In fact, continued study of Trump’s disciples has pretty well debunked the first easy explanation that they were driven by that economic dislocation resentment. Their mainspring is social issues, neatly encapsulated for them, after a quarter century of concentrated propaganda, as “#liberaltears”. They lazily define themselves as simply the anti-liberals.

Which is a problem for Republicans, and perhaps, for your thesis. Because the “young” generations–the oldest of whom are by now facing middle age–are diverse and tolerant and less racist and misogynist than…hell, you’ve read me saying this many times, the young match the profile that you and I like to think of as “liberal”, though they themselves have a healthy skepticism of old dogmas and would reject the label.

But not the beliefs. Oh yeah, Millenials et al have plenty to be resentful about, but I think a critical mass of them resent the attack on their values by the Trumpublicans, and recognize that their dismal economic prospects were wrought by conservative economic policies.

I’m counting on the power of their resentment.

And the correctness of their aim.

Our generation was the lucky one, we hit the sweet spot. Maybe it was sheer luck, maybe deliberate planning, maybe a combination of the two. Our children and grandchildren will lack many of the advantages we had, and they are systematically being coached to resent us for that. They have set black against white, immigrant versus native born, urban vs rural, educated versus ignorant, men against women. It is only a matter of time before the young are set against the old.

And this new generation of proles will have nothing but resentment for their boomer parents and grandparents, who they are reminded every day are wallowing in entitlement luxury derived from the withholding taxes of the working poor. Even today, when unemployment is very low, salaries are stagnant and careers are nowhere as plentiful as jobs, youth are moving into a future of temporary piece-work, part-time insecurity, no benefits, and “gig economy” (optimistically described as grass roots entrepreneurialism). We can’t all be coders or Youtube artists, and, BTW, Gupta already has that job. The only reason we cannot easily detect a wave of rising anger and resentment among the young is because they are still strong and resilient, not to mention optimistic and getting laid frequently. When I was their age I was at my peak of performance and career growth, so I didn’t notice how quickly things were turning sour during the Reagan years. I, and everyone I knew, were well educated young professionals on the way up, sure, we thought everything was just fine. Give the youngsters a few more years of stagnation and they’re going to be just as pissed off as their parents already are. The Trumps of the future will have all the recruits they need.

And voter suppression efforts will be like nothing we have seen before…

This will get ugly…

And mcfly, when you wrote “the younger generations will regain their rightful ability to decide their own future”, you fingered one of things I find most contemptible about these elderly reactionaries: They’re trying to tie the hands of their children and grandchildren, to deny them the right to choose for themselves how to live and what kind of society they live in.

I think the younger generations understand that they have to act to take back their own futures. I’m looking forward to the November election.

We’ll know America is having it’s day in the sun when it gets more color.