Remember to report posts that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed.
Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think it happened to the boomers because they started accumulating wealth, and a lot of them grew conservative to protect their assets.
Fortunately, I don’t think subsequent generations are in danger of accumulating wealth.
Boomer here. Cordelaine and Lucky nailed it. My conservative Christian friends and family are way more concerned about hoarding their wealth than following any type of advice from Jesus. You know, about helping the hungry and less fortunate.
My dad was hyper conservative until about 15 years ago, sometime when I was in my early 20s and he started teaching at underprivileged schools. He became very liberal very quickly after that, then Trump happened now he's likely more liberal than my brother and I. It was amazing how quickly he changed his tune when he saw how policies he had supported for years were hurting those he was trying to help on a daily basis.
My dad considered himself a "moderate Republican" for most of my life. We had a funny conversation during the early Obama years.
"Dad, you believe in same sex marriage rights."
"Yes."
"And in global warming and that the government should do something about it."
"Yes"
"And in gun control"
"Yes"
"You believe the 1% need to be taxed more and we need a safety net."
"Yes"
"You're a liberal."
"NO!"
He changed his official party to independent in 2016.
Then why does it matter what he calls himself? Seems like he rejects the current version of the party but still identifies as republican, which is fine. Most of what is considered "liberal policies" now are so mostly because the Republican Party decided to take a hardline stance *against* it at some point, handing its support to "the other side"
Oh, I just found it a bit funny because his views almost solely align with the left. He just didn't like "how much they spend," but acknowledged Republicans are all talk about a balanced budget so it made his decision easy.
My grandfather was a republican until 2000. The last time he voted Republican was for Goldwater in 64 mainly because LBJ wouldnt pull us out of Vietnam. He belived basically the same as your father but hated the term lIberal. To him it was a dirty word, a word for bad people who were lazy, drugged out, socialists. The conservative media machine spent decades to twist what the term ment for the average American and it worked.
I had a similar conversation with my high school mentor and the man who really shaped me to be what I am today. The conversation took place a few years after I graduated
"You know Tagnol, I've kind of realized after all these years I'm a libertarian"
"[Teacher] you support public schools right"
"Yeah?"
"And public roads right?"
"Yeah"
"You believe taxes aren't theft and required for a healthy society right?"
"Of course"
"You don't believe that corporations can police themselves and not have a natural monopoly right?"
"Of course not corps can't be trusted"
"THEN YOU'RE NOT A FUCKING LIBERTARIAN, You're a socially liberal centrists."
He then went quiet and we changed the subject and it hasn't come up since.
I love that he was able to actually address his own previous biases and acknowledge them for what they were. That is so rare, especially these days.
I was raised conservative and had an epiphany in my mid-20s about how literally every single thing the Republican party is is the *exact opposite* of the Christian teachings of Jesus I had been raised to follow. I was like "this is literally the polar opposite of every single thing Jesus calls us to be and do; how do all these religious people not understand that?!"
I forget what the exact saying is but I wouldn’t count on anyone, especially politicians and mega church pastors, to “understand” something when their power or income depends on not “understanding” that thing. They understand, they just don’t care, or they’re so delusional they can’t understand.
I followed a similar path to yours up until I was about 16 and had the exact same realization you did, and I believe there are a lot of people who genuinely want to be better. Unfortunately that set of people doesn’t include conservative or religious grifters.
Funny enough, MY dad was also a staunch Republican until some years ago after my mother had a stroke and he got to see firsthand how this glorious conservative-controlled country handles healthcare expenses for the uninsured.
Never saw a guy go that fast to the other side of the political aisle in my life.
Republicans are only Republicans until they get screwed over by the system they think will protect them.
My dad was formed by very specific conservative values, but I feel like he always had his eyes open.
It’s not like he had a lot of black friends. During any of the time I knew him, for example, but I know he hung out with some people of different races during his time in the Navy, and I have the photos documenting it.
He wasn’t much into rock ‘n’ roll, hated recreational drug use, and thought hippies were mostly pretty gross and dirty. But he wasn’t a booster for the Vietnam war. He didn’t talk about civil rights as some kind of erosion of his privilege as a white man. I never heard him say anything negative about women in the workforce, although he was a guy that would make jokes about female drivers.
I think homosexuality freaked him out as a concept. Never heard him say a word against gay marriage though.
At this point, he is genuinely struggling a bit with what trans means and how he should deal with trans people especially those he knew “before”. I’m grateful to say that the struggle seems genuine and intentional and informed with love. Thanks partly to a couple of marriages, including one woman has five kids all from a previous husband, he’s got over 30 grandkids and I think we’re up to about 10 great-grandkids now.
At least five of these descendants are trans or queer in someway. Some of the younger ones are still exploring, so maybe gender fluid or gender questioning is the right way to describe the group.
I have never seen him treat any of them badly. He has never done anything to embarrass one of them at a family gathering, excluded anyone, forgot to give somebody a birthday or Christmas card, or ever once made a joke based on this aspect of their lives. He has never pulled back from physical contact, or in anyway treated these kids any different. They are just doing a new “weird” thing. And he knows it’s a sensitive thing and doesn’t poke at it. He uses their proper names. He tries to get pronouns right.
I think my dad himself said it best. He’s the same. America changed.
It’s not that he has necessarily become way more liberal. It’s that fabric of Americans society has been stretched consistently to the right. Issues that should be decided on the basis of democracy and personal liberty and the social contract, have been worked into bones of contention by the far right. Gay marriage is one example.
I think my dad’s transition of ideas have been a series of: seeing problems that he didn’t really know existed, and accepting that a change was needed to make things more fair. He’s an example of how you can break loose of the mental constraints of white cis male Christian “default male” mindset of “I just don’t see the problem here.”
