Shownotes
In this episode, Grace, Katelyn, and TJ, discuss evolving
political beliefs and perceptions of the American Dream across multiple
generations. They dive into voter insights on whether personal beliefs have
changed over time and the definition and attainability of the American Dream.
The discussion features a diverse group of interviewees, ranging from ages 27
to 86, who share their thoughts on being moderate, the impact of upbringing,
changing political alignments, and expectations for future generations. The
conversation highlights themes of work ethic, the impact of economic
conditions, and the role of education, reflecting on how generational
differences shape views on opportunity and prosperity in America today.
00:00 Introduction and Greetings
00:24 Diving into Voter Questions
00:48 Beliefs Over Time
01:54 Moderation and Radicalism
04:19 Personal Reflections on Beliefs
06:24 Immigration and Political Shifts
11:34 Civility in Politics
16:23 The American Dream: Perspectives
19:54 Generational Views on the American Dream
28:47 Conclusion: Reflecting on the American Dream
Copyright 2024 Grace Cowan
Transcripts
Hello, Caitlin and TJ. Hey, how is everyone?
TJ:Yo mama. What up?
Grace:Wow. TJ has been in the studio by himself a little bit too long.
Katelyn:TJ, go for a walk, man.
TJ:I'll be back in about half an hour.
Grace:Okay. Sounds good. All
TJ:right.
Grace:Oh my word. Okay. So today mama and Caitlin and TJ are going to dive into a couple more questions and today we're just going to hear from voters one of the questions we asked today was have your beliefs changed over time? And the second was, what do you think the American dream is now and is it still attainable? So let's start with the question of have your beliefs changed over time.
Chad:I would say it's pretty similar to where I started. It's, I would say I'm probably more down the middle on most issues than most people.
Rose:I've been paying attention to that lately. I will tell you that when I turned 86, I began to pay more attention to How I was alike and how I was different from when I was 46. No, I don't think that many of my beliefs have changed at all.
Allie:I grew up in a very traditional community. And that's not to say like women were oppressed or we weren't, considered decision makers in the household.
Allie:It was just more of a traditional upbringing. And that's where my values lie everything that I do is centered around my family. My personal life and my personal development's in there as well.
Grace:This is an interesting group to put together because Scotty is 27, Rosemarie is 86, and Allie is 38.
Grace:And I have not met or interviewed one person that says they're radical. Every person that I ever meet always says I'm pretty moderate. I fall down the middle.
Grace:But once you start asking deeper questions even though we all think we're down the middle, we typically are not.
Katelyn:I guess I would need to know what people define as the middle these days. I think there's a, maybe a difference between moderate and the middle.
Katelyn:For instance, you can be a moderate left or moderate, right? That still has you on one side or the other. Whereas the middle truly means that you don't side with one or the other. And those are like these mysterious people in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, and these other States that we're spending tens of millions of dollars to convince, to vote one way or another.
Grace:But what is the middle? When you start to finding yourself as a moderate I think you are only comparing yourself to the bubble that you're living in,
Katelyn:I guess you could ask yourself the question, have I ever been with someone that I agree with and they I feel like they're more radical than me. am thinking of one person in my mind where in general, I feel like we agree on what we would consider basic things, but they are in my mind, much more radical about how we get to accomplishing the things that we do. We all want to accomplish.
Grace:Just hearing Scotty say that in that interview and I don't know that I'd say he's far right, but he's much more right than, someone that we would traditionally call a moderate.
Grace:What defines someone that is a far right radical or a far left radical?
TJ:I think that depends on where you get your information from, how they define radical. I think it just depends on what you're dealing with and what you're facing on a day to day basis as to that's radical or that's not.
Katelyn:Like if your beliefs allow you to dehumanize other people, then you're radical in my opinion. You should be able to disagree and still believe in the. equity and health and safety of the person you're disagreeing with.
Grace:So then our second voter was Rosemarie. And I really love that She brought up that she's looking back on her life, I think that's what you do as you get older, as you take stock of who you were when you were younger and what you've learned throughout your life.
Katelyn:Yeah, I think so too. I'm just reflecting back on how she defined herself, how Scotty defined himself. And then, how Allie defined herself, Scotty and Rosemarie reflected on their Ideology based on themselves.
