George Rebane

[This is the addended and linked transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 17 February 2016.]

In this election year the millennials are going to make their mark, and both parties are doing their best to woo them.  Why?  The simple reason is their numbers; but that’s not the whole story.  The US Census Bureau tells us there are 83.1M young adults in the country born between 1982 and 2000 – the so-called millennials.  They now overshadow the previous big cohort of generational voters – the Baby Boomers – who today number only 75.4M (more here).

The millennials are not only the largest voting group, they are also the least knowledgeable to put it politely.  Studies show that they have an embarrassingly deficient knowledge base, especially when it comes to economics and finance.  Their deficits come from having been educated by the now perfected system of unionized public education, honed since Great Society days to produce cadres of voters ready to fundamentally transform America.

The major beneficiary of this national dumbth is the Democrat Party.  Latest polls confirm that 60% of millennials prefer not only the Democrat Party, but of those, 84% prefer the hard left socialism of Bernie Sanders.  These millennials have been taught and now stand convinced that their own deficits and bleak futures are the result of the rich stealing from the poor, the solution to which is more and bigger government – they live in Nottingham and ol’ Bernie is their Robin Hood.  In fact, what they really are doing is inviting the tyranny that will hasten this country’s Great Divide.

The fashioning of this malignant generation – for they now also teach our children – has been the American socialists’ dream since Depression1.  During 1933-39 our country came very close to abandoning the republic our Founders left us.  WW2 interrupted the socialist program that was not resumed in full force until President Johnson’s launch of the Great Society in 1965.  Its social engineering and wealth transfer policies restructured our government schools, and created a permanent poverty class designed to be impermeable to literally any and all subsequent welfare payments – now in the trillions – which have been thrown at it.

And after forty some years, the transformation of our educational system is complete.  It annually now pumps out almost four million young people with marginal skills.  At the same time the black middle class has been thoroughly decimated, leaving a huge cohort of permanently disgruntled voters loyal to any party that promises them “More!” – the same demand that union boss Samuel Gompers once made.  Keeping this block of blacks on an eternal and growing ‘plantation’ has been the Democrats’ objective for decades.  Couple this with the march of the mini-minded millennials, and the progressives have completed the pincer that promises to throttle what remains of our republican democracy.

The only task remaining for the Left is to get them to vote.  The program to encourage millennials to do so is a national effort that reaches down to the local level.  Hereabouts we recently heard from Ms Reinette Senum and Ms Joey Jordan, two strong progressive voices urging millennials not to listen to their elders or study the issues, but to simply get out there and vote for ‘what you want’.  Their message is clear.  There are enough of you millennials out there so that if you speak with one voice, the government will be able to pry loose enough wealth from the 1% to pay off your student loans, provide free healthcare for all, and generate millions of high paying jobs.

There is no need to explain to them how all this will work out or what kind of country we will then have, because their mental machinery is not up to the task of digesting all the details.  Just trust ol’ Bernie as he leads the charge to bring down capitalism and finish the work Obama started.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  A couple of nights ago Jo Ann and I had a busy day of appointments after which we decompressed by watching an old heavily politicized romantic comedy – ‘Holiday’ (1938) starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.  True to form, it portrayed the society of that day as dominated by an uncaring and rapacious upper class that dismissed their social lessers with self-congratulatory sniffs.  The movie taught its viewers that the rich did nothing – e.g. create businesses and jobs, engage in massive philanthropy, etc – save enjoy themselves while skimming the earnings of the hard-working classes below them.  They lived risk-free luxurious lives guaranteed by insider information investing along with a vast network of the well-heeled and powerful government connections.  The welfare of the little guy was summarily dismissed and didn’t have a chance.  Very little has changed during the intervening decades in how Hollywood wants us to view America, save that now our schools have become the dominant part of the anti-capitalist and anti-entrepreneurial machine of message mongers.

[20feb16 update]  I want the record to show that the millennials' intellectual deficits are beginning to receive the attention of more informed observers who understand their impact on the upcoming election. Today Daniel Arbess writes 'The Young and Economically Clueless' wherein he notes –

These young voters seem not to realize that the economic policies they find so resonant are the least likely to promote the growth and the social mobility they desire. They deserve to be lead from the discredited backwater of equalizing outcomes, (and) forward with policies that instead help eliminate barriers frustrating their access to opportunities. … Yet millennials, who would most benefit from a real economic recovery, replacing the false one of the past several years, so far seem intent on voting against their interests.

All this flies in the face of Sanders' claptrap about capitalism and enterprise that when swallowed induces terminal stupidity in the young and inexperienced.  Even their business education has been co-opted by progressives as described by recent MBA Matthew Tice ('My Anti-Business Business Education').  The millions of these mini-minded millennials are joined by a cadre of equally clueless progressives (see our local versions in the comments) who actually have fewer excuses for their jaundiced views on liberty and equal opportunity.