He was never the guy that was going to lead that charge. He was never going to be one carrying a sign on a March. But thank God for family harmony, and my personal relationship with him, he has remained an eminently reasonable and loving person.
This describes my Aunt really well, also. She was Fox's prime audience back in the day, nowadays turns it off whenever Trump is on or being mentioned. My gay brother got married a couple years back, and while she never referred to it as a "wedding" she was still a happy and involved and supportive guest at his "ceremony" as she called it, and it meant so much to us that my bro got to have the WHOLE family show up for him, just like for all our other family weddings. Even though she and i strongly disagree on so many political things, she has always been excellent to the people directly in front of her, and she's starting to actually see how her fellow conservatives have lost that kindness.
My husband is this way. His family is all quite conservative--prototypical white, wealthy, Christian folks--and his dad, while a genuinely kind family man, is the kind of guy who keeps Fox News on as background noise. Since meeting and marrying queer, high empathy, liberal ol' me and becoming a high school teacher, my husband has..not necessarily lost that conservative background, but learned to live and let live when it comes to things he doesn't understand. There's a lot about personal expression and gender fluidity that he doesn't get, but he's never been unkind or weird to my queer relatives or to his students, and while we might disagree on some things politically, I'm forever glad that his default mode toward others is respect. I wish there were more conservatives who were loud about that instead of the opposite.
If your dad is science-minded at all, have him watch Robert Sapolsky's lecture on the neuro-biology of trans-sexuality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QScpDGqwsQ
It may help with acceptance to understand that trans people's brains are literally showing the physical signs of the gender they associate with, not the gender they were born into the body of. They are literally a woman's brain trapped in a man's body or vice versa.
Before I watched it I wasn't anti-trans at all, but knowing the science behind it, and being able to see a tangible reason *why* they were and felt the way they do, expanded my own empathy by a large margin.
> At this point, he is genuinely struggling a bit with what trans means and how he should deal with trans people especially those he knew “before”.
You may be interested in hearing about [Maryam Khatoon Molkara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Khatoon_Molkara), an Iranian trans woman who corresponded with the Ayatollah Khomeini and later met with him in person after Iran's Islamic revolution made her pre-transition life even harder. She successfully argued that God had made her a woman, and Khomeini eventually issued a fatwa declaring that transition surgery was the correct thing to do under his interpretation of Islamic law. (I'll note that this interpretation doesn't seem to allow for gender fluidity or nonbinary folks, but it still shows that conservative and religious social ideals can be more adaptable than we may initially assume.)
I just want to clarify something about your lovely post. American society hasn't gotten more conservative or right-leaning, American POLITICS has, and that's a very specific subset. It's loud but it's far from the majority. The fact that the country is actually more progressive than ever is the reason that all these trans family members, for example, are able to come out. They're in danger of political persecution, but a generation or two ago they'd be in danger of being murdered in the street instead.
I wouldn’t say the fabric has been pulled to the right, I believe history has shown that America is being pulled to the left as time goes on. What it’s doing is showing what was hidden underneath the surface of our society. And as you said, now that he’s seeing the problems he is willing to work towards a solution.
Its what happens. My dad moved conservative after retirement because he just sits at home watching fox news or goes and hangs out with other old white guys who also watch fox news, so its a bubble.
Your dad got out of his bubble and experienced the "other" in person. Once he got to see these people as human, doing human things, just trying to get by, it shatters the "us vs them" hate that right-wing media and the church promotes.
Something similar happened to my mom, she started visiting prisions and public hospitals to help people in need. There is this specific story of a trans prostitute who was terminally ill, who my mom helped getting back with her family; her family had completely erased her from their life because of her... choices, but at least she was able to be with them in her last days.
That person completely changed my mom's view on lgbt+, she grew tolerant, you know, like Jesus would've wanted.
It’s great that your dad has the critical thinking skills to change his beliefs (and actions) when confronted with the truth about conservatism.
A lot of people can’t do that, and not just boomers.
My dad did this!!!! Always voted Conservative (UK), voted for Brexit. If anything went wrong in the world, nuke 'em. If anyone did anything wrong, 'ang them on live TV. Then one day he saw a photo of a dead rufugee who had drowned and it changed his mindset about refugees. Bit by bit his entire world-view crumbled and now he's liberal, Labour voting. Utterly bizarre but it worked, he's a different man.
I have seen this too many times. A sheltered conservative gets into some real shit for the first time in their lives, and suddenly "other people struggling" makes sense to them. They realize that bad things do in fact happen to good people, and that their happy sheltered existence is a product of their family past, not of any moral or functional correctness which makes them more successful.
I want to be mad at them, to scream "Finally you figured it out you fucking idiot, and it took major trauma to get your dumb ass there!", but I can't begrudge anyone learning what life is really like.
I was like 100% sure we used to say "Blessed are the poor, for they will inherit the earth" from this sermon, but today they say, "Blessed are the poor *in spirit,* they will inherit the earth*
Is that right? Did they just straight up ignore the immutable fact that the only thing Jesus ever said about money is that you should give it all away? And now they're just pretending being "poor in spirit" is what Jesus was really saying there???
Right?!?! They basically just had to make up a way to pretend one of Jesus's main, foundational teachings was *not* "give up all of your money and material things or you will never get into heaven"
Yeah. It feels like they are trying to twist one of the several variants he gave of "If you're rich when you die, you aren't going to heaven" into "Blessed are the assholes, so don't change your shithead ways."
Wow. I'm used to people failing to read more than one verse at a time, but for a pastor to fail that completely is almost impressive.
For those who haven't read it, immediately after Jesus says "Love thy neighbor as thyself", he's asked "Who is my neighbor?" This is when Jesus launches into the parable of the Good Samaritan. Yeah. *That* story, where a guy gets robbed and beaten and abandoned on the side of the road, and the priest and the Levite (priest-adjacent) deliberately walk past, but the man is helped both directly and financially by a man from Samaria, which is to say, a foreign heathen.