Katelyn:Whereas when Allie was defining herself, she was defining herself against or with the community that she was in.
Grace:And that could be time of life. She's a young mom. She has three small kids, including a new baby. I think that an even bigger piece is who we are as voters depends on what we're feeling in the moment.
Grace:Read this really fascinating quote this morning that said, if I feel broke, you're not going to convince me otherwise by doing the math. And I think that a lot of our views. It's on politics and the outside world come from how you're feeling at the moment and how the world around you is directly affecting you. Okay. So we have Chad, Diane, Michelle. Have your beliefs changed over time?
Scott:I think I like to think that I'm trying to like really take in what's happening and how that affects other people. Why do conservative people feel the way they feel? Why do. More left people feel the way they do and try to like balance that with myself. I really do want to walk the line and not go too far. Cause I think that's where all the work gets done is in the middle. I feel like these polar opposites that we're in right now is what's hurting constituents the most is that we're not getting any work done. I don't know if I really answered your question, but that's, I think politically. It's really hard. Some people have such strong angles that pushes you the other way.
Dianne:Personally, I've become more adamant about immigration. I wasn't born in America. It's always been an important part of our lives. My father becoming American, me making sure that my citizenship was American and not Cuban.
Dianne:And my grandparents coming over here as immigrants, all of that has been a part of my life. And now watching these other people come in without doing any of the requirements that we had to do to become America is just very destructive in my view to America.
Michelle:I think that as I was growing up, I just adopted a lot of the beliefs from my parents and my family until you start to get old enough where you form your own and so I feel like I just used to straight ticket, conservative, like that's just what you did.
Michelle:But I don't feel like I fit in conservative or liberal box anymore. I think that there are things where I bend more towards a liberal view and perspective, and then there's other ways where I can be even more libertarian in a perspective.
Michelle:I think overall, just as you get older and you live life and you have your own experiences and you form your own opinions and move away from your parents being less boxed in.
Grace:Okay Chad was an answer that sounds very moderate, chad is listening to both sides and then forming your opinion. Other.
Grace:There's an entire line of stories about how Trump has pushed traditional progressives more to the right on the immigration issue. To Chad's point, it is really important to listen to both sides and trying to not look at it through your partisan lens.
Katelyn:America has an immigration issue. There's no doubt about it. What is happening on our Southern border needs an answer and a solution. And I agree with Chad that the work gets done in the middle, we need an answer that both sides are going to support because Americans are hurting and the immigrants who are coming here.
Katelyn:And we got to fix it. So I think he's spot on.
Grace:Michelle, who was our last voter her take was I grew up in a house with conservative leaning parents and I just voted like they did.
Grace:And then as I had more experiences in life my beliefs, It's changed a little bit and as I've gotten older, sometimes I think this way. Sometimes I think that way.
Grace:Our perceptions have been able to change much differently than they did 20 or 30 years ago.
Katelyn:And I think circling back to Michelle, I think the I think a lot of americans feel that way And yet what we're seeing play out on a national stage doesn't necessarily reflect that feeling that your experiences are playing out And you're back and forth.
Katelyn:We're seeing this like true binary decision that does not feel like there's any gray left in our on a national level and that seems counterintuitive to I think what we're all Personally experiencing
Grace:and national politics has taken over local politics. That's why on the, ground level, we all feel that split so three more voters suzanne, George, and Trish question is, have your beliefs changed?
Suzanne:I think I remember being a little bit nativist when I first started getting into politics and not really paying attention to international affairs so much.
Suzanne:Just knowing that the deficit was so big and we're sending all this money elsewhere and we have such a huge homeless population and there's people hungry in the States and there's problems with violence and crime and thinking, why are we sending All this money everywhere else when we can't even deal with the issues we have.
Suzanne:And slowly but surely, I started paying attention more to international politics and realizing why The U. S. is involved internationally. Everyone's doing what they think they can do is best, but I think so much of it is just trying to stop a bleeding artery with a Band Aid.
George:I didn't grow up with a father. My father passed away when I was under a year old. My family basically consisted of an older brother, an older sister, and my mother, and the three of them collaborated to raise me. They were conservative. And I guess I was conservative, too, for a while. My voting record is Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush. And then I started voting Democratic. I voted for Bill Clinton. I did not vote for George Herbert Walker Bush's second term.
