Whenever people say that you grow more conservative when you get older, they’re working from the premise that you’ll grow more affluent and comfortable later in life. For Americans, that just isn’t true anymore. Wages are mostly stagnant, home ownership is much less attainable, and cost of living is at an all time high. Yet for some reason, pundits just can’t figure out why millenials aren’t getting more conservative as they age, or why zoomers appear to be following this trend.
Straight up I was conservative as a young teen, because that’s what EVERYONE was here in Utah when I was in the LDS church.
Now I just keep floating more and more left as time goes on.
If something, as years roll on talking to people with different experiences enriched me as a person.
Yup but I have seen it in my peers unfortunately. Honestly though not in the ones who were actually passionate. Like the guy who started the environmental club is as left as he ever was but like the one friend I had I think just parroted what most of his friends said atm.
I grew up in a rightwing household, and unquestioningly drank the koolaid until my late teens. The right’s bullshit eventually became impossible to ignore, so I dove right into the ‘both sides!’ trap and rode the Libertarian train for a while.
It became really easy to articulate what I didn’t like about the right; describing what was bad about the left was just echoes of Fox bitching about things like them voting on emotion instead of logic… but no real examples.
Around my mid-twenties I finally realized ^that was projection; then 2016 happened and holy shit they’re running Trump and Hillary?? Easily the two most hated candidates in my lifetime… against Gary Johnson - an admittedly goofy personality but likeable and most importantly not crazy, THIS IS THE LP’S TIME TO SHINE! …yeah they got 3% of the vote. We won’t ever see better conditions for a 3rd victory, so, pipedream shattered.
Guess I’ll have to just pick a lesser evil, so let’s see what we have to work with…
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there’s the red team. Burn through our fossil resources with reckless abandon. War, war, war, and more war. Shave social services down to nothing so we can claim ‘fiscal responsibility’ which is good I guess (hey! eyes down here, we’re done talking about the war part), a blatant integration of religion and politics, and they want to make life as miserable as possible for my gay/colored/female/nonchristian friends. Fuck, that’s pretty bad…
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Alright, next we have the blue team, which is the opposite of all those things, at the exceedingly high cost of… getting cockblocked by the red team when they try to implement those things… and… well there was that time Bill lied about getting a blowjob- outrageous! Surely the red team does a better job of keeping it in their pants… *checks* …uhh, nope! Fuck, I’m starting to become aware of my own cognitive dissonance and it feels like absolute shit.
So I start voting one issue at a time, crunching both options against eachother and choosing the one that’s best for the US. That way there’s no bias and I won’t be part of this tribal bullshit plagueing our politics… Weird, when I ignore affiliation and vote on policy alone, my ballot becomes solid blue. What are the odds of that?! Next election, solid blue again. And again.
My desire to be ‘independent’ on label alone is pretty much gone at this point, and I’m being more and more vocal about supporting leftwing policies. Family isn’t a fan, but they hit me with the shit OP is poking fun at - I only shifted blue because I’m poor! Once I make more money, just you wait and see, I’ll come crawling right back.
Now, I’m not rich or anything, but I’m (finally!) not living paycheck to paycheck. During all ^that I wandered into the military which gave me access to all kinds of socialized resources which have enabled me to get where I’m at now and have made a pretty significant improvement on my life. The thing that pisses me off about those socialized services is WHY THE FUCK DOESN’T EVERYONE HAVE THIS?! So wearing camo for 4 years for some reason got me this VIP tour of what we should should be doing for everyone.
I was a late bloomer, I got there. I haven’t missed a single election since 2016, big or small. Solid blue. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll even look up the voter registration of candidates for nonpolitical positions like judges, and red is a deal breaker.
The better off I become, the more blue I get. The notion of red-shift with income is trash.
Alright, next we have the blue team, which is the opposite of all those things, at the exceedingly high cost of… getting cockblocked by the red team when they try to implement those things… and… well there was that time Bill lied about getting a blowjob- outrageous! Surely the red team does a better job of keeping it in their pants… *checks* …uhh, nope! Fuck, I’m starting to become aware of my own cognitive dissonance and it feels like absolute shit.
The DNC isn’t to the opposite of the GOP, they are aligned on the vast majority of issues and use the rest to yap loudly in disagreement. Dems aren’t left.
During all ^that I wandered into the military which gave me access to all kinds of socialized resources which have enabled me to get where I’m at now and have made a pretty significant improvement on my life.
Social programs aren’t socialized, that’s a bit of a misnomer.
However US Corporations that exploit US Workers and Workers abroad are subsidized, even for their losses. Us Taxpayers pay them while they exploit us further and Social Services get gutted and crumble. Gotta love neoliberalism, where socialism is bad for workers, but good for corporations.
Have you read Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism? It analyzes modern Imperialism, where workers in the Global North are both exploited by their bourgeoisie and yet benefit from the fruits of Imperialism, forming a labor aristocracy.
It isn’t Socialism for corporations, it’s Imperialism in action.
No, I have not. I’ve only touched on the book Consequences of Capitalism so far. Thanks for the req, I’ll check it out
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I am becoming more annoyed by young liberals as I get older but I’m sure as shit not turning GOP conservative.
You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.
