S4 Ep11: Quarter-Life Crises (with Peter Hamby)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Secret Podcast. I’m Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark. And this week, we are checking in on Gen Z. The recent New York time Sienna poll that everyone freaked out about had Joe Biden’s approval rating with voters aged eighteen to twenty nine at thirty one percent. Disapproval rating at sixty five percent.

And Biden was only leading Trump by one point among young voters in that poll. My guest today is one of my favorite people to talk to about today’s youths, youths, youth people. Peter Hamby, host of the Snapchat Show Goodlock America, and co founder of puck News, which I read religiously. Peter, thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me, Sarah. As a, old millennial, I, you know, I love talking about gen z. I feel like an authority.

What year were you born?

Eighty one.

Eighty one. Okay. So I was born in nineteen eighty. And, you know, for people like you and I, there is a subgenre. I don’t know if you know this, called Zenils.

Mhmm.

Which I believe is seventy eight to eighty two.

Okay.

We’re a very specific group where we were both had the internet early enough

Yeah.

That it is like been a big part of our lives, but also not so early that we didn’t sort of get really used to just regular phones and had to memorize everyone’s phone numbers and, like, didn’t have it in elementary school or even really high Like, I got the internet with the dial up, the AOL dial up sometime in high school.

Yeah. No. And I think on the other end, you’ve got the I don’t know the word, but gen z millennial types who came up with social media.

Fully native.

Yeah. We have a little bit more of a touch point where We lived at a time when if you were bored. You didn’t have a lot to do. You just get in your car and drive somewhere and listen to CDs, or we grew up parked in front of the television. Partly because of my Snapchat job and my time spent with gen z, I feel like I can inhabit a room with a bunch of gen x people and talk about vinyl.

And then, like, head over to the gen z offices and talk to them about Snapchat and TikTok and whatnot.

Yeah. We we straddle.

It’s good to see my fellow, Daniel.

Okay. We are in a moment where people are particularly freaked out about young people. Democrats are really freaked out about young people. And a lot of that has to do with what is a schism in the Democratic party about Israel versus not just a mosque, Palestine in general, but also just overall Joe Biden’s aid sort of looms over the conversation around politics. And so, you know, younger people having a tough time identifying with an eighty one, eighty two year old president is also an issue.

And so do you think it’s true that we’re actually seeing, like, a break even point between Republicans and Democrats? With young people. And, like, what do you make of the backsliding? Why is it happening?

I think this is one of those, like, polling debates that we watched in real time on Twitter where, like, certain pollsters are like, don’t trust the crosstabs and these subsamples are hard to believe. You know, the New York Times Sienna polls you mentioned basically showed Trump and Biden at parity with young voters. I I think that can be true right now. I find it hard to believe that that will be the case. Come next year.

Biden has real issues with young people. I think that’s right. I think that New York Times poll had twenty percent. Of self identified Democrats, giving Biden disapproval rating, which is horrible for a democratic incumbent president. And that number was higher among young voters of color.

And I think Biden has demonstrated a real weakness with black and Hispanic voters under the age of forty. I was listening to another podcast. It was what? Five thirty Secret Podcast, and they had a poster on saying, you know, right now, Bulwark voters over fifty feel like the most reliable Democratic constituency, and Bulwark voters under fifty feel like the least reliable. It’s this real disconnect.

So, look, I think the war in Israel and Gaza is certainly driving some discontent that softening Biden’s poll numbers But that softness existed before Hamas launched its attack on Israel. It’s been there the whole time. It’s gone up and down. Like, there’s been moments where Biden is seen as fighting for young people, and he’s effectively communicated that around certain issues. But all things being equal, you know, if you talk to any of these Democrats and your focus groups, I think they prefer somebody other than Biden, but it’s hard for them to come up with an idea of who.

It is. Okay. So for this show, we talked to self identified progressives who voted for Biden in twenty twenty and self identified conservatives who voted for Trump in twenty twenty. So they’re all age twenty five and under and are either still attending a four year college or have recently graduated. So, like, we’re really with these young guys.

And I wanna start with the young progressives because it’s very common in the focus groups that I do for people to kinda be uneasy about the current state of the country. This is across all the political spectrum, dems, when it comes to the economy, just a lot of negativity. But I’m not sure that you can encounter a moral sort of group that is more. Catastrophizing about where we are than young progressives talking about the future. Let’s listen.

For a lot of people, even people who have mass master’s degrees have I don’t have a master myself, but have a little hard time finding jobs. I also live in Florida. So the LGBTQ issue it’s terrible here. I, myself, am an ally, and I fear for any person that has to go through the hatred and the disgusting policies that Ron DeSantis is trying to enforce. And, of course, gun violence, especially in schools.

Like, amongst my friends, and what we’re talking about, where we wanna settle down and stuff, that things like exposure to climate change in certain areas and increase chances of certain natural disasters due to climate change in certain areas, it’s starting to become something that we’re actually considering or thinking about moving somewhere?

As a kid, I was really, really affected by the Sandy Hook shooting, and I, like, ended up skipping a whole grade of school because I was so terrified as a kid. So between, like, elementary school and early high I just tried to stay out of news completely. And then as the Bulwark Lives Matter protests were going on, I, like, went fully back into it because I was so upset.