Grace:Okay, so what prompted that change?
George:I think it was Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown.
Grace:Wait, how did Dan Quayle change your voting pattern?
George:He came in as a social conservative, and that is not characteristic of me.
George:And I really didn't start to think about it until I saw how crude and How mean the Republican Party was beginning to, to get, but if I look back on it now, they were very rational compared to what we're looking at today.
Trish:Okay. I don't know that my political beliefs have changed. I think my party allegiance has changed because of just the shift in lack of civility.
Trish:And I was more of a, like I said, a Reagan Republican, a Bush Republican. I'm more of a fiscal conservative than I am. a social conservative. So I don't care so much about the issues that some people focus on in that regard. I care more about taxes and economic policy. And in those areas, I am more aligned with Republican policies in general.
Trish:But just the general tenor of politics today has, it's unfortunate, it is not the politics that I grew up in. I do still generally vote Republican on a local level. I think this will be the second time that I've cast a vote for a Democrat on the national level.
Grace:Let's start with Suzanne. It's fascinating to me that she used the term nativist.
Grace:I think a lot of people feel that way. Because. It is really hard as a person who lives paycheck to paycheck or even month to month or year to year, however you live.
Grace:To try to grasp the gigantic amounts of money that we hear about on a daily basis leaving the country. And then at the same time on your daily commute, you see a sign from a homeless person saying, Veteran needs a job.
Grace:Can you spare a dollar? Why aren't we putting our oxygen mask on first before we help others?
Katelyn:The answer to me is we have the money.
Katelyn:The money's here. We have enough money to fix our roads. We have enough money to give people health care. We're the richest country in the world. Countries that are significantly less wealthy than the United States give their constituents healthcare and have great roads. So it's the willpower to do it and the political cooperation to be able to achieve it.
Katelyn:And, the second two voters that we heard from talked a little bit about civility.
Katelyn:Trish from the upstate talked about how she was really a fiscal conservative, but more of a social liberal.
Katelyn:That's like what I grew up with, Olympia Snow was my senator from Maine for years. And that was really what the Republican Party was about, I think, for all of us in the 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s. And it started to shift whereby, that social conservativism was influenced by the rise of Christian nationalism over time.
Katelyn:And understanding that history gets us to the place where we are now, where you might have people who had registered Republican and now feel. more aligned with Democrats on social values.
TJ:We've been fed the story that all this money goes overseas to do whatever it goes overseas to do.
TJ:While we never are given the information about how much money we throw in the corporate pocket. Trough to feed oil companies. They don't pay for their exploration. We subsidize that so they can go drill, baby, drill and bring out all this oil and make billions of dollars while the taxpayers fund the exploration for the oil in the first place. Like you just said, Caitlin, we have the money and we give it out to people all over this country every day, as long as you are a corporation or a company that can then turn around and give some of that money back so we can get reelected it doesn't go to feed that family down the street that can't take care of themselves because they can't get a job that pays more than 10 an hour.
Katelyn:I did international development and spent a lot of that money in Africa across the continent. And I will say this, that money, yes, is given away to do a lot of things, but that money is very political in nature. It is tied to relationships with governments. It's used as leverage to get what America wants in certain countries.
TJ:We don't give out money unless it has a political return.
Katelyn:Yeah. We're investing in our strategic interest overseas. And that just happens to be branded as USAID. And I also understand that is a necessary and strategic move. Diplomacy is just as important as any military aid and defense that we have.
Grace:Let's now switch To whether or not people think the American dream is still in play and is it attainable? For this next generation, a lot of them say that they don't feel like it is. Do you feel like there's something that's missing with that generation that, that makes them feel like it's not attainable? Let's do first three, Ed, Lauren, and Michelle.
Ed & Lauren:housing supply. Yeah, it's expensive, but I think some of it is just lack of work ethic. They don't want to work hard.
Michelle:I don't think of the American dream as being that you'll do better than your parents. Cause I feel like that is so cyclical. It's the land of opportunity is what I like to think of it as. And that can be very Pollyanna ish, I know. For me, that the American dream is that you can do as well as you want.
