Show Us Your Hogg

We have a great chance to save America and believe it or not, David Hogg just showed us the way.

The generational divide among young Americans is stark, and it’s impossible to ignore. I reflected on this after hearing David Hogg’s flippant “get laid and party” remark on Real Time with Bill Maher. Of course, Hogg is a shameless grifter, but is useful to contrast with my conversations at the Offshore Technology Conference and Exhibition last week, where I met recent and soon-to-be STEM graduates brimming with focus and ambition. These young engineers and scientists were grounded, aware of the challenges awaiting them in their careers and the world. They exuded a clarity that seems absent in what I’ll call the “Hogg generation” - a cohort that, through no fault of their own entirely, appears adrift, lacking a firm grip on reality.

This contrast, however, presents a profound opportunity: to redirect a generation searching for meaning toward an aspirational vision of America.

The STEM students I met were dialed in, not just to their technical fields but to the broader realities of their future. They spoke of innovation, energy demands, and global competition with a pragmatism that belied their age. Meanwhile, Hogg’s comment - while perhaps tongue-in-cheek - encapsulates a troubling aimlessness among some young Americans. This isn’t entirely their fault. For years, they’ve been fed a steady diet of progressive ideology that promises utopia but delivers contradictions. The Democratic Party, once a champion of working-class values, now often seems to exist solely to oppose, even when that opposition defies logic or harms the very people it claims to represent. The past four years have been a masterclass in dysfunction - economic strain, border crises, and cultural division have left many young people disillusioned, searching for something to believe in.

This vacuum of purpose is where opportunity lies. If millions of Hogg Generation young adults are directionless, why can’t America - the real America, not the caricature maligned by critics - be their north star? I’m not talking about the America of partisan talking points, but the aspirational nation that acknowledges its flaws, learns from them, and strives for better. This is the America that built the modern world, that landed on the moon, that innovates relentlessly. It’s the America that the STEM graduates I met implicitly believe in, even if they don’t articulate it in patriotic terms.

Ironically, Hogg’s quip about what young Americans want - freedom, joy, connection - aligns more closely with the values of certain conservative factions within the Republican Party than with the modern progressive agenda. Not the establishment GOP, mind you, which seems content to revert to pre-Trump inertia, as evidenced by this Congress’s dismal legislative output. No, I mean the populist, liberty-focused, “Get off my yard, I want to be left alone” conservatives who champion individual freedom, economic opportunity, and a rejection of stifling dogma. These are the values that could resonate with a generation tired of being lectured about what they should think or feel.

There are already signs that young America may be the most conservative in history. Several recent polls and surveys suggest a shift toward conservatism among young Americans, particularly among Gen Z voters. Rather than fighting tradition, they want it. They want what their parents (or maybe grandparents) had.

The challenge is to present this vision without the baggage of partisan tribalism. Young Americans aren’t stupid - they see through the hypocrisy of both sides. They’ve watched policies fail in real time, from skyrocketing costs to eroded social cohesion. They know who’s made their world worse, regardless of party labels. The task is to show them an America worth believing in: one that rewards hard work, fosters community, and doesn’t apologize for its ambition.

If we can do that, we might just turn a lost generation into the one that rebuilds the nation.