It has been four years since university halls and young cities were filled with the resounding cries of, “Yes we can!” Today, millennials doubt whether any words, a politician’s or ours, hold any power at all anymore. I debated all through high school in all my gawky glory, thinking that persuasion and confidence would help me convince others that there were solutions to the world’s problems, that our generation was ready to take them on. But even as I was watching the well-crafted speeches of the conventions, I realized that words and speech in political discourse were failing this generation.
Truly, what does a declaration or statement or state of the union speech mean when Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino-owner (so he’s clearly not interested in doing anything but gleaning cash from the ‘masses’ anyway) practically buys the presidency? Does it mean anything that Obama raised record amounts from grassroots supporters? Is that really going to change the fact that Romney is simply going to have more airtime and be Adelson’s own well-heard candidate? Not really. More often that not, millennials despair – and who can blame them? When it feels like our gesture of support is either irrelevant in the big picture of campaign finance, or hardly making a difference at all, it’s no surprise that we have no faith in political speech – either a politician’s or even that our own speech might be heard.
Of course, there aren’t only foreboding messages of doom. Both the conventions saw a rise in millennial expectations of both parties. Google
estimated that the searches for ‘register to vote’ doubled after Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention. Though a controversial free speech case, this year’s Stolen Valor Act ruling showed the Supreme Court making strides in objectively viewing speech as a right, removed from the caveats of honor and the issue of the prestige of the Medal of Honor. There is some hope that words will still mean something to our generation when we start to run for office.
We are a generation desperately seeking an identity and a moral compass. This cheapening of public speech demeans our efforts in unusual and detrimental ways. When words have no impact, sustained dialogue becomes difficult; meaningful conversation, in which millennials try to sift through the values hidden among the data and information we are constantly assaulted with, becomes rare; morality becomes hard to explore, when
our political institutions don’t provide us with the vocabulary for it. Both Democrats and Republicans have devalued speech and its power through excessive and often irresponsible use; words are not a petty commodity, and it’s the job of millennials to recapture the power that they can have.