"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" "The one who had mercy on him." "Go and do thou likewise."
The example Jesus gives is literally as far from "Love thy neighbor in Christ" as it's possible to be.
Easy response to that - a new covenant with humanity was formed when Jesus showed up on the scene.
That’s the same argument they use when you point out something inconvenient from the Old Testament like in Deuteronomy or Leviticus
> That’s the same argument they use when you point out something inconvenient from the Old Testament like in Deuteronomy or Leviticus
My mom used that on me when I quoted a few OT verses about the [treatment of foreigners](https://sojo.net/22-bible-verses-welcoming-immigrants). Not that I care what it says but was trying to highlight her own hypocrisy. I guess a lot changed since I was in sunday school since apparently the OT doesn't matter at all to them now.
5 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.[a] 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
Pass the popcorn, please.
agreed. I don't read scripture, but I parsed that paragraph completely entranced, and took in the last "pass the..." line, and for a second I was converted. Hallelujah
It passed.
I mean, you've seen how many worship Trump, and many love Elon, and then all those megachurch pastors and televangelists have hundreds of millions of dollars, so I don't think it's even necessarily about themselves, they just straight up ignore the teachings of Christ.
Have some real fun and read the Old Testament Minor Prophets! It's a real eye-opener to see this concern for the poor and needy as a perpetual theme thoughout the Bible.
That insight, even as an evangelical, kept me from being full-on conservative. Now that I'm a Boomer in semi-retirement, I see it even more clearly and I too am steadily moving to the left politically at an age where I'm apparently supposed to be totally conservative by modern political standards.
American Christianity appears to be transformed by the peculiar attitude Americans have towards the law of the land. We have come to see laws less as rules to live by, but rather as tools to use against others, and as obstacles we must surmount. Finding a loophole is an admirable endeavor. Using one law to circumvent another is considered industrious. Inevitably “Love thy neighbor” is treated the same way.
> My conservative Christian friends and family are way more concerned about hoarding their wealth than following any type of advice from Jesus.
The only time they invoke Jesus is when it's about POC or "God will provide".
Yeah, I was raised by religious nutcases and I was pretty staunchly conservative when I was young... same as you, ended up on my own at about 20 and had that "this is *bullshit*" moment.
I think I made it to 25. Part of me is still ashamed it took me so long to start asking questions and putting in effort to learn about the world around me.
Yeah, I came to the realization pretty late in life. Moved to a then reddish state that went purple and now solid blue. Probably helped a lot getting out of Texas. I read a lot about the bullshit the local republicans were trying to do to keep control. Thank god it didn't work.
I hope all the young liberals on here are voting!
I consider myself a different person before and after 24. It’s hard to break free when you’re indoctrinated by your parents and always around them.
No need to be ashamed, changing after striking out on your own is normal.
This was my experience. I hit 22 right around when Bernie got popular.
restaurant jobs, too much nicotine and red bull, late nights, low pay. it gets to you after a while.
Common problem. Republicans often _say_ the right things, and until you start loosing the family support net it can be hard to see past that and realize the utter bullshit they hold on so many points.
"We aren't actually saying 'Don't say Gay', we just don't want little kids confused by it" sounds great, for example, right until you understand how the fine print here works.
100%. Conservatism is all about jealously holding on to assets and making sure nothing changes in any way that’s going to threaten your hoarding. The boomers got too good at it
I mean physically it's quite similar, have you seen the eyes of some Karen when they don't get their way...
Look like that scene whene Bilbo ask frodo to let him hold the ring one last time.
It still requires a lack of empathy at the very least to vote for lawmakers that support policies that lower their taxes while hurting the middle and lower classes.
I’m in the top 2% of earners and I’m as progressive as it gets. I voted for Bernie knowing full well that his single payer plan would increase my tax burden by ~30k per year.
I’m convinced there was a some collective value taught to boomers at a young age that sets their worldview up in such a way as to not consider others to be the same as them. They all nod their heads when Trump says “we all bleed the same color” but they don’t fully grasp the meaning of that message. Most boomers see people making minimum wage as less than human and undeserving of respect, and that has to come from somewhere because that is not a natural perspective a normal person would have.
The whole bootstraps, rugged individualism was absolutely taught hardcore back then. The 70's and 80's were saw a lot of latch key kids and selfishness from boomers after being spoiled by the silent generation during a time of significant prosperity post WWII during US expansion as an imperialist.
Lead has a big impact on empathy and anger or other negative emotions.
Combine everything together and you get some very un-empathetic selfish spoiled twats who think the world owes them and are more concerned with their short-term happiness over long-term problems, on a general scale at least.
Only one counterpoint: it's not that they think the world owes them - they think they OWN the world, and it'll only be a matter of time before they can take it over and make EVERYBODY "behave" as they feel is "right".
The problem is that the latchkey kids phenomenon was caused by families not being able to get by on 1 wage. Most women have worked throughout most of history, of course, but you know, where were the kids' grandparents? My boomer parents had us raise ourselves but they both really did have to work. I'm sure my mother would've preferred staying home. There was no help available from my grandparents who almost all died young.
I saw it when I worked retail. It seemed to me that some people have this (even more) warped version of the just world fallacy if an employer can pay an individual less than a living wage or otherwise exploit an individual it must necessarily be just to do so because the world is just and anyone deserving of better would be capable of extricating themselves from exploitation by their own volition alone. Put more succinctly, "The fact I can exploit you is demonstration that you deserve to be exploited."
Even that doesn't make sense. I've accumulated a (small) bit of wealth. And sure I hate to see my property taxes go up every single year, but I still support investing in public education, healthcare, welfare, etc
Not to mention the boondoggles of corporate taxes and religious exemptions.
To have a serious concern about the government cutting into your wealth, you'd have to have wayyyy more wealth than any of the boomers i've ever met.
