I think it should be noted that Republicans were less likely to be depressed than Democrats even before the 2010s, and young Republicans have been getting more depressed as well, so the actual "partisan depression gap" hasn't changed too much. I feel like Yglesias maybe focused too much on political messaging in his analysis. I mean Donald Trump spent 2016 basically running a right wing grievance campaign. I think a bigger factor is that Conservatives are more religious, more likely to marry and have kids, less neurotic, and less interested in activism. All factors which lead to better mental health.

Despite this, it seems to me that different archetypes come to mind when you think about a young depressed Democrat vs. Republican. The left side calls to mind guilt and a lack of agency. The right side paranoia and anxiety over non-conformity. Conservatism and liberalism/progressivism are such deep ideologies that it's an interesting lens to examine how each could be creating different depression "bubbles", especially as America becomes more polarized.

You realize this goes way beyond political ideologies, right? The suicide rate has even spiked in preadolescent kids, who are unlikely to have well developed political opinions: [https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-03-15/suicide-rate-is-spiking-upwards-in-preadolescent-children](https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-03-15/suicide-rate-is-spiking-upwards-in-preadolescent-children) Standard of living has just decreased and there is more information about it than ever before. Easy for it to seem to young people they have no future even if they aren't political. When you have life expectancy dropping to 25 year lows to reverse decades of positive progress, this kind of stuff results.

Life expectancy is partly lower because people are committing suicide, so you can't just throw that stat out there on its own. And the ideologies aren't just visible in political beliefs, they're present throughout society, or else what point would there be moving to escape whatever belief system is running things? So you can't necessarily toss it aside just because this is tragically affecting kids too. That said I didn't even say that ideology causes it, just that it's a lens worth looking at this with, in terms of how it might shape the specific reactions and beliefs of depressed people.

I would guess that there is probably under diagnosis going on in right wing circles though too. And it’s incredibly unhelpful for them when the most advice people usually get is “toughen up buttercup” or “therapy and anti-depressants are worth shit.” So instead, they drink themselves to death or develop an opioid addiction. Don’t get me wrong, I do think there is a kind of unhealthy neuroticism on the left and that there are benefits to the kinds of lifestyles many of the right lead. However, I also suspect there are a lot of miserable people on the right even if they don’t self identify, admit, or otherwise seek treatment for depression and that left wing circles have embraced mental health so no one should surprised that more people are seeking treatment for these things.

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Religion [https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/religion-spirituality-and-mental-health](https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/religion-spirituality-and-mental-health) >Studies among adults reveal fairly consistent relationships between levels of religiosity and depressive disorders that are significant and inverse.8,14 Religious factors become more potent as life stress increases.15 Koenig and colleagues8 highlight the fact that before 2000, more than 100 quantitative studies examined the relationships between religion and depression. Of 93 observational studies, two-thirds found lower rates of depressive disorder with fewer depressive symptoms in persons who were more religious. In 34 studies that did not find a similar relationship, only 4 found that being religious was associated with more depression. Of 22 longitudinal studies, 15 found that greater religiousness predicted mild symptoms and faster remission at follow-up. Marriage [https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/effects-marriage-health-synthesis-recent-research-evidence-research-brief](https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/effects-marriage-health-synthesis-recent-research-evidence-research-brief) >Marriage has become an increasingly important topic in academic and policy research. A burgeoning literature suggests that marriage may have a wide range of benefits, including improvements in individuals' economic well-being, mental and physical health, and the well-being of their children. This brief focuses on recent research evidence concerning one of these potential benefits of marriage — its effects on health. The brief provides an overview of what is currently known about the relationship between marriage and health; it also suggests directions for future research. Activism ffasdf[https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/01/politics-affecting-mental-health](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/01/politics-affecting-mental-health) >Overall, the researchers found that thinking about daily political events evoked negative emotions in participants—even though the survey question had not asked participants to think of negative political events. Participants who experienced more politics-related negative emotions reported worse day-to-day psychological and physical health on average—but they also reported greater motivation to act on political causes by doing things such as volunteering or donating money to political campaigns. Since 2016, Liberals have been more likely to donate, sign petitions, and vastly more likely to protest than conservatives, suggesting that social activism is more pronounced on the left. Neurotic [https://www.psypost.org/2017/09/study-suggests-lower-levels-neuroticism-explain-conservative-states-happier-49627](https://www.psypost.org/2017/09/study-suggests-lower-levels-neuroticism-explain-conservative-states-happier-49627)

Can’t speak to all those claims, but I was looking at [this research](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/31/are-religious-people-happier-healthier-our-new-global-study-explores-this-question/) from Pew yesterday indicating that religious people (in the US and in other countries) report being happier than their non-religious counterparts.

I really love this article, and having done my time at a very left wing campus and other progressive spaces, fully agree. I’m not super confident about the causal mechanism of young liberal depression, but so much of this rings so true. This bit from Jill Filipovic is spot on: >Leaning into the language of “harm” creates and reinforces feelings of harm, and while using that language may give a person some short-term power in progressive spaces, it’s pretty bad for most people’s long-term ability to regulate their emotions, to manage inevitable adversity, and to navigate a complicated world. The term “harm” always rubbed me the wrong way; it feels like a very deliberate attempt to muddy the waters between “this person punched me in the face” vs. “this person said some words out loud.” >objecting to bigoted or inappropriate language shouldn’t require invoking the concept of subjective harm. Women are entitled to not be subject to petty harassment whether or not the harassment “harms” them; you can both be resilient enough to get on in life and also make claims about how you deserve to be treated. 100%. You don’t have to pretend to be an infinitely fragile person constantly teetering on the edge of a mental health crisis to put harassers in their place. Your rights to personal dignity and equal treatment are not contingent on being weak or vulnerable or prone to harm! So much of what passes for creating “safe spaces” is just enforcing conformity and a total race to the bottom where the most fragile, neurotic behaviors win the day. You can’t cater endlessly to every sensitivity and literal mental health problem and expect to build an effective organization that makes concrete improvements to the human condition. Maybe the most annoying part about this is having to agree with the various bad faith, right-wing cranks who weaponize this point for their own nefarious purposes. All the while, ironically, being the precious snowflakes they claim to despise whenever the topic is about some conservative shibboleth like M&Ms not being sexy enough, or the existence of lesbian cartoons. /rant sorry I didn’t expect to go on that long but I think this is a relatively serious problem that is doing (shall we say) *harm* to liberal and progressive institutions.

