EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION/ANALYSIS • POLITICS

Gen Z will go out to protest ICE … but won’t shovel snow for cash

Posted on February 7, 2026
By Dave Huber - Associate Editor
Share to:
More options
Email Reddit Telegram

Dana Carvey's 'Grumpy Old Man'; Saturday Night Live/YouTube

Performativity over old-fashioned responsibility … and the media love it

This past week I was chatting with my best buddy about the recent snowstorm that socked the northeast … and we recalled how it was similar to one that hit back when we were in junior high school.

We had made a ton of cash in those halcyon days, spending about 10 hours a day shoveling neighbors’ driveways and sidewalks.

But a couple of weeks ago? Between us we saw one teenager in our, and others’, neighborhoods shoveling and hacking away at the snow and ice: A boy from a known religious (and conservative) family.

Otherwise, all those working outside were adults around our age.

My pal and I then began joking about how we were becoming curmudgeonly old men grumbling about about “back in my day” (like Dana Carvey’s “Grumpy Old Man” on “Saturday Night Live”): Kids having to earn an allowance, walking or riding a bike to extracurriculars (no mommy or daddy hauling them everywhere), no leftover food allowed on our plates at mealtime (because families lived within their means), etc. etc.

Then, after a brief silence, we agreed in Seinfeld-esque style: “But wait — there’s nothing wrong with all that!

But is our perception warped because we’re right-leaning folks living in a deep-blue state … where the kids of pampered liberals are more concerned about maintaining progressive “cred” rather than engaging in traditional charity-like endeavors with tangible results?

Or is this perception a narrative projection of the mainstream media? Or both?

After all, both have wrought, particularly over the last couple of decades (and especially during the two terms of Trump’s presidency) zero personal accountability (evident in the criminal justice system, schools, and student loans), selective enforcement of laws based on people’s politics, and most especially crybully/performative “protests” because an election or state-based decision didn’t go the way people wanted.

The last one in particular is tailor-made for the social media age.

For instance, look at how these “brave” and “heroic” anti-ICE clowns in Minnesota thought that what they’re doing here is akin to what the Mount Suribachi flag-raisers did at Iwo Jima during World War II:

“Hey, look at us! We’re fighting fascists just like they did during WWII!” Meanwhile, these same dolts are out and about demanding to see your papers when you’re merely driving to pick up a prescription or a fast food burger.

Elsewhere, CNN featured a puff piece on two Chicago brothers who allegedly have “sacrificed normal teenage life” in order to become “full-time ICE watchers in Minneapolis.” These definitely unindoctrinated youth reportedly “document federal immigration agents’ actions with cell phone video and quickly warn of agents’ locations with whistles and car horns.”

Of course CNN covered these guys. Does anyone think if they were from Wyoming and were tracking illegal immigrants’ movements in the same manner that the article’s tone would be a little different … if there was an article at all?

There was also this youngster covered by CBS News who spoke about how the looks on his Latino and Asian peers’ faces whenever the acronym “ICE” is mentioned are “terrifying”:

This young student goes on to say he looks up to people like Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai “because they know what rights are and what to say when people get kidnapped by ICE.”

Kidnapped? From where could he have gotten such an idea? Oh, right: “When I watch the news.” He concludes by referring to ICE as “bastards.” (Give him partial credit, though, for mentioning Yousafzai, who actually faced hardship as a youth unlike Thunberg.)

Picking up on this kid’s kidnapping allegation, a young lady takes it a step further by claiming ICE is deporting U.S. citizens:

When asked if she can name just one U.S. citizen who was deported: “Not off the top of my head.” In response to “Is there anything else ICE is doing wrong?” the girl says agents “are killing innocent people.” The victim(s)? Renee Good.

Then there were the various school anti-ICE walkouts:

Lastly, there was the Yale University student (who attended a boarding school during her HS years, works as a public relations director for a “cultural center on campus working across identities toward collective liberation,” and considers nature the inspiration for her art and writing) featured in a New York Times story about folks who feel a tinge of guilt for frequently ordering in for food.

The kicker: “While [the student], 19, has concerns about the pollution caused by the driving involved, she said delivery has expanded her palate.”

One might think these groups at her university might be cheesed, but it’s good money their members are doing the same.

To be fair, this Yalie wasn’t alone with the eye-rolling inanity; another in the article said it was “a blessing and a curse that we are financially privileged” to be able to order a single $15 “tiny chocolate lava cake,” and an Atlanta millennial noted he spends about $700 per week ordering in — yet “frets about the waste he’s creating with delivery boxes and bags.”

As Laura Ingraham said, “These kids are TikTok pawns on the socialists’ chessboard. Meanwhile, thousands of young people show up at the Annual March for Life, and nary a press person around to interview them.”

MORE: ‘OK, boomer’? Pay the bills, support a family, then we’ll talk