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Boomers started out progressive then sold out. They project this onto everyone else as if it’s the natural order of things.
Same with the whole "social experiment" thing they accuse everyone of.
In fact, their childhoods were the biggest social experiment ever. Suburbs, nuclear families with mothers who needed uppers to do everything expected of them, easy access to free and cheap education and loans, etc. They act like it's the way things always were, and that it's the only way things should ever be.
It was all a fluke of the post war economy. Not normal, not sustainable, and trying to appease their fantasy is killing the world.
If you want to dive into the utter failure that is/was the suburban experiment, I highly recommend the book Strong Towns published by the nonprofit of the same name. Not Just Bikes has a good overview series on it, which how I found it.
The very, very oversimplified tldr is that suburbia is a giant ponzi scheme that's on the verge (relatively speaking, within the next couple decades) of collapsing in on itself.
There's data on this: https://d6c748xw2pzm8.cloudfront.net/prod/42800fa0-876c-11ed-b4ef-3dee38a55a6d-standard.png
Millenials, and presumably gen z, are getting less conservative with age, a complete reversal of the traditional trend. We're also the first generation that's poorer than our parents.
They kept the money flowing in the post-war economy, and kept propping it up with increasing globalisation, pushing the poverty onto poorer nations, but it looks like that's stopped working and now the economy is cannibalising its own young.
I hope this sparks revolution, and I see our job right now as building the structures that will make a better world afterwards.
I think it’s less that people get more conservative as they age and more that they get more conservative as they get wealthier. Previous generations typically could get wealthier as they get older, but younger generations are being screwed over, hence the reversal.
I can't tell you how dismaying it is to see Gen X trending conservative even faster than previous generations.
They got to be lazy and still had enough scraps from the boomers to not have to worry about too much. They have been apathetic to most issues as a voting block and hidden under the answer of their parents and older peers wouldn't let them do anything. And now a group of them are poorer than ever and will happily and lazily blame whoever they are told to and the other side are finally getting the positions and wealth they were locked out of and either way it leads to a conservative shit group.
You can actually see some of that angry hard swing conservativism in a group of gen Z that either got transitioned unimaginable wealth or poverty early and have turned to fascism as well to protect or try to claim that wealth.
I used to be conservative up to my mid 20s because I didn’t know enough about the world and all I had was my parents’ influence.
Now in my mid 40s I’m as progressive as they come, and I believe there are absolutely no redeeming qualities of being a “conservative” and it’s ruining society.
Conservative isn't even the right word for today's GOP. It's regressive.
That's pretty much what conservatism is. Conservativism tries to conserve something a country has and when that country males.progress they must regress to go back to what the country has.
Yeah, conservatism means protecting a society's institutions and allowing only slow and gradual change to prevent disruption.
The Democratic Party is conservative.
Progressivism means embracing the possibilities of change and working powerfully to change society for the better.
We don't have a progressive party.
The Republican Party isn't even "regressive" - what it wants to "regress" to never even existed.
The Republican Party are refounders. Revolutionaries. They want to tear down American institutions to remake them in the image of an imaginary ultralibertarian "American golden age" that will eliminate democracy and ensconce themselves and their descendants as a new American robber baron oligarchy. And they don't care what they destroy in the process.
Boomers to me in my teens: "Don't believe anything on the internet, find actual trust worthy verifiable sources."
Boomers to me in my 30's: "Don't trust the LameStream media! I found this guy on Facebook who made a real compelling video about how all Hollywood stars are transgender!"
A real compelling video about how all Hollywood stars are transgender!
Well, that's news to me.
I know this is probably exaggerated for comedic purposes, but I'd like to see a video that actually argues that because it sounds really funny. In a completely unhinged way, of course.
I actually used that example because some old guy at a thrift store said it to me. There are actually videos of people comparing unflattering photos of celebrities saying they have an Adam's apple, or "too broad of shoulders to be a woman". I didn't believe it either, but it was a big thing in small circles called transvestigation. I don't know if it's still being spread anymore though.
Yeah there was a whole movement back in 2008 that tried really hard to prove that Michelle Obama is a man. It's really weird even by conspiracy standards.
People who know the truth already know that Hollywood stars can't be trans, because they're not real. Hollywood stars don't exist, they're actually all just crises actors pretending to be Hollywood stars.
Hollywood stars are all... actors? And their job is to pretend to be someone else?
I think you might be onto something here.
It also needs to be noted that a lot of "conservatism" is straight up fascism, mask on and mask off. If you undermine social programs while shouting about how you are protecting kids and families, you are conserving jack shit.
My brother (staunch conservative) once paraphrased Churchill to me: "Anyone who is a conservative when they're young is heartless; anyone who's a liberal when they're old is brainless."
Now that 50 is just over the horizon for me, I say that someone who voted for Donald Trump thinking I'm brainless is a compliment. Also, forgive student debt, give us universal healthcare and a universal basic income, fuck the rich, and come the revolution, may each of you reading this get to throw a Molotov at someone who owns a private jet. 💙
Fuck yeah
In my 20s, I always pointed out that the empirical evidence shows that, as people get older, their political positions generally just... become harder-line versions of the positions they held in their 20s.