My generation isn’t going to be able to achieve a lot of, like, standard things that the previous generations were. Like, owning a home and such. I’m also just continuously disappointed with, like, the amount of waste that the US produces, like, as, environmental concerns.

As far as kids, that’s a long way out for me, but it’s, like, like, second thoughts to even having kids. I can’t even afford them. There’s just a lot, like, just not too confident on the feature. From an environmental standpoint, just I won’t even be here, really.

So Peter, these young people, they think they can’t have kids because the country’s literally going to, like, sink into the ocean any minute. And there’s no hope for sort of the American dream, so many concerns about the economy, but I also I don’t know I remember being twenty five. Like, is this is this just normal quarter life crisis stuff? Like, I don’t know. You’re yelling.

You don’t have any money. You can’t afford to buy a house yet. You can’t see a path to doing it. Does every generation do this, or is there something real and specific happening with current gen zers?

There is something real and specific, but I also think you are correct to say a lot of this represents the kind of permanent laments of young people figuring their way out in the world and not having a lot of money. There was someone in your focus group also who lived in New York City and was like, Man, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to stay here if I can afford it. It’s like there was another young woman in focus group who lived in Missouri. And, like, she didn’t say her economic circumstances were very good. But she did say she was able to buy a house.

And everyone else, the focus was like, wow. Oh, congrats. That’s awesome. So, like, the complaint that New York is too expensive I’m sorry. That’s pretty timeless.

We can get it more into the effects of social media. I do feel like when you and I were in college, we didn’t have all of the language you have about, like, trauma and oppression and, you know, all this, the psychological stuff that is now commonplace in the vocabulary of young people and all of that is magnified by social media and gives people something to blame other than the fact that, yeah, you’re twenty two and figuring out your way in the world. Here’s what I will say though to these folks credit. One thing we have to realize is setback as as millennials and understand is these folks that you were talking to came of age at a very different time than we millennials said, yes, we graduated to her session. Yes.

Millennials had to deal with foreign wars. There was a lot going on at different time. Gen Z really became politically sentient in the Trump era. And even then, maybe, like, like, well after twenty sixteen. And they just have, like, a fundamentally different experience growing up with gun violence.

The specter of political violence, and a kind of stagnancy for them and the economy that is a little bit different than the great recession that, some millennials live through. The economy by certain signals, you know, has been doing pretty well. The problem is that gen z feels like they can’t access it. You know, it’s a different version of the sort of income and equality conversation that, like, wages aren’t keeping up with prices, that rent is too expensive. You know, so there’s a bit of a give and take here.

I mean, a lot of young people wanna live in, like, the cool blue cities. Sorry. Rent is really expensive in those cities. There’s a bit of both, but I was struck by the the woman who mentioned Sandy Hook. Like, that’s a good example.

Like, she was probably, like, I don’t know, ten or eleven when that happened. She also said in the focus group that she had to, like, take a couple years off school later because she was so scared of going to school. That’s so real. And so that generation has this baked in cynicism, partisanship, fear, I think a lot of millennials didn’t have. A lot of millennials were, like, changed the world types.

You know, they were in the in the era of Barack Obama. They were always posting about, like, how cool it was to be involved in politics. This generation doesn’t think politics in the system is going to work for them in any way.

Yeah. I think that’s right. I I too felt, there’s like a couple times I wanted to maybe roll my eyes. Like, some of these progressives are just they’re so on brand where it’s like one girl said something like, you know, my grandma’s really problematic sometimes. She said some really problematic things and Joe Biden and my grandma are the same age.

And so I think he probably is problematic too. And, like, I wanna laugh at those things. But just, like, even the phrase problematic, I was, like, this is not a thing that existed when we were young, but I was also thinking about how because I’m on the older end of this millennial side of things. The first bad thing that I remember happening was the challenger exploding. I was like five, though.

That’s my first memory.

Yeah. So you’re, like, four or five. So the challenge are exploded, but then, like, the other things I remember are the cold war ending, the wall coming down, like, tremendous hope and optimism, America has, like, won the Cold War and, like, the wars that we were fighting, especially when I was a kid, it was like far away. Like, I couldn’t really feel it. And then it’s like, you know, Bill Clinton with his saxophone and, like, the big fights were over sexual immorality.

And I became a young conservatives at a time because I thought he was kind of a dirt bag and felt like the feminists were being hypocrites and, you know, but like that just all feels so quaint. Yep. And I remember graduating into like, a recession and all my college friends talking about, like, oh, there’s a recession, but, like, I don’t know. Everyone got jobs. Everyone was fine.

And I was in college when nine eleven happened. And I was also in college when Columbot happened, which was the first real school shooting that was like in everybody’s memory, but it was also the beginning of these school shootings becoming not common, but not uncommon either. And I just think about the world that they grew up with that is post nine eleven. Wars constantly in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are not winning with things coming out about America, you know, the, Abigrave. And then all of it on social media.

My friends and I say to each other all the time. Thank god. We didn’t have phones in high school. Yeah. So it is different for we came up in a in, I think, a more optimistic way.