Most millennials retirement plan atm is die of heatstroke in 150 degree weather in a 8 person shared apartment in Alaska.
I have a house and a pretty sizable retirement account.
I will GLADLY take a lower home value, higher taxes on my retirement, higher taxes in general, so long as the ultra wealthy are also taxed accordingly.
Or you’ll get more communist when you have people to protect, like children or friends who start getting sick now that they’re not young anymore
I became a socialist because I was an “essential employee” during the height of the pandemic. I was treated like shit by my company, the customers, and the government while they sung my praise. I watched my grandpa get good cancer treatment with the VA (shocker, I know, but it happens) while my sister and grandma had to fight insurance for cancer treatment.
We can’t make a perfect world, but we can make a better one. And it starts with a socialist economy.
Luckyyyyyy!
my experience is the opposite
In the mid 20th-century, people reliably got more petty bourgeois as they got older.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379422000452
Yep, correlation, not causation. Getting older doesn’t cause it.
There’s a much better correlation between wealth and conservatism than age. Almost like those who begin to benefit from the system of oppression are incentivesed to keep it going.
How’d you get a picture of me?
I know that conflating Liberals and Conservatives is practically lemmys official pass time, but I have to point out they are not the same.
Both the democratic party and the republican party are liberal parties. One of them got scratched.
Liberals and conservatives are more similar than liberals and progressives.
No, I have a lot of experience in liberal organizations and they are not, despite the memes, closer to conservatism than progressivism. It honestly makes me feel like most people on lemmy have never really worked with liberal groups.
The major differences between a liberal and a social democrat or progressive comes down largely to deciding when a market has failed and when to use government intervention, both Liberals and progressives are fine with intervention, only the threshold changea. We want the same things, mostly, but disagree on how to get them.
Conservatives, philosophical Conservatives anyway, won’t typically even consider such a thing, and often do not even want the same things as Liberals or progressives.
This both sides same stuff just hurts progressive causes, because it sours mushy people with little to no real philosophy on voting for liberal parties. Those people flip flop back to Conservatives when they get angry and we lose the progress we’ve made, as is about to happen in Canada.
rofl! The difference vetween a progressive and liberal is NOT just when they decide to intervene in corporations…
American liberals want to means test EVERYTHING that could concievably go to a poor person. A progressive realizes the red tape is fucking stupid and expensive in its own right. Remember the COVID funds? Sucked up by megacorporations more than small businesses like it was supposed to be for? Notice how American liberals didn’t go after those corporations or really care that the money instantly dried up for smaller fries?
Yea, American liberals are ABSOLUTELY closer to American conservatives in practicality. It doesn’t matter how many polite words they use if the end result is FUNCTIONALLY THE SAME. No, conservatives wouldn’t have given any money to poor people, but as already said, liberals didn’t care that corporations with lawyers that could push all the red tape got the money, not small businessesthat actually neededrhe help.
They BOTH serve to drain the government of public funds. You’ve just fallen for the pleasantries they put on the same actions.
The major differences between a liberal and a social democrat or progressive comes down largely to deciding when a market has failed and when to use government intervention,
Okay sounds like you’re just describing different labels for liberalism.
Compare these people to a communist who thinks we should literally nationalize and worker-self-manage the relevant sectors of economy and you’ll see what people are trying to tell you about how liberals and conservatives are basically the same.
No, I have a lot of experience in liberal organizations and they are not, despite the memes, closer to conservatism than progressivism.
Perhaps if you redefine progressivism.
The major differences between a liberal and a social democrat or progressive comes down largely to deciding when a market has failed and when to use government intervention, both Liberals and progressives are fine with intervention, only the threshold changea. We want the same things, mostly, but disagree on how to get them.
Yep, you redefined it.
Conservatives, philosophical Conservatives anyway, won’t typically even consider such a thing, and often do not even want the same things as Liberals or progressives.
Conservatives often do, and the distance between genuine progressivism and liberalism is shorter than liberalism and conservativism.
This both sides same stuff just hurts progressive causes, because it sours mushy people with little to no real philosophy on voting for liberal parties. Those people flip flop back to Conservatives when they get angry and we lose the progress we’ve made, as is about to happen in Canada.
Electoralism will not save you.
I think the fact that you’ve spent a lot of time in liberal organizations is why you think that way about where it falls on the continuum between progressivism and conservatism.
Interesting that you characterize my statement as "both sides"ing. I would say the thrust of my statement is not “both sides” but “one side”. America does not have a progressive party, only conservative and conservative-lite. Given the choice, of course I’ll choose the latter, not least because the former is so far off the deep end it may never recover as a party. That does not mean I think that both parties are the same.
Visually:
--------Progressivism ------------------------ Center ------ Liberalism --------------------------- Conservatism.
Conservatives are a subcategory of liberal. They aren’t conflated, that’s like saying thumbs and fingers get conflated.
Yet both liberals and conservatives (in your sense of the words) say this.
A lot of conservatives are liberals. The two terms are not mutually exclusive.
Become retarted, got it
what’s a retart?
Maybe they are into chemistry\alchemy.
I vaguely “knew” that alembics, retorts, and calcinators were things because of some fantasy book or another. Morrowind taught me what they were.
Hehe, same.