Connor Cushman is a student opinion writer for The Siskiyou. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of The Siskiyou or Southern Oregon University.
Chances are if you have a social media account you’re sifting through a landfill’s worth of politically charged articles shared by your racist grandparents, all in the effort to reach the dump trucks worth of statuses written by you’re high school friends.
Its great fun, its why I signed up for Facebook.
But in all of my hours spent on social media, from FarmVille requests to sick Fraternity pics no one political candidate has domain over the internet quite like Bernie Sanders. From socially conscious chit chat with Atlanta rapper Killer Mike to air tight economic policy there seems to be a Bernie video for everything, but has Sanders garnered the support of an apathetic youth?
In reality most Sanders related content I see on Facebook amounts to false quotes about Sanders smoking “Phat Blunts”, which is pretty hilarious, but does it put Bernie in danger of becoming a novelty? In light of all this, the question arises will Sanders suppo
rters be packing the booths as well as they pack bowls?
The fact of the matter is that two thirds of the eligible voting population did not vote last election cycle, and 60% of registered voters aged 18-24 also did not vote. I’m guilty of not voting. By the time I turned 18 I had been down enough youtube conspiracy theory rabbit holes to believe every president since Lincoln was a Lizard Person (Still do). And although the Bernie Sanders demographic might not be going 
through the same quarrels about voting that I did, there’s a looming distrust of the political process that threatens the Sanders Base. In essence we have a generation of people who are excited about a candidate without a P-Diddy in our face telling us to Vote Or Die.
The Sanders paradox is that his campaign of political revolution appeals mostly to people who are jaded to the American political process. Maybe I’m wrong, I’ve been living in Ashland for three years and by now you could probably convince me and most SOU students that Tommy Chong is running for office, you could probably tell me he’s leading the polls with enough time.
All things considered come November who knows if I’ll vote, its really far away and I have poor time management skills, but at least for the moment, I’m feeling the Bern.