Absolutely. I’ve been evangelizing about this book lately that Chuck Closterman wrote came out last year called the nineties. And it’s a really good social history of the era. And, you know, that was the Fukuyama end of history time. It was also the last decade in world history where We were at once bombarded by constant media, television, magazines, newspapers, whatever.

And yet, there was no internet. And so, like, our memories Bulwark differently at the time. And people could check out of society if they’d want to. And by that, I mean, they didn’t feel compelled at every moment to have a take. They didn’t need to go online and post because they couldn’t.

And that sort of gets to what I was saying. Like, if you didn’t wanna participate in a march, you didn’t have to. You could go hang out with your friends. You could get in a car and just drive around for a few hours, but he makes the point that he marks the end of the decade at nine eleven, like, technically, like, the world changed after nine eleven. And, like, the big fights before then.

It was, like, the V chip. But he does talk about bush v gore. And, like, this was a huge moment, obviously, in hindsight, it consumed the country. Everyone was talking about. Everyone had a take.

Al Gore came out. Gave his speech, the Supreme Court, you know, made their decision. There were certainly some protests after that. There was some anger especially among Democrats for years, but, like, people mostly just went back to their lives. Yeah.

You know? Like, it wasn’t this all consuming thing, and he makes the point that that would just be an impossibility today. I really recommend that book. Even as a history of, like, knowledge, and how we thought about music and politics and art and pop culture in the era, just very different than folks coming of age now, and and who came up not just with social media, but with cell phones. Yeah.

And the other thing to mention as we get in some of the stuff on the left is not only did all these folks come of age, during the trump years. They came of age watching Bernie Sanders and the ascendance of, within the Democratic party that that sort of DSA very, very progressive social justice slash identity focus slash economic populism. And that creates a sort of world where you can blame the fact that you can’t buy a house or afford a car on larger economic forces that are working against you, whereas, like, the Obama years, you know, he was a capitalist. He was a neo liberal, you know. Yeah.

Work hard play by the rules. You’ll succeed in our culture. And that just doesn’t really checkout for a lot of gen z, liberals.

I I wanna finish on the progressives because one of the things that was interesting is even though they very much reflected what we’re seeing in the polls in terms of feeling like Biden is too old and is detached from them culturally, they did all say they were gonna vote, and they did all say they were gonna vote for Biden. So let’s listen.

It’s just not exciting to vote for Biden versus Trump. It’s like, oh, Biden’s fine. Trump sucks. Like everyone else saying, he’s fine. He’s old.

I worry about him. They’re not doing a good job of showing him being strong and like that he can handle another four years.

But he’s been actively put in the media to be, like, fallen and, you know, look in denial and stuff like that. So, like, we don’t want to vote for him. Nobody wants to vote for him now. And there is no other option. So, yes, we will vote for him because we do not like Trump.

And, obviously, that was, like, a terrible time for most people. And the last four years, truthfully, we’re not that bad.

Yeah. I’m pretty unmotivated to vote. We’re not still gonna vote because I’m gonna act on that right. I wish there was, like, more fresher and younger faces that were running, like, have, you know, new ideas because I think that’s what we need. I’m still just gonna vote for Biden because, like, I believe it’s still the lesser of the two evils.

It’s no offense to Biden, but he’s, like, about to, like, croak any second.

I think I’ll mainly be voting for kind of like the other things that are on the ballot and trying to get, like, representatives in that represent my values because I don’t think the president is gonna really be able to do that.

I’ve had people tell me, oh, well, I’m gonna do third party. I’m gonna do independent. Oh my god now. Please don’t. Any vote that’s for Trump, any vote that’s for independent.

Like, it screws us. I think a lot of, like, the stuff we’ve seen the past four years A lot of it is state individual. A lot of that is who we voted locally.

I’m gonna go for the lesser of the two evils right now, which is kind of the situation, but it does feel like sometimes, like, frustrating to be in a state or, like, it doesn’t really matter. Like, if I vote or not for the presidential elections, it’s more for the local elections.

We oftentimes joke about playing a game with the focus groups where we have to drink whenever people say lesser of two evils. And if we had done this, that during the young people groups, we’d be dead. Like, because of how many times people just said lesser of two evils So tell me if you read that as good news or bad news because they have bad and lukewarm and whatever things to say about Biden and yet Trump still gets them out of bed to vote.

I read that, and we might disagree on this. But if you’re a Democrat and you’re rooting for Joe Biden, year to be dragged across the finish line. I saw notes of optimism in here, actually. And this this cuts to something that and I’m gonna reference John Dela volta here a bunch because he’s a pal, and he’s done a lot of research on this generation for the Harvard youth poll. I talked to him a lot.

He occasionally advises president Biden. A consequence of the Trump era for this generation is, yeah, They think politics sucks, but they also understand the stakes are really, really high. And they delivered some strong margins in key states house and Senate go racist in twenty twenty two that helped Democrats, you know, shore up the vote and and and mitigate losses. They have shown going back to twenty eighteen the capacity to vote no matter what. I was interested to hear a lot of them say there are gonna show up to vote for racist down ballot, even if they weren’t hyped about Joe Biden.

