Dear Fellow Millennials, You in Fact Don't Need to be Insulted by Everything

Since the surfacing last night of audio from a Hillary Clinton fundraising event back in February, I have repeatedly seen headlines (though I hesitate to call them that without noting that they are not seen on many reputable publications) and outraged Twitter remarks which claim the Democratic nominee for POTUS had "mocked" the large bloc of Millennial voters who had supported Bernie Sanders during the primaries. The condemning remarks, that Bernie voters are "children of the Great Recession living in their parents' basement," certainly can come across as derogatory or lambasting, but when you actually think about it they are nothing by which those voters should be insulted. In text form, they can come across harshly (most Millennials who have at some point gone through their significant others' phones or had their phones gone through should know that the written word sometimes is tricky when conveying a conversation as even the most innocent comment can seem sinister when that's what its reader has in mind ahead of time), but if you read the transcript critically or bother to listen to the actual audio, there is nothing mocking about this.

Hillary's actual statements were that Millennials are "children of the Great Recession"- true- "living in their parents' basement"- guess what, also true! Yes, fellow Millennials, I'm sorry to let you know what should probably seem obvious but we are at the highest rate of young adults living at home in recent history. But don't take my word for it, or even your own anecdotal evidence. Take this Pew study published in May of this year, going back to 1880, and finding that our generation is the first since then with a plurality living at home.

Now, with the knowledge that this is an actual fact, listen to the audio yourself and tell me how "mocking" this statement is. There's absolutely no mocking tone in her voice and I think it's pretty fair to say that that is not how she meant it.

There's another part of this audio leak which people are holding against Hillary, though, and that is her saying that many Bernie supporters are "new to politics completely" and therefore quick to believe idealism. Here is where I'll switch back to anecdotal evidence. I majored in Political Science undergrad and immediately went for my Master's in it, and I was absolutely obsessive about politics. I spoke to everyone I knew, ranting at length, and heard mostly crickets as a reply. Now a great number of those same people are facebook pundits, active spouters of the gospel of their political ideologies without having done ANY of the research. Do most of them know from where the concepts of modern liberalism and conservatism came? Have they agonizingly annotated their copies of Edmund Burke and Locke and Rousseau and Marx, and their case studies on what happened in different parts of the world at different points in history when each of these political theories were implemented? My guess for a large bloc is no. So yes, they are "new to politics." People my age previously have only had the man who was almost undoubtedly the coolest presidential candidate in history as their option against people whose views opposed what they knew they were in favor of fundamentally. Now, as people pretending to have our shit together, we are looking slightly more closely at the issues, but they still don't acknowledge the logistics of the matters. You do feel ideologically, as HRC says, and that's great; that is how we all should feel. But our actions should take into account common sense along with our consciences, and common sense (as well as just like even a superficial knowledge of world history) should tell you that you can't just Tabula Rasa a political system and expect it to work out. Change is gradual, and that doesn't make it any less great. The US' social policies of the last century were utterly shameful: even fucking interracial marriage wasn't legalized until Loving v. Virginia in 1967. Yet many young people expect everyone who grew up under such a system to even understand, let alone accept, every left-leaning policy they want. And they think that's fair. 

The facts of the matter are just that: facts. Hillary stated facts, which many people don't want to hear. There's no reason to glean from this audio that Hillary spoke condescendingly. On the contrary, she astutely pointed out a very significant reason so many millennials are inclined to feel in their hearts that debts should be lowered and social programs raised: because the system has failed us. Hillary is a person who has studied policy for a long time and the thing that all policy has in common is this: it is written and supported, or opposed, by humans. Humans, with feelings, they're who shape things, and so it is fundamental to an understanding of politics to understand the context that's molding the people creating them. Listeners of this audio might also note that Hillary follows up her comment by saying "So I think we all should be really understanding of that." Ooph man, that's hurtful.