Deniz Opal
Because older generations tend to be more conservative than younger generations, it looks like people get more conservative with age.
This is, thankfully, untrue.
People get more progressive with age.
It's just that previous generations get a little left behind. The jump between generations is bigger than the progress that happens within people, giving the illusion that older people become more conservative.
Some good news for once. 😊
𝓓 𝓑 𝓒𝓸𝓸𝓹𝓮𝓻
Makes me laugh when Americans talk about ‘the left’. They don’t have a clue what ‘the left’ is. What they actually have, in the grand scheme of things, is far-right and even further right. 👀
Deniz Opal
The relationship between the people of the USA and the excuse they have for "the left"
"Hey can we have healthcare?"
"No"
"Adult education?"
"No"
"Regulate firearms so my kid can go to school?"
"No"
"A proper welfare system?"
"No"
"At least make life easier for migrants?"
"No"
"Well, why am I voting for you again?"
"You better. Because otherwise you get the bad guy"
Deniz Opal
I think in the US the scale is skewed so they consider liberals to be on the left.
Their scale goes: capitalist serfs in the middle, actual Nazis on the right.
Freek Bomhof
@selzero that's a nice read. As a European, I'm always puzzled at first by the use of the term 'liberal'. At least in NL, liberals are considered as centre at best, but usually more as conservative. The 'lefties' are called 'progressive' in stead.
Or maybe, when comparing EU and US, the centre is also different?
Deniz Opal
I'm in the UK and I follow a lot of US politics and feel the same.
I am not a liberal. I am a progressive.
Jean-Baptiste "JBQ" Quéru
@selzero I remember my mom asking me why I care that other folks get access to health coverage and education. I explained that I don't want to store clerk to sneeze over the produce they are setting up in the supermarket, or that I want the people who'll take care of me when I'm old and sick to actually know what they're doing. She got it.
Alexandre Oliva
GNU Too
Robert James
Robert James
Deniz Opal
"Cure for conservatism discovered"?
Alexandre Oliva
Alexandre Oliva
GNU Too
If people become more liberal with age, why are they more likely to say they are conservative?
“Conservative” and “Liberal” are relative – if someone thinks they are right of center, they are more likely to consider themselves conservative.
The center moves over time.
Most people don't keep up.
As young adults, they were left of center.
Over their lives, they became slowly more liberal.
But the center moved faster, and caught up with them.
And some time in middle age, they found that they were right of center.
clacke
@freekbomhof @selzero It is both.
First, when US people say "liberal" they mean "social democrat" or "leftie" or possibly "socially/morally liberal", not "economically liberal, wants to liberalize government regulation and economic influence".
For them "social-liberal" is repeating yourself and "liberal-conservative" is a contradiction rather than a triangulation. Don't get me started on "neoliberal".
Second, what's right-wing in Europe is center-center in the US.
Iron Bug
In Search of a Better World
Deniz Opal
Cities that have a high wealth disparity also have a high crime rate. By taking from society to enrich themselves personally, people end up unable to walk down the street, and have to create gated communities.
We live in the world we collectively make.
Tom Capuder
"karma is real"<<Evidence, please.
Deniz Opal
I'm an atheist, but karma is real y'all. What good is it to live in a world where I have more and people around me are miserable.
Outersider 🇵🇸
@BigJesusTrashcan @SocialistStan @TechyDad @selzero I'm 32 now & I just want stay home & let the economy collapse, so we don't have to go to work anymore lol.
Big Jesus Trashcan☑️🏴
@SocialistStan @TechyDad @selzero kryst I'm almost 58
Got more radical along the way
I started as an anarchist & just got deeper in. I still vote. But I have pretty much the same wants & needs as I always have had
SocialistStan
@TechyDad @selzero Me too (I'm not 48 though, considerably younger, lol) But teenage/early 20s me would certainly have been categorized as alt-right now.
I've done nothing but get more 'liberal' as I've gotten older to where I completely detest liberals now and only support leftists.
Whoever had this idea that people get more conservative as they age was full of it.
TechyDad
@selzero I'm 48 now and am actually more liberal than when I was younger. To give an example, had you asked 20 year old me about marriage equality, I'd have said "gay people can have civil unions. Marriage is between a man and a woman." Nowadays, I'm fully supportive of marriage equality.
