Politics is an Old Mans Game

politics

is an old man’s game and as someone who

is not

old or a man it fascinates me

granted the only first-hand experience

i’ve had with politics

is in fifth grade student council but

through my

endless fascination with politics i’ve

become

less interested in who wins and more

interested in

how they win take for example the 2016

u.s presidential election now don’t

worry i’m not dumb enough to tell you my

personal opinions on everything that

went down

but just in case you’ve been living

under a rock donald trump won

not by simple majority but by electoral

vote

but i told you we’d be focusing on the

how so let’s just ignore that for now

let’s say if you were of legal age and

registered to vote

but didn’t they marked that on a ballot

as

one vote for this i didn’t vote

candidate and you’ve got your red for

republicans and blue for democrats right

let’s say i didn’t vote was tan

in 2016 i didn’t vote would have won

in a landslide

i got this map on the obviously well

named website

brilliant maps based off of an atlas

filled with ideas just like these

ideas that no one really talks about low

voter cri

low voter turnout is an american crisis

the states has one of the lowest voter

turnouts of democracies worldwide

but no major news network is going to

pull up this map

when we talk about what happens in the

2020 election this fall

and i think it becomes even more of an

issue when i show you who actually

is voting all the way up there

the smallest chunk that’s my age range

or at least it will be in two years

and down here we have the 60 plus crowd

and thanks to data from the circle civic

engagement group

i can also show you how they voted

blue voters increased with age 6.5

percent

red voters increase 20.5

and given that trump was running under

red the republicans

i’m saying that the 60-plus crowd are

the people that won

donald trump his presidency

this is why politics is an old man’s

game

but the key is it doesn’t have to be

if you take ib psychology the first

thing they teach

you about a self-selected population is

that it isn’t necessarily representative

of the whole

i mean it makes sense it takes a certain

type of person

to willingly let people experiment on

your brains

and if you think about it the same logic

applies to voting

only the most passionate will go out on

a cold november day

and wait in line for hours just to check

a box on a ballot

but if you know anything about my age

range you know that we are

not short on opinions we are not short

on things that we’re passionate about

things that get us excited things to

yell about

141 million tweets

on only the top five policy issues that

were big in 2016.

141 million aggressively loud and

self-righteous opinions this graph

was taken from twitter’s internal data

from the first day of 2016

to the 3rd of november a full 5 days

before the votes were counted

and released on november 8 2016.

so they’ve eliminated any whiny tweets

about the results

why aren’t these people voting

my issue with this graph and why i think

you should have an issue with this graph

isn’t the trump one

love him or hate him trump’s political

influence will come and go

just like the 44 presidents before him

my issue with this graph is if 53.9

of young americans didn’t advocate for

their opinion

when it came to an issue as polarizing

as trump versus clinton

why would they advocate for themselves

when it comes to more subliminal issues

whose effects might last for the next

hundred years

why would they vote when it comes to

climate change policies

you know who is gonna vote when it comes

to climate change policies

and in 2016 when there are entire cities

underwater

and we can’t raise our children outside

because the pollution is too dangerous

for growing lungs

and we are struggling to provide a drop

of water for the lower class when my

generation is

fighting for a livable future

those people will be dead

we are laying around complaining about

how

everything in our lives are going

downhill

but we lack the agency to do anything

about it

but i’m 16. i can’t vote

why should i be standing up here talking

to you all about the power

of a democracy that i can’t even

participate in

and while we’re on it i’m sure every one

of you has little reasons why you just

didn’t manage to cast that vote

maybe you just became of age and you

don’t know how

maybe you don’t come from a politics

family maybe you had a nasty cold the

day of

i don’t know i’m not one to judge but

even over the course of this ted talk

you’ve probably had some pretty

visceral reactions towards like trump

or climate change and you’ve definitely

gotten into a fair few arguments over

twitter

or facebook or at the family dinner

table over the holidays

and to me where you stand on any of

these issues is irrelevant

i’m not trying to tell you what to think

that negates the point of democracy

and i’ve shown you a lot of graphs and

honestly none of them really matter

either

u.s politicians and twitter

and voter turnout is just a way to

represent

an endemic problem what does matter

is that we fight for the future that we

want

so badly

and if you need another example

a lot of people are going to get up on

this stage tonight

and tell you how you can make your life

better

but they’re just words

change requires action

you choose to listen

you choose to think

you choose to feel

now act thank you