: of likeasistics that I've seen based on American society is
Speaker 1: that like, women who aren't married are way happier than
Speaker 1: they are in marriages, and you know, like men do worse.
Speaker 1: But like, you know, but like I mean, this is
Speaker 1: one of these things there's like we don't know, like
Speaker 1: there has not been a version of America where we
Speaker 1: haven't where the institution of marriage wasn't like our thing
Speaker 1: that hasn't existed for like two or three hundred years.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, we don't know.
Speaker 1: The Washington Post doesn't know what an American society without,
Speaker 1: like where people don't get married. Looks like like they
Speaker 1: have no idea, but they're just sort of assuming that
Speaker 1: it's like the apocalypse because they're weird conservatives in the nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of I mean, and again, a
Speaker 2: massive part of what's we're seeing here is less it's
Speaker 2: objectively good, like marriage is the result of all of
Speaker 2: these kind of positive mental health outcomes and more well,
Speaker 2: when people are like have relationships and loved ones and
Speaker 2: like a family system supporting them. They're less likely to
Speaker 2: commit suicide, they're more likely to have someone notice if
Speaker 2: they take ill. They're just like healthier in general. But
Speaker 2: that doesn't that doesn't necessarily mean that it's marriage specifically,
Speaker 2: and more like yeah, not being alone. Right, Yeah, Anyway,
Speaker 2: I want to continue and just kind of go through.
Speaker 2: I think we've trashed this article enough, but I did
Speaker 2: find a lot of interesting stuff about gen Z and
Speaker 2: young voters that I wanted to get into. But first,
Speaker 2: here's some more fucking ads. You pigs, you filthy mongrels.
Speaker 2: Slop it up, suck it down. Anyway, we'll be back
Speaker 2: in a.
Speaker 3: Minute, and we're back.
Speaker 2: So one interesting thing I found. I tried to stick
Speaker 2: to just stuff from like twenty twenty one or later
Speaker 2: for this, in part because of the Andrew Tait of it.
Speaker 2: All Right, I wanted to like try to find stuff
Speaker 2: that was like, Okay, since that guy came onto the scene,
Speaker 2: has there been some sudden shift because people treat him
Speaker 2: like the pied piper of fucking fascism, which, again, he's
Speaker 2: a problem, but I don't think that's broadly accurate. So
Speaker 2: one of the studies I found was a twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one survey from MTV AP and o RC right, and
Speaker 2: it was interesting because it showed something I didn't real
Speaker 2: something I had kind of bought into, was at least
Speaker 2: less supported by the evidence than I might have thought,
Speaker 2: which is like the level of Doumerism and young people politics.
Speaker 2: Gen Z actually shows optim like that they are more
Speaker 2: optimistic than a lot of older people, both in the
Speaker 2: state of the world and their role in improving it.
Speaker 2: Two thirds of gen Z feels like their generation is
Speaker 2: motivated to make positive change in the country. Part of
Speaker 2: I think where we get some of the feelings of
Speaker 2: dumerism is that only about fourteen percent think that they
Speaker 2: can have an impact on what the government does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that isn't higherly reasonable assessment of I
Speaker 1: mean just like looking at polling data on Palestine or like.
Speaker 2: Absolutely no, we had a very rational take actually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's like we had we had an entire uprising,
Speaker 1: like people people fought the Secret Service at the gates
Speaker 1: of the White House, and the product of it was
Speaker 1: the government was like, no, we should give more money
Speaker 1: to cops. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like, Okay, we're
Speaker 1: like defunding the New York Public Library System to buy
Speaker 1: encrypted radio like things for police units. Like it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like this is objectively true that you have very little
Speaker 1: influence over the government.
Speaker 2: Like a perfectly reasonable thing to say. Yeah, but yeah
Speaker 2: about uh it is interesting too. Another thing that I
Speaker 2: was kind of surprised me. It's about half of Gen
Speaker 2: Z people think their standard of living is better than
Speaker 2: their parents, but about half also think that the world
Speaker 2: their generation is facing is worse than what most other
Speaker 2: people most other generations have dealt with. So like they
Speaker 2: think that their problems are are worse than like what
Speaker 2: boomers and Gen X and millennials we're dealing with, but
Speaker 2: they think they're about half of them think they're living
Speaker 2: better lives. This is pretty similar to how millennials feel.
