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Every time I visited my father and mother-in-law in the past two years, our conversation turned to an evocation of the Trump administration's latest horrors. We all fall into the category of progressives and tend to agree on the issues. But there is always a subject that has made me moan and that has drawn my attention to home-cooked foods on the table: Mueller's investigation.
My father and my mother-in-law have followed very closely the special advocate's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. Almost every time I get back into their apartment, television broadcasts MSNBC, the cable news channel that has attracted the most attention on the Russian probe, with Mueller who rides one time out of three, mentions Trump. I do not know how to call my dad on the phone from 9 to 10 o'clock on weekdays while he is in bed watching Rachel Maddow's show, the program that has perhaps been the most generous by devoting its time to cover the investigation of Russia.
It's not just my father and my mother-in-law. For two years, Mueller has been almost ubiquitous in news coverage by cable. One study found that 55% of all Trump radio reports were based on the survey in Russia. Even the most casual reporters can easily get carried away in the thrilling intrigue of adrenaline around collusion and foreign spying. And for baby boomers like my parents, who make up a substantial part of the cable news audience – the median age of MSNBC viewers is 65 – Mueller's frenzy is even bigger. A recent NPR story interviewed elderly Americans in a retirement home praying to live a little longer to see the final report of the special advocate.
But for young Americans, Mueller's story may not be as fascinating. In a survey conducted last year by Vanity Fair, less than a third of millennials said they were following the Russian survey very closely. This relative lack of interest is clearly generational: the proportion of millennial Democrats who closely followed the survey, 38%, was lower than that of 35 years and over, across all trends, by 45%.
It is not difficult to understand why. First, we probably do not watch the news of cable, where the history of Russia has dominated the information cycle since 2016; Millennials are less likely to pay for cable. But beyond sources of information, young people are more concerned about the larger and more structural issues of today: climate change, violent racism, economic inequality. According to a 2018 Pew poll on the generation gap, a large majority of Generation Y (66%) believe that our economic system unfairly favors powerful interests and that more needs to be done for racial equality (68% ), far beyond the market share. older generations. (For the silent generation, 50% said our economic system unfairly favored powerful interests, while 54% said more must be done in the area of racial equality.)
When my friends and I laugh about wanting to enjoy a day of snow in New York while we still have them, it's because our generation will likely be hit by a climate disaster in our lifetime. When mass starvation, sea level rise and an economic situation that resembles a sci-fi dystopia are on the horizon, it seems almost irresponsible that the media do not spend the majority of their resources to that, instead of lawsuits that have not yet personally involved the authorities. President. When neo-Nazis shoot in synagogues and parade through American cities, Russian social media trolls do not seem to be the biggest threat to our democracy.
There is a reason why some of the biggest protests in the last two years – the Walk for Life led by Parkland survivors or the students who advocate for climate change – have been led by young people. But none of these movements have much to do with Russia.
The generation gap comes down to the basic ideas about our country
Do not mistake yourself. Like more than two-thirds of Millennials, I am very concerned about corruption in government. And my cohort is hardly up to Trump: almost all the demonstrations, rallies and anti-Trump demonstrations I took part in have been led by millennia.
It's just that the focus on the Russia inquiry simply does not reflect the importance of the priorities of my generation. With more than half of us supporting a Green New Deal and nearly 70% claiming Medicare for all, we want our policy to address the transformational paradigm shift aimed at protecting health and safety. security of our planet, of ourselves and of future generations. There is a reason why only a third of millennia consider the Russian inquiry to be a top priority for Congress, while a majority say it should tackle climate change.
This generational gap is really much bigger than Russia. For Boomer Liberals like my father, Trump is still thought to be fundamentally anti-American in his fanaticism, xenophobia, and corruption, and the combined forces of Congress and the courts can override him by allowing him to evade to the vision that this country is leaning towards justice.
For millennia and young people – even those of my cohort who are not greedy politicians – this positivism feels naive. In the face of the climate catastrophe, the growing inequality of wealth and the rise of violent racism, the ills afflicting America do not seem to be able to be solved by the report of the special council. It is not surprising that about one millennium out of three, like me, is called socialist. An investigation into the corruption of a president seems almost picturesque in the face of the massive political change needed to ensure our very survival.
As we move toward what could be the most important presidential election in a generation, we need our policy to focus on major structural issues, not on close investigations of Trump's relationship with the United States. Russia.
I will soon have dinner with my parents. I hope that with the Mueller inquiry behind us and that Trump himself is about to wear an orange jumpsuit like "Putin's puppet", our conversations will rather deviate from the more pressing issues facing our country.
Aaron Freedman is a writer based in Brooklyn. Find him on Twitter at @freedaaron.
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