• queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Translation: you’ll become more conservative when you have children and own a home

    Millennials: 😆
    Zoomers: 😂
    Alpha: 🤣
    Whateverthefuckcomesnext: 💀

    • ulkesh@beehaw.org
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      I have a child and own a home, and am a member of the lost generation. Fuck the Republican Party and any conservative who believes their selfish bullshit should outweigh the greater good of others.

        • ulkesh@beehaw.org
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          I agree about Republicans. I don’t agree about Democrats. Some, of course, are conservative, as they historically always have been. But a good portion are quite liberal.

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            As a whole, the Dems are pretty center of the aisle, because America as a whole is fairly conservative compared to Europe (despite 60% of the population being more liberal than the government at most times). Europeans generally consider the Dems in the US a conservative party, and corporate Dems are definitely closer to the right than to the left. The other issue besides the general conservative leaning in the country though is that there’s about 50 other groups of various left leaning shades that would be their own separate parties in Europe but are bunched in with the corporate Dems and therefore have little say in the party platform.

          • ulkesh@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Seems people feel the need to try to educate me, not really sure why. But whatever :)

      • RadicalCandour@startrek.website
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        I agree with everything you said except, im confused about the use of the term lost generation. That’s a generation born in the 1880-1900s.

        • ulkesh@beehaw.org
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          My mistake if so. I was under the impression that term was used for those of us born between 1978 or so thru 1983.

          In any case, I don’t see myself in the same vein as GenX nor Millennial, at least stereotypically.

          • RadicalCandour@startrek.website
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            I had an feeling you actually meant GenX but I just wanted to make sure. I know that GenX is often thought of as the latchkey generation. I’m on the edge of GenX/millennial.

            I just see myself as apart of the “ boomerang “ generation where I’ll be worse off than my parents. Fun times.

    • danisth [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen my material conditions improve as I’ve entered my mid-thirties which has let me start a family and buy a home. I’ve also watched my incredibly talented and hard working friends/acquaintances/neighbours be ground into dust under the cruel rule of capitalism. I got lucky, they didn’t, this has radicalized me far more than any naive idealism ever could.

      • iByteABit [he/him]@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Exactly this. I’m fortunate enough that the skills I’m good at have a lot of demand at the moment, but people I know that are more hard working than I am and very talented, struggle to get by just because their job for some reason is considered less worthy to pay for.

        Wanting to maintain this rotten system is the purest form of greed.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Influencers on the whole are trying their best to make little nazis out of the next generations. Give them time. homer-bye

      • halferect@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Which is weird since conservative politics is all about cutting funds for schools, gutting the department of education completely, no pre k or free lunches for kids, and getting rid of a large portion of our law enforcement. Just doesn’t make sense why any one who cares about education or safety would be conservative

        • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]@hexbear.net
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          getting rid of a large portion of our law enforcement

          I’m pretty certain neither party supports this. After 2020, every state and city, including dem-run ones increased police funding.

          If you’re talking about republicans complaining about the FBI because it went after Trump, they’re just as likely to abolish prisons because some jan 6ers got convicted. These people like those institutions too much when they’re doing their primary purpose of neutralizing leftist political movements.

          Also you’re not private property nor do you own significant capital. It’s not your law enforcement.

          • TheForkOfDamocles@beehaw.org
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            You should look past the Cato Institute’s analysis of the KC schools situation. For example, the summary and conclusion sections of this article from the University of Michigan law school show that the conservative criticisms are based on myth.

              • TheForkOfDamocles@beehaw.org
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                You may revise your opinion after reading the summary and conclusion, but maybe you just figure the liberals at Michigan Law can’t possibly understand all the nuances vs someone watching their local news.

                Also, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Your skimmed analysis of silly twists of numbers belies the full picture, and in my opinion, total desegregation without changing the major obstacles of the systemic segregation of the city’s real estate, was doomed from the start.

                BTW, I agree with you that merely throwing money at an issue without cause isn’t correct. One might argue against the ridiculous and constant over-budgeting of the military, for example. In KC, I believe it had many successes, though obviously not a complete realization of the goals (that shouldn’t have needed to be implemented in the first place).

          • jennwiththesea@lemmy.world
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            How would they prove to you that the funding for schools is necessary? What studies do you require? How is the state going to conduct these studies (in your view), in a timely manner that will positively impact this generation?

