时代周刊:“千禧一代”即将成为时代的主宰(3)（在线收听）

Meanwhile, Trump is deeply unpopular among young Americans.

特朗普则非常不受年青一代的美国人欢迎。

One Harvard poll found his disapproval rate among people under the age of 30 topped 70%.

哈佛大学的一项民意调查发现，他在30岁以下人群中的反对率超过70%。

There’s nothing more natural than generational turnover.

没有什么现象比世代更替更自然的了。

Every couple of decades, a wave of elected officials begin to retire and a new generation fills the void.

每隔几十年，就会有一波民选官员退休，他们的空白则由新一代填补。

In the 1950s and ’60s, it was the Greatest Generation,

20世纪五六十年代，是参加完二战又领导了社会振兴运动的“最伟大的一代”

the ones who fought WW II and led a civic revival that built the national highway system and the rockets that sent men to the moon.

搭建了贯通全国的高速公路网并制造出了将人类送上月球的火箭。

In the ’70s and ’80s, the so-called Watergate babies swept into office to clean up corruption and reform institutions,

到了七八十年代，所谓的“出生赶上了水门事件的一代”纷纷上任，整肃腐败，改革体制，

ushering in a new era of entrenched partisanship.

开启了党派之争逐渐根深蒂固的新时代。

And for the past 30 years, baby boomers have been running the show.

过去30年，婴儿潮一代一直处于稳控全场的地位。

They shaped American politics according to their principles of fierce individualism,

强烈的个人主义原则，拥抱私有化，减税以及植根于“个人责任”的政策，

embracing privatization, tax cuts and policies rooted in “personal responsibility.”

他们一直按照着他们自己那一套准则推动着美国政治的发展。

Generation X’s leaders, including former Georgia house minority leader Stacey Abrams

X世代的领袖，诸如佐治亚州前众议院少数党领袖斯泰西·艾布拉姆斯，

and Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley, are now ascendant.

共和党参议员马尔科·卢比奥和乔什·霍利，如今势头正劲。

Millennials are next.

接下来便是千禧一代了。

And by understanding the forces that shaped their politics,

了解了塑造过他们的政治思想的推手，

we can understand what America might look like when they’re in charge.

我们就能知道他们上台后美国的模样。

On Christmas eve 1999, 16-yearold Haley Stevens opened her journal, gripped a purple marker and wrote: Haley’s millennium ideas.

1999年平安夜，16岁的哈莉·史蒂文斯翻开她的日记，抓起一支紫色的笔写道：哈莉千禧年有感。

Her letters were large and looping.

写得又大又圆。

“The polar ice caps are going to melt,” she wrote.

“极地冰盖即将融化，”她写道。

“Natural disasters and mad leaders at war...what we read and what we do became so unbalanced and money driven.”

“自然灾害，疯狂的领导人势如水火……我们的所见所闻，所作所为早已失去平衡，早就成了金钱的奴隶。”

Like most diary-scribbling teenagers, she had a flair for the dramatic: “We won’t stop our mistakes,” she wrote.

和大多数在日记里胡言乱语的青少年一样，她的话也带上了一丝戏剧的口吻：“我们并不会停止犯错，”她写道。

“So what the prophets predict will come true.”

“所以，先知们的预言不会落空。”

Back then, Stevens was just a high school junior who filled her journal with America Online instant-message chats with boys from camp.

当时，史蒂文斯还只是一名日记里充斥着在“美国在线”（当时的互联网新贵）上与男同学聊天的记录的高三学生。

(She printed them out and saved them for later analysis.)

(她把那些聊天记录打印并保存了起来，以备日后分析。)

Now she’s a freshman Democratic Representative from Michigan’s 11th District,

现在，她已经是密歇根州第11区的新任民主党众议员，

one of 20 millennials who were elected to Congress in 2018 in a wave of discontent with the Trump Administration.

2018年，在对特朗普政府的不满浪潮中，20名千禧一代当选为国会议员，她便是其中的一员。

I first met Stevens a couple of months before she won her primary.

我第一次见到史蒂文斯是她赢得初选的几个月前。

She had never held elected office, and at that point she was a long shot to win her party’s nomination,

鉴于她从未担任过民选公职，她赢得党内提名的可能性本来很小，

much less go on to flip her Michigan House district.

更不用说翻牌她的密歇根众议院选区了。

Which is perhaps why she let a reporter into her mother’s bright yellow kitchen

也许这就是她让一名记者进入她母亲那明亮的黄色厨房，

to read her childhood journals and sift through boxes of old keepsakes.

阅读她童年的日记，翻看她一盒又一盒旧纪念品的原因。

“I think there’s a little bit of a misperception that people have about millennials:

“我认为大家对千禧一代有一丝误解：

we do feel very called to service,” she told me at the time.

我们确实觉得有很强的使命感，”她当时对我说道。

“Kids of the ’90s, we grew up thinking that we were going to change the world.”

“我们90后从小就觉得我们是会改变世界的。”

The conventional wisdom has long been that young people usually lean to the left

一直以来，大家普遍都认为年轻人通常会倾向于左翼思想，

and then become more conservative as they age, buy homes, build wealth and raise families.

随着年龄的增长，买房，攒钱，养家糊口才逐渐变得越来越保守。

Winston Churchill once supposedly said, “If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart;

据说，温斯顿·丘吉尔就曾说过，“20岁时不选择自由是没良心；

if you’re not a conservative at 40, you have no brain.”

40岁时不选择保守则是没脑子。”