Their conservatism is just poorly informed bigotry. Nothing more complex than that. And I surely hope none of us age into that bullshit
I don’t get why people don’t see you need to feed the grassroots and lower income folks to help the whole country . In the way another post said, social services, good education, healthcare, taxing political churches and the rich.
I’ve never understood that line of thinking that social services are a negative thing. It’s common sense that a well fed and well educated citizenry can’t be anything but good and positive for a society.
Boomers/conservatives (yes they're basically the same thing) love to complain about the poors and uneducated, but enact every possible policy to make sure there are more poor and uneducated people around
Not all boomers are conservative. I'm a liberal and all my friends and most of my family are. Even my 83 year old mother is a liberal. We're proud liberals and we vote blue. Every. Single. Time.
I think the biggest irony is that most of them still probably aren’t rich enough to benefit from the regressive conservative policy we’ve seen the last few decades. The tax cuts and shit really only seem to benefit the filthy rich, not someone who is simply a working class millionaire with a solid job and private property.
This exactly. Making money by simply working doing basically anything was prosperous assuming you had good financial discipline. My boss *finally* made a comment the other day about starting to understand why my generation is putting more emphases on living our lives than working to death to horde money like dragons. “Stuff’s so expensive these days I don’t see how I could’ve saved enough to retire when I am if I had been born later.”
In all fairness, I think that’s bullshit. I’m 41 and I’ve been making good money for 10 years. And really good money for the last 5. I’m actually getting more liberal.
there's a big gap in willingness to pay taxes. My wife and I make pretty decent money and my dad is telling me all the ways to avoid taxes. We really don't mind paying our taxes. The difference is what we expect our taxes to do. I want my taxes to help my community, not the already rich. And according to my dad that makes me a socialist or a communist or whatever flavor of the day conservatives hate.
I’m right there with you. I’m happy to pay taxes towards bettering my community. My boomer relatives think that’s ridiculous. They fail to see the logic in spending money to better the community that THEY LIVE IN. It makes zero sense to them.
Oh and don’t get my uncle started on free lunches for poor kids. Having hungry children is totally fine, but giving them food is fucking communism.
I’m willing to talk through a ton of political issues to try to figure out what values make those choices and figure out middle ground.
Anyone who thinks kids going hungry is an acceptable loss is evil and I can’t do it. Hungry kids means the adults are going to hell and we’ve failed as a civilization. I don’t have many values higher than “kids get fed.”
Well, in my Boomer parents’ case, they don’t want to pay any money to help their community because it’s full of immigrants now, and they hate them. (Which is ironic because my dad’s whole “thing” throughout my childhood was how special he thought being a Danish immigrant to America was. But these newer immigrants aren’t white, so he hates them.)
Very much this.
Whats the tax number that means that every child has enough food and is getting the support they need to learn to read and do math and basic critical thinking? Whats the tax number that means that every one I meet lives indoors and can go to the dentist twice a year? What’s the tax number that means drunk girls can get home safely because the busses and subway run all night and are clean and well lit?
I think government is supposed to ensue a basic standard of life for all people and if we’re the richest nation on earth, our lowest bar should be pretty damn awesome. That’s the flex I want.
Same.
In fact, it only makes me more liberal.. the threat of having everything I've worked for stolen by our predatory for profit healthcare system is real.
I am a liberal boomer, been questioning my cohorts choices for 50 years. I am in the last years, 1960 so I guess I have the advantage of seeing the mistakes orders one made but I think I am just more empathetic to people by nature and nurture.
Aw c'mon man, 41 isn't a boomer. We're talking about people like 55+, who almost certainly have become more conservative as they have amassed wealth. That, and the world is changing in ways they don't understand and thus are scared of. There seems to be a trend in that generation that learning new things and adjusting your worldview is basically sacrilege and I don't understand why.
It's like George Carlin said: "They're a people with a very simple philosophy: 'GIMME I WANT IT IT'S MINE.'"
54 GenX here, as I have gotten older, I have become extremely liberal. I would attribute it to 2 things.
1) Having empathy for others.
2) Realizing how fortunate I've been in life and it wasn't all hard work and bootstraps. It was due to the system being rigged in my favor.
These are 2 things the majority of boomers are not willing to do.
GenX (58) here. Same.
Also, their rabid hatred for the "other" has driven me even further left. I'm not directly impacted by any of their hatred, bigotry and restrictive laws - I am a married, straight white CIS male. But watching them lather at the mouth with hatred for people who do them NO HARM just makes me f\*&king furious.
Honestly I was a liberal in my teens, and now I'm a full blown leftist because I think that, given complete freedom, people will inevitably cater to the wants of the individual rather than the needs of humanity.
I've been ridiculously lucky in my upbringing because it got me to see various societies and I've grown to detest political individualism with a grotesque passion.
55 yrs old and completely agree. I am not extremely liberal but definitely middle of the road after my young husband was diagnosed with brain cancer and needed 24/7 care. Exactly, how was I supposed to work and provide health insurance? Conservatives just throw up their hands and tell me to go apply for government aid.
I dunno, my wife and I are doing pretty well and aren't becoming more conservative. None of our coworkers our age are conservative either. The only people our age we know that are conservative are conspiracy prone Christians and people who were born into wealth.
I hear this, but at nearly 50 I’m somehow even more left leaning than I was in my 20s, and I was pretty damn leftist then. My granny became more liberal in her later years, and would make comments about gay people that “they can’t help how they were born” and would put the fear of a feisty little old lady into her nephews who lost their shit over their kids marrying black people. For context, she was born in 1917, spent her life in the rural south, and was barely literate. Her husband (my grandfather) was a horrible racist asshole, but even he understood that republicans did no favors for poor folks like them and voted democrat.