            There is plenty of research showing, e.g., that fewer kids per teacher provides for better education. Studies that show the benefit of school nurses, counselors, and other wellness experts. All of this costs $$$, often way more money than any given community is willing or even able to put up. This is why strong state funding is so important, rather than relying on levies and bonds. Requiring your specific state to prove the value of teachers, special education, etc is quite an ask. Why isn’t the existing research good enough for you?

              • Chapo0114 [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                That’s an exaggeration. The median price for new construction in 1980 was $64,600. [1] As for existing housing stock, the median home value in 1980 was $47,200. [2] As housing prices are heavily right skewed, the prices of cheap housing is far closer to the median than the price of expensive housing. Based on a cursory overview of some charts, it seems like the bottom 20% of houses are no more that 30% cheaper than the median, putting them in the $30k range.

      • robotrash@lemmy.robotra.sh
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        Then why conservative when they actively hate children and society in general? It seems insane to lean that way.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Economic issues always come down to economic incentives. You care about property values because your home is an investment. You care about stocks because you have a retirement plan. You care about not being a burden on your children when you’re old and having inheritance to leave behind when you die. You care about crime because you have things to steal and a life to lose.

        I don’t have property. I will never retire. I will never have children. I am nothing and no one and that will never change.

        When I was younger I was a pretty typical liberal. By 30 I was a Marxist-Leninist and desired nothing but the complete destruction of the demon shithole country called Amerikkka. 😘

              • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                That’s a well intentioned sentiment. So don’t tske any of this as an attack, just a clarification.

                We aren’t just all on this journey together, some of us are oppressed by others. Our problems aren’t abstract, they are a consequence of the ruling class engaging in warfare on the rest of us, and that’s what the person above was getting at.

                We know we’re people, but we also know that we aren’t people to the ruling class.

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                Optimism is for older generations, who lived the before times when life got better year-after-year.

                That has never happened in my entire life.

              • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                Nothing about the way everything’s going is designed to let me feel like a person. Money’s a requirement to simply exist. Everything’s a race to get enough money to sustain myself. I’m simply a worker who generates profit so my parasite of a boss and the associated shareholders can hang out on yachts. My job is nonsense too that doesn’t help anyone. I’m estranged from my family for gender and lifestyle reasons, can’t make friends because I’m always exhausted from work, can’t go to therapy except sparingly because it’s too expensive.

                No matter how much validity my humanity holds, none of it really matters if none of it can be expressed due to a combination of alienation and dead eyed pessimism about climate change.

                And no, we all aren’t on the same journey together. The economic strata that sits above mine has nothing in common with me.

              • cloudpunk@sh.itjust.works
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                No offense, but it seems pretty naive to say things will get better. I try not to jump on conservatives when they are willing to engage, but that’s a pretty rough take.

          • Grimble [he/him,they/them]@hexbear.net
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            This kind of talk is so worryingly common on this site. Feels like people insist on being seen as a “drone to serve their boss” even though they’re desperate to escape it. They’re disgusted by optimism because someone taught them that escapism is dumb and they believed it

      • JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        I care about schools. I want them to be free and public.

        I care about crime. I want to abolish the police and use that money to on social safety net programs including healthcare, social workers, housing, and more which is proven to reduce crime.

        I care about children. I want paid parental leave for both parents, guaranteed job return, free childcare, free healthcare for children, and a monthly check for groceries.

        Conservatives want none of that, and actively work against every point. Centre/centre-left only want some of that performatively and will undermine any implementation of these programs. The only people working for this are the “hard left.” And because of decades of anti-communist propaganda, no one will touch it.

        The only reason I can think of to be conservative and “socially liberal” is to protect your own capital at the expense of others while not wanting to feel bad about doing it.

          • JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            Schools are already free and public

            Not Pre-K for most parents, and schools are only “free” and “public” for now, thanks to conservatives and liberals alike. College, tech college, and other educational programs are also not free and need to be. Private schools need to be abolished.

            Most people do not want to abolish the police. Crime would soar as there would be nothing to stop the criminals.

            First, okay? I said me, not everyone. Second, that’s objectively not true. If you care about a data-driven argument that shows how policing increases crime, see Alex Vitale’s End of Policing. You can download it for free in a bunch of different formats here.

            You get a monthly check for groceries, it’s called a job.

            Ah, so you truly are a conservative. A person’s worth is only equal to their productive in the blood-soaked economy machine. A child can’t have a job, jackass, that’s why giving new parents a check for groceries helps their income as their total costs rise.

            I think this best take away about communism is if it was so great, why were people fleeing from it rather than to it?