Speaker 2: Gen X feels very different. Gen X or is the
Speaker 2: most pessimistic generation about the state of the world, which
Speaker 2: actually makes kind of sense if you realize that like
Speaker 2: a lot of Gen Z kids are the children of
Speaker 2: Gen X people, right, So like they think their standard
Speaker 2: of living is better than their parents because Gen X
Speaker 2: is miserable. Yeah, which you know, interesting. Gen Z and
Speaker 2: Millennials are more accepting than Gen X of depictions of
Speaker 2: same sex couples in media, and hold more positive views
Speaker 2: of LGBT people, which again, Gen X is the worst generation.
Speaker 2: We all have to agree on that one.
Speaker 4: Just terrible.
Speaker 2: It really really didn't work out.
Speaker 4: In two thousands.
Speaker 2: Were just a disaster, calamity, calamity. So I wanted to
Speaker 2: kind of break down some stuff from this survey that
Speaker 2: was interesting, just kind of on how the generations support
Speaker 2: various policies. So, in terms of their support for prohibiting
Speaker 2: work place discrimination on the basis of gender identity, sixty
Speaker 2: two percent of Gen Z and sixty two percent of
Speaker 2: millennials support that, only fifty three percent of Gen X does,
Speaker 2: which is still actually not like a massive gap, right
Speaker 2: when it comes to this is interesting when it comes
Speaker 2: to requiring Americans to mask in public places like stores
Speaker 2: and restaurants, fifty four percent of millennials support that, fifty
Speaker 2: three percent of Gen X do but does, but fifty
Speaker 2: two percent of Gen Z does, which is all potentially
Speaker 2: within kind of a margin of err, yeah, that's us
Speaker 2: like noise, Like, yeah, that might just be noise. It's
Speaker 2: about equivalent, right, It's pretty most of this is actually
Speaker 2: pretty for all of our shitting on gen X, most
Speaker 2: of this is actually pretty close. For acquiring vaccinations, Millennials
Speaker 2: seem to support it higher than anyone else forty nine percent,
Speaker 2: gen Z at forty three percent, which is significant. Kind
Speaker 2: of gen X is right in the middle at forty
Speaker 2: five When it comes to supporting a nationwide ban on
Speaker 2: air fifteens and other similar semi automatic rifles, gen Z
Speaker 2: and gen X are at forty two percent for gen
Speaker 2: X forty four percent for GIN, whereas millennials are at
Speaker 2: forty seven percent. Now, a lot of this breakdown, because
Speaker 2: I dug into the actual numbers, is the difference between
Speaker 2: men and women, and conservative men and liberal women right
Speaker 2: who are liberal women are a lot more common and
Speaker 2: more likely to support these kinds of bands, whereas conservative
Speaker 2: men aren't, But that drags the overall numbers down. It's
Speaker 2: just interesting to me that there seems to be less
Speaker 2: support with gen Z over that they're closer to gen X.
Speaker 2: Increasing security at the border fifty This is where there's
Speaker 2: a huge gap. Fifty five percent of gen X for
Speaker 2: increasing border security. Millennials and gen Z are at thirty
Speaker 2: eight and thirty seven percent. So that's really like gen
Speaker 2: X really seems to buy into the we need more
Speaker 2: border security, whereas de utes are like, no, fuck that shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Gen X or gen Z and millennials both tied at
Speaker 2: forty eight percent support for a universal basic income. Only
Speaker 2: thirty six percent of gen X supports this, again, another
Speaker 2: significant gap. One interesting thing is that gen X and
Speaker 2: millennials at eight and thirty six percent support reducing regulations
Speaker 2: on businesses. Only thirty one percent of gen Z supports this.
Speaker 2: That's a significant difference. I find that kind of interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wonder how much of that.
Speaker 1: Also is just like like like you are okay, you
Speaker 1: are in, You're a zumer, You're never are you over
Speaker 1: owning a business?
