This is Democracy – Episode 2: Coming of Age in the Shadow of Trump

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Introduction with many voices: This is Democracy- a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s most influential democracy.
Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of “This Is Democracy.” I’m so excited for our show today. We have with us one of our star students here at The University of Texas, and someone I know all of you are going to be hearing more about, a future leader of our society, Kelsey Ritchie. Kelsey, nice to have you here.
Kelsey Ritchie: Thank you so much, I’m so excited for this conversation.
Jeremi Suri: We are delighted to have you on. Kelsey and I are going to talk about a number of things. We’re going to talk about the difficulties today in trying to find a space for individuals who care about our societies and bring different points of views together. Kelsey comes from a conservative religious background, but she’s also an activist, and deeply concerned about a lot of issues concerning the American debt, the treatment of citizens, immigration. And how does a young person like Kelsey, young ambitious, talented person, find space for views across political lines? And how do you influence policy? We’re going to talk a lot about that. And I know Kelsey has a lot to say. And of course we have Zachary Suri here, how are you this morning Zachary?
Zachary Suri: Good, tired.
Jeremi Suri: Tired? Zachary has an original poem for us. He’s going to have original poetry for each of our shows and in each case, a poem that’s designed to fit the theme. What’s your poem today about, Zachary?
Zachary Suri: It’s hard to summarize it, but it’s sort of about like realizing that you can’t, you can’t be complacent anymore. That you have to like, you have to feel strong emotions, you can’t try and like hide from them.
Jeremi Suri: Wow, what’s the title?
Zachary Suri: “In a Quieter Time.”
Jeremi Suri: Well, do you want to read it for us?
Zachary Suri: Sure. In a quieter time, in a more peaceful place, I swam in a frigid lake beneath the shadow of an alpine summit. It was the clearness of the water, the absolute, undeniable cold that numbed the body, and this for many years stayed with me. An occasional recollection, a backward glance to a once upon a time. A distance of years led to a night of pain in front of the TV on the couch, watching Michigan quickly slip away and then Pennsylvania, and then Wisconsin. I wanted to lose all feeling again, but I lacked the courage. Sometimes I long to be numb again, lost in a place without feeling. I take a cold shower with the news playing on the radio in the other room. Time passed, as it sometimes will, and I remember seething in the back seat of the car when the death was announced from Virginia that August day, and the Texas heat bored into me and I wanted to be numb again, but I couldn’t. And I dream often of rain, of snow, I guess to numb the feeling. And I wake up with the face of my stuffed companion plastered to my face and I walk to breakfast this way, wanting to stay in that moment forever, but I can’t.
So I move on to bigger things, I walk to the bus stop wishing it would rain and sit in the back of a classroom, head on my desk, wanting to be numb. One day, in the middle of what would have been a torturous band practice, it snowed for the first time in years. I walked outside in the Texas snow, smiling up at the sky and felt numb, and I went home wanting to feel numb forever, but I still listened to the radio that night as I went to bed and time passed. On Valentine’s Day, the fourteenth of February, the fourteenth of February this year, I wanted to feel numb again. I wanted to be frozen alone in front of the TV forever. I wanted to shut the radio off and go to sleep, but I knew that I couldn’t. I couldn’t be numb anymore. And huddled in math class days later, lights off, for a drill I knew was fake, the only one shivering and scared, I knew I wouldn’t be for a very long time, I knew I couldn’t be complacent anymore.
Jeremi Suri: Wow. There’s a lot in that poem, the election, the Charlottesville riots, Parkland– the shooting in Parkland. What motivated you to write this poem, Zachary?
Zachary Suri: I don’t know when– I don’t really think there was some big reason why I wrote this poem, but I do think that, like, I do think that the last part is like the most– really important. About how, like, we can’t pretend that the violence is only happening to other people because it’s happening so often that it’s really hard to just think, “Oh it’s going to happen to the next person, not me,” and that’s like a really dangerous thing to think. So I think it’s speaking to the fact that you have to acknowledge that this could happen to you and that’s really scary, but you also can’t, like, be– and that should motivate us not to be complacent. And not to just think that, “Oh someone else will solve it.”
