As I’ve written here before, I suspect that Clinton’s inability to pick up Sanders backers stems in part from a left-wing anti-imperialism that considers her to be a “warmonger.”
But there’s something deeper, and darker, about millennial opposition to Clinton and the attendant blitheness towards the prospect of a Trump presidency. It’s best described as a mix of moral relativism, historical ignorance and narcissism.
Millennials are the first post-war generation to have come of age after the Cold War. Baby boomers, by contrast, grew up listening to their parents’ tales of American heroism in World War II and read about the depredations of international communism every day. Throughout their formative years, the United States was locked in Cold War struggle against an expansionist Soviet empire, and the world lived under threat of nuclear holocaust. The anti-Vietnam War movement may have bred skepticism about America’s global role, but the notion that American power was necessary to protect freedom in the world remained a majority one.
Millennials, by contrast, spent their early years blissfully unaware about the world and its dangers.
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