Speaker 2: Like first off, thank you? I under what circumstances I
Speaker 2: think it may it may be and I don't I
Speaker 2: don't know that this has been studied. It may be
Speaker 2: that because gen Z are so so many of them
Speaker 2: want to be influencers to do some other kind of
Speaker 2: job and like internet content creation that and a lot
Speaker 2: of them have done kind of work, made some amount
Speaker 2: of money in that field that tends to be independent
Speaker 2: contractor work. And there's some pretty onerous tax regulations. You know,
Speaker 2: if you've ever been an independent contract about how you've
Speaker 2: got to pay taxes, it may have something to do
Speaker 2: with that. I don't know though, Like I this hasn't
Speaker 2: been broken down like granularly that I've seen, but I
Speaker 2: did find that kind of entry. And then here's kind
Speaker 2: of depressing but interesting reducing funding for law enforcement agencies.
Speaker 2: Thirty four percent of millennials support that. Thirty percent of
Speaker 2: gen Z supports that, which is enough of a gap
Speaker 2: to suggest like might be somewhat less popular among gen
Speaker 2: Z the millennials. Only eighteen percent of gen X feels
Speaker 2: the same, which is a huge gap, and that is
Speaker 2: kind of interesting to me. So yeah, yeah, well that's all.
Speaker 1: I think There's one I think there's one like last
Speaker 1: kind of interesting thing about this is that those numbers,
Speaker 1: the numbers on like police funding and a lot of
Speaker 1: the sort of like if you just look at the
Speaker 1: graphs that were in the Washington Post article, a lot
Speaker 1: of that is it looks a lot like there's there's
Speaker 1: there's a giant spike dream the uprising, and then it
Speaker 1: sort of like tails off after it. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: that's the thing that I think is like like that
Speaker 1: I don't, you know, And this is I think a
Speaker 1: thing I think is kind of important is like this,
Speaker 1: this stuff is all malleable, and moment something happens, everyone,
Speaker 1: everyone's beliefs change really quickly. Yeah, and that's the thing,
Speaker 1: and like like that, that's that's the thing with these
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, with with the sort of
Speaker 1: Juambers and right Andrew Tates like yeah, like but people,
Speaker 1: people's actual political beliefs and what they're willing to do
Speaker 1: for them can change very very very quickly in moments
Speaker 1: where they're sort of you know, I mean there's there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of people getting shot by cops in the
Speaker 1: street right right like that that that changes people really
Speaker 1: really quickly.
Speaker 2: And I think that's why the gap is so high
Speaker 2: both between overall Americans, which are at twenty eight percent
Speaker 2: for defunding police, and between Gen X and Gen Z millennials.
Speaker 2: Is that a lot more Gen Z millennials people got
Speaker 2: like beaten by the cops in twenty twenty, and that
Speaker 2: this does show well, again it's an uphill battle. Most Americans,
Speaker 2: a super majority of Americans do not support that way.
Speaker 2: More young Americans do, and it's probably because so many
Speaker 2: of us got our asses, yecked.
Speaker 1: And I also I want to like, like, like if
Speaker 1: if you look at what was like the numbers dream
Speaker 1: the uprising, right, like the number of people who supported
Speaker 1: the burning of the third presink was like fifty percent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like these are things that change really quickly in
Speaker 1: the moments too, and now we're in the sort of
Speaker 1: long backlash and that's you know, and that's that's driving
Speaker 1: like some of these numbers. But yeah, yeah, like don't it,
Speaker 1: don't don't be cynical things. Things can and will get better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes they will, and they there's a pretty dramatic difference.