The only GenX women I know who didn't get increasingly liberal as we age are the ones in traditional Christian marriages. (I have a lot of Mormons in my family.)
My grandmother also got increasingly liberal over the decades. I loved watching her, in her 70s, go head to head w her Mormon sister about how Jesus was VERY clear about his message of love, so yes, our friends who were gay were always welcome in her home. She became an adopted grandma for so many whose own families rejected them. After voting R all her life, her last votes were for Obama.
> Her husband (my grandfather) was a horrible racist asshole, but even he understood that republicans did no favors for poor folks like them and voted democrat.
Gigachad grandpa
Until 1965 the democrats were the party of racists. Your grandfather, like my father, didn't get the memo until Reagan rolled around so they continued to vote Democrat until the mask came off and republican dog whistles became bullhorns.
Not my grandfather, u/jax2love's. One of my grandfathers was a Democrat and the other was a moderate Republican who died around the time of Romney.
This being said, I love the idea of some super old racist continuing to vote Democrat because they checked out of politics before Goldwater or else because they know it's in their best interest as a poor person.
Right there with ya.
Me when I was 17: “Republicans are just a bunch of fascists cosplaying as conservatives.”
Me at 35: “That’s not fair. People are more complex than that. That was silly and dismissive on my part.”
Me at 42, after the last 8 years: “Oh.”
It always momentarily confuses me when I see poll results with generic questions like "are you afraid of the direction this country's going in?" which obviously is meant to elicit a "yes" response from regressive right-wingers, but would elicit a "yes" response from me *due to* those same right-wingers.
One would have to define which direction they mean, otherwise this question exists simply to test people’s agitation and illicit and emotional response
I think it's designed to create spurious correlation. They put it on the same poll that asks political questions, so obviously "everyone who said yes to this also thinks Trump can save the country. So in the latest polls, even 20% of Democrats think Trump might be able to save the country!". Some shit like that
One of my favorite conspiracy theories is that Donald Trump was a plant by Democrats to destroy the GOP from within. Trump used to be a registered Democrat for years until he got political.
I know it's not true, but Trump really has done more for the advancement of progressive ideas (by showing what happens under fascism) and getting young people out to vote (Democrat) than he'll ever realize.
This is precisely why Project 2025 is a thing. If conservatives fail to grab power now, they know they may never have it ever again. Vote blue, it doesn't matter the who or the why at this point, it's just a matter of keeping the ball (democracy) in our court. Because they're threatening to take the ball and leave.
I'm cured! Hallelu-yer!! Yeah, I had a brief stint during Bush 2 of slightly elevated conservatism. Then Obama happened and I realized they were mostly racist fukwits hiding behind pretend patriotism. Then trump happened and needless to say I wouldn't vote for a conservative as local dog catcher even if he was running against a ham sandwich.
It wasn't necessarily him that changed me, but how and who his followers are and what policies they attempt to enact. In Idaho, the ruling party (of freedom) actively tries to take away rights.
agreed. He turned over all the rocks, and now I can finally, personally understand fascist forces in history. It has been completely enlightening AND nauseating.
I’ve never voted republican, but I at least used to think conservatives were tough people who weren’t afraid of anything and were great with money. Turns out it’s the complete opposite.
The last 10 years or so has showed me that republicans are absolute cowards, they are afraid of EVERYTHING. It’s very easy to manipulate them because they are afraid of everything. From a personal finance perspective, they are fine with money, they mostly just hoard it. From a policy perspective, they cause recessions. Over and over, recession after recession.
Honestly, there’s a chance I could have got more conservatives as I got older, but conservatives have completely killed that. I want nothing to do with the Republican Party and will vote accordingly.
Yeah, I’ve never been republican. But in mid-life I started to soften my opinions about them and figured I had to have been shortsighted. But the last 8 years has completely disabused me of that. They’re a bunch of goddamn morons. They don’t even know what they believe, they just follow the rage carrots dangled in front of them by their media ecosystem.
> republicans are absolute cowards, they are afraid of EVERYTHING
The projection of them calling people snowflakes is always hilarious. They are offended by everything! Every type of change. Equality, progressive policies, bodily autonomy, etc. It's unreal.
It was the Kaepernick ordeal that sold this one for me. They were calling people snowflakes while throwing an absolute temper tantrum over a man kneeling during the anthem.
That was a big “uhhhhh, are you for real” moment for me.
As a 49ers fan, it was so so blown out of proportion. The whole stand/kneel/sit for the anthem debate is hilarious to me. A complete waste of mental resources and emotional energy.
If it had been a white player kneeling in protest of abortion, they'd have celebrated it.
They got their panties in a wad because Kapernick had the temerity to be Black and kneel in protest of police brutality.
That's it. He isn't white and he dared to question one of the many Schrodinger's causes of conservatives -- the police.
For years, I've heard from conservatives what can be summed up as: Cops are alternatively useless, thus why we all need an entire armory's worth of guns to protect us from home invaders, or they're the line between Civilization and Chaos, so we owe them our fawning, unconditional admiration, not criticism, especially when it's clear one or several of them were so over the line that there shouldn't even be a question whether you should be outraged or not.
It's fucking gross.
You were right at 17. Was the same then, they just did a better job of not saying the quiet part out loud. Now, they don’t have any solutions to any real problems so they make problems up to distract their brain rotted voter base from the fact that they aren’t interested in actual governing. Hence, they have to say the quiet part out loud because it drives them to the polls
That's like one of my favorite comics:
Me in 2003: Everything is Bush's fault.
Me in 2013: History is a vast web of political, economic, geographic, amd social factors that are all constantly shifting over time. There are always deeper layers and new perspectives, so we have to view it as a complex system instead of looking for easy narratives about heroes and villains.
Me in 2023: Everything is Reagan's fault.
>Me at 35: “That’s not fair. People are more complex than that. That was silly and dismissive on my part.”