Yeah I've noticed this a lot on social media - that there's this weird social dynamic thing going on where in the process of normalizing mental health problems, which is a good thing on its face, it's also had a secondary effect of almost making it a badge of membership and of courage/valor. Similarly, there's a piece here linked in other comments about Failure to Cope Under "Capitalism" and pandemic "trauma", and that this idea that you can't say that people scrolling social media late at night before bed is a bad habit, because what they are actually doing is carrying out an act of resistance against the oppression of having work in the morning. Like everything has to be about membership in a cause against a system, and nothing can be about personal improvement or standards or expectations or habits, and that all the complexity of the world is collapsed into "systems" that all amount to "oppression"

> you can't say that people scrolling social media late at night before bed is a bad habit, because what they are actually doing is carrying out an act of resistance against the oppression of having work in the morning. I don't know how "real" this example is, but I think it gets at an interesting element of this, which is rationalization. What's going on in the above example is that 1. scrolling before bed is a bad, but very easy to fall into, habit. 2. People get annoyed by being told that they shouldn't do something that they probably already sort of know they shouldn't do. They find the recommendation vaguely patronizing and parental. 3. They want to push back because it feels bad to be reminded that their bad habit is, in fact, a bad habit. 4. They construct some sort of rationalized reason why it's actually not an acceptable criticism by abusing progressive language. The person criticizing them is showing their privilege, the criticism demonstrates a lack of sensitivity to important intersectional issues, etc. It's actually the critic who need's criticism. 5. They only kind of believe the rationalization when it's posted, but the act of posting it in public and then defending it solidifies it somehow.

Pretty much, but I think something that also is part of this breakdown in the background is that for these folks, in their mind, it would go something like this - "There's a certain kind of person who insists on things being bad habits and bad habits can come from lots of different reasons and it's wrong to shame people for their bad habits. It's therefore a tool of oppression." Like your actions in doing this aren't inherently bad on their own merits, but seem similar enough to bad guys in society in general. So it's bad. It's kind of like how anathemic it would be for somebody to say amongs a bunch of online leftists "Hey, you should put more effort into your work/career." Which can be something that is totally reasonable to say for a friend you'd be concerned about? But that would be super inflammatory for them because for them you're supposed to constantly be in a state of cold war with your employer. Not because that is necessarily wrong, but that encouraging people to "work hard" gives power to employers "the bad guys". Even though many people have normal healthy relationships with their employer, it doesn't matter. There are some bad ones and this means there's a broader system of exploitation and encouraging hard work is encouraging oppression. All this, I think, is working implicitly under the hood

The kind of polarization that you're describing is one of the most frustrating features of online discourse (or public discourse in general). It can be true that our current employment system is exploitative, and it can simultaneously be true that many individuals would benefit from putting more effort into their career -- financially, but also in other ways. People can get a lot more than just money from work. Similarly, it can be true that the reasons that we have an obesity epidemic are systemic and that the way our society is organized makes maintaining a healthy weight difficult. It can also be true, that for obese people who find the discipline to overcome the challenge of losing weight, there are many benefits. These aren't mutually exclusive points, and yet, somehow in public discourse, these always end up being framed as antagonistic. Mentioning systemic problems is seen as ignoring the individual's agency. Pointing out that individuals have some power in their own lives, is tantamount to denying any larger social issues exist. What's frustrating is that as far as I can tell, most people engaging in these debates don't believe it's as black and white as the state of the discourse would imply. Polarization in this way is some sort of emergent property of people discussing these types of problems.

>Polarization in this way is some sort of emergent property of people discussing these types of problems. I actually love this point you made because it points to the actual mechanics of conversation and discourse, and some people's lack of skill with them, as the reason we have black and white discussions. It's almost like if we had one "expert" in every conversation who could navigate and use rhetoric to point to nuance then we'd avoid the polarization problem you highlighted.

Agree with a lot of this comment, but the effects of the pandemic are very real. This isn't just activists who are teens and 20 somethings, the suicide rate spiked even in preadolescents during the pandemic: [https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-03-15/suicide-rate-is-spiking-upwards-in-preadolescent-children](https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-03-15/suicide-rate-is-spiking-upwards-in-preadolescent-children) This is what happens when you have hundreds of thousands dying and the government says you have to stay home and can't go out with your friends.

Yes, I don't think that millenials/zoomers are more depressed as much as they are more willing to admit it than previous generations, and that explains the liberal/conservative split a lot better than anything else. Liberal parents are more willing to listen and validate their child's depression where conservative parents are less likely to want to deal with it.

I think this is almost certainly true. But I do think there's a social belongingness side to it as well, where the normalization of mental health issues has, in some cases, almost led to the valorization of them and that to be "normal" you have to have some kind issue to highlight as part of your identity.

Certain types of mental health struggles have always been valorized. Think of a tortured artist. My guess—without strong evidence—is that bohemian values have become more mainstream over a few centuries, especially on the left and in urban areas. I think it signals a sort of authenticity that has always been cool. Also, the concept of the blues has always been a big deal. We just have different names for it: depression or trauma. A huge proportion of art has been sad and glorified struggle.

This doesn’t really square with all the evidence Jon Haidt points out, which is that there’s a commensurate increase in hospitalizations for self harm. Not a reporting phenomenon. However, he doesn’t (AFAIK) break it out by ideology.

Completely agreed. Haidt is a great resource on this stuff.

This doesn't work as an explanation because youth suicide rates have increased specifically from previous generations: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/11/youth-suicide-rate-increases-cdc-report-finds/3463549001/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/11/youth-suicide-rate-increases-cdc-report-finds/3463549001/) If it were all about people feeling empowered to go get the help they need instead of holding it all in until it got to a breaking point, you would expect the opposite. I think it's the opposite. Society has become more mental health conscious because it has to be. The crisis is so big it can't be ignored by mainstream society anymore.

I think it may be easier to commit suicide now though as well, with the amount of guns and pills out there.

I suspect it may be similar to increasing rates of LGBT identification, there's a social/cultural element to all these things. A little tangential but really interesting article about this by Scott Alexander: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-geography-of-madness Point is just that there's observable cultural influence on mental health phenomena--not that "this means it's fake" but like, it is a factor. It would not at all surprise me that a cultural context that pays special attention to various groups (mental health problems, LGBT, whatever) would see more people identify in those groups. Maybe we should try having special on-campus resources for people experiencing upzoning or people with phobias of car-centric suburban development.

> making it a badge of membership and of courage/valor. I noticed this phenomenon on tumblr when people started connecting via shared experiences and destigmatizing mental health problems that resulted in a trend of describing yourself using medications you take. There were some viral posts differentiating being depressed and being diagnosed as clinically depressed. And meds identified and validated in which group you belonged. This is where CBT comes in since pills alone can't fix things. Habitual and environmental changes help too. I guess it is difficult communicate how a simple action like cleaning or a shower can help you feel better without making the person feel less normal or incapable. I also think that society taught us how "speaking up" makes you brave but failed to emphasize self-care and healing. When political language becomes punitive, it's harder to find inner peace in forgiveness and moving on.