Speaker 2: Maybe it'll take a couple more of the general uprisings
Speaker 2: where people get they're natiskick, which is not great to
Speaker 2: think about, but like, these are pretty stark differences in
Speaker 2: the generations, and I think that that's kind of worth
Speaker 2: noting and I don't know, celebrating maybe the wrong term,
Speaker 2: but I don't think it's pessimistic now in terms of
Speaker 2: stuff that is pessimistic. I want to end on a
Speaker 2: note of like where I kind of think some of
Speaker 2: the lazy, dumb ass pundit brain on this is coming from,
Speaker 2: and I maybe I'm wrong about this. But I have
Speaker 2: a little conspiracy theory that involves AI because I did
Speaker 2: kind of at the end of digging up a bunch
Speaker 2: of these studies, reading through I don't know, like fifteen
Speaker 2: articles or whatnot, and you know, the actual like entirety
Speaker 2: of three or four different big surveys, I decided just
Speaker 2: to hop onto one of the AI search engines that
Speaker 2: I use occasionally that is usually not helpful, just to
Speaker 2: see what it said. And I asked, like, what is
Speaker 2: the most recent data on how young gen z men
Speaker 2: are voting right? And it gave me mostly useless shit,
Speaker 2: Like the resources were bad. But one of the things
Speaker 2: that said, because it breaks down the different sources and
Speaker 2: like summarizes them for you. So it says here the
Speaker 2: Atlantic is kind of one of the sources. It recommends
Speaker 2: the Atlantic Reporter that gen Z and millennials are more
Speaker 2: likely to vote Republican. This could indicate a shift in
Speaker 2: political leadings among these demographics. Now, the article that it
Speaker 2: is linking there is an article called is gen Z
Speaker 2: coming for the GOP? Not all young people are Democrats?
Speaker 2: By Ronald Brownstein, And it does not say that, It
Speaker 2: does not say anything like that. It certainly does not say,
Speaker 2: and I will tell you what it fucking says, right,
Speaker 2: because it's wildly fucking different. An analysis of previously unpublished
Speaker 2: election data from Catalyst, a democratic targeting firm, by Michael
Speaker 2: pod Orzer, a former political director for the AFLCIO, shows
Speaker 2: that even the emergence of these new voters may not
Speaker 2: break the larger political stalemate that has partitioned the country
Speaker 2: in a seemingly immovable blocks of bread and blue states.
Speaker 2: Podewzer's analysis of the Catalyst data, shared exclusively with The Atlantic,
Speaker 2: found that over the past four elections, gen Z voters
Speaker 2: have broken heavily for Democrats and blue states and provided
Speaker 2: the party's solid margins and closely contested swing states. But
Speaker 2: in red states with a few prominent exceptions, Podhorzer surprisingly
Speaker 2: found that even gen Z voters are mostly supporting Republicans. Now,
Speaker 2: when you dig into the data, first off, that does
Speaker 2: not show that gen Z people are voting more for Republicans.
Speaker 2: It's the opposite of that. The vast majority of them
Speaker 2: are voting for Democrats, but in red states the number
Speaker 2: and it's not finding in red states that gen Z
Speaker 2: are more likely to support Republicans than previous generations. They
Speaker 2: are more progressive than previous generations. They're just still majority
Speaker 2: supporting Republicans in deep red states. Now again, if you
Speaker 2: read that quote, it's also saying there are some red
Speaker 2: states where gen z are voting overwhelmingly for Democrats, and
Speaker 2: in purple states they are wildly progressive compared to previous generations.
Speaker 2: It is, again the opposite of what that AI summary
Speaker 2: is wondering how many lazy pundits are doing this because
Speaker 2: they suck at shit and we're just like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: the Atlantic says they're more republican. It's like, no, if
Speaker 2: you read the article, it does not say that. It's
Speaker 2: a pretty good article.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and this is actually there's one thing I
Speaker 1: want to mention about that polling data too, which is
Speaker 1: that the twenty twenty two election was really weird because
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty two election was supposed to be it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a red wave election, and yeah,
Speaker 1: there actually was one, but it was it only happened.
Speaker 1: It happened in deep red states. Yes, and it happened
Speaker 1: in New York. And that that has to do with
Speaker 1: the New York media market, which is part of also
Speaker 1: why all these people's brains have been completely destroyed. Yes,
Speaker 1: but I don't actually like it's actually genuinely unclear to
Speaker 1: me that this is even predictive of how those same
Speaker 1: people in deep red states are going to vote in
Speaker 1: like the next like four to eight years, because that
Speaker 1: was because again this this this, this was a mid
Speaker 1: term election with a Democratic president. That is, when you're
Speaker 1: supposed to have the opposition like win a bunch of
Speaker 1: seats and stuff like that, and like it didn't go
Speaker 1: the way it was supposed to and so and so
Speaker 1: I think it's actually even that part is more is
Speaker 1: more like even the tiny note of it where they're
Speaker 1: like more like gen Z people voted Republicans, Like I,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't even know if that's gonna
Speaker 1: hold in the long run now, but all of these
Speaker 1: pun like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the fact that they probably are just reading.
