lumenadducere said:
I have to say, I agree with his sentiment towards young voters. Why so many people my age are content to let people 2-4x their age make policy decisions baffles me. They're not the ones who are going to have to live with the shit they pull, we are. And I think we're far more informed of today's social issues than they are. And yet there's such a huge sense of "meh" towards the whole thing, which I really don't get.
And yes, I've heard all of the "arguments" against voting (one vote doesn't make a difference, both parties are the same, if you get all the other non-voters to vote then I'll vote too, etc.) but what it really boils down to is that each one of them is too damn lazy and ignorant to do something that actually matters. Freaking smacktards.
I think it's a little more complicated than that actually. I've voted in every election that I could since I became old enough. I also registered Republican pretty early on because I tend to agree with that side of things more than I do with the Democrats (though this is by no means universal) and wanted to be able to vote in the primaries for that party.
When it comes to the younger generation, not just the "Millenium Kids" but also my own generation: Generation X, I think one of the big issues is that almost all of the politicians who manage to make it far enough to appear on polls are Baby Boomers or close to it. It's hard to take elections seriously when there is no money behind the cantidates that you might want to support, and in the end you wind up with a choice of cantidates where you don't empathize with either one.
Most politicians DO believe in something if you learn about them, all of them start out as young crusaders who get into politics to change the system, and really believe in one or two issues that they wind up not compromising on. Everything else winds up being for sale. A lot of the issues important to the younger generations are ones that are totally for sale, and we realize it, and as a result it's hard to take any of these guys seriously.
Above and beyond that, the nation is so heavily deadlocked, especially on the big issues, that nothing gets done anyway. Few people are naive enough to think that any election is going to result in any kind of change that is likely to be noticible to them. The US system is designed to avoid sudden, radical change, which has it's pros and cons, but ultimatly means people become far less invested in the process.
Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with people not voting, I vote myself, I just understand why a lot of the younger generation doesn't bother. Whether a member of the (relative) youth is right wing, or left wing, or somewhere in between, they have a hard time getting invested in the system.
Now, this might change somewhat when we start to see more politicians from Generation X make brief apperances, followed by a big time influx of Generation Y politicians. Your going to see the youth of today get more invested in what is being said then, in their voice, but in the end little is still going to change and I doubt we're ever going to see close to a 100% voter turnout unless something really special happens.