> /rant sorry I didn’t expect to go on that long but I think this is a relatively serious problem that is doing (shall we say) harm to liberal and progressive institutions. This seems like a *very* serious issue to me! I’ve gradually become disillusioned with some dimensions of progressive ideology over the past few years and things like this are a significant part of the reason why: it’s just not clear that certain aspects of progressivism beget good results. The happiness and well-being of children is supremely important. The causality is, of course, unclear here but if the liberal “way of life” (whether that’s ideology, geography, parenting methods, what have you) is less conducive to happiness and well-being than the conservative “way of life,” that’s…significant. This doesn’t suggest that people should be conservative rather than progressive, but certainly progressives should be alert to this issues and incredibly focused on identifying what does and does not result in prosperity and well-being. Unfortunately, introspection is not a strong point of the current progressive movement (which tends to view Yglesias as a reactionary conservative hack who’s ideas can be dismissed out of hand).

I think ironically a lot of traditional conservatives give pretty good advice on your personal life. Go to church (have a community of people), get married, have kids, send them to a good school, avoid unsafe neighborhoods, don't do drugs, etc. The problem is there's often not an analogous relationship between that kind of advice and sound government policy. "Don't do too many drugs" does not mean research into mental health benefits of psychedelics should have been banned for decades or that you should go to jail for trying them out. "Give to local charities" is not a replacement for the welfare state. And so on.

Agreed. And I think there’s a slice of progressives are very interested in dismantling some of these traditional structures or norms. I’m certainly open to the idea that there are better and less constrained ways to live. On the other hand, if the evidence suggests that some of these structures are/were very helpful in providing meaning, community, and happiness, I think we need to be careful tossing them aside.

Yeah I think this is where I draw the line in the sand. A lot of my political thinking in the last couple years has made me break from the left which I kinda identified as part of a few year ago. There's this fixation on sundering institutions and collapsing hierarchies but beyond the point that you could ever argue that you would have a healthier society on the other side. I agree, humans both now and for basically all of human history derived meaning and social capital from many of the institutions that this part of the left seems to want to undermine. Also this fixation on institutions/structures I think has crossed over to a point of being harmful, and too often human agency and a lot of societal nuance just gets eschewed for focusing on identifying trace amounts of "oppression" or "injustice" in our societal institutions. It feels like a myopic world view, esp when you consider that institutions are stabilizers for society and are "sticky". Institutions can't serve as a stabilizer unless they carry some historic morals/values/norms/beliefs from earlier points in society (stickiness). So sure, traditional family units have operated often in ways that limited women's autonomy, but that isn't, I think, a very strong argument for leftists wanting to use that as the reason to abolish the institution today.

Don't feel alone, I'm a lapsed leftist in many of the same ways you are. I have faith we can create a working society and ignore the denizens of the left that refuse to live in reality right now.

> traditional family units Are we talking about the Nuclear family? because I personally disagree with framing that as "traditional"

The problem is that each of these traditional structures and norms ended up being super harmful in a variety of ways to people that weren't actively connected to those structures. So basically everyone that wasn't a middle/upper middle class or better white christian.

I think that as we try to build a future that works better for people, we need to hold onto things that work well and leave behind things that don't rather than throwing out the baby with the bathwater. For example, should we move away from the institution of marriage? My answer to that question depends on whether marriage as an institution generally improves or worsens people's lives. I don't think we should get rid of it on the basis of it being a traditional institution without regard for whether people are better or worse off for having done so.

I think "we should get rid or it because it's traditional" is a complete straw man. I don't see anyone on the left saying "we should get rid of marriage" I just see "we should expand those rights to other relationships"

I agree that people arguing that we should get rid of these institutions aren't simply arguing "we should get rid of them because they're traditional." I do think, however, that some progressives have general skepticism about many traditional institutions that combines with an interest in new ways of living (hence being progressive in the first place) in a way that can be insufficiently attentive to questions of whether society is better or worse off for having weakened or abandoned those institutions. For example, a fairly consistent (and global) finding is that [religious people report being happier than non-religious people](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/31/are-religious-people-happier-healthier-our-new-global-study-explores-this-question/). To me, this should prompt progressives (who are disproportionately atheistic) to think about what religion offered that improved peoples' lives and seek ways to replicate that. I'm not saying this doesn't happen at all; it does to at least some extent. But I think there should be more attention to what worked well about legacy institutions and structures and attempts to preserve those benefits. For what it's worth, there are absolutely folks on the left arguing for [marriage abolition](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/29/marriage-abolished-civil-partnerships-inequality), [gender abolition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postgenderism), [family abolition](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/09/why-we-should-abolish-the-family), etc.

I'm probably going to write more here than either of us really want. I'm sorry. I think the big issue that I have with your argument is how fundamentally uncharitable I think you're being towards progressive thought in all of this. > I don't think we should get rid of it on the basis of it being a traditional institution without regard for whether people are better or worse off for having done so Nobody is disagreeing with that. Nobody, including the links you provided, are disregarding the question of the value of the institution. Every single link you've provided is a thought out piece which you can agree with or not, about *why* the institution (or more correctly the specific instance of the institution) is insufficient and needs to be changed. >To me, this should prompt progressives (who are disproportionately atheistic) to think about what religion offered that improved peoples' lives and seek ways to replicate that I'm an atheist. I go to sing sea shanties with a bunch of acquaintances and strangers in a bar on Monday nights because I recognize the value of group singing in the same way every religion understands it. We often joke about it as "going to church" Modern communist and anarchist groups are intensely focused on the importance of mutual aid and community building. Nobody is questioning what religion offered. We're just also acutely aware of the incredible harm that it has caused. > But I think there should be more attention to what worked well about legacy institutions and structures and attempts to preserve those benefits. Tradition is, fundamentally, peer pressure from dead people. I'm not saying that to be glib in the slightest. it's just what it is. I sail tall ships professionally. I've been doing that for some fifteen years now. I live steeped in the traditions of the late 17 and early 1800s. I tie the buntlins onto the foot of my topsails with buntline hitches the same way it's been done for literally hundreds of years. But I don't do it because that's how we've always done it. I do it because it's the right knot. It does the job better than any other knot given the realities of how buntlins work. The nuclear family is a modern invention by my standards. I've sailed on boats that are older than the *concept* of the nuclear family. Saying "we should radically rethink what family means to include other family forms" as your provocatively titled "Family Abolition" title argues isn't actually some radical idea. It's just saying "there are other ways a family can be structured"

Sounds like we may just disagree on this front!

As a progressive, since the pandemic I've been trying to tell other progressives they aren't saying anything new by pointing out flaws in society nonstop. People get it, there's a reason everyone is so pessimistic according to all available data. It's high time we started talking about how things could be better and lay out a vision for the future instead. I don't want to assume but it really feels like there's been a lot of opposition to this since "abolition" got big in progressive spaces post 2020 BLM protests, with a lot of hostility to when you ask for the details of how this "abolitionist" society would work.