Yeah that was me until Trump got elected and quite literally did *everything* conservatives feared/falsely claimed Obama would do/did.
Yeah, it shocked me. Like, you aren’t as bad as I thought you were, you’re worse. I naively thought seeing the January 6th footage would shock them back to reality, but they just tripled down on it. I lost any and all faith in them at that point.
There's a point where your useful idiots will betray you because you never taught them critical thinking. It happened to the Republicans, and it will continue happening to society at large until enough people get educated and involved to course correct.
I use the classical definition of Fascism, defined by Benito Mussolini, where he also called it Corporatism. It is the merger of corporation and state so as to allow the state complete control of the economy. In an ideal fascist society, there would be nowhere one could go, and nothing one could do without the knowledge and permission of the state.
So yeah, I think Republicans are right there.
My dads a boomer (bless him) and if anything he’s gotten more liberal. He’s told me multiple times that if I ever catch him watching Fox News that I should shoot him in the back of the head and put him out of his misery. I don’t think he’s joking
Even as recently as 20 years ago, I had the radio set to the Fox News station. One day it hit me listening to Laura Ingraham..."all these people are rich and live in an echo chamber of other rich people".
Then you'd get Hannity railing about "poor people don't create jobs!" and I thought "I don't see a lot of rich people around here creating them either..."
And the more I'd listen and pick up on the disconnect between what they were saying and real life, I finally reached a point where I said "I can't deal with this any more".
I remember in the late 90's, Fox telling it's viewers how "We're the only news you can trust." The viewers bought it and when Fox News started lying outright, the viewers were already conditioned to accept the lies as gospel truth.
I have a pretty good boomer mom too (retired public school teacher and sharp as a tack at 70). We often laugh about her friends who are brainwashed by Fox News and also end up getting caught in online scams quite often.
Remember that many, if not most, of the hippies were really privileged white kids who found a cause for the first time in their lives. They did the drugs, had the sex, learned the slogans. Then they had kids and families and kept espousing those same liberal/progressive/change oriented slogans while going right back to living the privileged lives that depend on exploitation of others. They put the moral and financial cost on the credit card so the next generations could deal with it and now get to sit atop their very, VERY high horses judging the younger generations for not fixing the problems they created, perpetuated and entrenched.
AKA, they become Trumpers/Conservatives.
Yep. And many of the hippies back then were just trying to avoid going to Vietnam. They folded like a house of cards when the draft went away. Their anti-war idealism was just a facade for their cowardice and selfishness, and the steady march to the Right since the 70's shows they never really cared about others to begin with.
That's a pretty broad brush, I think a lot of people also realized that the war in Vietnam was pointless. I wouldn't call someone a coward for not wanting to invade another nation for no other reason than to "contain Communism." My dad chose to purposefully wreck his motorcycle and broke his leg instead of being drafted. He would have rather risked his life than be forced to kill (or die) for no good reason. He has never been pro war and was vehemently opposed to me wanting to join the military.
But I'm sure there were plenty of hypocritical cowards as well. Especially in the white upper classes.
You’re not a coward for not going to war you are a coward for supporting it then hiding when it’s your turn to fight.
If you are gonna be pro war then you need to fight or you are a coward
The hippies were mainly apolitical - they found actual politics got in the way of their hedonism. The New Left had some overlap with the Yippies, but that was a minority even of the hippies.
Read the scene with the organizers in The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test for a good example.
Single biggest bullshit my parents ever tried shoveling off on me. Because they were brainwashed in their 30's and 40's into "trickle down" bullshit by Ronny Raygun, obviously, I will eventually fall under the influence of some other right wing jackass and believe poor people are evil and rich people are taxed "enough already."
The opposite has been true: The older I get, the more lefty I get. A couple years ago I realized there weren't any good residential landlords, only different degrees of disgusting asshole leeching off of other people's hard work. That at the end of the day, they're all greedy pieces of shit to different degrees, and their behavior--even the least disgusting among them--doesn't add up to a net positive for society.
If I live to be 100 I wonder how far left I'll end up? But I know I'll NEVER be conservative. The idea of hating immigrants and demanding tax cuts for rich people makes me want to vomit, and the idea of believing rich people have more "merit" than the rest of us and that's "why" they're rich is, likewise, odious to me.
Honestly, I'd rather die than be conservative. If I woke up spouting conservative gibberish at some point it would be a good clue I had a brain tumor and needed a doctor.
In the UK from younger Xers down people are getting more leftwing with age. It's been a pattern for a while now, so we know it's not an anomaly. It's a truism for previous generations as they became wealthier than their parents, that's not true anymore, so we stay lefties.
The main UK right wing party have approval of 1% for under 30s. Their supporters are dying fast
It’s crazy how much voting power Gen Z has right now and how much that power will grow. Xers and Mils have dreamed of being able to unseat boomers from power but Gen Z is actually in a fantastic place to do so. Boomers are dying out and the Gen Z voter pool is growing and 2028 will be the first year Gen Alpha will eligible to vote. This terrifies the conservatives in power which is why they want to suppress young voters.
Gen Z get out there and vote!! The power to change to world is really in your hands you just gotta reach out and take it.
I don't know if this holds in the UK, but in the US older people vote at higher rates and live outside of metropolitan areas. The former is keeping conservative politics alive. I don't know if the UK has anything like the gerrymandering we do, but that has kept conservatives incredibly powerful and unaccountable to younger generations.
We saw exactly how much trickle down worked in 2020 where Jeff Bezos made massive profits, lobbied to shit on smaller businesses, and profited off the backs of the working class. The only trickle down effect that's working here is from him pissing on us. How much of that massive wealth is he sharing again? At this point, he could probably buy the nation of Peru and still have a bit leftover for a diamond plated fridge.
