It is Over by Zorain Nizamani

 History has a habit of flattering the impatient. Every generation, especially one born into crisis, believes it stands at the brink of finality. This is the end, it tells itself—the end of old men, old lies, old hierarchies. It is an understandable temptation. When inflation eats wages, when universities promise futures they cannot deliver, when climate anxiety shadows adulthood, the declaration “it is over” feels less like rhetoric and more like survival.

Yet politics, unlike poetry, does not end when a sentence is uttered. It merely rephrases itself.

What we are witnessing across much of the world is not the seizure of power by Gen Z, but something far more paradoxical— a generational energy that destabilizes regimes only to midwife the ascent of another, equally aged elite. The slogans change; the faces wrinkle differently. The system endures.

This is not a dismissal of youthful anger, nor a defense of gerontocracy. It is an argument about misdiagnosis. Gen Z is not failing to rebel; it is succeeding spectacularly at revolt. However, Gen Z has not yet mastered to rule.

There is an illusion of generational conquest. It must be understood that a protest is movement; power is settlement. Modern politics often confuses the two. Streets fill, regimes wobble, headlines announce a “new chapter,” and yet the pen that writes policy remains stubbornly familiar. The very speed with which Gen Z mobilizes—digitally fluent, morally charged, impatient with compromise—often becomes its weakness. Institutions move slowly; power hides in committees, budgets, courts, militaries, and bureaucracies that outlast viral moments.

In classical terms, Gen Z excels at στάσις (stasis)—the rupture—but not yet at τάξις (táxis)—the ordering that follows.

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This is why revolutions so often replace rulers without replacing ruling logics. The throne changes occupants; the throne room remains untouched.

In South Asia, interestingly it is indeed the young who break the door but the old take the chair. Bangladesh offers perhaps the clearest illustration. Youth-led mobilization was central to the collapse of Sheikh Hasina’s long-entrenched authority. Students, urban professionals, and a digitally networked generation articulated a decisive no to authoritarian stagnation. Yet what followed was not Gen Z governance but an interim arrangement led by figures whose moral authority and technocratic credibility were forged decades earlier.

This is not an indictment of that interim leadership’s intentions. It is a structural observation that the post-uprising state required administrative gravity, and gravity favored age. The young supplied the shock; the old supplied the balance. A similar pattern appears in Nepal. Gen Z protests disrupted complacent party politics and hastened the exit of entrenched leadership. Yet the political system reassembled itself through coalition arithmetic long mastered by veteran actors. Youth energy bent history’s arc—but it did not hold the pen when coalition agreements were drafted.

In both cases, the lesson is uncomfortable. The youth movements are revolutionarily effective yet institutionally homeless. They dismantle; they rarely inherit.

The problem is not confined to South Asia. Across continents, the most consequential decisions—war and peace, monetary tightening, technological governance—remain in the hands of leaders whose formative political experiences predate the internet, sometimes even the end of the Cold War.

Donald Trump is emblematic rather than anomalous. His return to power in a hyper-mediated age underscores a deeper reality. Political systems reward familiarity, capital, and narrative durability far more than generational novelty. The same pattern appears with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Narendra Modi—figures whose authority is rooted in long institutional memory, not youth appeal.

Even where younger politicians rise, they do so within ecosystems designed by their elders.

Zohran Mamdani is often cited as evidence that the generational tide has finally turned. At thirty-something, ideologically aligned with democratic socialism, and inspired by Bernie Sanders, Mamdani represents precisely the kind of political figure Gen Z celebrates.

Yet his trajectory also illustrates the limits of generational rupture.

Despite fierce opposition to Trump-era politics, Mamdani met President Donald Trump soon after his election and pledged pragmatic cooperation. This was not ideological surrender; it was structural realism. New York City’s fiscal health depends on federal flows, regulatory approvals, and national political bargains. Even the most radical mayor must negotiate with a federal architecture designed long before his birth.

Rome, after all, did not fall because young tribunes spoke truth to power; it endured because the Senate controlled the legions and the treasury.

Greek mythology offers an uncannily accurate metaphor for our moment. Cronus devours his children to prevent succession. Zeus overthrows him—yet does not abolish hierarchy. Olympus remains a mountain governed by immortals. Power changes hands; power does not democratize.

Modern Gen Z revolts often reenact this myth in reverse. The children do overthrow Cronus—but then hand Olympus to another god of similar age, often under the banner of “stability,” “transition,” or “national unity.”

Roman history reinforces the point. The Republic collapsed not because young reformers lacked ideals, but because institutional control—land, armies, law—was monopolized by entrenched elites. Caesar was not young radical energy; he was elite continuity with populist aesthetics.

There are three structural reasons to explain the pattern of Gen Z facilitating the power shift instead of seizing power.

First, power today is infrastructural, not rhetorical. Hashtags mobilize, but budgets govern. Ministries, courts, and security institutions are not captured by moral clarity alone. They require cadres, training, and time—resources youth movements rarely possess at scale.

Second, youth consensus dissolves after negation. Gen Z unites easily around what must end— corruption, hypocrisy, fossilized authority. It fractures over what must replace it. Elites exploit this vacuum by presenting themselves as responsible custodians of transition.

Third, institutional memory is weaponized. Older elites understand procedural choke points such as, electoral law, coalition thresholds, bureaucratic inertia. They wait until the chants fade—and then negotiate among themselves.

In effect, Gen Z performs the revolution’s labor while older actors reap its dividends.

In Europe, green and progressive youth movements have pushed climate and social justice onto national agendas—but policy execution remains dominated by centrist coalitions led by seasoned politicians. In parts of Africa, youth-led protests topple constitutional orders only for military councils or elder technocrats to inherit authority. In the Middle East, young populations confront some of the oldest ruling structures on earth, where dynastic politics converts generational pressure into cosmetic reform.

The pattern is global because the architecture of the modern state is global, hierarchical, capital-intensive, legally dense.

The claim that the old narrative no longer convinces is undoubtedly correct. Patriotism without opportunity is hollow; sacrifice without justice breeds cynicism. Gen Z sees through performative nationalism and imported slogans.

Where the argument falters is in equating disillusionment with displacement. A story can die while its storytellers survive. When one script loses legitimacy, another is commissioned—often by the same producers.

For Gen Z to stop facilitating elite rotation and begin exercising power, a shift is required—from moral eruption to institutional patience. This means capturing local governance before chasing national symbolism, building parties rather than movements, cultivating bureaucrats alongside influencers, and mastering compromise without surrender.

In Aristotelian terms, politics is not merely ethics; it is phronesis—practical wisdom. Without it, virtue exhausts itself.

So is it over?

What we are witnessing is a handover ritual. One cohort exiting with reluctance, another entering with noise, and authority settling once again among those best trained to hold it.

Gen Z stands at a crossroads not unlike that of earlier generations. It can remain history’s battering ram—glorious, destructive, indispensable yet disposable—or it can learn to sit long enough at the table to redesign it.

Until then, every proclamation of finality will echo with tragic irony.

From Fukuyama’s End of History to Gen Z’s rhetoric of rupture and its insistence that It is Over, history has resisted closure. History has not ended. It has merely changed managers. And it is not over.

Article BY: Zorain Nizamani