That is something and, like, I don’t wanna take too much credit for this at Snap, but, like, you know, my old colleague, Sophia Gross ran this important partnership and education program, like, back in twenty eighteen and twenty twenty where we’re just, like, educated and registered millions of young people to vote. And I think they just get the stakes and the importance of voting, and and vote on issues and local politicians and local issues. I think more than they care about Joe Biden being at the top of the ballot. This is a thing. Like, I’ve seen a lot of Democratic professionals on Twitter say this in in recent months as they’ve been, you know, rolling their eyes at gen z.

Like, politics is always about the lesser of two evils. Like, you’re never going to get your ideal candidate out there, but you do have a duty to vote. And so that made me feel hopeful. The the line from Democrats from the Biden White House, from the Biden campaign, and my conversations with them is these voters will come home once Trump is on the ballot. Now with Cornell West and Will Saletan and RfK junior out there, like, It’s a scary line.

You know, I did a piece for puck with John Delvope last year, and and he was working with Emma Bloomberg education foundation, murmuration, and they were trying to study gen z. And this was in the summer of twenty twenty two. They found that among Americans under age twenty five, thirty percent said they would definitely vote in November twenty twenty two. I went back and looked. According to Circle, it touched university, which studies you turn out twenty three percent ended showing up.

So there’s obviously a difference between always what people say they’re gonna do and what they actually do. But I only raised that to say that, like, the margins are gonna be incredibly thin. And people are really motivated to vote against Donald Trump in twenty twenty. I feel like people are going to be slightly less motivated to vote this time, but Democrats win in presidential elections when they win over sixty percent of young voters. Hillary barely dipped below that line and she lost.

Biden was above that line, and he won. Obama was obviously above that line. So that’s a that’s a key number to look out for. And, like, you know, two or three points either way. I am scared if you’re a Democrat, but I’m also thinking Okay.

That’s better than I thought. They don’t like Joe Biden, but they still think it’s important to vote.

So here’s the thing that I thought was wild. And I was genuinely surprised by this, and it the strategist and me immediately was like, well, wait a minute. These young people are all talking about the importance of voting down ballot. We don’t have enough time to play all the stuff.

But one

of the things that was very much in the conversation was they were all very aware that some states mattered and some states didn’t

in

terms of the national election. Like, there were people in Pennsylvania or, like, they’d gone to college in Pennsylvania and it their vote counted more when they were there going to college than it would when they moved back home or wherever they went off to. And this is where abortion, I think, can become really powerful for Democrats where even when I think Donald Trump can nullify or or take some of the potency out of the abortion argument by sounding more moderate, which he often does. I think for young people in turnout, selling them on local elections, suddenly, to me, like, when blaring red listening to them, like, actually, don’t talk about Joe Biden. Talk about the lunatic Republican who’s running in the local race and the Democrat who’s there and just get them to the polls on anything.

Goal. And, like, that’s a little inverse, I think. A lot of times, people are like, well, they’re gonna pay more attention to national politics. At least in more recent years, the whole, all politics as local stuff has really been falling away because of how much the national media has just nationalized politics. But I think I wonder if for young people it can be, the inverse.

My experience is anecdotally and with, I think, some survey research show that gen z really cares more about local stuff than we give them credit for. And another thing to keep in mind here is a lot of the candidates running at the local level, and it could be you know, dog catcher, tax commissioner, like school board, whatever. They are gen z. They are millennials. And so, like, people want to vote for candidates who look like them who talk like them who are younger and more diverse.

Like, the bench of the democratic party on the local, local level is way more diverse and perhaps compelling than all the old white dudes and old white ladies running at the national levels. I that’s an important thing to keep in mind.

Okay. We’ve hit the top lines on the young progressives. I’m gonna move to the what we heard from some of the young conservatives about their how they’re feeling about the current Republican party, and you’re gonna notice a common thread among the GOP candidates that these guys were interested What’s listen?

I’m a pretty big trump stand. These allegations kinda hurt, but I just feel like for the strength of our country, like, internationally and for the economy. Like, he’s the best bet. I really like to say this ever since my friend introduced me to him. He introduced the, don’t say gay bill.

I’m, like, strong advocate for that. Now, by no means am I against gay people, but I’m just saying, like, we shouldn’t be pushing that type of ideology that early on. And especially in, like, elementary school, middle school where people, you know, if kids are still in development, whatnot?

I don’t think it’s realistic for him to be president right now, but I do like Vivecrosawami a lot. I think that he’s helping to control the narrative and lead the discussion, especially at the debates. And being a trump supporter, I appreciate that he is, you know, on Trump’s side when he comes to a lot of these things.

I we’re at thirty plus trillion dollars in debt or whatever and we’re still kind of going out of our way to add humanitarian and, like, military aid to these packages for countries that, like, Ukraine isn’t exactly like model democracy that, you know, people kind of hold it up to me, I would say. And so when a lot of candidates and I think this is what Trump is kind of got his finger on the pulse best with his his understanding of what the party wants. Okay. So

what stands out to me is how these young conservative voters were into Trump DeSantis Vivec. No interest in the old school Republicans And I think I have had it in my head maybe a little bit. I have this weird bias where it’s like, well, young people are just more moderate. Like, that they would still like some of these sort of moderate GOP candidates, but of course, they’re actually more trumpy, not less. And I mean, trumpy specifically trumpy in that and you said this earlier, their political cognizance is all Trump.

