In The Nation, Sena Chang reports that young people who might have sought (or already had) federal jobs are looking elsewhere. That is bad for the government and for young adults, who will miss opportunities to develop skills and networks. Chang quotes University of Michigan Prof. Robin Jacob, who says, “I think it is quite likely that we will see a decline in youth participation and representation in the federal government and in government more generally over the next several years.”

That’s true, but I also want to look forward. Chang quotes me: “Levine believes that restoring the civil service may fall to the next generation. ‘At some point, the executive branch will have to be rebuilt with hundreds of thousands of new workers, many of whom will be young,’ he said. ‘Rebuilding the government is going to be the opportunity and the calling of Generation Z.’”

I know this is optimistic in the sense that it presumes a relatively good scenario–a successor to Trump who is a Democrat or a more conventional Republican and who wants to rebuild the civil service. That outcome is by no means guaranteed. But it is very possible. We must contemplate the relatively good scenarios as well as the worst ones.

Whatever he wants to accomplish, one thing that Trump achieves by talking about 2024 as the last time you’ll have to vote–or when he hints at running again in 2028–is to discourage opponents from planning for a recovery. If we apply frameworks of democratic decline or collapse, whether drawn from the 1930s or from recent examples around the world, we can convince ourselves that the end of democracy is inevitable. But Brownlee & Miao (2022) find that governments that have slid into authoritarianism fairly often move back to democracy. More generally, history is not inevitable; it depends on us.

A profound struggle over the nature of America is underway. That struggle is not over and is not lost. One ingredient of success is envisioning the consequences of victory. Gen Z has a particular role to play.

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See also: a generational call to rebuild; calling youth to government service; setbacks for authoritarianism? and the tide will turn.