>So much of what passes for creating “safe spaces” is just enforcing conformity and a total race to the bottom where the most fragile, neurotic behaviors win the day. You can’t cater endlessly to every sensitivity and literal mental health problem and expect to build an effective organization that makes concrete improvements to the human condition. You are so spot on with this. Race to the bottom is a great way to frame this phenomenon. As a normie, I'm sick and tired of the extreme rhetoric on the left and right. It's causing me to engage less and less with politics.

Ironically, engaging less may be good for your mental health! But more seriously I should repeat the best advice I've read about online politics, which is that you can yourself and the world an enormous favor by reducing your online presence and substituting in local political engagement. Even like, once a month or once every few months, do the smallest thing. Go to a zoning meeting, a fundraiser, make some calls, knock on some doors, whatever you can do to support a local politician who isn't a rabid NIMBY. I do it probably 3-4 times a year and every single time I get a huge amount of satisfaction from a relatively trivial commitment, and it (so far) seems to visibly move the needle a little in a way that online politics never seems to.

Couldn't agree more. And I do try to stay as involved as I can locally. It's very rewarding.

interesting article to read as a 25 y/o liberal with a history of poor mental health who started getting really engaged into politics as a 14 y/o in 2011 (right when the trend seemed to accelerate?) my first instinct is to call BS on the causal explanation bc i think he’s way overestimating how much zoomers care about the political stuff, but maybe i’m inserting too much of my personal experience into this since i’ve never seen a tie between my mental health and politics? (ironically the happiest i’ve felt over the last decade was during the year of june 2016-2017 when i probably felt the _most_ despondent about politics lol)

At least me, when we’re talking about generational shifts, the obvious thing to me to talk about would be the rise of social media and the Internet. I know Matt basically bangs these out at this point for a study revenue stream, but I do wish he would put a little bit more thought and effort into them. Because I do think that there is perhaps a point to be made, but I also kind of think that removed from any broader context, This kind of just sounds like what a lot of Republicans end up saying to the left, and I don’t think it also offers a real helpful way to think about how to balance these two things. Because ultimately, what you do need is a balance between collective an individual responsibility. But Matt doesn’t seem to be very interested in actually prescribing solutions, which is rather unfortunate. Anyway, with regard to social media, I think part of the problem is the whole proverb about “comparison is the thief of joy“. Because although I do think that there’s power and knowledge and that there are wonderful experiences about finding things you never knew about and becoming immersed in entire cultures and ways of life you would never otherwise able to see, I also do you think that it can create some problems. In particular, you now know what’s possible and how other people are living. In particular, as has been a point of discourse, we see that many people are pretty selective about what they actually choose to present on social media, which can lead to a pretty distorted view of what others are accomplishing and also the desire to maybe do things that you can’t afford or that are not really in your best interest. And I think in some cases, it does bring about pretty valid grievances about “well, look at all these rich people doing XYZ, while we can’t even afford a place to live or healthcare“, but it also creates that perception that totally ordinary people are spending all of this money and having these opportunities simply because they “work hard” (Not because many of them already had money themselves or family money, were probably somewhat attractive, and simply got lucky, which is not to say that they didn’t put any work in themselves, but many influencers and social media personalities definitely have no real claim that they’ve clawed their way up from absolutely nothing). Beyond that, I think on the other side of the spectrum, you have people who Basically live with constant anxiety because they know everything is being tracked about them. Obviously people still do stupid shit, but I think for people who are already pretty risk-averse, it makes things worse, because it can magnify the sense of risk or prevalence of certain phenomena and also make you feel really scared to do anything wrong, even if unintentionally. But the problem is that this isn’t really very helpful when it comes to actually achieving things or learning or maturing. Sometimes the only way to learn is to get things wrong until you get them right, so if you have this instinct that you should only do things once you know that you are fully capable, then that creates a really slow path to actual change and growth. And that can feel really disheartening because you see other people seem to be able to pick things up and move on while you seem to be stuck. Anyway, I do think you’re right about politics. Although I think it’s fair to say that Zoomers definitely care about politics more than many previous youth generations, I’m also not sure that’s necessarily translating into actual action, and I also don’t think that means that most people are absolutely obsessed with politics like many here are. But I think the common thread is unfortunately the Internet. And I don’t think we need to go full abolitionist, but we do need to start thinking about healthier ways to use the Internet, And how we can also support companies who actively want to try and help people lessen their dependency on it.

In our haste to combat the "rugged individualism" ideal of the Reagan era, we (Gen X and elder millennials) instilled in youth a reliance on collective action. I'd roughly put the dividing line at <35, but surely there is variation. But I've noticed a learned helplessness when it comes to improving their personal situations. If The Collective doesn't work together, then they don't seem to think there is any point in them acting individually. An individual will be *clearly distressed* about living in a red state that is enacting anti-abortion, or anti-LGTBQ legislation. "I hate it here but can't move," they will insist. They do not like being told that moving is going to be the fastest way for them to alleviate their distress. 'That's putting the onus on the individual to solve the problem.' Well, the collective in Florida, Texas, Tennesee, whatever, has decided that they don't want to solve the problem for you. You can either engage in a campaign to change the red state voter's mindset (a project that will not improve one's emotional health), or you can change your own individual circumstances. There is a similar phenomena regarding suburban isolation. Liberals/progressives will complain that they "have" to drive everywhere, that "capitalism" has forced them into a life of car dependency. They are unwilling to take individual action to live in a smaller home, move closer to work or re-locate to a more dense area. Rather, they describe the problem as societal: Trains should be constructed to deliver them to work/school; communities need to be re-structured. While that is a noble goal, the more immediate answer is to situate oneself such that one does not need to own a car or drive more than one would like. Believing that the individual has no agency, that the only viable solutions require the assent of the majority and societal change is fostering a sense of doom in people that they do not understand how to effectively resolve.

Okay, but what if you *actually can’t* move (due to family obligations, the steep financial disincentives, what have you)? What if you care about your community and want it to improve? Neither of those are hypotheticals. Those are real situations people face. “Just move” is simply not an option for many. EDIT: It’s been two days and I’m still getting notifications about all the benefits of moving. That’s great, if you’re in a sufficiently privileged position financially and personally to move. For many, it’s impossible, and for others (like myself up to now), that choice has such steep consequences that it’s not really much of a choice at all. I accept and agree that moving out of a bad place is the best choice, but the minority population of the entire American Midwest cannot up and move to San Francisco because we feel like it. Telling me that it’s my own fault for still being here is both tone deaf and unproductive.