Jeremi Suri: Right, right. Well that’s a perfect transition to bring Kelsey in because I think the concerns of violence and debt and ineffective leadership in our society certainly are concerns that so many of my students, so many young people share. I know you share these concerns, Kelsey. How do you come to these issues? What’s your starting point?
Kelsey Ritchie: I think, kind of the way you had introduced me, I do come from a pretty religious and conservative background. I’m originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, was raised in a huge Catholic family, attended Catholic grade school, Catholic high school, and so I’ve always kind of been introduced to these social justice issues through a religious lens.
Jeremi Suri: Wow, wow.
Kelsey Ritchie: And I’ve been introduced to them in a way that religion is the ability to bring healing and to bring restoration, but I think what we’re seeing now is that when there is ineffective and potentially dangerous leadership that is using religious rhetoric to incite violence, we’re seeing it being used in the opposite way of tearing people further apart and attacking people’s truth– what they believe is genuine truth. And when they’re using that in a way to incite violence and to incite further separation, I think that we’re entering a really dangerous time in our political culture. And I think that we’re seeing more and more division through a really religious, kind of radical right and a very secular left that really breaks the– kind of that middle ground that is really hard to reach without a huge social movement and a huge, kind of uprising of young people who want to bring people to the center.
Jeremi Suri: And how do you navigate this, Kelsey? Because in one sense, your tradition that you come out of today is filled with people who are hypercritical of universities, hypercritical of people who want to get involved in immigration reform and things like that. But then also, many of the people you spend time with at universities and think tanks– you worked at the American Enterprise Institute this summer, they’re deeply skeptical of religion and sometimes caricature religion. So how do you navigate this personally?
Kelsey Ritchie: I think that the difference in experiences that I’ve had of being, being so inter– or being so like immersed in a very conservative upbringing and being from Oklahoma that’s been a red state, a deeply red state, for a while. And then going to college and kind of having a political swing to the left– working for a refugee resettlement agency in college, having a lot of international experiences, really kind of embracing the university culture. And then deciding to go to graduate school at the University of Texas and at the LBJ School that does kind of have the reputation for being more towards the left. I think that has given me the ability to see that it’s not about the stances, it’s about the people. And it’s about listening to a person explain why they have those political stances.
This summer I was part of the Archer Fellowship as well through The University of Texas and we would have guest speakers come to our classes every Monday night. And we heard from Beto O’Rourke, who’s running for Senate against Ted Cruz, and heard from Ted Cruz the next week. And after both of those conversations, I would go home with my roommates, who are also all Archer Fellows, and I was shocked after the Ted Cruz conversation that we all came back and they were like, “He was a great guy. Like he was a very genuine guy,” and my roommates were all, definitely, like way to the left. And after those conversations I think that we had the realization that if, when you listen to a person talking, it’s a lot different than when you just see a political stance on a piece of paper.
And so I think that– to answer your question, the way that I navigate it is I just try to have conversation and I try to, like, really engage with people. And it’s not about me telling them what I think, it’s about me asking them what they think and being able to respond to that. And I think the ability to ask questions and to really be able to engage in those conversations is being lost, but I think– and I think that the university culture is as guilty as anything. I think that when we see the silencing of certain voices on universities and we kind of see the more and more radical stances taken on universities, that it’s dangerous to breeding civil discourse amongst the next generation.
Jeremi Suri: Well it’s certainly something you’re very good at, listening and exposing yourself to different points of view.
Kelsey Ritchie: Thank you.
Jeremi Suri: How do you think about, sort of, action then? I mean you want to be a policy maker, you’re going to be a policy maker. Listening is certainly the first step, but where do you go from there, especially when you have points of view that are diametrically opposed? Take something like abortion, or views of refugees in some communities. So where do you go from the point of listening?
Kelsey Ritchie: Definitely, and I would say that I really don’t fit either of the main parties right now. I could not identify with either–
Jeremi Suri: Join the club.
Kelsey Ritchie: (laughs) Yeah, could not identify with either of them and so I think that what the next step of that is looking towards finding people that you can support that are running for different offices. As a 23 year old, I know my limitations as being able to be in the front and like be the, kind of, the voice, but I also know my potential and I think that we’re really looking toward a time in our society that young people have the ability to have a voice. And so I think action steps, that looks like writing, that looks like trying to get op-eds in local newspapers and trying to write different pieces that put your views on paper that other people can look at. I think that just having a conversation with a group of people is so important, but I think that we also need those ideas to be somewhat fortified.
