Thanks to Starmer and the Supremes, the old guys are at it again.
Only this time, instead of telling other old people what our federal election was all about, they’re shouting all the familiar lines about lowering the voting age.
Don’t they know kids these days don’t even drink? Or drive?
None of their arguments are new or interesting. But what should we expect from status quo thinking about the status quo? A few repetitive quips from fellow 44-year-old Jesse Kline will have to suffice:
- “If you think politics is bad now, just wait till an army of pimple-faced teenagers who get most of their “news” from TikTok are given a say over who’s in charge.”
- “if you think political proselytizing is a problem in schools today, just wait until all those hippie teachers realize their gullible high school students could change the course of an election.”
Apparently, the gates to democracy won’t keep themselves!
Our performative pundits make no attempt to consider, let alone develop, better arguments about how we might improve the allocation and exercise of democratic rights.
Maybe the UK Labour government really was motivated to drop the voting age to 16 by cynical partisanship, and the supposedly left-leaning party is just targeting the innate optimism socialism of youth.
Or maybe Sir Keir and his crew have grasped the fundamental unfairness of political institutions that impose unprecedented environmental, economic, and social costs on young people via carbon emissions, public (and publicly supported) debt, and “austerity” measures that exacerbate inequality while undermining solidarity. Starmer himself says he wants to restore the social contract with younger generations.
I prefer a slightly more radical take.
The establishment knows our political and economic systems are vampiric: they transfer wealth and opportunities from young people and future generations to older incumbents, often in ways those incumbents do not understand. Remember: nearly 50% of Canadian adults are functionally illiterate.
Advocates for a lower voting age don’t want “fresh ideas”, they want fresh blood. They want to co-opt young people into institutions that are rigged against them. So long as young people cannot vote, those inter-generational transfers are blatantly unilateral, arguably illegitimate, and potential targets for retaliation. Housing tax, anyone? Wealth tax, comrade?
By lowering the voting age, older generations would implicate younger citizens in their pyramid scheme. They would neutralize, or at least weaken, arguments about the fairness and legitimacy of these inter-generational wealth transfers because more young people would have the opportunity to participate in the elections that perpetuate these harmful policies. If more of them have the vote, then young people will have less excuse for their inability to move out of mom’s basement.
The risk of this strategy backfiring on boomers and costing them an election is limited because:
- there are not that many 16- and 17-year-olds;
- younger people are still less likely to vote than old people; and
- at least in Canada, none of the major parties has a plan to help young people (of course, that could change if more teenagers had the vote…and turned out…and donated to the parties…and had well-funded lobbyists advocating on their behalf….you get my point).
Adults use stereotypes of innocence and naivete to deny young people agency and equality. Sometimes, like Walter White, we use that rhetoric to valorize our own selfish decisions. Andrew Coyne, ever the crotchety contrarian, contemplates raising the voting age to 25 in part because “it is undeniable that your average 18-to-20 year-old had more life experience 50 years ago than today.” Typical reactionary wheeze.
Fortunately for Mr. Coyne and his cohort, unlike 20th century suffragettes, few teenagers today are fiending for the franchise. Possibly Mr. Kline is correct and they have all been lobotomized by algos. Maybe they all trust their parents and grandparents to do right, despite all the contrary evidence. Perhaps they sense the precarious legitimacy of our political system and would rather not join the questionable and ultimately futile pursuit of raiding the future to gild the past. (We should probably just ask them.)
I know my argument might sound exaggerated, even paranoid: how can the vote – the hard-won treasure of democracy – be a poisoned chalice?
But ask a different question, get a different answer: what would 16- and 17-year-olds be giving up in exchange for the vote? TANSTAAFL. Everything has a price.
The trade-off is clear: for political purposes, enfranchised youth would become ordinary citizens. Part of the system. Just like the rest of us. Normal. Disenchanted.
There is a protean power in the purity of youth. We create and maintain that power by insisting on this stark division between young people and adults. Youth embody the future. Unsullied by compromise and unburdened by Mr. Coyne’s “life experience,” young people could still be so many different things. They could still choose to act and live very differently from us, a capability which is both essential and unsettling. Children dabble and dream, whereas adults face reality and follow rules.
Adults infantilize youth in large part to contain and control their capacity for radical change, which we first project upon them and then pathologize and discipline. And when we can no longer infantilize young people, we seek to neutralize them by normalizing them: converting them into adults who are responsible for their choices made within established institutions and according to inherited rules.
We flatten the future until it resembles the past. We displace our inherent and precious capacity for creation onto our children. Then we progressively drill it out of them. We are all trapped by the duality of youth and adulthood. Maybe we like it that way. Frightened by the myriad possibilities our own lives present, we use the concept of “youth” to contain that threat in the harmless guise of development and experimentation. Then, we claim to work and worry so the children in our lives can be free and unfinished. We prefer the dour martyrdom of self-sacrifice to the dramatic uncertainty of constant re-invention.
Never get old. It’s a trap.
Agios Nikolaos, Crete
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