And so current Republicans in their early twenties came to Republican politics because of Trump, not despite him. Right?

Yeah. That’s exactly right. And then I was struck by how much these young Republicans and leaners, like, used Trump style language and talking about politics I interviewed Chris Christie on Thursday just over the phone, and I actually read to him the quote about the guy in your focus group talking about how Trump was strong and respected in the world that, obviously, like, Chrissy set set him off and he disagree with that. But, like, he kept saying, this person in your focus group that the attack in Israel wouldn’t have happened if Trump was in office because Trump is strong. He project strengthened to the world strong, strong, strong, strong.

He just felt like he had been indoctrinated by that vocabulary, the kid who talked about how the vague quote, like, is able to control the narrative. Again, in politics, that’s what you need to do. But, like, the fact that a, like, twenty something kid was, like, using that language, like, Controling the narrative is a w. I was like, oh my gosh. Like, and then the other thought too is unlike what we’re just talking about with the young left where I think they, a lot of them, like vote on issues and care about local politics, etcetera, and maybe the you know, election for school board might matter for them.

It might matter for these kids too, but in, like, in the nationalized way, all politics is national all the way down for the Republican party at this point. So, like, you know, the school board election is about getting trans books out of school or, you know, whatever culture war issue of the week is is hot. And so there’s one kid in your focus group who was talking about, like, he was, like, a green eyeshade, like, deficit dude. I was like, you know, like, a Paul Ryan College Republican. And I was like, oh, I remember you guys.

You still exist. That was me.

Yeah. Exactly. Oh, this is the odd thing too. And I, you know, I was thinking of Tim Miller, our boy, when this happened, but, like, calling, like, sexuality and ideology. Yeah.

That was a little, like, cringe and and tough to hear. And I I imagine that would make Tim’s, like, forehead veins throb as they do. He watches things like that.

Yeah. I have one coming up with with JBL. I try not to show those guys too many focus groups because I do worry about their their coronary health. It was glaring how quickly they jumped to the cultural issues. Like, it’s just like, what do you think about the Republican party?

It’s like, well, the other party’s crazy and our party believes in, like, the biological reality of men and women was, like, kind of where the one of the guys started right away. And I was, like, okay. It’s just interesting to me to think, like, that’s a thing that makes you the Republican, but you hear that a lot from older Republicans as well.

Again, the good news here if you’re a Democrat or a Biden supporter is that, you know, we’re talking about these two different focus groups you did, but, you know, that generation is not fifty fifty. I know the polls again, show Biden and Trump split among young voters, but all evidence in the last eight years points to this generation votes, like, sixty six to thirty three Democrat Republican.

Totally. And there were a couple of people. There’s like a young woman in the group, which, by the way, I’ll just say that the group’s gender makeups were interesting. Like, the progressives just had more women in it, and the conservatives one just had more dudes in it. But, like, one of the young women in the conservative group.

She was clearly, socially conservative, but also, like, she didn’t love Trump. But she also They’re not really like considering Nikki Haley. Yep. There’s kinda trump and that’s all there is. So this is a a question I have for you, which is when I talk to reporters all the time, they have this idea of, like, was the Republican party going back somewhere?

Right? Like, you you mentioned Paul Ryan, like, is there a world in which you kinda go back to something? And the answer, I’m always like, no. No. No.

No. Not only voters not want it, but, like, you listen to these guys and you’re like, okay. Well, this is the future of the Republican party. Like, this is the new group. And what do they think?

Who do they like? So what do you think the future of the Republican party looks like?

I think a lot of this is built around media and and what a lot of these folks here in in their media spaces, there was one person who the person who said they liked the Santis, The way they brought that up was really interesting, just the tone of voice. It was like, oh, I think I kinda Ron DeSantis. One of my friends told me about him If you are Sarah Longwell or Peter Hamby, like, you know, you know Ron DeSantis, you talk about it all the time inside out. He was brought up almost as, like, I’m kinda into that guy that I’ve sort of heard of. Trump like dominates the head space, the mind share for for a lot of these folks, but we have to keep in mind that even among, like, these young liberals who, like, spend a lot of time on TikTok and Snapchat, you know, they’re also, like, getting headlines from credible news sources and, you know, probably some left leaning news sources.

You know, they will read CNN if they had to open a link. They will read the New York Times if they had to open a link. On the right, that doesn’t exist. Anymore. And so you’ve got this whole generation of young conservatives who are reared on turning point memes and Ben Shapiro and Bannon and Bongino.

And, like, they’re certainly not watching cable news because, like, everyone in that generation they’re not watching any broadcast or cable news. And so the world where they’re getting information is just full of Trump, trump, trump, or people who can act and behave, like Donald Trump, like Vivek, Ramashwami. And so that’s where they’re coming up. You know, I talked to Tim about this too. Like, and this is probably true with you too, Sarah.