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Kelsey Ritchie: And I think that trying to write is really important– and that’s one thing that I love about graduate school is it really encourages great writing and concise writing. And writing that is for the purpose of making a statement, but making a statement in a way that is very, kind of, well-supported and well-warranted. And so I think that’s one of my goals for this coming year, for my final year of my master’s program, is just to write a lot. And to really think about putting my ideas and my beliefs into words that can last longer than just a thirty minute conversation, or a three hour conversation in a class. So I think that having things that have been recorded is really important. And I was a journalism major in undergrad and just really have a lot of appreciation for the idea that media still has a role to play and I think that we’re seeing the media go down a path that isn’t beneficial. And I think that having young people come up and using different media– mediums to record their ideas and to fortify those is really important.
Jeremi Suri: Right, and words provide an opportunity for us to come together.
Kelsey Ritchie: Absolutely.
Jeremi Suri: Too often now, especially at this moment, words are being used to separate people.
Kelsey Ritchie: Absolutely.
Jeremi Suri: Words can be used to trigger emotions, to highlight differences, but we all know words can be used to bring people together. And I’ve talked about Franklin Roosevelt on our podcast before, Abraham Lincoln, and today– inspired by you, Kelsey, I thought it would make sense to talk about Robert Kennedy a little bit. Robert F. Kennedy, of course, was Attorney General, a major political figure in the United States and came close to winning the Democratic nomination in 1968 before his tragic assassination. Just a few months before this assassination, he gave a number of speeches following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In some ways, as difficult as our world is today, it still doesn’t approach the violence and chaos of 1968 when you had two major figures, Martin Luther King and then Robert Kennedy, assassinated.
One of Kennedy’s most important speeches was the speech he gave the day after Martin Luther King’s assassination and it speaks directly to what you were talking about so eloquently, Kelsey. The way words can and must bring us together and how we have to use our language better. So I wanted to read a little bit from Robert Kennedy, this is in Cleveland, Ohio on April 5, 1968 and he’s just anticipating Kelsey’s words here. “Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them. Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear–”
[Suri’s voice transitions to Robert Kennedy’s recorded voice]
Robert Kennedy: “violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls. For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference, inaction and decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man amongst other man…”
Jeremi Suri: “And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies, nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies – to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.
We learn at last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear – only a common desire to retreat from each other – only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers. Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts the leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.”
And, Kelsey, I think about your work in these exact terms, trying to navigate, as you said, through the hateful rhetoric and find space to bring brotherly and sisterly work together. How are you doing that with other young people? What do you see as the productive work of your generation?
Kelsey Ritchie: Definitely. Well just hearing that speech, too, I’m just so reminded that those are the qualities that– what religion is supposed to be preaching.
Jeremi Suri: Yes, yes.
Kelsey Ritchie: It really is and it’s not– religion isn’t meant to incite violence and I just think about, kind of the metaphor of, when you can take one verse, whether it’s out of the Bible or the Koran, or out of the Torah, or whatever religious denomination that you fall into– if you take one verse, you can interpret it in any way, but one verse out of an entire work like that is kind of like a hand when it’s been severed from a body. And like that hand is still a hand but it has no function anymore and it has no, kind of, relation to what it’s supposed to be doing. And I just think about that all the time, of like seeing the way that different lines have been used to radicalize different religions. And so I think that how I’m approaching it– and I’m learning more and more every day of how to do this correctly and I think it’s a learning process that I’ll be engaged in my entire life, but I think a lot of it is really understanding what I believe and understanding why I believe that.
And I think that a lot of times when we’re going through undergraduate and graduate education, we’re constantly just inundated with all this information and we’re just thrown all of these facts and all of these different stances on things, but we’re rarely asked to kind of solidify where we stand on a lot of it. And I think that because of that, what happens is when this generation becomes policymakers, we are then constantly thrown more and more information and we never know exactly where we stand. So I think a lot of it is self-actualization, but I think that it’s also understanding the role that young people can take and being bold enough to like stand up for what they believe in. And I think that being bold enough to stand up to people that are more of like these institutions that Robert Kennedy was talking about in his speech– being able to understand that when something is wrong, that it’s okay to stand up for what is right.