Speaker 2: AIS, Yeah, I wonder just like coming across that dog
Speaker 2: shit suthing like just completely wrong, very funny, made me
Speaker 2: feel a little bit better about the computers coming for us.
Speaker 2: All made me feel a little bit worse about the
Speaker 2: intelligence of pundits. But yeah, it's you know, and one
Speaker 2: of the things that is kind of if you're concerned
Speaker 2: about twenty twenty four. That is a worthwhile concern, and
Speaker 2: that is a real problem is that while young people
Speaker 2: are overwhelmingly progressive as voters, this is not evenly distributed
Speaker 2: across the country, and a lot of the gains in
Speaker 2: voters that progressives have seen are going to be clustered
Speaker 2: in states that were already overwhelmingly blue, and when it
Speaker 2: comes to an a presidential election, those are wasted votes, right,
Speaker 2: And a lot like that this and this is a
Speaker 2: problem that the Republicans dealt with a lot during the
Speaker 2: Obama years, right where there would be massively more Republican voters,
Speaker 2: but they would be clustered in these areas that dims
Speaker 2: were never going to win, and so it didn't help
Speaker 2: them electorally.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That is kind of worth noting. It's potentially a thing.
Speaker 2: Although a lot of the gains when people are freaking
Speaker 2: out about like, oh, you know, Biden's numbers among non
Speaker 2: white voters have gotten worse, that is probably true, almost
Speaker 2: certainly true to some extent, But a lot of those
Speaker 2: vote gains are clustered in areas that were so heavily
Speaker 2: read it may not have any impact on the health.
Speaker 4: Of all electorals.
Speaker 2: The one.
Speaker 1: The one place for that matter, actually does matter is Michigan, yesca.
Speaker 1: And Michigan has his huge Muslim population who are unbelievably
Speaker 1: pissed at Biden for you know, offering them the deal
Speaker 1: We're going to murder your family and also you have
Speaker 1: to vote for us, which is.
Speaker 4: Like I'm not doing the Will Stancil thing and saying
Speaker 4: there's nothing worry about. No, I'm saying there are places
Speaker 4: where it does matter yere.
Speaker 2: But like, yeah, yeah, it's unclear, and a lot of
Speaker 2: what may be happen, well, a lot of what is
Speaker 2: certainly happening, although this doesn't mean that there won't be
Speaker 2: because I think there's a good chance there will be
Speaker 2: an electoral impact. But a lot of what is objectively happening,
Speaker 2: both on the left and the right, is increasing numbers
Speaker 2: of voters who are in states that would never, never
Speaker 2: going to be in play electoral Yeah, right, the electoral
Speaker 2: college is bullshit, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like like I've I've lived in Illinois my entire life.
Speaker 1: It is not possible for me to cast a vote
Speaker 1: that matters. Yeah, Like it just isn't. It's just how
Speaker 1: the system works, right, It's like it's a great great,
Speaker 1: great job, great job.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he wrote the Constitution.
Speaker 2: So anyway, Uh, I think that's that's about enough to
Speaker 2: get into. I hope this has been edifying and useful
Speaker 2: to people. Uh Mia, you got anything else to say
Speaker 2: before we roll out here?
Speaker 1: Uh Molotov twenty twenty four, just like Molotov twenty twenty
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, don't the Washington Post.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: I want to close in the note that the Washington
Speaker 1: Post editorial board managed to find the one socialist in
Speaker 1: the entire US who's anti abortion maker, a stat maker,
Speaker 1: a writer for them.
Speaker 2: So last yeah, but who are you speaking for? Why
Speaker 2: is it important that we have this voice of a
Speaker 2: person like fucking hell?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: God, it's tiring. Speaking of tiring, I'm tired. So now
Speaker 2: we're done. Goodbye.
Speaker 4: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 2: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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Speaker 4: Thanks for listening,