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Two Israeli embassy staff were shot dead late yesterday night as they were walking just outside the Capitol Jewish Museum. The Capitol Police have identified the suspect as one Elias Rodriguez of Chicago. Reportedly, Rodriguez shouted “Free Palestine” as he executed the couple, who were engaged to be married.
I have been meaning to write a “Civil War vibe-check” top-level post. My intuition was that the danger of such a nightmare scenario was receding, having peaked twice, with the mass-shooting at the Congressional baseball team practice game, and the George Floyd Riot/January Sixth Riot forming a stockbroker’s double blow-off top before a consistent decline in risk.
Recently multiple events have made me question this. The Zizian cult killings, the suicide bombing in Palm Springs over the weekend, and now this, make me feel like something is perhaps coming. Maybe not a full Syrian Civil War, but at least another Days of Rage similar to the period in the 1970s after the great wave broke and began to recede. I would appreciate hearing anyone’s thoughts.
I find myself quoting Noah Smith a lot recently. He's written about the main thesis in the book Days of Rage that the wave of terrorism of the 1970s was due to evaporative cooling. After the huge social changes in the 1960s, the more moderate activists got on with their normal lives, leaving only the most radical remaining, who in turn radicalised eachother.
Now that the Great Awokening is in decline, the normies are quietly removing the pronouns from their email signatures and taking down their Pride flags, while the crazier fringe are shooting Israeli diplomats and bombing IVF clinics.
That probably also explains much of the political unrest that took place in the young Weimar Republic between 1919 and 1923 or so.
It's probably more accurate to say that it was successfully completed. The youths that were indoctrinated and acculturated during the awokening are irreversibly woke at this point. Those who stopped virtue-signalling are the older ones who haven't received such indoctrination.
Didn't Gen Z overwhelmingly vote for Trump?
Nope: Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 51% supported Harris while 47% supported Trump. Gen Z men did go 55% for Trump though. Women went 58% for Harris. That is closer than it was in 2020 however but still not a majority for Trump in Gen Z, let alone overwhelming.
Though I don't think that would suggest they are indoctrinated into wokeness either to be fair. A basically 50/50 split wouldn't support that (or at least that things like the economy can override whatever woke feelings there are).
Edit - It actually seems to be closer to 54% for Harris and 43% for Trump depending on which exit polls you aggregate. Which doesn't change the argument much.
IIRC that is a significantly higher percentage of the youth vote than most Republicans get, which is probably why @FtttG thought that.
Except.... Romney got 37% (lost to Obama), McCain got 32% (lost to Obama) so it starts to look true, but Bush got about 45% (beat Kerry) in 2004 and 47% (beat Gore) in 2000. Clinton got 55% to Doles 35% in 1996, so back to being true and Bush Senior got 34% (lost to Clinton) in 1992 but 53% (beat Dukakis) in 1988.
Partially it's just whoever wins will in general do better with most groups than times when their side loses (because that's how you win!). If you compare to times when Republicans win Trump at 43% in 2024 is a touch below Bush in 2000 and 2004 and less than Bush Senior in 1988.
If you look at 1984 to 1996 it looks like youth support for Republicans is in free fall from 59% (Reagan win) to 53% (Bush Senior win) down to 34% and 35% (losses to Clinton) but they jump right back to 47% and 45% the next two elections (Bush wins). Then drop back down into the 30's (losses to Obama) and then pop right back up for Trump in 2024. It looks mainly to be an artefact of who is winning/losing in general.
I wouldn't pay too much attention or be surprised when youth vote percentages are high when you win and low when you lose. It's just a subset of winning/losing. In the last 50 years Republicans have been as high as 53% (or even 59% if we go back to Reagan in 84!) and as low as 32% for McCain. Trump is still well within those norms I think. Actually his win in 2016 is maybe the odd one out. He won with just 36% of that youth vote. Which in most years would correspond with an overall loss (and he did lose the popular vote of course, not that it is relevant much). 36% again in 2020 with a loss, which is about on trend. Then up to 43% in 2024 with a win.
If anything it is the opposite, if you compare like with like. Trump at 43% and 36% with wins compared to Bush at 45% and 47%, Bush Senior at 53% with a win and Reagan at 59% and 44% with wins. On his loss he is on par with Romney, a touch ahead of McCain and Dole and Bush Senior on their losses.
Or if we average (a very blunt tool!) Trump has 38% across 3 elections which is just ahead of Romney (37%), ahead of McCain (32%), behind Bush's average of 46%, above Dole's 35%, below Bush Senior's average of 43% and below Reagans average of 51%. So pretty much middle of the pack.
So I think we can say Trump did NOT get a significantly higher percentage than most Republicans get. He did do better in 2024 than Romney and McCain when they lost, but that's kind of to be expected! And he didn't do as well as Bush or Bush Senior when they won.
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42% of gen z women voted Trump...? o_O
I think all those Kamala ads hammering that “your vote is private! Your abusive MAGA husband will never find out!” may have backfired by reminding women that they could be militantly anti-Trump on social media and around their friends, but still pull the lever for him in the voting booth.
I think the population that does something like this, in any direction, is small and mostly male.
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It’s possible but maybe women who were on the fence felt condescended to and voted Trump because Kamala just ran a fantastically bad campaign.
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I would not be surprised if there were group chats of women where the majority voted for Trump and all vehemently pretending they didn't. At least two in my wife's college friends chat just nodded along as the others prepared for Gilead and then quietly voted for Trump.
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There's one of those on a bollard at the local McDonald's and I always wonder about the thought process behind it.
I also thought everyone knew we have secret ballots but maybe with the increase in mail-in voting they forgot.
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Vastly more henpecked husbands secretly voted trump than vice versa.
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Yup and 45% of women overall, up from 42% in 2020 and 41% in 2016. The differences are often over-estimated I think. It's only a few percent across the board.
That feels similar to the difference between pro-life and pro-choice women, which I feel is likewise over-estimated, and very probably for similar reasons.
I wouldn't be surprised if it depends a lot on how you define those terms. If we use maximalist definitions i.e. no abortion even in cases of rape/danger to the mothers life, or abortion being legal up to birth, the number of women who support either position is probably both similar and quite low, with most people's views falling somewhere between the two.
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