Jeremi Suri: So how do you do that when there’s so many incentives not to? I mean what I hear from my students all the time is they share your desire to see change, they share your concern about misspent money in our society, about impersonal institutions, about violence, about mistreatment of people, about racism and sexism, but the burdens to doing something about this are pretty high. They’re afraid that they’re going to lose opportunities, they’re afraid they’re going to lose supporters, and they’re also afraid they’re not going to get a job if they stand up, right? So how do you think about that? You’re entering the policy world where you need people to mentor you and open doors for you.
Kelsey Ritchie: Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more and I share all of those same fears of if I take a stance and I write something down and put it in writing that is antithetical to what the current administration believes, then I’m probably not going to be a political appointee in that administration. And that is something that I’ve really had to reconcile with this summer of being in DC and having conversations with people who can’t get hired by the government right now because of what– the letter they signed or a statement that they put on social media and it’s a real thing and it’s a real fear for young people. And so I think that, personally, where I find the motivation is in my faith and in understanding that if I’m standing up for things that I really do believe in, then I do believe that God provides and that is something that is personal to me, but I think that when you’re speaking for like a larger group, that understanding that we have to build a support system amongst ourselves.
And that means supporting young candidates, that means supporting local candidates that are more willing to cross party lines, and I think that this has to be, kind of a local to national movement. I don’t think that we’re going to see national change immediately. And so that means, maybe not taking those “sexy jobs” in DC right out of school that kind of make you compromise on some of those beliefs, but instead, really working towards public service and that is a hard thing to do but– I saw the musical “Hamilton” this summer when I was in DC and I was just so reminded of how hard the people had to work to form our government and how labor intensive and thought intensive and time intensive that was. And I left that musical thinking like, “Where are those people now?”
Jeremi Suri: Right.
Kelsey Ritchie: “Where are the people that are willing to risk so much and to work so hard because they believe that there is some potential that is better than what it is now?” And I think that it is in the young people.
Jeremi Suri: Right, I think you’re one of them.
Kelsey Ritchie: I hope to be.
Jeremi Suri: I think you’re one of them, you’re a young Hamilton, right?
Kelsey Ritchie: (laughs) I don’t think– I don’t know if I’ll ever reach that level, but I do hope to be a part of this movement.
Jeremi Suri: You make such an important point about starting local and starting in the world around you and of course every religion teaches this as well. It’s very easy to say all kinds of flowery things about a place far away, but what are you doing in your own backyard? How are you treating people in your own space?
Kelsey Ritchie: Absolutely.
Jeremi Suri: You use the phrase “public service” and I often feel that that’s a phrase we just throw out there, like liberal and conservative, without thinking through. What is public service to you in your generation? How would you define it?
Kelsey Ritchie: I love thinking about public service because I completely agree, like I’ve heard it my whole life and never really thought about what it meant. And having friends here that are in the ROTC, or the army or the military programs that come through the LBJ School here, I’ve had a lot of conversations with them about what service means to them and I’ve done a lot of reflecting on that this summer. And I think, to me personally, public service is the idea that you have the ability to be a voice for people that don’t have the time or that don’t have the interest, or that don’t have the ability to speak up for themselves. And I think that certain people have god given talents that really allow them to be great public servants and whether that is public speaking or just like a persuasive attitude, or a genuine servant hearted leadership. And that’s kind of where I’ve arrived, my conclusion on what public service is– it’s the genuine idea of servant leadership, of saying that, “I have the capabilities of leading and I have the desire to lead, but it’s not for me– it’s not for putting myself in power, it is for the idea of serving people.”
And I think that public service means being really in tune with what the people are saying. And I think that, kind of going back to the point of this podcast, of like the health of our democracy– democracy is genuine, just, government by the people. And I think we’ve moved so far away from that and I think a lot of it is because local politics isn’t as, it doesn’t get the same respect that we see in the national politics. And so I think that public service needs to start back at a local level of looking at how our local leaders really do serve their communities. And I think that the media has a huge opportunity here to really highlight some of those local leaders and to kind of build them up on the national stage. And I think that young people have the ability– I think that something that would be so beneficial is having more of a partnership between universities and city councils and universities and city government of understanding how college students can get plugged into serving a city.