            You need to do some self-crit and question everything you have been taught. For example, there are more people in prison right now in the USA than there have ever been in a gulag. If you genuinely want to learn more about communism from a communist perspective, there are plenty of places to turn. You can start on the Prole Library with some shorter introductory works. You can watch Parenti’s famous yellow lecture for a short introduction, and you can watch Richard Wollf’s introduction to Marxian Economics on YouTube. You can read The Jakarta Method, Blacks and Reds, or listen to a few podcasts like Blowback to learn about the propaganda machine at specific times (e.g., Iraq, Cuban Revolution, Korean War, Afghanistan in order of seasons of Blowback).

            But you’re going to have to stop trying to win internet arguments by being a smarmy ass and put in the effort if you really want to learn how a better world is possible.

              • JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                Pre-K isn’t necessary.

                “Fuck them kids” - You

                Consistent with other studies that find preschool has a huge effect on kids, Walters, Gray-Lobe and Pathak find that the kids lucky enough to get accepted into preschools in Boston saw meaningful changes to their lives. These kids were less likely to get suspended from school, less likely to skip class, and less likely to get in trouble and be placed in a juvenile detention facility. They were more likely to take the SATs and prepare for college. The most eye-popping effects the researchers find are on high school graduation and college enrollment rates. The kids who got accepted into preschool ended up having a high-school graduation rate of 70% — six percentage points higher than the kids who were denied preschool, who saw a graduation rate of only 64%. And 54% of the preschoolers ended up going to college after they graduated — eight percentage points higher than their counterparts who didn’t go to preschool. These effects were bigger for boys than for girls. And they’re all the more remarkable because the researchers only looked at the effects of a single year of preschool, as opposed to two years of preschool. Moreover, in many cases, the classes were only half a day.

                College should not be free

                Scratch a liberal and…

                It doesn’t make sense for a garbage man to for someone else’s gender studies degree

                There it is folks. Mask off in three replies.

                “I will read anything suggested.”

                Direct links to books, articles, videos, and a podcast

                “I have talked to people who lived during communism and I have visited a communist country.”

                Your only interest is yourself and your capital. You only want to protect yourself and, by doing so, you actively harm others. You are not only incredibly selfish as a conservative but want people to applaud you for being “socially liberal.” I hope your pile of gold is worth it.

                I only have one further question: have your children cut off communications with you or is that something you have to look forward to?

      • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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        Not in my case. I grew up pretty conservative she moved right libertarian until learning economics in college which moved me left. I bought a home and have two kids and am squarely on the left. I care about schools and crime which is why I want more funding for education and programs that actually decrease crime.

        Healthcare is the big one for me. We should not be forking over 20% of our paychecks for healthcare. People on the right are fucking nuts to believe that the cost is because of too much regulation considering we have the least regulation and pay twice as much with now limited options. We need Medicare for All.

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    I have heard this my entire life and now that I recently have kids and a home, I find it to be an insane take. If anything, the greater my knowledge of the world becomes the MORE liberal I am. I’m significantly more aware of rigged systems and injustice as I age.

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    In order to be conservative you have to be afraid, irrationally. Afraid your guns will be taken, afraid the gays are going to out-breed you (not even kidding, they really “think” that), afraid what you want won’t be what everyone does, afraid other people are smarter or more capable, afraid that when you die you won’t get magicked somewhere to live forever. Basically afraid of everything whether it makes any sense or not. And afraid someone else will find out how afraid you are all the time.

    They’re pathetic and not fit to walk a dog much less run anything.

    • essell@beehaw.org
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      A lot of that specific brand of conservatism is very American. While everywhere has conservatives, and I totally agree they’re build on a foundation of personal fear, they have very different presentations in different places!

      • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
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        Yet they are fools everywhere. I can confirm for Germany, bunch of anti-science idiots who make my blood boil.

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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      afraid the gays are going to out-breed you (not even kidding, they really “think” that)

      Do, uh, do they understand how reproduction works, or…?

      afraid what you want won’t be what everyone does, afraid other people are smarter or more capable

      Well, yeah, that’s almost certainly true.

      afraid that when you die you won’t get magicked somewhere to live forever.

      Atheists would say that’s true too.

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    My old man has told me this my whole life and I always tell him no, because I’m not a cunt. 42yo so far and still going strong.

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      I’m more conservative than a lot of people here, but no, I’ll never be a religious nut cheering on death. If that’s conservative they can keep it.