Will I perpetually keep getting more liberal? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe that Overton paradox will claim me as well. Still, I'm not going to turn into some MAGA Trump supporter just because I can join AARP soon.
TechyDad
@selzero For almost my entire life (at least since I started voting), my father has told me that I'll become a conservative when I get older.
When I was 18, it was when I turn 30. When I was 30, it was when I turn 40. When I turned 40, it became a nebulous "when you're older."
1/
Deniz Opal
@Outersider @BigJesusTrashcan @SocialistStan @TechyDad
You broke the capitalism Stockholm Syndrome.
G.I. Robot :bc:
@Mary625 @housepanther @selzero
There are times when I wish I was raised in a progressive household, and other times I’m proud that I grew up in a Nazi household and managed to get out of it.
It’s also nice to be able to know what they’re thinking and how their logic works, so that I can more effectively counter it.
Mary625
@GuyDudeman @housepanther @selzero
I'm much older and have always been left, way left, of many. I won't say most because I believe most are left of anything that is reported in the media in the US.
My parents, both gone now, life long progressives. Campaigned for McGovern with enthusiasm and never changed
G.I. Robot :bc:
Same!!
House Panther :verified:
@selzero I know that I am becoming further to the left with age. Now, at 46 years old, I am as far to the left as is possible with #anarchocommunism
G.I. Robot :bc:
@Mary625 @housepanther @selzero
Nice. My grandpa was county administrator for the biggest county in the country during the 70’s and had a sort of “mandatory retirement” just as it was being discovered that he bought cheap land from the county under his mom’s name and sold it for a huge profit, knowing that it was illegal and the land was not approved for what the buyer bought it for. He got away with it.
My family has not been… the best.
Mary625
@GuyDudeman @housepanther @selzero
I'm glad you got out. That has to be difficult.
My mom, a #Union teacher then professor. My Dad, owned a real estate company but was the village president, the president of the Chicago suburb mayor's and Manager's association, worked with the Democratic caucus and was asked to run for the Senate by the governor. My mom wouldn't let him 😂
G.I. Robot :bc:
@Mary625 @housepanther @selzero
That’s not to mention the plantations in Mississippi and people we owned and abused, and fighting for the south against the north, and finally coming to California and discovering it was even cheaper to hire migrants to harvest your citrus than to feed and house and clothe slaves.
There was one shining light in the family, but they ended up perishing with Jim Jones. Life is nuts.
Mary625
@GuyDudeman @housepanther @selzero
OMG! This is just horrible. I'm so sorry!
I can honestly, and thankfully, say, my family didn't own plantations or enslave people. Too recently immigrated here. The one side that came right before the civil war actually worked with and loved the Indigenous people. Enough so that one tribe deeded a great deal of land to my great*4 grandfather. The city stole it. Any money in the family was lost fighting the city of Chicago
danjac
@selzero in the UK Margaret Thatcher believed that the path to a permanent Conservative hegemony was an enlarged middle class of property owners.
So you might be a 21 year old socialist firebrand, but once you have your 2 bedroom house and share portfolio, you're a Tory voter.
However we now have people in their 30s and 40s with no hope of a home - so that Conservative pipeline is broken.
Arena Cops 🇺🇦✌
@selzero Older Mark Twain in a speech to the Knights of Labor:
"Who are the oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat."
https://socialistworker.org/2010/04/21/the-twain-they-didnt-teach
dpflug
@selzero
See also: https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109609941910796255
@andyhilmer
Robert James
Dogzilla
@selzero @partnumber2 @freekbomhof Why do so many people think democracy is like some sort of fancy buffet, where you sit like little lords and ladies while waiters bring you choices?
Democracy is participatory- if you don’t like the choices, it’s *your* job to change them. There literally isn’t anyone else who will. You have bad choices because you or your parents were too lazy to get involved - don’t make the same mistake.
Peter Brown
@Dogzilla @selzero @partnumber2 @freekbomhof unfortunately, under first past the post it doesn’t work like that.  You need proportional representation for democracy to have even a chance of surviving
Peter Brown
@shreegupta @selzero @partnumber2 @freekbomhof 50 or 60 years ago I could have understood that. But not any more.
shreegupta
@selzero @partnumber2 @freekbomhof now I know why all Asian parents says to go America
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