Oh boo fucking hoo you special snowflakes. Oh we want to be inspired to vote! We won't just do it because it's our civic duty; or to save democracy as we know it; or because we value right to choose, some semblance of geopolitical stability, and a government that doesn't endorse hate crime... No we want to feel inspired! You know what that is? That's whining narcissism. Go fucking vote. Wankers.

(Also: Your generation isn't special. Gen Xers and boomers were just as narcissistic in our youths.)

Young people have never turned out to vote in numbers that would justify pandering to them. When they do go to the polls, everyone else votes in higher numbers, too.

There is data verifying this, but as we all know, Ansel Herz is the sworn enemy of data in journalism.

Seriously, I kind of have to go with @1 on this. The ballot comes to you in the mail and you can put it back in the mail when you're done filling it out (Super-Secret Pro-Tip: You don't even have to put a stamp on it, USPS will deliver it anyway). If you're not registered, you can do it online. Aside from general apathy and lack of engagement, it's actually easier to vote in this state than it has been at any time in our history

Granted, finding someone to vote FOR may be a challenge, but it's also part of our collective civic duty to educate ourselves on the issues, the candidates, and the parties. Don't like what you see? Get engaged, get active, get involved, be the change you seek. If you don't see candidates who reflect your values - become a candidate yourself. Seriously, it's not that hard. If yahoos like GoodSpaceGuy can figure it out, you can too.

And remember: you're not the first generation to have these pangs of disinterest and ennui, nor will you be the last. It happens to every young person who feels like they don't have a stake in the system; the secret is finding the parts of the system you DO have a stake in, and working like hell to improve them. It's not a perfect system, but it's what we have, and sooner or later you're going to have to learn how to make best use of it you can, because if YOU don't you can bet dollars to doughnut holes somebody else WILL.

Is there any evidence that these weren't the exact same attitudes of 19-29 year-olds 20 years ago?

@1, @4

"Back in my day" has always worked before, so it will surely inspire now.

@1 has it about right: like young people always are, millennials can't love Hillary, because they're too busy loving themselves. They'll get over it in a couple of decades.

Instead of wasting time all Summer and early Fall complaining about Democrats, look at what the GOP is doing and vote them all out on Nov 8. Less GOP, more Other Types of Candidates to choose from. We're taking steps forward, not backward, right?

Well to all those millennials I will say just one thing: SCOTUS
Scalia was placed on the Supreme Court long before I could vote and yet I still had to suffer through decades of him. This stuff goes far beyond the 4-8 years of a presidency.

I don't need to be inspired, I need fucking baseline competence. I'm 32.

Are most of the commenters above ignorant about millennials coming of age when the middle class is disappearing, home ownership is the lowest since the early 60's, educated youth are in debt to their neck and on? apparently so for it would quite unfortunate to knowingly disparage youth that is justifyingly not very hopeful about its collective future.

I should add that the continual attacks on Ansel Hertz by establishment sycophants are quite rich considering their silence about the terrible "journalistic" display offered by Savage and co over the last few months.

@9 exactly. 20 years from now your youth will be long gone but those horrific trump appointees will still be fucking with your rights and the rights of your children.

@11. Shut it. Sure you have every reason to be disaffected. The world is a fucked up place and your generation faces some genuinely crappy challenges. No argument from me. But a) you're not being sent to Vietnam and b) your nihilism isn't cute. And anyone of any generation saying that it all comes down to the same thing no matter who wins this election frankly doesn't deserve a job. Unless you're into wall-building for $3/hour.

@6/11:

It's not back in MY day, so much as it's back in SOMEONE'S day. Millennials could just as easily look at the Panic of 1785, the Depression of 1807, or that of 1815, or 1873, or the Great Depression of the 1930's, to see that this country has undergone a series of cyclical economic diminishments. And at some future date, no matter how much things improve - assuming of course that they do improve - their grandchildren or great-grandchildren will suffer through a similar retraction with commensurate diminished expectations. We move forward; we fall back. It's the very nature of Human Civilization. Babylon fell, Egypt fell, as did Greece, and Rome, and Persia, and China (several times), and Spain, and Britain, and the USSR. We will too; it's inevitable. But, somehow humanity keeps moving forward. That's not "disparaging" anyone, that's just pointing out simple reality. But, generally things eventually get better. Granted, we're pushing our environment to extremes undreamed of by previous civilizations, and it's entirely possible we may reach a tipping point from which there's no coming back. But that's just all the more reason for those who are going to still be around after the rest of us are gone and don't have to deal with the ramifications of our squandering of the planet to start acting NOW to nudge the proverbial ship away from the looming iceberg of global catastrophe.

Politics and governance are the systems we've collectively developed to come to terms with the fact that we all have to live together. Nobody (well, almost nobody) said our system was perfect or that there isn't room for improvement. But, if the next generation doesn't decide to take it upon themselves to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work that needs to be done, then who do they think will?

@17 empirical evidence to the contrary be damned! amirite?

Hillary Clinton has given you plenty of /reasons/ why her presidency would improve your actual life. If your big need is for her to blow sunshine up your ass instead, well then, you might end up needing to vote for her without feeling like it fulfills you. Life brings us trials.

I don't think I've yet read a really cogent refutation of that fivethirtyeight.com piece that painted Clinton as an unabashed liberal. I've no doubt it exists, them millennials are nothing if not prolific content generators after all, I've just not yet read it. Link?

Millennials have far more at stake than I ever did.

When I was 20, my biggest fear was being arrested and put in prison for being gay in the military. I had no clue that we were fucking up the planet. A few scientists knew about climate change, but it wasn't even beginning to become public knowledge yet. It was never mentioned when I was in school or college.