Like, when we were in college, even if you were of a different, like, political persuasion, like, you still had to and this is, like, well after the Walter Crownkite, like, voice of god, broadcaster era. You’d go online and you’d go to drudge or you’d check out the weekly standard at the library or, you know, you’d watch the news or you’d maybe you’d listen to, like, rush or Mark Levin on the radio. But now you can just segment yourself and listen to your infotainment, right leaning, media content, and that’s again, where a lot of these people have received a lot of their ideas and and knowledge, if you wanna call it that. And Yeah. That’s not changing.

That’s right. Okay. So I wanna turn now I’m gonna go back to the young progressives for a minute because we we did ask them about the situation in the middle east. And I felt a little bad asking, you know, early twenty something. I felt bad asking them to opine on this conflict, but considering how much this discourse is involved progressives on college campuses and, like, is about sort of young people.

I was eager to hear what they thought. So let’s listen.

This is like all of my sister’s campus that I’ve heard about. In New York is that the people making decisions are usually, you know, white Jewish males. So, obviously, there’s like a natural bias towards, like, that group of people. And, like, obviously, like, from World War two and everything, like, you know, antisemitism is still a big problem now even for this, but now this has kind of, like, blown that up. If their donors were, you know, Muslim, if their, like, students were Muslim, and they had more of that population that was wealthy and loud enough to speak out.

You also wonder what, like, that might have done.

I overall have a lot of, like, mixed opinions on this because I think it’s really

complicated and that most people aren’t really educated

on the history. And I think I know a fair amount about it, but not enough still because I’m not I’m really, like, not personally affected by any of this. I also think that I can see how it’s affected. My opinions other people. Like, I do personally know people who are, like, publicly supporting Israel.

And acting, like, Israel’s, like, the only victim here, and it it has changed my opinion of them.

I am Jewish, and I think it’s kind of interesting because I’m not zionist, but I’ve known about the conflict, like, for many, many years, because obviously, like, supposed to be the homeland of the Jewish people and stuff like that. But I hate the Israeli government. I hate home mosque. I’m also still a terrorist group, and it’s been an overwhelming month. Because, like, I know people there, people who live in Israel, I have a lot of Jewish friends, and a lot of friends that are also, like, very pro Palestine, and it’s really tough.

Like, I I can’t be on Instagram half the time because I just get so, so overwhelmed and, like, disheartened. First and foremost, no citizens should be brutally murdered. And I think it has been horrible to see, like, people celebrating, like, Israeli deaths, and then, like, Palestinian deaths as well.

So you recently wrote about the way many Democrats are concerned about how younger progressives are reacting to the situation in Israel.

Mhmm.

Representative Jake Ockenklaw said that gen z tends collapse all the context of and history of the Middle East into to a binary of oppressor versus oppressed. Given that, What did you make of these young progressives?

I well, one, like, the woman there who said, like, it’s changed my opinions of people.

I saw one person publicly

expressing for Israel as if that was, like, a deal breaker. But on the whole, I I actually again, this is where you get away from the maximalism and dichotomies of social media, a lot of these young people were able to balance multiple ideas in their head and say, well, you know, what a lot of people probably think, which is, like, Beebie’s government isn’t awesome. Like, Hamas sucks. But I really hate the fact that people are always posting about this. I need to log off.

That’s a very normal and real relatable feeling, I think. For a lot of people. And and I was appreciating the fact that they were able to just say, it’s okay to hit pause. You don’t need to, like, be posting all the time, be posting through it. And it was a it was a different conversation I thought than what you’re hearing I think online and all of the the examples that that we’re seizing on of, like, stupid people on college campuses.

And The one thing that that just I can’t quite figure out about the young left on this is some of them out there, not the people in your focus group, you know, accused Biden of genocide, whatever. He’s not the prime minister of Israel. Right.

He’s

the president of the United States. He’s certainly taking a strategy toward Israel that is keeping Netanyahu close so he can negotiate with him and sort of bend the conflict in whatever direction is in America’s best interest. Yes. We’re sending them arms and money. At the same time, like, people are acting like Joe Biden is the one flattening Gaza, and they have to remember that, like, that’s a big over simplification.

And there were, again, a lot of people in this focus group who seem like surprisingly to me were, like, somewhat aware of the history here. And that is, again, once you start to talk to people in person in these focus groups, there’s a very different political conversation than the one happening online. And that is true across stories, issues, political events, talking to people in person is better.

Yeah. The other thing I kinda liked that some of the kids in this group said, they would say, like, I don’t know enough about. Yeah. And then they would, like, say some things, but they were like, you know, I’m not an expert. And I’m, like, Good.

Because the bulk of these young people I mean, even me, that this conflict I mean, the amount of time I’ve spent going back to be like, what was the last accord? And, like, what did Clinton do? How did this all get this way? And who’s who? The fact that many of them were willing to just say, I don’t know enough, and I’m not gonna go opine on social media about it every five minutes.

And it’s annoying that everybody else is. That’s a good instinct. I appreciate the instincts.

I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. More of that, please.

It’s okay. Restraint is a virtue that is lost in our culture. Restraint is a virtue. Remember it.