  • sleepy@reddthat.com
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    I was actually more right wing as a kid. Now that I’ve learned some things about the world that’s when I became a left leaning liberal.

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    Boomers got more conservative as they grew older because they’ve been eating shovels of propaganda since reagan and never learned how to fact check like younger generations

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    I remember a high school friend’s father saying something to me like, “You’ll get more conservative when you start paying taxes.” This was around 1993-1994 or so.

    I’m 45 now, modestly wealthy, and pay plenty of taxes. I can’t envision ever voting for a Republican for any public office ever again…and the current circus of bullshit around TFG just seals that deal for me.

    • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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      Same (though not American). I did the opposite. I started off conservative cause that’s what my family and community was. Then found out that was hateful bullshit and am now extremely progressive. I’m happy to pay my taxes (and I pay waaaay more than average). I do sometimes wish they went to better things and weren’t squandered as often (especially on MPs paying for $16 glasses of orange juice), but overall Canada does a decent job at using its taxes. It’s impossible for taxes to go to 100% agreeable things, since there’s no satisfying everyone. They’re ultimately a net benefit.

      I also don’t have kids but am happy to see kids get the benefits of my taxes (and many other things taxes go to that don’t directly benefit me). People who expect tax dollars to always benefit them are selfish and narrow-minded, which I think is the root reason some people don’t like taxes.

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      Even if conservatives go back to being about “small government”, I can’t see myself voting Republican. I don’t think I’m anything. I can see “small government” working. But I can also see the democrats vision of “government should do things” working too. I can see either technique working. The problem is, back when Republicans used to promote “small government”, I noticed after a while, they never made government smaller. When I confronted some of them on that, they used to say at least its not as big as what the democrats want. What the fuck does that even mean? Democrats, on the other hand, actually try to do stuff.

      • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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        They want small government for the rich and big government for anyone that’s not a conservative pentecostal Christian. Simple. Lol

  • TheRealGChu@lemm.ee
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    GenXer. I’ve gotten more progressive. I used to consider myself a moderate dem back in the 90s. On the other hand, the 90s moderate dem is now considered a commie woke libtard, so shrug? Shocking that I want justice for all, fair wages, end systemic racism, end homophobia, etc. So librul! I’m destroying Western society! Oh wait, I’m a POC immigrant woman, course I’m destroying America!

      • noetics@lemm.ee
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        It’s a famous example of survivorship bias. The idea is, adding armor to planes make them heavier, so you want to minimize where you put armor. After some flights, you take note of where the bullet holes are in the planes that come back.

        Where do you put more armor? Do you put it where there are the most bullet holes? That seems to be where the planes are being shot the most.

        The problem is, your sample isn’t representative of your underlying population. These are the planes that came back. If they get shot it the cockpit, they die.

        So, where should you put the armor? Well if they can get shot and come back, it’s not all that important, so put it everywhere else.

      • fox [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        During WW2, the Allies wanted to armor their planes better so more would survive missions. But armor is expensive and heavy so you’d have to prioritize where to put it.

        So they go out and collect data on the returning planes to see where they’d been hit. That picture is basically the data collected: where returning planes had sustained the most damage.

        So most of the engineers looked at that and went “Aha, the points with the most damage should be armored, since they get shredded up pretty good.”

        And one engineer went “Um actually, if they got shot there and came back, armor doesn’t matter. We need to armor the spots with no bullet holes, since a plane shot there wasn’t able to return.”

        And so it was, and they called it Survivor Bias.

        In this case, it’s survivor bias about becoming more conservative as you age

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        It’s an old diagram showing where damage to an airplane could be identified after it returned to base without crashing while still damaged.

        In short, the places you don’t see damage are parts that the plane can’t get hit in if it is expected not to crash before landing again.

      • Bulkiestpizza@cocte.au
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        I think it’s the most common places that the planes got hit when returning back to base during WW2, it’s most commonly used when discussing survivorship bias. Which I believe is their intent with said picture.

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    I hate it when boomers, specifically, say this. My grandfather, who is Silent Generation, will tell you that he’s gotten more liberal as he’s gotten older. Whenever I hear a boomer say this, it’s used as a shaming, like “you don’t understand now but you will when you’re older”. Turns out I haven’t gotten more conservative. I listened to minority populations and then came out and it’s turned me more leftist.

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      Boomers, in general, are a generation of spoiled children that, for the most part, have never seen the true hardships of any other generation. “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” Boomers are the weak men that created hard times for the following generations, yet they keep living and consuming as if our world wasn’t dying. “Fuck you, got mine” I guess.