That’s something that I just really benefited a lot from in my undergraduate experience, was working for a non-profit that was kind of linked by university that really served the city. We did homeless outreach, we did refugee resettlement, we did jail visits in prison– kind of restorative justice. And I just really understood the opportunities for young people to get plugged in to that idea of servant– or service to a city. So I think that that’s what we need to see as kind of revived in our city government in our young people supporting those, those city officials.
Jeremi Suri: Absolutely. And do you, among your colleagues, early twenty-somethings, right? It pains me to think that I’m not in that generation anymore–
Kelsey Ritchie: (laughs) You’re so close, yeah.
Jeremi Suri: Thank you, thank you, Kelsey– this is why I like talking to you. Do you see this as something that a lot of people in your generation want to do? Because often you hear people say negative things about millennials and others– I don’t agree with those negative comments. I think actually millennials are a new, great generation waiting to come into power and you’re certainly a great representative of that. Is it fair to say that there is this kind of idealism that you have in many of your colleagues?
Kelsey Ritchie: I think so. I think that there are– I’ve been very refreshed, especially this past summer I was meeting people in Washington DC that are in the 23 to 28 range that are really doing some great work and are really looking to do great work. I think that it’s really easy to get caught in a trap of, when you go to college and you have student loans to pay off, to go towards those types of jobs that just pay well. And I think that that is also kind of this, this broken system right now of just, in order to get to the roles that you can make genuine social movements come from, it takes a lot of education and it takes a lot of potentially unpaid internships. And that’s wrong, that really is–
Jeremi Suri: And you get worn down, you become cynical.
Kelsey Ritchie: Absolutely, absolutely and I think that that is something that I have seen as well, is that people that are going into this– into public policy or into politics, they go in very idealistic and then all of the, I guess the red tape you have to go through to really feel like you have a voice, it does wear people down. And, again, I think that that’s where, for me, faith comes in as kind of the sustainer, but I think that people that maybe don’t have as good a support system or that same kind of hopeless, romantic idealism that I somehow have, I think that it does, it does become tough. And I think that that’s where, kind of, building that support system amongst our generation is so important.
Jeremi Suri: Well it’s so wonderful talking to you, Kelsey, because your romantic, idealistic enthusiasm is contagious and I think that’s part of the point, isn’t it, right? That we need more people speaking up, using the words you’re using to remind those who are on the verge of cynicism that there’s something larger. That there’s a higher purpose and you can define it however you wish and whatever your religious choice is or political choice, but there is something higher, there is a higher meaning. And of course that’s at the core of democracy, what Robert Kennedy was saying, similar to Franklin Roosevelt, was that our democracy is not simply about the acquisition of things, it’s about the pursuit of something, something higher, some notion of justice. Some notion of participation, of a better humanity.
Kelsey Ritchie: Absolutely.
Jeremi Suri: So what I’d love for us to close on is your final reflections for now, on what some of our young listeners today who care about these issues, who are, I’m sure, motivated and inspired by you– what should they do? If someone, another 23 year old is listening right now and she is thinking, “Wow, I really want to get involved, but I have all these college debts and, you know, and I’m looking for my next internship and things like that.” How can she or he make a difference right now?
Kelsey Ritchie: Definitely– it’s, that’s such a good question and I think that is a question that we’re going to continue to develop a lot over these next few years. I think that what’s, what I keep hearing when I talk to young people about their political views, is that a lot of people say that they are socially conservative and fisc– or fiscally conservative and socially liberal. And I think that, if that is really what you believe and that is really and truly your stance–
Jeremi Suri: Just define that for a second for some people.
Kelsey Ritchie: Yeah, I would say that people say fiscally conservative because we have a $21 trillion debt and for some reason that has really kind of fallen out of the spotlight. And at some point we are really going to feel that and it’s going to be the young generation that does, whether it’s the depletion of Social Security or whether it is our military not having the funds needed to continue to support–
Jeremi Suri: Higher mortgage rates to buy a house, things of that sort.
