2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumBernie Sanders And All Those Damn Millennials
http://bitterempire.com/bernie-sanders-and-all-those-damn-millennials/I am a broke millennial and I am surrounded by broke millennials. Ill refrain from generalizations, but me, my family, the people I know, we work like hell when the work shows up. There is no absence of ability or desire to work hard, there just isnt any work. What apathy there is, is apathy born of not having a reason for being. In a regular town, not a city but a town, where rent is not starkly and hideously impossible, there are no jobs that can steer us toward the middle class. We can kill ourselves working and it wont get us out of paycheck-to-paycheck dread and exhaustion and nerves.
There is a ceiling on what hard work can do when youre in the stock room of a big box store. And there is a ceiling on how much hard work youre allowed to do in the first place. When I hear millennials talk about work, its I didnt get enough hours and they wont make me full time and I wonder why my back is so fucked up. It is never the soulless, bloodless marketing vision statement platitudes about authentic workplaces and fulfillment. Its not enough hours and not enough money and too much pain.
(snip)
Theres just not much to do that feels tangible and real. Jobs that make human being money, aside from the army, are illusory and largely seen on television. If you work at a Shell station in Prineville or a Kmart in Shawnee, youll really only know people in the service industry. There are no magic phone calls to make to get the ball rolling on changing that. Youll have just about enough energy to hold down that job and be on the lookout for addicts who might steal from you. And college is a shot in the dark, too expensive and not enough of a sure thing to provide an exit strategy like it once did.
(snip)
Heres the thing about Bernie Sanders. If youre a working class millennial in 2016 and youre not plugged into the pulse of some big city, if you didnt get four years in the womb of a well-manicured college, politicians dont give a shit about you. You are invisible. You are worse than invisible. You are irrelevant. Bernie Sanders isnt campaigning on free marijuana and Xboxes. Hes not pandering to the entitlement of a bunch of kids drooling at screens. Hes just admitting that Jenny at the Modesto Dressbarn actually exists, and hes admitting that a lot of things are ruined, and hes saying it like he means it, and hes providing a way out of the wreckage. Nobody else is doing that.
flor-de-jasmim
(2,125 posts)With the DNC, the Democratic Party's ideals may sound the same, but the policies supported over time have shifted so far that it now takes a so-called left-wing radical to bring us back to the party of FDR.
Peace Patriot
(24,010 posts)You are the underpaid, overworked kids I work with and the 70 year olds who can't retire, and so many people I talk to. Quite wonderful people-- courageous, hardworking, generous, taking care of others, who somehow maintain hope and high ideals in great adversity. You are me.
Thank you for this beautiful post!
tokenlib
(4,186 posts)Go Bernie!
6chars
(3,967 posts)wonder what it would be like with a multi-party system instead of a two-party system. as long as we don't have proportional representation from election results that ain't going to happen. primaries are the only place we ever have proportional representation on any basis other than geography, but as we see in this primary all the groups that just want a say in their own future have no choice but to just compete with established powers and big money in trying to influence the two major political parties.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)WHO DO THESE PEASANTS THINK THEY ARE?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Vattel
(9,289 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)The jobs are in places where the rent is unaffordable.
And the jobs everywhere else are service jobs that don't pay enough to live on.
And we have no national commitment to saving or even to paying people enough so that they could save if we had a national commitment to saving.
Absolutely right.
I am a Bernie supporter, but I realize that it is going to take not just a political revolution but more important a revolution of the heart to change the reality described in the article in the OP -- a revolution of the hearts of Americans, especially of the hearts of the richest Americans.
Poverty and most important the hopelessness that accompanies poverty is growing in America. I wish that some of our philanthropists would understand that fact and fight to raise wages and to build some industry with good jobs in our own country.
redruddyred
(1,615 posts)like, you shouldn't have to be beholden to whatever multinational corporation is hiring in order to pay the rent. ideally you can start your own business. but who's going to be the customers if everyone's money is all going to food, rent, utilities?
i'd note that "the richest americans" don't find their nationality of any particular interest: the global elite have much more in common with each other than the people with whom they share their country of birth.
PatrickforO
(14,599 posts)car or sick child away from losing her job there, and it is a near impossibility for her to get ahead.
Bernie's policies will help her an many others, for sure, but only if the Millennials show up at the polls during this primary. Low turnout helps Clinton, and low turnout in the general election helps the GOP.
bybr
(1 post)I live in Malaysia and I am a Rotarian. The people here cannot understand Bernie's appeal to the people in the US. I try the best I can to tell them things in the US are not as rosy as they may think, but they counter with you are the richest country in the world as if that alone is enough. They are too polite to disagree directly.
At our next meeting I am going to hand out a copy of the main topic. I will just ask them to read it and imagine if they were you.
I think if they read it and try to put themselves in your shoes they will also "FEEL THE BERN". Pity they cannot vote, but I will.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Odin2005
(53,521 posts)FEEL THE BERN!