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      Yeah, same. It’s also part of their mindset that “progressive = immature” which I’ve always found really confusing.

      Yes, the idea that my taxes should be spent for the benefit of all is immature. Gotcha.

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    Young people tend to be more persuadable before 30, and tend to bake in their political views around that age. So big events in one’s 20’s tend to lead to lasting partisan affiliations for life after that.

    FDR’s presidency won over a lot of people to the Democrats in the 30’s and 40’s. Eisenhower’s presidency shifted people over to Republicans in the 50’s. Nixon pushed people away from Republicans. But by the 70’s Democrats were losing a lot of voters, and then Reagan won a bunch of people over to the GOP. Then 9/11 won people over to Republicans, while the Iraq war pushed them away.

    But each of these things had an outsized effect on those under 30. So Boomers who remember getting fed up with Democrats in the 70s and crossing over for Reagan (and then voting Republican in every election since) just thought it was the effect of age, rather than the effect of that particular political moment in 1980.

    And even though this data and the analysis is mainly for Americans, it’s probably reflective of how people shape their own political beliefs everywhere.

    • iByteABit [he/him]@lemm.ee
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      That’s probably true… It would be nice if people would voluntarily read books at all ages and get educated so that they can have actual political beliefs instead of ‘x party good, y party bad’

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    1 year ago

    That might have been true decades ago, but now people have:

    • Greater access to knowledge, and are forced to think more critically about what they consume.
    • More extreme views, which picks off the weak.
    • Most importantly, older people had stuff. They owned houses, had stable, life-long careers, and had settled down before they hit their thirties.

    People in their mid to late thirties nowadays might have a fancier job title, but many of them are still struggling like they were before. It’s hard to be protectionist when you have nothing but your life to protect…

    • hydrospanner@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I think it’s your third point, mostly. Maybe even as sharply stated as: boomers became more conservative as the system and status quo brought them wealth, comfort, and security, so naturally they wanted to keep that going. For the generations that have followed, the system and status quo have only continued to bring those benefits to the boomers, not to them, so they’re less likely to trend conservative to perpetuate a system that has failed them.

      Additionally, in the years since the boomers came of age, the political right has moved away from a traditional conservative platform to a very extreme and hateful version of itself. Even if many millennials had shifted slightly to the right as they aged, the party typically associated with conservatism has moved so much farther to the right that even with their gradual shift, these millennials are still far closer to the left, or at least to “not whatever the right is saying”.

    • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      More people become conservative when they have something to lose. Why would you want to conserve a status quo where you don’t own anything of substance and probably never will?

    • lemmington_steele@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      while the last point is perhaps the main determinant theory behind why many older people are not being owing more right wing, I’m a little confused by your first two points.

      especially the fact that people have greater access to knowledge and are forced to think more critically. if anything, with the advent of the internet, echo chambers have never been easier, preventing critical thinking. this leads to a growing of extreme positions which further reinforces such views due to tribalistic fallacies in our thinking and the need for these tribal identities to distinguish themselves.

      • ANGRY_MAPLE@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I think it also depends on whether or not they were provided the education to use the internet well. If all people get is a vague “have at 'er!”, of course we would have more echo chambers. Ever hear the saying “don’t believe everything you read online?”

        Properly teaching people how to verify their information sources and how to reflect on things would probably result in fewer echo chambers. “Huh. I don’t want to keep looking like a fool who spreads obviously false things around.”

        There’s also internal bias to think about here. If someone is already dead-set in believing only their current mindset, they’re likely not going to be open to other sources. Instead, they’re probably going to search for whatever will back up their claim. People don’t usually try to prove themselves wrong in an argument.

        This means that part of getting rid of echo chambers will also be teaching people to accept and acknowledge their own errors. We should be teaching people to go for the best answer, not to just prove themselves right. In this way, this problem also preceeds the internet. That mindset has hindered science for literal centuries. It even goes back to the first days of science in Greece. (Thanks for that attempted halt of progress, religion.)

        It’s easier to blame the internet than the people doing these things. Sadly though, it’s in human nature.

      • S_204@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        My kids made me more liberal…our conservative government cut property taxes to starve our public education system, I donated most of the rebate to my kids school, some of it went into their education fund.

        People who aren’t as fortunate as we are, deserve the same opportunities we have when it comes to public services.

        • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          A lot of people get caught up in finding the best local district for education or sports here. I think that mentality prolly says something about them.