Grace:So let's start with Michelle. She thinks that it's, it's the pull yourself up by the bootstraps. You can do as well as you apply yourself. And that's what Ed and Lauren were saying too. There is this fundamental belief that the American dream is the land of opportunity. I love asking this question because it really is the older generation looking at the younger generation and being like, you have it. It's so easy. And you just complain about having to work hard and you don't want to put the time and energy in. You drink too many Starbucks and you spend all your money on avocado toast and you don't want to work more than a 40 hour work week.
Grace:So I think that comes more from how we were raised in the different generations as to what your view of the American dream is.
Katelyn:Yeah, I think that's true.
Katelyn:Yeah. For in my lifetime, I'm Gen X and what I was taught was education plus hard work equals prosperity. I come from the Midwest. Before moving to the South. And I feel like there is this Midwestern sense of grit and hard work. And the American dream was to be the best that you can be and buying a house, raising a family, having a good education, and then working hard every day until you could retire. That's the American dream.
TJ:And I think for me growing up. The education was not a a step forward. I would say 85 percent of the people I went through school with did not move on to college or tech college or any, there was none of that. They simply worked on the farm after they graduated or the successful people were the ones that got the job.
TJ:Those jobs the Dodge plant or at Eastman Kodak You got a factory job and you got a pension. I can buy a car and I'm gonna put a down payment on that house. You had it made That was the American dream from my experience Graduating class forward, there was more of a move to go to college and become a doctor, become a lawyer, become a whatever.
Grace:But that all changed when factories started closing down and then education became
TJ:the way out,
Grace:the way out. And so you, it was like, okay, you graduate and then you go to college and get a degree so that you have a career and you can make money. And that became the driving force. of teenagers. So TJ, you're a boomer. I'm Gen X. And now I think we've gone to the other side where everybody has to go to college. But Caitlin, you're a millennial. And so you're more the generation that I think Lauren was talking about of, They don't work hard enough.
Katelyn:Millennials have been told that we haven't worked hard since the day we were born.
Katelyn:So we're so used to hearing it. It's listen I think that we work differently for sure. The dawn of the internet made our lives easier. We didn't have to process as much paperwork. Things didn't take as much time. So there was this perception that we weren't working as hard. We look at it like we were just working smarter because we knew how to use the technology.
Katelyn:The joke with millennials is that boomers still ask us to put things in a PDF. Like it's the most simple thing ever. And yet they, and they make four times as much as we do and they can't put it into a PDF. But just to put things into perspective in the south, in 2000, the average home price was 148, 000.
Katelyn:Almost 25 years later, the average home price is 371, 000. So you have people who are making basically the same amount of money that their parents were making. We just can't keep up with the economy changing without a change in salaries. And Gen Z is the first generation, I think that it like has the largest population of 20 somethings living with their parents because it's just impossible.
TJ:My son is in his mid 30s and has two college degrees and says, Now what? I can't get a job using my degrees making enough money to buy a house in the first place, so why bother? You ask my son, is the American Dream thing still a factor? Absolutely not.
Katelyn:Yeah, I think most young people would say the American Dream is dead.
Grace:But again, this is the key difference to me in how people vote and what party they align with is what their version of the American dream is. If you feel like the American dream is alive and well you want the economy to do well. You want to live in a suburb. You want to have a picket fence. You want all of those things, but there is a whole group of people That feels like that is not attainable.
Grace:It's why that statement that I read this morning stood out so much to me. If I feel broke, you're not going to convince me otherwise by doing the math. And the reality is that if the American dream for you is education, hard work, own a home, try to do better than your parents, that equals prosperity.
Grace:All of that. Lot of people in this country are living that American dream, but they don't feel like it. And why is that? It's because they're comparing what they have right now to what they think they should have. And so if I feel broke, I'm always going to feel like the American dream is not attainable.
Grace:And really there are jobs, we are at record low unemployment. All of those things are happening, but I don't think people feel like their skills and their qualities are being used the way that they should be. And they're not getting paid what they feel like they should be. So it doesn't feel like the American dream is attainable.
Katelyn:I would say that I think the younger generation looks at the number of billionaires that own the lion's share of the market and would argue that it's wall street that decides whether or not the economy is going well, not Main Street. And 50 years ago, it was Main Street that decided whether or not the economy was going well.
