The Millennials and Bernie Sanders: Why Many Of Us Are Drawn To Him

Image by Gage Skidmore (License CC BY-SA 2.0

 

If you truly believe that all young people hate older people as viciously as they seem to hate us, I guess the popularity of Bernie Sanders with young people would be confusing to you.

If you are really that set on ignoring everything Bernie Sanders has ever said and stood for, and the complaints of the majority of Americans, because you deeply believe that people of different age groups are destined to fight each other like some kind of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon bullshit, I honestly don’t even know what to tell you.

I’ve encountered this mindset a lot. Older people who have done shitty things to me have tried to dismiss my anger by telling me that “I’m just too sensitive” or “I just hate old people.” When I was a college student, a middle aged woman I was at dinner with bragged about her wealth and famous connections for hours, and then tried to nickel and dime me into paying for her dinner and wine. I don’t think I was old enough to even legally drink at the time.

Obviously, I hated her. And I’m not subtle. If I hate a bitch, the bitch knows about it. You know what this woman said to me?

“You don’t like me because I’m old. I can tell.”

Let’s get this shit out of the way. Most normal people do not inherently dislike or like somebody because of their age. You know what most people like? Feeling validated. You know what most people don’t fucking like? Feeling ripped off.

“When we say “What the fuck, America?” most older people straight up ignore us or tell us to shut up.

Bernie Sanders has been asking “What the fuck, America?” and actively trying to fix it for decades.”

Whether you are 5 or 55 or 105 no one wants to be told they are reaching into a cookie jar only for it to be filled with used condoms. Nobody wants to be conned. Nobody wants to be treated like shit. People want to be heard.

A lot of Americans of all ages feel heard by Bernie Sanders. It doesn’t matter that he’s old enough that he saw the events of The Land Before Time in person. I wouldn’t give a shit if he was a sentient lawn mower, with nipples, that ran on banned 80s soft drinks chock full of radioactive waste. Our ideals align.

Bottom line, what this election really proved, is that our country really hates and is frustrated with our shitty government. The two favorites were a guy with no political experience at all, and a guy that didn’t belong to either political party for decades. In fact, if the DNC hadn’t probably cheated, we would have President Bernie in office right now, and he would most likely be moving us closer to a Star-Trek-like holodeck-filled utopia where aliens and I could make tender and respectful love to each other.

Instead, we have a party in power eating itself alive, because the only unifying thing they had going on was hating Obama because he was black. Now that he’s gone, they don’t really know what to do. The GOP spent over half a decade railing against Obamacare and promising to destroy it.  And even with basically total control of the government, they couldn’t get it together enough to wreak their pasty vengeance on the poor. Right now, Paul Ryan has more egg on his face than the 3 A.M. crowd in every Denny’s in America combined.

Bottom line, the world is more connected nowadays than it has ever been. People travel more than ever before, and even if you don’t, with a click you can get in touch with people from all over the world instantly. As an American, you can only talk to so many people from other countries that have free healthcare, free higher ed, functional public education and transportation, no mentally ill homeless people starving on the streets, no mass shootings, and a police force that doesn’t kill over 100 people a month, before you kinda go, “What the fuck?”

Our infrastructure is crumbling. People are dying because they can’t afford medicine. Some pregnant Lyft driver was ferrying motherfuckers around while her baby poked out of her goddamn vag because nothing is more important than work in this shitty country. Hell, she probably needed that money to cover the costs of giving birth. What the fuck is all our tax money going toward? It can’t all be going to siccing drones on Middle Eastern toddlers and Melania Trump living in her Manhattan penthouse,  because she can’t stand to be around her fucking husband.

So, why do the kids love Bernie Sanders so much? Why are teenagers on the internet calling Bernie Sanders, daddy?

When we say “What the fuck, America?” most older people straight up ignore us or tell us to shut up.

Bernie Sanders has been asking “What the fuck, America?” and actively trying to fix it for decades. I can’t speak for all Millennials, but even though I do not personally agree with every single point Bernie Sanders has ever made, I respect the shit out of him.

Millennials want our country to be able to compete with the rest of the world. Fifty years ago, America may have been the golden land of opportunity, but now it’s just fucking embarrassing. Most of our people are sicker, poorer, less educated, and more miserable than people in almost every other first world country, which is probably why Trump did so well in the first place.

We don’t even make the top 10 of the world’s happiest countries, despite being wealthier than all of them. Wealth inequality and violence are rampant. Members of the dying middle class are killing themselves in droves. The life expectancy of an American is lower than that of a citizen in almost every other wealthy nation. In fact, the gap is only expected to get worse.

Bernie Sanders wants America to move forward and fix all this shit. And that’s why he is legit #DaddyAF.

Isadora Teich is a freelance writer and traveler. They’ve written social media copy, tabloids, news, erotica, opinion pieces, quizzes,  have worked on film scripts, and do some ghostwriting from time to time. Isadora lives for artistic experimentation and is working on a novel.

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