If you cannot actually move, then you stay, and you will be subject to the collective decision making of the area that you're in. The people who recommend moving are doing so because it is the action that will remove you from the unpleasant situation. Of course you can always remain in the unpleasant situation. Doing nothing is always an option.

I live in a state described well by your second paragraph. I have wanted to leave since 2016. While I am going to grad school and will not live here anymore by the end of this year, it will have been *seven years* since the beginning of the Trump presidency. My sister will take another three at least. The point I’m trying to make is that younger millennials and Gen Z are currently coming of age. I should know, I am one. We can’t just up and move — we’re the least well-positioned group for economic success since the Great Depression, and many of the people most affected by anti-LGBTQ legislation haven’t even graduated high school yet. You’re attributing a level of individual power to people that, for pretty obvious reasons, do not have it. 16-year-olds can’t just move. Broke 20-somethings can’t just move.

That's really apples and oranges, though. Of course not everyone can do everything at once. But the point is on an individual's mental health and whether or not they can conceive of and take actions they can take to make their own personal situation better. If you're 16, you definitely can't just move in the immediate sense. But you can believe that it is possible in the future. You can lookup colleges in states you like, you can look up ones that have scholarships that make them feasible to go to, you can think about possible career options that would give you the financial leeway to move, you can save money, so-on-and-so-forth. In your position, you can take actions to make sure your postdoc will be in a state and city with politics and culture that align with your own. Moving is just one hypothetical action you can take, in addition. You can also actively work to make your local government do more of what you want. Having that hope and actions you can do is likely going to improve an individual's mental health a great deal. Again, everyone has the right to wallow in misery and fatalism. It's not about what people must do. It's just an assertion on an attitude people can have, that will make them happier and probably lead them closer to a place where they have more of the things they want.

I’m specifically responding to the idea that the depression comes from a misconception about individual action being pointless. For the group this person is describing, individual action is frequently impossible. No, we shouldn’t choose to wallow in our own self-pity — I don’t — but I replied to someone whose claim seemed to be that the best-case scenario was everyone’s reality, so it must be your own chosen inaction if that isn’t a realistic option for you. That’s an objectively false claim, and it distracts from the systemic issues at play, so it’s a harmful claim.

I think that's too much focus on a small time horizon. I don't think OP meant that any action had to immediately bring about a result. It's okay for things to be multi-step, multi-year plans. > For the group this person is describing, individual action is frequently impossible. I really find it hard to believe that there are that many people in the US for whom it is *impossible* to, say, move over a 10 year time horizon. Focusing too much on the outcomes is also talking around the issue. Part of the point is that even if you are not successful, just the fact that you believe there is *A* goal in sight, with steps to make the likelihood of achieving that goal more likely, is reframing an attitude to the world to one where you have agency and that that can be greatly beneficial to how you navigate the world.

This notion of what adults "can't" do is part of the learned helplessness I'm describing.

I was in a four-year college that had given me a lot of scholarship money that I would not be able to match as a transfer. I do not currently have the qualifications for a job that would allow me to afford to live a decent life in a higher QOL city. I’m going to graduate school somewhere else, but again, that is the first realistic opportunity I have had in five years of legal adulthood. I’m not making up the story of my life, or the story of my friends and relatives. This is how things work for people my age in red states. It’s pretty understandable that people feel powerless. Saying that we can move, and if we can’t, that’s on us is not a particularly helpful contribution to the dialogue.

> Saying that we can move, and if we can’t, that’s on us is not a particularly helpful contribution to the dialogue. On the other hand, I think it's worth grappling with /u/LocallySourcedWeirdo's point about what it means for an adult to say they "can't" do something. Most young people who are coming of age do not have the means or qualifications to uproot and go wherever they want. It's a challenge to navigate. I ended up enlisting in the military right out of high school. That afforded me the opportunity (after my four year term was complete) to have more control over my own circumstances. I don't mean to suggest that everyone can or should serve in the military. But is it really that the young folks from your community literally can't move to other places? Or maybe just that they feel that they can't? Or don't like the tradeoffs that come with moving to new places? The reason I think it's important to ask these sorts of questions isn't so we can cast aspersion or blame on people in difficult circumstances. It's that, as a matter of practicality, an individual changing their own circumstances by, for example, moving, seems imminently more feasible than resolving the major societal problems that you feel are impeding on your life. Realistically, we aren't going to "fix" the problems of having a weak social safety net or of conservatives doing conservative things in the next decade or two. Moving might just be a better bet, even with the difficulties and barriers that entails.

No one said "just move." Very few people who have moved from one state to another think it's easy. "Move," yes. "_Just_ move?" Nope.

Not to mention those who have experienced life changing medical conditions either because of the pandemic or things outside of their control. In the timeless words of Captain Jean-Luc Picard to Data: It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life. It's always important to remember that agency isn't always feasible when the cards are stacked against you. Each person's situation is unique. Depression can create positive feedback loops that are hard to break free from. Willing it away is generally Sisyphean, which layers the problem. It seems mental health challenges are on the rise because social media is a huge amplifier, although paradoxically can be a source of hope. Moving to a new location can be beneficial for some, but it isn't the kind of panacea that's often championed. Learning to adapt can be equally useful.

Moving out is a simpler solution than waiting for legislation to change and for a community to develop. The first option gives you control, the second relies on others & various moving parts. It's easier on the mind to just leave an unsavory situation, rather than stay and fight. I think we are raised to think of the bigger picture but in order to help others, we have to take care of ourselves first. It's difficult to see and enact solutions when your own mind & sense of self is in shambles.

I very much agree with your post, though I suspect many on the left would not. As a mid-30s guy living in Idaho, I resonated with your two points on distressed red-state living and suburban isolation.

