I'm a liberal Gen Xer and a political news junkie. The state of local and national politics frequently gets me feeling hopeless and beat down, but I'm wary of putting too much pressure on Gen Z to "save us all" because 1) that's too much of a burden to place on anyone and 2) why shouldn't we expect Gen Zers to lose engagement, or drift to the political center as they age?
The author first lays the foundation so we can understand Generation Z in the context of the generations that came before them. "As children, the world for baby boomers and many Gen Xers often began and ended on their block; for Gen Z, there is no limit, and with this brings an unparalleled understanding of humanity and empathy." (p. 32) The author argues that Gen Z will not "abandon progressive values for conservatism as they age" (pg. 12) because "we have raised Zoomers to be an uncommonly empathetic generation." (p. 13)
The author believes that Gen Z's compassion for their fellow human beings, as well as their fears that arise from the current state of the world (e.g., school shootings, police brutality, college debt, climate change, etc.), naturally lead to having progressive values that prioritize human rights, the climate crisis, gun safety, income inequality, etc. It's those progressive policies that will help "save America". To illustrate Gen Z's preference for progressive ideals and their record-level political engagement, the author presents all kinds of polling data as well as quotes from actual Gen Zers he has interviewed. He shines a spotlight on Gen Z activists like the Parkland school shooting survivors and Greta Thunberg, among others.
Interestingly, Gen Z white nationalists and insurrectionists are also featured, showing that the world is truly engaged in a battle to win the hearts and minds of young people, and a more progressive future is not guaranteed.
The messages and lessons of this book feel urgent. Recent political events are analyzed through a Gen Z lens, and it's clear we need to pay attention to Gen Z RIGHT NOW if we want to leverage the power of their numbers and passion for progressive change.
Though the book's topic of an entire generation having to fight to save America is inherently depressing, the foreword by David Hogg, a Gen Z activist and school shooting survivor from Parkland, sets a positive and optimistic tone for the book, which ultimately left me with a solid sense of hope.
My only disappointment was the lack of attention on Asian Americans. Asian Americans were included in some of the data (p. 21), but not others (p. 47). Also, there was no mention of the Stop Asian Hate movement in the section about hate crimes increasing under Trump's presidency. (p. 81) To give him the benefit of the doubt, it's possible that the author didn't purposely exclude Asian Americans so much as he couldn't write about an issue that was unfolding in real time while he was actively writing the book, presumably in 2020 and 2021. He discussed the 2020 elections in great detail - as a political pollster, he would have been processing the election data as it was collected - but maybe he didn't have pandemic-related data at his fingertips; much of the anti-Asian violence grew out of the covid-19 pandemic, of which the author mostly made only passing mentions, admitting early on that it was "a global pandemic...with a yet-undetermined impact." (p. 17)