Now, for you, the very planet is at stake. We may or may not render earth uninhabitable by humans. If we fuck it up beyond repair, it will have little effect on me. I've got 20, maybe 30 years to go if I'm lucky. I will die of old age before the worst effects of climate change hit. We absolutely have to halt climate change, and soon, or your future is totally fucked.

So, millennials, isn't that something worth considering when you vote? Is there really no difference between Hillary and Trump? Do you seriously think they both have the same policies regarding climate change? Sure, Hillary is far from a perfect and inspiring candidate. But if you can't see any difference, if you let Trump become president through your apathy, you deserve the future you will get as a result.

Good god, Herz, vote or don't vote but just shut up about it.

Raise min voting age to 30.

@3 Thank you.

@4 WA is probably the easiest state to vote in. Some states you have to stand in a line outdoors for hours on a workday, then the polling station closes before you even get inside the building. It's insane.

Whenever Trump says something dumb enough to remind you that most of the nation doesn't like him anyways, here comes the "OH NO YOU GOTTA BE ON TEAM HILL YESSSSS YOU ARE GOING TO DOOM US TO HELL IF YOU DON'T" brigade

Fuck yall, I'm not a Bernietard but I am done with this "you have to vote for the default establishment candidate" crap. I'm not helping Trump win because Trump isn't going to win. And I'm not going to help Hillary win because she's a different kind of terrible person and I'm not going to associate my name with either of them.

@23 While we are discussing voter disenfranchisement, how about we weight votes by life expectancy remaining? That way those with more skin in the game have more influence.

This Millenial does love Hilary and will enthusiastically vote for her. I'm not looking for "inspiration" or whatever. I can get that elsewhere.

I would like to enjoy a middle age unbeset by the Bush era ruin that ran to meet me and my fellow Millenials on the brink of adulthood. If I want a good barn-burner, I'll watch fucking Braveheart.

I'm sick of this "Millenials Hate Clinton" narrative I keep hearing. I am a Millenial and I work surrounded by Millenials, and we're all onboard for Hilary.

..."nearly precipitated her defeat" is a telling line that this asshole doesn't know shit. She would need to have been nearly defeated for anyone to take credit for the attempt. At 33, I'm not really sure if I am a millennial (sometimes we're counted all the way to 35 sometimes cut off at 29) but I will call out again that.....

...(excessive caps because FUCK YOU, MILLENNIALS!)...

You cannot be BOTH

[A] Part of a MORAL MOVEMENT to fight against the oligarchy

AND

[B] A political CONSUMER who can blame your apathy on poor-branding, not being "inspired," or a poor "user experience" with the voting system.

People in moral political movements have moral political OBLIGATIONS. You can be PART OF A MORAL MOVEMENT FOR GOOD or you can be a POLITICAL CONSUMER, but you CAN'T BE BOTH!

When someone says they are looking for a candidate to "inspire them" and they might not vote if that doesn't happen, what I hear is...

"I'm an entitled baby who doesn't know what real pain and disappointment are. I'm feckless and unmoored, and I need to be dragged out into the woods and beaten by rednecks until I develop some damn convictions worth sacrificing my own self-righteousness for."

@2. Satire is a biting truth.

@15 It's rather incredible that as we are seeing youth increasingly disenfranchised and, consequently, looking for revolutionary change, your only response is to say that things eventually get better. Not only as you pointed out, things may not get better for quite a while if at all considering resource and ecosystem limits but the overwhelming majority of individuals don't act according to the arc of history toward progress. Your apparent dismissal of millennials' immediate needs as many are condemned to non-living wage jobs for a significant fraction of their lives (and they will never make up for it) is not a good harbinger of things to come as these people will be looking elsewhere to solve their problems.

Herz will still be writing this stuff 4 years from now ... 8 years from now ... he'll still be writing this stuff when he's in assisted living, while the robots who change his diapers laugh at him behind his back..

Most people learn and grow. A few just burrow in and hunker down.

@31 as if millennials lining up behind an anti-establishment candidate like Bernie or even Obama, wanting a "revolution" and increasingly finding that socialism isn't a dirty word didn't indicate that youth is increasingly disenfranchised from politics as usual because they don't feel represented by establishment pols and the duopoly.

Stop making assumptions about who you are talking with. It's not because I am aware of the shit sandwich handed to millennials that I am one of them.

@33 - Since when was Obama an anti-establishment candidate? He never claimed to be. He and Clinton are politically nearly identical and that was clear in the primary too.

I bet that's one of the big reasons why he won and Bernie didn't.

@34 As if the dude who was going to bring transparency to Washington DC didn't make a claim to being anti-establishment

As a Millennial and a Clinton supporter myself, I think a lot of my fellow Millennials need to quit whining about how perfectly-cromulent-candidate-X doesn't share their views on one specific issue and actually put some effort into their political stances. Vote, and vote strategically.

@27: Pretty much me also.

@35: Increasing transparency in government != anti-establishment, you factually challenged twit.

Without tripping the Godwin Alarms:
Reagan was inspiring, Trump is inspiring to several millions, many actually felt inspired by Joseph McCarthy and Huey Long and George Wallace.

F.D.R. and Obama inspired as well, but they were worth voting-for because they could get some if the right things done, or refrain from doing wrong things (defending D.o.M.A., prosecuting the War on Drugs as much as he might have done).

Inspiration can spur to action, but it can turn-off rational and moral thought, and skew perception strongly. We need rational and moral thought, and as close to an objective and complete view of reality, as Serengeti-grade anthropoids can get.

To paraphrase Capt. Willard, 'I wanted a saviour, and for my sins, I got one.'.