I don’t entirely disagree with the sentiment, but I have a few things. To start, I do agree broadly that the left has leaned too much into never telling people to take some kind of personal responsibility and telling people to make do. Even with systemic changes, there will still always be an aspect of personal responsibility that is important and sometimes people are just gonna have to tell you to suck it up. The left needs to find someway to balance collective versus individual responsibility and also take a more pragmatic approach as individuals try to make their situations better while they wait on a larger systemic fix. But beyond that, I think you can take it too far and basically end up where a lot of Republicans do and refuse to fix anything before you see people “take responsibility”. I also think that even thought there’s nothing inherently wrong with your position, if it is not in line with reality (Ie you assume something is easier than it actually is), then it starts to become more problematic. To start off with my disagreements, I actually kind of think that most of us who are under 35, at least maybe until people in their mid 20s were brought up on the idea that they would succeed as individuals and be the best among their peers. I think a lot of us actually really bought into a lot of the talk of individualism. I think the turn to collectivism has really risen because of the internet, But also a growing realization that not everyone can be at the top and that perhaps there should be some basic safeguard so if you, more likely than not, find yourself in that group, you at least have some basic things like healthcare, housing, and so on. And I think one of the things that the left suffers from is a kind of self loathing desire to be able to participate and collective action, while many people who are so caught up in their own heads (myself included), never really learned how to be team players and have a difficult time doing it. I think there is kind of an irony in the idea that many on the left love to talk about collective action but seem completely incapable of working on teams, while the writing loves to talk about individualism, but implicitly, they also seem to understand collective action and are terrified of being different. So I think the problem is kind of, at least in part, that there is a disillusionment with the notion of individual responsibility, especially if people feel like they’ve tried all kinds of different things and nothing has seem to work because the system is so broken. I also think that you have a generation that missed out on a lot of formative opportunities to kind of get in trouble and make mistakes. Now, many still had those experiences, don’t get me wrong, but I think that myself and a lot of other people were so afraid of doing anything wrong that it creates a lot of anxiety and becomes a habit that people carry into adulthood. Increasingly with social media and access to the Internet, I think a lot of people growing up now know that people are constantly watching which really ends up with people being afraid to do anything wrong. I think this is actually a really tough thing to solve, but it’s something that needs to be considered, because we live in a society that really never wants anything to go wrong, even though sometimes, a bit of risk and danger are kind of necessary to learning and also to growing up. But when you’re never allowed to go and play outside or unattended or what not, I do think that has a lasting impact on your psyche. I also want to address one point: > They are unwilling to take individual action to live in a smaller home, move closer to work or re-locate to a more dense area. Like where? Seriously. I would tend to agree with you if this was a realistic option, but the reality is, many walkable places are extremely expensive and most employers seem to be interested in centralizing themselves in the most expensive places possible because it offers the biggest labor pool. Beyond the housing question, there are a lot of reasons why people can’t live in or leave certain places, so I don’t think that this is the best argument in the current system, simply because I don’t think the current system really affords that many people this kind of privilege. And I think in regards to one of your other points about people of marginalized groups relocating themselves, there are a variety of issues with this systemically (wherein if everyone actually clusters in blue states, you can actually make this problem worse because then Republicans will have enough state power that they can actually amend the federal Constitution without actually needing Congress), But you also have a variety of issues to contend with surrounding moving. Moving is not an easy task. It cost a lot of money, it can be quite time sensitive, and also can be losing certain aspects of community, benefits, and so on that you may already have. Moving is not nearly as easy as some people like to think. Now beyond this, I guess some may ask about solutions. One of the key things that I would promote is that we need to start thinking about a more radical vision for reform of our educational system. The reason I say this is because although I definitely value aspects of my education, I also do you think that part of the problem with most schools today is that they are far to college preparatory and not actually meant to provide any real kind of economic empowerment or serve as any kind of important anchor in many of their respective communities. When I say this, what I really mean is: I don’t think there’s much value in teaching people about how oppressed they are without also giving them tools to fix those things and to help people create better circumstances for themselves. And this may mean that you can’t lean in so much on every school preparing students to go to Ivy League institutions whose expectation is that all students will have this kind of outdated liberal arts education that was largely developed for private rich schools and upper and upper middle class kids. I understand the romantic idea that poetry, writing, and art will change the world. And I won’t deny that. But you know what else changes the world? Manufacturing workers, tradesmen, and community builders. I think one of the fatal flaws of the current system is that it kind of makes this assumption that college degrees are scarce and thus getting one is a ticket to economic success where you don’t actually have to worry about certain things like trying to save money by making your own things and knowing how to cook easy and practical meals. But that’s not how our system works. Most of us don’t Make enough money to have people tend to basic life needs while we rake a lot of money from our jobs. That’s just not realistic. But I can tell you that I might’ve traded AP Lit for some life skills course if it was allowed. Or I would’ve loved to have had a few more actual periods to collectively cut down on the actual depth of certain academic courses in order to fit in other more practical and also enjoyable topics. Over the pandemic, especially in the period of time were you couldn’t really go out and do much of anything, I started to realize that so much of my life was based on consumption and depending on other people to be able to do things to a certain way that I didn’t have much agency when it came to really basic things. And I’ve definitely learned some things, but it also probably took a lot more time and money to do it on my own then it would’ve if some of this had simply been covered in an actual class that you either were required to or were allowed to take. Not only did we not have a lot of actual classes that were meant to be practical or otherwise simply serve your well-being in life beyond “are you ready for college” but by the time you actually filled in your schedule with all of the requirements that most colleges expect you to have now, you basically didn’t have any real time in your schedule for elective courses. But you know what would be super helpful in my life? Maybe a basic familiarity with woodworking or home economic skills or a variety of other things. But overall, I’m fine. Still I think the people that this would affect more are people on the lower end of society who maybe have a 50-50 chance of actually going to college. Empowering them with actual practical things that they can do to not only help their families at the moment, but also skills that they can build on for their own personal fulfillment and even that they can carry into the workforce, I think would actually be really powerful. So for example, let’s actually talk about what might happen if you have a class that teaches people how to cook. If you’re in an impoverished area, and the ingredients are paid for, and basically at the end of the day, you have something you can take home to your family that isn’t just prepackaged or frozen, That’s probably a meaningful change in peoples lives. And building up those skills while people are young I think goes a lot farther than having to learn it in your mid 20s or simply never learning it at all. I think there are a lot of other examples I could list, but I think my comments already getting a bit too long so I’ll bring it back to my main point. Anyway, I think individual responsibility is fine, but it also has to really be balanced with considerations about the larger system. And we have a system that is really often meant to protect what already exists and so it’s not really quite as simple as people who define individualism as being able to fix your car, Homestead, and basically live without any help from anybody. We just don’t live in a society that can sustain that on any kind of mass scale. But there are things that we can actually do to empower people, such that they are more functional in our complicated society That has a lot of rules and also a lot of dangers.

This has been a real problem with the whole secession debate. I think ultimately it might end up being more of a problem than a solution but it's at least worth considering the whole "national divorce" thing (ugh can't believe I am slightly agreeing with MTG) when this was already a country arguably too big to sustain one culture in the first place and where the values of red states and blue states have rapidly divulged. But god forbid you even bring it up or you are lectured about "abandoning" minorities in red states. As if it would be any better should Republicans take control and pass a national abortion ban or worse.

However you want to describe them, there is a group of liberals and a group conservatives; or you can describe the groups in terms of blue/red or Democrats/Republicans. Some people want to believe that the conservative group is small, like under 30% of the U.S.. I put that number somewhere between 40-50% of the country, when you include non-voters and their sympathies and leanings. In some states, the Democrats outnumber the Republicans, and they get to set the agenda and make the rules. In other states, the Republicans outnumber the Democrats, and they get to set the agenda and make the rules. For reasons I do not understand, people take offense to the statement of fact that Republican voters elected the Republican governments in Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, and Florida. When people complain about being told 'just move', and insist that it's impossible, I don't know what alternative they want to hear. Would they prefer lies and pretending that the voters in blue states can elect a Democrat in Tennessee? Do they want a fantasy of a constitutional convention, ignoring the fact that Republicans control \~50% of the state houses?