Yeah. Or just be like, I, you know, I’m I’m not sure. Okay. So now I’m gonna bounce back to the conservatives where we did ask them to talk about free speech and cancel culture, you know, Gen Z and college campuses are at the center of the Council culture discourse in America today. So we deliberately screen these groups for folks who are either still on college campuses or graduated pretty recently, which I said.

For. So a lot of the young conservatives talked about self censoring, when they’re writing papers or participating in group discussions, let’s listen.

I had a writing class. We talked about immigration, for instance, the wall, like, that was back when And I wrote a paper about it. It was like, it was spot on everything. Like, I had checked by even the writing center, and they still gave me a d for that paper. When I had actually a Disney class about gender, and I wrote, you know, what they wanted to hear.

I got an a plus. So it’s really impossible to really voice your opinions

I was at a leadership, Summit in college gym. I was up for some sort of like activity reflection And then I just brought up this simple fact. I said, Hey, you know, men are woman are physically different. Usually, most of the time men are physically serving a woman. So I thought that was fine.

Like, you know, sure. It’s probably just biological fact. Right? So then after the activity, a few of my no, they were my friend before they they, like, they said that that’s not sure you gotta do your science, you know, check behind that. I was like, oh, really.

Need to be like a, like,

a writing class or some, like, specific requirements and one of

the classes I was also available was, like, global gender and woman studies, you know, a lot of these people are very liberal. And I was kind of, like, you know, nervous about voicing my opinion because I’ve heard of many articles of, like, you know, people kind of, getting failing grades or things like that because they voiced their opinions. So kind of, like, you I kinda, like, try to take a very soft approach and kinda, like, you know, plan my words carefully because I generally do not want to, like, you know, fail a class and then kind of, like, ruin my graduation.

Okay. Some people are gonna probably roll their eyes at the idea that we just heard discussed you know, that maybe you’d get a lower grade. But I will say in my days as a campus conservative, I remember taking a gender race in sports class, easily received my lowest grading college. And I think the more liberal elements on campus did make me wanna double down a little bit on my conservatism. So do you think that college campuses, do they end up kind of radicalizing, some of these conservatives?

What do you think?

Well, I you mentioned that puck piece I wrote with Jake, and some other millennial Democrats in Congress, and they agreed with you, Ritchie Torres, sort of said the same thing. They can’t have become illiberal. That’s an overheated take in some respects. I agree with you though. Like, it’s not any stretch of the imagination to imagine a professor or a TA giving you a bad grade because one of your papers or one of your hand raised in class disagrees with the received wisdom on any given topic.

I mean, that’s always been there. It’s also like I don’t know. Like, when I was in college, My professors were authority figures.

Yeah.

Now that I’m old enough to be a professor, I realize how many of my peers are morons. Left and right. And it’s just like people are susceptible to bringing their personal politics and their social media diets into the classroom. So that’s not crazy to imagine. By the way, I heard this.

I remember going to the University of South Carolina for Good luck America, back in twenty oh, twenty sixteen and interviewing college Republicans on campus there. We also went to SMU And we went to Berkeley, interviewed college Republicans at these three campuses all over the country. All of them at the time said what those kids just said there. Which is they were sort of afraid to, like, raise their hand in in a classroom environment or afraid to write something in a paper because they were afraid they would get a lower grade. I I think that’s not a crazy thought, actually.

I agree with you.

Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. It I bounced around on this a little bit because I felt perfectly safe being don’t even know if provocative’s the right word, but I certainly would push back. I was sort of would talk about being a conservative. It was no secret.

And I, at Kenyan College, quite liberal felt. No problem doing that. And I think some of this can be, like, there’s a a victim mentality that I think you get taught kind of early as a conservative where, like, culture is against you, and you have to be, like, iconoclastic or heterodox in order to push back against this pervasive liberal bias. In the media and on campus, whatever. And I think there is both truth to it, and then there’s, like, there also think a way that people kind of, like, lean into it.

And also, I don’t know. Part of me wants to say to these guys, Yeah. I got a c in gender race and sports in college. You wanna know how much that affected my professional life, like, who cares? Who cares?

Like, also, if you don’t, like, get a c talking about those things, like, don’t take that class. Like, take a different class. If you take a class called gender race and sports, you, like, sort of know what you’re in for.

Yeah. That’s true. I also think, like, this is my experience in a lot of ways. I went to Georgetown and, you know, their theory of education, those jesuits is, like, it’s if you have robust epistemological debates in the classroom and on campus, whether you agree or disagree, that’s a good thing. Like, it’s teaching you how to think and how to joust and a good professor theoretically would even if they, like, somehow disagree with your politics, still be willing to be like, okay.

This person did Bulwark. And here’s your proper grade. That’s how I sort of think it should Bulwark, but you know, I’m not in college today. So who knows?

Yeah. I don’t know. I sort of think that’s one of these, like, the more things change, the more they stay the same things. Like, this this conservative sounded exactly like the rest to, like, the conservatives I knew when I was in college.

You’re the fourth person in my life who went to Kenya.

Oh, really?

Amy Vitor. Are the Pod Save America went to Canyon.

He and I were in the same class.

Oh, okay. There you go. And then, my two best friends from high school, Matt and Kellen, both went to Canyon. I went to visit and hang out with them multiple times.