Katelyn:And people had much more control over how they earned their income and the ethics behind how they earned their income and the things that they were willing to do to earn that money are different now than they were 50 years ago. And a lot has changed in the economy and not necessarily better for the everyday average working American.
TJ:I agree with that a hundred percent. Yeah. Yep.
Grace:So we have Kim Garcia and Scott answering what they think the American dream is now. And is it still attainable?
Kim:Yes and no. I think that's still the American dream at the core, but given how our families have been able to evolve I have bigger goals, bigger dreams for my kids.
Kim:Not only do I want you to have something better than me, I want you to have the best. Because I think we have all of the resources and capacity to make that happen, and the best is subjective, but for me right now, that means freedom. Freedom to dream and actually go after the dream.
Chad:To me, the American dream is being able to work and support your family and build something outta nothing.
Chad:Obviously, depends on the situation that you're in and what resources you have and can get. So it's. Always going to be dependent on the person and how they view it versus what's handed to them.
Garcia:I do believe it is. My great grandparents migrated and my grandfather was from Baltimore and education was very important.
Garcia:Now, my mother and my father were not college graduates, but their commitment was that all of their children would be. And we all are college graduates. As a matter of fact, three of us have advanced degrees on a master's level. And my older sister has a doctor of education. Education has been paramount.
Garcia:And I do agree that the expectation is perhaps not so much of the lineage that you have to go to college, but whatever you do, it has to be purposeful, directed and driven to make sure that you're able to make that level of contribution as well. We. Actualize their dream, and we are making certain that next generation finds their way to be a productive and a contributor to society.
Grace:Scotty is our young guy. He's 26 27. And Garcia, I think she's close to 70. Kim is in her like late thirties, early forties. And so I think that each one of those answers is applicable to this stage of life that they're in, Scotty wants to start a family. So his American dream is to be able to buy a house and support his family.
Grace:Kim has kids. They're young. She has big aspirations for them as they get older. Garcia grew up in a time where the way that they got out of this first generation of Americans was get a really good education and you will be guaranteed a job.
Grace:I think the theme over everyone, Ed, Lauren, Michelle, Kim, Garcia, and Scott, is that everyone still has this belief of the American dream as hard work will pay off in the end.
TJ:I think there is a cut off, they're going to look at you and say, no, it doesn't exist anymore.
Katelyn:Are you talking age? Age. Yeah, I agree. There are kids out there who, kids, there are young adults out there who won't live.
Grace:You've crossed over into the old lady. I know, I have. There are kids, two kids.
Katelyn:God my mom is laughing right now. She doesn't know it yet, but she's laughing at me. I think there are young adults who don't want to live with multiple roommates and don't want to have to deal with, the pains of being in your twenties and not having a lot of cash.
Katelyn:And I do think that there is a comfort level and that's why it makes me giggle. When I hear Kim say, I want my kids to have the best. I want it to be so much better than what I had, because I do think we have gotten to a place where Life in America overall, I know people suffer 100%, but it's relatively comfortable in comparison to other countries, right?
Katelyn:And so when you continue to want better than what you had, is there a ceiling to that?
TJ:In my mind, that's where we are now. I think there is a generation of Americans right now who will not do as well as their parents did, simply because economics will not allow it. Period.
Grace:And is that the government's fault?
TJ:No, not at all. I'm just saying. The economy has given that to us on top of that, four years or whatever it was of COVID when the world shut down and they were trapped in a room somewhere. Plans got totally sidetracked. Now they come back and they've got debt to pay. They can't afford a house. Most of them can't afford a car anymore because they're making 10, 12 bucks an hour and a hamburger at McDonald's for lunch cost you 10, 12 bucks an hour.
Grace:Just to bring this full circle. And maybe this is where we end, but the fascinating thing here, I think, is that the American dream of the past, the person that instilled the American dream in me was the son of an immigrant. And that used to be the success story of America was that you were an immigrant, you came to this country with nothing, and you made something of yourself. You built your family. That's, that's where all of this in my mind started. And as TJ just said, this may be the first generation. Many of them do not do better than their parents. Yet, here we are with immigration being one of the hottest topics of this election.
Grace:I think we are finding ourselves in a very interesting place in history.