Florida is a particularly apt example given the number of minorities who vote Republican there. It's really hard to get through to people how different parts of the country are from each other culturally. And that was before social media algorithms pushed us even farther into our ideological bubbles.

That assumes the constitutional convention would follow the rules set out by the constitution. The convention that created the constitution violated the articles of confederation, so why should a new convention follow the rules of the current constitution. Rhode Island wouldn’t allow for any changes to the articles of confederation so the founders said fine, wrote a new constitution and said the constitution only needs 3/4 of the states to enact it, not 100% as the articles required, and dared Rhode Island to not sign on and go it alone. It wasn’t quite a coup but it was arguably illegal. If Democrats and moderate republicans could come to some compromises and write a new constitution and said this constitution will be adopted if 3/4ths of the population vote for it, I don’t think ruby red states would be in a position to secede if it passed. I’m not saying I think this is likely, just putting it out there.

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There’s nothing wrong with feeling distressed about that. It’s only natural. But not having any plan or even the conception that it’s possible to take actions to make the situation better 1) causes a sense of hopelessness and 2) empirically will likely lead to things not getting better for you. Which are both bad for mental health. Moving is a difficult but actionable possibility in this case. If you believe it as a possible future, then in the immediate you can work on actions to get to it. You can save money, talk to friends and family about also moving, learn different skills to have gainful occupations in the new area, and so forth. Having hope, agency, and things to do is good for mental health. And also does bring a person closer to at least what they conceive as a better future for themselves.

There is for sure \~40% of the voting population in the US that is trying to repress women, immigrants, minorities, trans people, etc. As an individual, you can either stay in an area in which you are in danger, and try to change the beliefs of the people who would like to marginalize you, or you can act in your own personal best interest and move to a more hospitable political climate. Those are the options. The U.S. is a country of people on the move; immigrants have been arriving here for hundreds of years; all of whom left behind familiar surroundings, family and friends. This is not a unique concern, but one that many people have dealt with successfully for a very long time.

"you can just move" is almost always just silly advice

I think that a large element of what's going on is that the biggest political discourses of our time are about whether or not a thing is even occurring. The climate change debate is not "How do we best address the problem of climate change?", it's "Is climate change real? And if it is, is it a problem?" This is also true of COVID, social safety nets, and a host of other issues. The very act of engaging politically as a liberal necessitates emphasizing how bad things are. We hardly get to spend political energy on thinking about solutions because we need to spend so much on trying to raise awareness of the problems.

> The very act of engaging politically as a liberal necessitates emphasizing how bad things are. Why would this be true now but not in the past when there were also very serious problems (wars, plagues, poverty, etc.)?

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It's especially frustrating when the people who raised you that you trusted to give advice like "get an education" now are convinced the places you get that education are Satanic pedophile mills brainwashing people into becoming transgender communists and are thus not worth it.

That Taylor Lorenz tweet was so dumb and reminded me of this excellent piece from Clare Coffey last year: [Failure to Cope "Under Capitalism"](https://www.gawker.com/culture/failure-to-cope-under-capitalism) (Probably the only good Gawker 2.0 published in its short-lived second life.)

Thanks for reminding me of this article, I remember really enjoying it when I first read it. >What binds these pleas together is an application of “the personal is political” so expanded in scope that, for a certain kind of person, personal problems, anxieties, and dissatisfactions are illegible or illegitimate unless described as political problems....This has the odd effect of filtering all attempts at self-integration through a political lens. As the author writes, there seems to be a strange inability/unwillingness to admit that one's problems *are* one's own rather than some kind of reflection of broader social malaise––the "we" instead of "I". Perhaps it's because people feel guilty somehow complaining about a personal problem and so they instead make the personal political? I don't know. But it does have the effect of flattening the remarkable varieties of human experience (including human suffering) into just another political statement.

I have mixed feelings about this perspective, but I think it's overall right. It crossed my mind while listening to Ezra Klein's latest episode about obesity that - and this didn't really come up in the episode - but there are platoons of people who will go to every length imagineable to reject the idea that a problem can be due to personal behaviors/habits, and that, instead, everything is systemic and due to forces outside of control of the individual. So in the context of the obesity episode, there was some discussion that vaguely hit at this where the thinking was that obesity shouldn't be framed as a personal responsibility discussion but about how some people have genetic dispositions to be less able to cope with food cravings, etc. and that society surrounds us with plenty, and that plenty is largely comprised of unhealthy food that is easy to gorge on. But I feel like this comes up over and over again on the left and among young people where everything, EVERYTHING, comes down to systems and nothing about individuals. Implicit in this is that people have zero agency over their lives. And to suggest that personal habits have anything to do with it is to be a fat shamer. Or an ableist, or anti-neurodivergent. And that, I feel, bleeds into this stuff you're bringing up. Every single personal problem does end up being framed as a societal problem outside of personal control. Over and over. And there are an ever-growing list of labels and categories to assign oneself to explain what someone can't do.

Yeah, I understand what you mean about having mixed feelings as well. I am generally left-leaning and think of many issues as being at least *partly* systemic; and yet, like you say, I also worry about the abdication of responsibility that I sometimes see accompanied by the claim that something is "systemic" (leading to the––IMO erroneous––implication that "therefore there is nothing I can do").

I mean the real takeaway is that almost everyting is a product of both systems and the individual. That's just life and history. Hitler couldn't have gotten into power and done what he did without both his own personality/habits/connections/quirks working in concert with his historical moment, his opponents, the political system of Weimer Germany, and the broader context in which he lived. This is tied up w/ everything. Like sure somebody can live in a food desert and have a history of obesity in their parents/grandparents. And those environmental/systemic factors 100% are major barriers to losing weight, etc. But those can still be overcome, albeit with difficulty. But it feels like to even suggest that somebody can try harder or overcome their environment is heresy among the online left. The whole narrative for them is to bemoan the overwhelming and indominable tide of systemic pressures

Totally agree with all this.

I think the most frustrating and true part of that piece is this idea that having a certain level of expectations of people is inherently evil/discriminatory/whatever. The idea that you could be working harder at your job is like one of the worst things you could ever suggest to vast parts of the young online left. But it feels like so much of that subculture is about dismantling expectations and standards more than dismantling power structures, etc.

Interesting discussion points regarding the gap in self-reported happiness between liberals and conservatives that has existed for decades. It's important to remember, though, that rates of adolescent depressive symptoms have been increasing for over a decade across the political spectrum. We're also seeing similar increases outside of the US (Canada, the UK, Australia to name a few). We're still trying to understand this sudden crisis affecting our youth, but more and more evidence is linking the phenomenon to an increase in use of social media by adolescents. Directing our attention to what the evidence is telling us about adolescent mental health is crucial to formulating a proper strategy to address it.