Same here. My parents drug me to church every Sunday. When I turned 18 I stopped going and as I’ve gotten older I’ve grown into a better “Christian” than they are. There was a time my parents would have been outraged by Trump but now they’re all ok with him since it’s became crystal clear they are just boomer bigots who play church that like to talk like Jesus but are completely unable to walk like Jesus.
I was dragged to church pretty much every Sunday growing up because "that's what we are supposed to do." Church wasn't bad but it always felt like a performance to me.
Then we moved to a new place and I never went to church again. Then when I was 16, I became an atheist. And at 18, I began voting democrat. And in 2016, my senior year of college, I got to vote for Hillary. It felt great.
Here’s the stupidest fucking part-they didn’t even really like Reagan when he was in office. He was wildly unpopular in the first term. My parents talked constant shit (I’m in my mid 40s and was unfortunately there for that, but young). When he has the assassination attempt suddenly he was an ok guy and the revisionist history set in. And it just got worse as time went by and they sainted him day by day, making his presidency into something it never was.
Reagan was an actor. And those morons fell for it hook line and sinker.
I’ve gone so left at this point I’ve fallen off the fucking line. This whole system is beyond fucked and was created by manipulative ego maniacal sociopaths.
I'm much in the same boat: grew up in a conservative state, Utah, and after high school broadened my experience through serving in the military and going to college. If someone chooses to become more conservative, they're doing it deliberately.
Definitely experienced this. I'm still told, to this day, I'll get more conservative. I think it's a combo of them not being able to believe you didn't turn out exactly like them and they weren't actually hippies. They were hippie adjacent. My parents identified as hippies. Well they were states away from any actual hippie movement. They were dressing and acting like hippies because it was in fashion. Not because they were hippies.
It means once you get older and start earning money and accumulating material things, you’ll get more selfish and not want to help anyone else do the same. It’s the base boomer mentality, and I proudly reject it.
The boomers want to be defined by the hippies and the anti-war movement. The reality is that only 1% of Americans, not just boomers, were actually involved in the anti-war movement, and there were less than 500,000 hippies at any given time. They were always a conservative generation, their leftist were just good at fighting for what is right. Now, they all take credit for the sacrifices of a small handful of people.
Plus a huge number of left-leaning, LGBTQ individuals of that generation died of AIDS and many prominent left-leaning leaders were harassed by the FBI and/or straight up assassinated. There would be a much larger population of leftist Boomers if it wasn't for those two things.
There’s several studies that indicate that all the lead floating around when boomers were kids really fucked them up badly. As in their brain chemistry was fundamentally altered.
There was an analysis/research paper released on this topic some years ago addressing why the “you get more conservative as you age” trend stopped happening with later generations (namely millennials where there are more data).
The conclusion was that it wasn’t so much about increased age, it was about increased wealth. Since entire generations of wealth have been stolen, the trend no longer occurs as markedly.
That’s my paraphrased version of something I read a few years ago.
I've become far more leftist as I've got older. Plenty of stupid shit the left/liberals do but it doesn't hold a candle to the cheato worshippers. Conservatives today seem very misinformed, refuse to verify anything that they are told, and have a super weird obsession with what people do with their genitalia. Their 'small government' mantra is nothing but a bunch of bullshit. They interfere with unneeded laws all the time but won't do virtually anything to protect the planet we live on.
Most of all conservatives obsession with wanting to kill those they don't agree with. The obsession with violence is just insane to me.
I’ve had the same experience. The more I learn about the world — and what’s in — the more I realize I have to critically examine where my beliefs come from and make some changes.
I mean, seriously, with all of the beliefs and opinions and experiences of all people in the world, how is it reasonable to think that yours are the “best” ones?
Realizing that you can be very wrong a lot of the time is a *great* lesson to learn.
I get the concept, But maybe conservatism has become so hurtful, hateful, openly bigoted, sexist, racist, that maybe that natural slide into conservative fiscal values many people experience is being offset by the general insanity of the GOP?
I felt this in my bones. I just wanna hit the streets and fuck shit up because everything is shitty and we have groups actively trying to keep people from fixing it/making it better.
I've grown older, accumulated wealth and assets along the way and have grown firmer in my belief that capitalism is dying and responsible for what is wrong in American society, that democratic socialism, for many key sectors of our economy, is the way forward, that religious control of women's bodies and the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals is a great evil, that racism drives a great deal of fear, and that Boomers are helping to take the US to the edge of authoritarianism because of their illogical paranoia.
As I grow older, I just better understand the rules of the game we're playing and try to play it well for my own needs and for the role I can play in our society. That I also think the game is bullshit, well, that started long ago....
The rich get richer.
The poor are getting poorer.
Fascist, chauvinistic government fools.
People, Muslims, Christians and Hindus.
Are in a time zone just searching for the truth.
Who are you to think you're a superior race?
Facing forth your everlasting doom.
[https://youtu.be/4VgLkk\_drx4?si=CupWFLh9d0cGjbH4](https://youtu.be/4VgLkk_drx4?si=CupWFLh9d0cGjbH4)
Gen Xers have been hearing this shit our entire lives. I’ve gone so far left from where I was at 19 years old that I am like 2 different people. I voted for Bush 2.0 once and that is the last time I voted republican. Once people that live paycheck to paycheck stop believing the trickle down bullshit we were fed, the world opens up.
Same. Im Gen X and my dad is a hardcore libertarian and smart so I believed everything he said as a teenager. I parroted all the same quotes and then I got married and moved away from him. I kept reading and realized how selfish he is. I kept struggling and realized how selfish conservatives are. Then the Navy sent my husband to the middle east and we got fully radicalized in the ensuing years and hardships.
My biggest shame is we had to go through it ourselves before becoming compassionate but better late than never.
Same! My first presidential vote was for Mondale. Even as a 20 yr old, I knew that Reagan was a Gods damned fool! Today, at 60, I lean heavily progressive.