Kelsey Ritchie: Absolutely, absolutely, higher loan rates for student loans– just all of these things that, that we’re going to eventually feel. I think that it has the ability to cross partisan lines of trying to come to a solution, but if it’s too late, to the point where we do feel it, I think that we can see a genuine demise of our financial structure.
Jeremi Suri: So you think young people care about that, I think you’re right, but they also, you said, are socially liberal.
Kelsey Ritchie: Yes, and I think that a lot of times those things are somewhat in contradiction because I think that socially liberal, in a sense of we don’t want to really be told what to do. I think millennials are a very independent generation and a very self-exploratory generation of understanding that we don’t have to, like, fall into a lot of these social confines. And so I think that social– or socially liberal is we don’t want to be told, we don’t want the government to tell us who we should or shouldn’t love, who we should or shouldn’t interact with, and a lot of those types of things we just really resent some of the old partisan lines that we see. So I think that a lot of people fall into these categories of we want the government to spend less, we want the government to tell us what to do less, but how do we reconcile those into a political party or into a politician?
And so I think that what young people should do is look for those people to put into office that really do represent that. And that might mean voting for a third party and I think that that is what we need to move towards. I think that we’ve seen the generation move further right and further left, but I think that we need to focus more on moving forward and that’s going to mean moving to the middle. And that means being willing to risk a third party vote and that means being willing to risk crossing partisan lines and potentially putting that on– putting it in writing that you worked for x candidate that had the x beliefs that may one day prevent you from working from somebody– for somebody else and that’s okay because that means that you’ve taken a stance. So I think that finding those local candidates, supporting those local candidates, and talking about it with people.
Jeremi Suri: Right, and also being some of those local candidates.
Kelsey Ritchie: Definitely.
Jeremi Suri: There’s no reason, coming back to your point that a 23 year old can’t run for local office.
Kelsey Ritchie: Definitely and I think that that is so important and I think that’s something that has been of huge interest to me personally and to people I’ve talked about that have these similar beliefs, is how do we, how do we get into office? And how do we raise the funds to do it? How do we find the support to do it? And I think that it’s a really exciting time to be a 23 year old.
Jeremi Suri: So I hope everyone remembers Kelsey’s name because you all should send her donations when she’s running for us soon, hopefully within the next few months she’ll be running for office.
Kelsey Ritchie: (laughs)
Jeremi Suri: And there are so many young people out there with Kelsey’s idealism and talent who, I think, would make a huge difference in our world and I think Kelsey is, you’re right. The place to start is to start close to home. Start making your community a model for your state and your state a model for the nation. Zachary, we’re just about done, what do you think? What do you think about these issues? You’re going to get the last word here.
Zachary Suri: I don’t know, I mean I just think that… I don’t know. I mean I was thinking the other day about, like, how different like the different generations that are interacting or like… Kelsey’s generation, like millennials, and then my generation, which is more 21st-century generation Z, and I think that, I think that often like we get grouped together, but I think it’s also. I think there’s also, at least like talking to other kids, I think there are many different views, but I do feel like it’s really more accepting of like oddball views. Like I know, like at least– and this is probably just like the climate that I’m in often, but going around I hear more people who say that they’re libertarian or more people who say that they’re, that they’re far left economically and I think that that’s like really interesting to see, especially like in my generation, because I feel like before nobody was really talking about that.
Jeremi Suri: That’s interesting, so you think there’s a wider range of thoughtful views?
Zachary Suri: Yeah.
Jeremi Suri: Well, we today have just begun to explore. I think one of the most optimistic and exciting parts of our society, which is our young people who, as represented by Kelsey and Zachary, I’m absolutely certain are better than those of us who are a little older. They bring an idealism and an excitement and there’s no doubt that a difficult time motivates a new generation of people to think in more creative ways. And in a sense, the darkness of our current politics might be the motivation for a bright future. And I think there’s so much there and democracy is about this intergenerational learning. And so today I think we’ve begun to see how our democracy is changing before our eyes. And that’s why “This is Democracy.” Thank you for joining us.
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Speaker 1: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin.
Speaker 2: The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke, and you can find his music at harrisonlempke.com.
Speaker 3: Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday, featuring new perspectives on democracy.
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