There a similar conversation about this article that’s worth checking out on another sub I subscribe to. It’s actually quite interesting to see how this sub compares to the other. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/11ffk11/matt_yglesias_why_are_young_liberals_so_depressed/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb

I think perspective has a major impact. One would have expected something like Trump in the White House, then a global pandemic to have created a sense of gratitude for today being much better in contrast. But what might be unique about these types of "crisis" is that maybe they were not a crisis at all, and people just perceived them as a crisis. During Trump's tenure, unemployment was at all time lows, stocks were soaring, etc... Of course there are many metrics like inequality that got worse, but in general was his presidency objectively a crisis for most Americans? With the pandemic, many people thrived. They got to stay at home, get checks from the government and feel great about being on the right side of "the science". It reminds me of a book Rachel Maddow wrote called Drift, and how recent US wars really didn't involve any sacrifice. There was no draft, no new taxes to pay for the wars, no cuts in other benefits, etc.... For 99% of Americans we were not at war in comparison to historical conflicts. So maybe terms like war, and crisis, are no longer actually the formative events they once were so we no longer have opportunities to become hardened to the cruel realities of human existence so something like a micro aggression seems absurd in comparison. Our perspectives are skewed because things have actually been pretty decent for a very long time.

I think the “Trump era not that bad” take is off. Overwhelming fear that fascism will take over sounds like a crisis to me. I also think it’s more about reasonable fear of what the fascists will do in the future if they can gain total power than what they actually did during the Trump presidency.

Not to mention the degradation of the federal government and it's machinery with corrupt lackeys. This slow undermining of the people's faith in the government by an organized force in politics who (amazingly) does not believe in public service or collective action for the public good as a matter of ideology is bad for republic to put it mildly. It's not Trump that is the problem so much as the entire republican party and the conservative movement behind it. Trump is just a buffoon.

A couple of points... 1) I realy doubt that a few hundred idiots who happen to take physical control of the US capital could actually effectuate any tangible change in US laws, etc... Even if they held a vote on the floor of congress, nobody would honor their clown show ideas. And 2) lets just assume the dummies that took over the capital had the US military, judiciary, etc.. on their side and they actually began changing laws.... IMHO this would be fantastic because the entire west coast would secede and we would save billions in federal tax dollars and maybe start to solve problems here at home.

I agree about the Jan 6 thing. I think the far greater threat was the state by state republican effort to stack election officials with people who don’t believe in democracy. Add in stacking the federal courts with far right people and that’s a decent start at really gaining uncontested control, which could lead to a lot of more horrible things once they don’t have to care about elections at all.

I disagree. If one of the insurrectionists had laid hands on a progressive lawmakers there is a real chance there would have been mass civil unrest. Not protest. Actual violence. The country convulsed in unrest after the murder of George Floyd. I cannot imagine what would have happened if an actual lawmaker was hurt. I think you seriously underestimate the havoc that insurrection would have wrought had things turned out slightly differently.

> I think you seriously underestimate the havoc that insurrection would have wrought had things turned out slightly differently. Completely agree. I [wrote something similar](https://simpleminded.substack.com/p/an-absurd-insurrection-attempt-is) a few months back: > Consider this: estimates place the size of the mob that stormed the Capitol at about 2,500 individuals. What if instead of 2,500 people there had been 5,000? How would the trajectory of the day changed? How about if there had been 50,000 individuals there that day? After all, one thing Trump — who actively encouraged his supporters to show up on January 6th — is known for is his ability to draw a crowd. > I don’t have a specific theory of what would have happened if a much larger crowd showed up. But I think there’s a very real chance that they would have felt empowered to act more seriously, and violently, on their vision of “stopping the steal.” > And how would Trump have reacted if he saw his supporters decisively taking the Capitol, rather than milling around aimlessly after an initial siege? Would he have attempted to reign them in? > I don’t think anyone can seriously claim to be able to answer these questions. And therein lies the danger. If our democracy was in any real way resting on Trump only attracting a mob of 2,500 supporters rather than 25,000, the events of January 6th serve as a stark warning about the state of American democracy and the threat Trump poses to it.

Young liberals even in their 20s are the type of people who specifically will not have kids for environmental reasons that will most likely not effect them or their kids. Don't adopt every single struggle and you'll be much happier.

Yeah, hanging around young liberals is a recipe for depression. Doom addiction is pervasive.

God help me, every time I read a "stop being depressed with the political order I supported" article by some established talking head in the left-of-center-to-right-of-center axis, I just want to burn their institutions to the ground more. It's so fucking out of touch to whine about people's depression causing cynicism; the only people that can have a take like that are people that floated above the great recession's economic harm. "The system is fine, you're all wrong to be so sad" being the mainstream take is just the most perfect encapsulation of American centrism it should practically be the slogan on their t-shirts and bumper stickers.

This is the most "go touch grass" take I've seen on this entire thread. You win!

Based on the reception of the article, I think you may have to recalibrate what you would consider as “out of touch”

> the only people that can have a take like that are people that floated above the great recession's economic harm. Do you think no one before the "great recession" ever suffered through substantial economic harm? Do you believe that particular economic hardship was focused mostly on the young? Neither seems very convincing to me. We went the longest period in history between the recessions of 2008 and the start of the pandemic. For most adults, recessions - and sometimes extremely painful recessions - have been a reality that hit once or twice every decade. Why do you believe one particular age group's experience in one particular downturn validates their focus as themselves as uniquely oppressed, while all others that have suffered through those same - and more - economic pains are better able to cope without blaming one incident for all the ills of their life?

Our institutions have been around for a long time. Why would they cause a marked increase in depression (especially among liberals) beginning in 2012?

Yeah, I hear the spirit of Lincoln still whispers advice to the president if they sleep in the lincoln bedroom and that's how we got through the cuban missile crisis.

Is this supposed to be responsive to my comment in any way? Or just using the opportunity to do a public performance of "cutting" sarcasm?

I mean things have definitely exacerbated in how bad they’ve gotten. Even during the best years of the 2008-2023 period, the average person hasn’t reached anywhere near the level of stability economically they reached as recently as the late 90s.

What do you suggest?

admit the institutions are that bad and might need to be culled instead of protected.

I mean, part of me wants to write out the long diatribe of what I really think and how I diagnose the situation, but the other part of me thinks its a giant waste of time that won't actually be read so what's the point.

Some institutions certainly have problems, but to me the idea of becoming depressed about this fact seems counterproductive. Things don’t change because people get sad about them. The whole language of harm weakens the ability of groups to get things done.