This is a trying time to be a young, conservatively-minded person.
First, there is the politics, which everyone automatically goes to first. Despite an overall good performance for the GOP, given the circumstances, the Republicans lost both chambers of Congress and the Presidency during the 2020 election. More to the point, the right-of-center political establishment in America is (and has been) woefully incapable of protecting actual conservatism and more resemble center-left career politicos driving the speed limit. So what does it matter if they actually did win?
Add to that the recent Capitol Hill riot which sounded the death knell of Trumpism, there are essentially now virtually no political outlets for Gen Z and younger Millennials who identify as social or religious conservatives (and not merely as libertarians).
Grant that social conservatives make up the smallest portion of these generations than at any other time in history, and that corporations and the government at nearly all levels are avowedly Progressive. It is natural to see yourself as a small minority with no political or cultural capital, and that is because you are! But wait, even though that may sound like a bad thing it is, in reality, a very, very good thing. Here’s why.
The United States has been undergoing an intense amount of political upheaval since we were kids. Ah! I pine for the simple days of watching Full House reruns in the morning and Obama drone strike another random country on the five o’clock news. Those halcyon days are, of course, long gone.
A great deal of this can be contributed to the fact that Critical Theory and other Progressive intellectual frameworks are extremely effective at securing and wielding political power within every institution they touch. By creating institutional structures that incentivize Progressivism, Progressive ideas have colonized basically all intellectual spaces in the country. Around 2016, this process reached a tipping point, at which the general public became aware of the Progressivization of the nation, with some opting to attempt to arrest its development. It’s now 2021 and that project has failed dismally. Social conservatism has essentially lost and the remaining political fights of consequence are between different factions of Progressives.
Sounds bad right? What it really means is there is no political future for social conservatives, so we can essentially cross politics off our to-do list. And good riddance, we have more important things to worry about. Basically all social conservatives are religious, for example, and no matter what faith you espouse, you can guarantee that worshipping God will be more beneficial to your life than arguing with Gender Studies majors over pronouns.
We have an opportunity to be the first apolitical cadre of our age. The slogan, “the personal is political,” has gained a lot of traction lately, but how about, “politics is personal.” Just like you don’t talk about your oddly-shaped birthmark to your classmate, because that would be too personal, never talk about politics with anyone but your friends. No one is entitled to hear your opinion (and frankly, most people don’t want to). So pretend as if you had none. If people try to “draw you into dialogue,” as a token conservative, don’t take the bait. Simply smile and play your best Bartleby: “I would prefer not to.”
Politics is one of the greatest sources of stress for the American public, and that’s to be expected when the battle lines cut so deep and bleed so profusely. Stress is basically the granddaddy of all chronic diseases (it causes most of the others, the one’s that get you in the end like heart disease). So you can make yourself a great deal happier (and healthier) by just not caring.
Delete Twitter (if you haven’t already been banned), delete Facebook, and in the name of all that is holy delete whatever third party app is delivering your latest dose of “here’s what left-wing radicals are doing today” outrage porn. Seek to cultivate inner peace, because we only have one life to live on this Earth and I would much rather spend it a happy and silent dissident than always waiting for my political utopia of choice that will never materialize.
Fundamentally, the truth that we should seek to regain is that politics are a sideshow from real life, a bit of kabuki theatre that we all like to indulge in as our collective national delusion. Young people (and here I include myself, curmudgeon that I am) have a tendency to subsume all of the here and now into the titanic political struggle, the only thing we have ever known of our national identity, and I am here to tell you, that struggle doesn’t need more footsoldiers, it needs less.
Illustration / Bartleby, the Scrivener, artist unknown
