Hope for Our Greatest Political Divide

The article blames the growing ideological divide between Gen Z males and females on screens and online experience. I don’t think that’s it, though I can believe they are contributing factors.

Maybe because the feed the diverging victimization narratives, which I suspect are the bigger influence. My impression is that many young men and young women both see themselves as victims, and identify with various communities of the victimized, but they have very different narratives for who or what the victimizers are and those narratives align better with already-in-place political narratives.

One of the bigger changes in my adult lifetime is that ‘conservatism’ has become infused with victimization narratives. This is the populism trend, it’s probably fair to say. So frequently now I see conservative Christian news an punditry that assumes or openly portrays conservative Christians as victims. Of course, sometimes they really are. But that was never a defining characteristics of conservatism and the right in general in the past. Very much the opposite. So now we have two political strains, both dominated by ‘we are victims’ identities, but with different versions of who and what they are supposed to be victims of.

Conservatism in the past might have been a bit too individualistic, but at least it at least emphasized responsibility and agency over victimhood. If real conservatism could make a comeback, there would at least be real choice for Gen Z—and older generations, too—as to what sort of political movement to identify with. As it is, the dominant choices are really so much a like if you look beneath the surface. Different variables plugged into the narrative, but basically the same dynamic, same ethics, same view of truth.