As time has passed, that's born out. I'm still a leftie, just a franker and more ticked off one.
Ditto. I've become far more liberal as I age. I attribute this to the fact I'd like the world to be slightly better for everyone else when my generation starts dieing off. At this rate I have little hope that will be the case.
This resonates with me a lot as someone that's been left of center in FL for the past 27 years. I feel really defeated actually. I've typically identified as politically active, but I just feel run-over at this point. I am working on getting approval from my job to leave this state, and I'm 2 out of 3 hurdles done. I can't fight fascism my entire life, and I feel like I have. I'm tired.
Just because the world is shitty the way it is, it doesn't mean that it has to stay that way.
And just because you personally benefits from the injustice of the broken system, it doesn't mean you shouldn't oppose it.
That's the part of the movie's message I feel that people tend to miss.
Most people just don't care enough to do anything about injustice, or don't think about it at all. It's infuriating to see how apathetic and irresponsible people can be. Just look at the meat industry. People could stop, but they don't. They only care that their virtue is signalled and that the suffering is far enough detached and out of sight so that they don't have to face it and actually self-reflect on their cognitive dissonance or flaws. What's worse is that eating meat is often culturally engrained, and so similar to religious indoctrination, even harder to quit. All this, done by years of lobbying of the meat industry and other unethical practices. These problems of injustice are deep-rooted in our society, and entitlement/lack of empathy. The arguments used for factory farming these days are the same slavers used in the past, and even now it is just transferred elsewhere so that people can be exploited all for a cheaper product to consume.
Things get even sadder when you realise that all the injustice in the world is for nothing but ego or extreme selfishness. I honestly think it's a large reason people still believe in religion. When you face the injustice in the world and become aware of it, you either have to ignore it/find a way to cope or actually do something. As long as people remain ignorant, uneducated and don't have empathy for others, this will continue.
My dad gave me that "if you're not liberal in your youth you have no heart, if you're not conservative as you age then you have no brain" nonsense and here I am, brainless.
In your dad's defense: being that conservatism is maintaining the status quo, I'd probably be conservative as fuck if I got to reap the benefits of the old economy and ride into the sunset with a pension. I mean, shit: I wouldn't want to change anything
What we've inherited fucking sucks. Also, it's kind of gross how racist our parents were
Remember that there are exceptions, just like in anything! My mother who's close to retiring and her friend (a 70 y.o. pothead that worked as a teacher and then managed a theater) are still left of center and are much more open to all things LGBTQ+ then a lot of people my age!
My opinions essentially haven't changed since i was 16: be kind, recognize that everyone is just trying their best to make sense of reality, seek the truth, be optimistic, and reach for the stars. In practice, that makes me pretty far left in the current political climate. I don't understand why people's opinions would change as they get older. The only thing that's changed for me is I'm more confident in having my own opinions and not trying to conform.
The way I've heard it described is the boomers were always out for self-interest. They voted for progressive policies when they were young because it benefitted them. They then voted for conservative policies when they got older because it benefitted them. The world they created was made for them and no one else, so now they vote to keep it that way. It just looks like they got more conservative as they got older because conservatives on the whole want things to stay the same forever, or at most go back to some ideal past where everything was in their favor, which is just more self enrichment. They pulled up the latter because others having more means them having less. It doesn't help that they lived through an era where we pumped lead into the air.
If you're conservative when you're young you have no heart.
If you're liberal when you're old you have no money.
Guess why the new generations don't become conservative with age.
Yeah it's a simple as as you get older you want to protect the things you hold important. Money is what most of the older generations value and hold utmost importance too.
Millennials have gotten conservative but it's over things they think they own like internet social media platforms and Internet content.
You can look at the rise in smaller internet bubbles and infighting of other artists "encroaching" on their territory to see it.
Good times make people selfish; selfish people make bad times...
It's really quite simple; all of the wealth has gone to executives and shareholders.
Regular working people have been fucked.
Im conserving my groceries more. Making soup out of vegetable scraps
Becoming more conservative is a result of having amassed a fortune to protect. No fortune, nothing to conserve.
What I find funny about right wingers trying to say that people will become more right-leaning as they get older is that the quote that they're citing seems to point to the idea that the left-wing person's ideas aren't going to change and that they'll continue to hold the same beliefs.
“It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.”
Seems to imply that it means you'll get stuck in your ways and continue to hold left-leaning views, the exact opposite of what the boomers are saying, it's based on an older version of the word conservative, meaning to keep things as they are. Ironic that they're citing it as a reason for why they think people will become like them when it seems to point to the opposite, that they'll stay the same and continue to hold left-wing views.
Of coarse the idea that someone will stay the same or change in some predictable way is a generalization, people grow and change in different ways depending on the individual, same applies for getting stuck in said ways.
If you can't win, you have to resist.
I don't think getting older necessarily mean you become conservative. I reckon many people conflate with looking for stability with capital "c" Conservatism. I certainly understand now what one means by looking to settle down. But it would not make me fiscal conservative; become a pro-lifer; religious; or traditional.