Oh, wow. We would have been in if you’re only a year younger, we might have been there hanging out the same time.

We would have been hanging out with the, hanging out with Amish Yeah.

That’s right. That’s right. Well, I’m from Central Pennsylvania, so I grew up hanging out with the Amish. So I was doing that my

whole Oh, gotcha. Gotcha.

Not like some of these kids who came Kenyon, and we’re like, oh, I gotta buy some apple butter for the first time. Anyway, alright. So just for our last segment here, as we wrap up, One of my favorite things is when you ask one of these groups or what they think about the other group thinks of them. Mhmm. Right?

So we asked, some of the progressives And we didn’t hear much sympathy for their conservative peers on free speech, and they also thought of cancel culture as a good accountability mechanism. Let’s listen.

They have ways of getting out their beliefs when I was in college.

I don’t know if it

was every semester or every few semesters. People would come in, like, Republicans or, like, conservative students would plaster giant pictures of abordinate fetuses, dead fetuses, and say abortion’s terrible. This is why you shouldn’t support abortion, and this is why I don’t support abortion. And there had to be police around the area, just so there weren’t fights or anything.

I think they wanna create this idea that they’re gonna be so my gosh. I can’t speak my truth. Like, I can’t, like, you know, talk about, like, my beliefs, but, like, nobody’s getting to, like, hark on them about Oh, you think this economic plan is, you know, better. Most of the stuff that conservatives and college campuses are talking about are not economic, whatever other parts of government. When they’re talking about, like, conservative ideals, it’s mostly social.

It’s mostly hate speech and just mean things.

I think people question a lot whether, like, after somebody who’s been canceled, they can, like, have a redemption or not, I guess. And I feel like a lot of the time, it’s no. Like, you can’t continue, like, with the platform that you have and, like, the consequences of being canceled is that you don’t get, like, a redemption. I think that people can always, like, still be better.

A lot of the people complaining about cancel culture are people that are just upset that they’re being held accountable. And it makes me think also back to, like, you know, we’re all younger here. Like, when we were first getting on the internet and, like, posting on so social media and stuff. I feel like our parents and grandparents were like, oh my gosh, wash what you post. Like, you can’t put anything out yet.

I remember having a whole library discussion on your email address, not even having your name or your age in there. And yet, it tends to be the older generations that are now, you know, getting called out for stuff that they did when they were younger, maybe you shouldn’t have sexually assaulted somebody twenty years ago, that’s gonna follow you, and it’s okay that it follows you because you shouldn’t have done it. Man,

AI, if you just said, like, AI, young progressives, whatever, I think they could have nailed that. Right? It was like, tate speech, This is good accountability. I I found that to be a mix, actually. Like, some of it’s, like, very rationally good.

No. I I agree with you. It was a mix. I had a mix of feelings, this and that. Some of it felt like the coddling of the American mind come to life.

You know, someone said that certain kinds of speech should be outlawed and should become a federal crime, you know, and, you know, if you say a slur, which is bad, but I did appreciate that one person said, like, words and language can cause violence, rather than, like, language is violence, you know, language is not violence. But, yeah, like, overheated rhetoric can lead to violence. January six being a good example of that. Oh, now, at least I agree with them too a little bit is And this cuts to the the conversation we had about young conservative media. There are a lot of young conservatives who are, you know, mischievous and rebellious, and they are deliberately trying to be provocative on campuses.

And going back to even before Donald Trump, I mean, like, Ben Japiro and Steven Krader, you know, post up on campuses. Charlie Kirk does it. The Matt Walsh, like, you just, like, take a camera and a microphone, and try to, like, quote unquote trigger and own the, young liberals on campus. And so, you know, I can see how the young Democrats here or progressives, like, really think that there’s no ideology on the right. It’s just to go in and offend people on cultural issues, on identity issues, on social issues, you know, one person brought up Milo.

I mean, that was this whole bit back in, like, twenty seventeen. It was just like, go to Berkeley and, like, see what kind of protests happen. But, yeah, I mean, then on the flip side, like, Milo’s not punching you in the face. Like, you let him speak. Don’t go to the thing if you don’t want to.

Like, yeah, he sucks. Go do something you wanna do.

I I think that talking about being triggered and all that stuff is a little silly, but I thought they I thought they kinda had their conservative compatriots kinda nailed on the they are just trying to be provocative. But also, it is just the best time in the world to be a campus conservative. Like, these kind of things that like, super famous. Super famous. Like, with the girl who was, like, no one stopping you.

The self censorship is probably also somewhat true because you are in a dominant culture, but also, like, you can have a podcast, and there’s a turning point USA chapter, and you can go out and find liberal tiers if you want them. And, like, one’s kicking you out of school. And so, like, I sort of I think everybody needs to. Well, they’re all twenty. You’re gonna do.

They’re all twenty. They’re all gonna grow up. Then they all be better. Just like just like we were at that age. Totally.

Alright. Peter Hamby. Thank you so much for doing this, and thanks to all of you for listening to focus group podcast. Got a couple more shows to go this year. You won’t wanna miss any of them.

Take care out there. Thanks again, Peter.

Thank you. Happy holidays.