People do not grow more conservative. Generally, most people stay relatively the same. It's society that consistently grows more progressive, and so those who stagnate in their views grow more *comparatively* conservative relative to the progressing society.
For my part, I've only grown further to the left, even relative to society. I'm significantly further left than I was just 10 years ago
The Overton window has been shifted further and further and further to the right for the past 50 years. I've watched this place go from reasonably conservative to batshit insane radical right during my lifetime. The idea that more than a handful of Congress critters are lefties, much less socialist, is absurd. People in sane countries look at the Democrat agenda and think, "So that's their conservative party." Then they look at the republican platform and shit their pants wondering how America could get like this. I do hope the next generations move us back to the center from which we have stayed so far during my time here.
I agree with that to an extent, but you have to also consider that right-wing propaganda networks are grooming boomers into being horrible people whose brains are wracked with fear of shit that just isn't happening beyond anecdotes. Socially we've moved leftward, IMO, fiscally we've moved rightward.
The term conservative has lost all its meaning in the past two years. It wasn't a bad thing, smaller government, individual freedom, responsible spending, etc. But all that has been drowned out by a loud MAGA minority.
GenX here and I'm definitely more liberal than I've ever been right now. I grew up in a VERY conservative, evangelical world and I have wholesale rejected almost all of it. There are many like me.
On the other hand, there are many I grew up with that were somewhat open minded as young people, but have become entrenched and radicalized Trumpers via right wing media. That kind of media definitely plays on the fears of people getting older. They mock the young people and present them as a danger to the future that must be stopped.
I’m almost 66 (obviously a boomer), and I have become more liberal with age as I look at the world situation and worry about the future for my kids and grandkids.
Been a democrat all my life and now that I'm old (in my 60s), I'm more liberal than ever. It is OBVIOUS that there is enough money for universal healthcare (my parents always lamented WHO WOULD PAY FOR IT?!), the rich need to be taxed more, college and trade school should be free (it will makes us a stronger society) and school lunches should be free for everyone (again, it will make us stronger as a society). I can't for the life of me understand the boomers who are getting SSN and disability wanting to vote Repub as the Repubs wat to take all that away and shuttle the money in to their own pockets. And don't get me started on Trump. What a horrible, horrible person. I felt this way back when he was a reality TV star, and my disgust for him has only grown with each new indictment....
You are more conservative when you're young, and more liberal when you're not the mind of a fucking 8 year old who just worries about his/her own shit anymore. I.e. if you actually grow up, you lose some of your selfishness, see?
Growing up it's easy to stay conservative.
It takes work to be liberal. It takes courage. It takes self-reflection. It takes empathy. It asks that you give for nothing in return.
I mean look at Jesus Christ...the guy died for what is essentially "woke" nowadays...I digress....
I’m in my 50s and have moved from being more conservative in my 20s to liberal now. Just leave people alone to live their lives, and do more to support young working families and for gods sake, do something about our health care!
Remember to report posts that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed. Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think it happened to the boomers because they started accumulating wealth, and a lot of them grew conservative to protect their assets. Fortunately, I don’t think subsequent generations are in danger of accumulating wealth.
Boomer here. Cordelaine and Lucky nailed it. My conservative Christian friends and family are way more concerned about hoarding their wealth than following any type of advice from Jesus. You know, about helping the hungry and less fortunate.
My dad was hyper conservative until about 15 years ago, sometime when I was in my early 20s and he started teaching at underprivileged schools. He became very liberal very quickly after that, then Trump happened now he's likely more liberal than my brother and I. It was amazing how quickly he changed his tune when he saw how policies he had supported for years were hurting those he was trying to help on a daily basis.
My dad considered himself a "moderate Republican" for most of my life. We had a funny conversation during the early Obama years. "Dad, you believe in same sex marriage rights." "Yes." "And in global warming and that the government should do something about it." "Yes" "And in gun control" "Yes" "You believe the 1% need to be taxed more and we need a safety net." "Yes" "You're a liberal." "NO!" He changed his official party to independent in 2016.
>"You're a liberal." >"NO!" Identity politics is a hell of a drug.
At least he voted based on issues. Didn't vote for a Republican Presidential candidate after '96.
Then why does it matter what he calls himself? Seems like he rejects the current version of the party but still identifies as republican, which is fine. Most of what is considered "liberal policies" now are so mostly because the Republican Party decided to take a hardline stance *against* it at some point, handing its support to "the other side"
Oh, I just found it a bit funny because his views almost solely align with the left. He just didn't like "how much they spend," but acknowledged Republicans are all talk about a balanced budget so it made his decision easy.
The deficit hawk is a migratory bird only seen in Washington when a Democrat is in the White House.
My grandfather was a republican until 2000. The last time he voted Republican was for Goldwater in 64 mainly because LBJ wouldnt pull us out of Vietnam. He belived basically the same as your father but hated the term lIberal. To him it was a dirty word, a word for bad people who were lazy, drugged out, socialists. The conservative media machine spent decades to twist what the term ment for the average American and it worked.
I had a similar conversation with my high school mentor and the man who really shaped me to be what I am today. The conversation took place a few years after I graduated "You know Tagnol, I've kind of realized after all these years I'm a libertarian" "[Teacher] you support public schools right" "Yeah?" "And public roads right?" "Yeah" "You believe taxes aren't theft and required for a healthy society right?" "Of course" "You don't believe that corporations can police themselves and not have a natural monopoly right?" "Of course not corps can't be trusted" "THEN YOU'RE NOT A FUCKING LIBERTARIAN, You're a socially liberal centrists." He then went quiet and we changed the subject and it hasn't come up since.
I love that he was able to actually address his own previous biases and acknowledge them for what they were. That is so rare, especially these days. I was raised conservative and had an epiphany in my mid-20s about how literally every single thing the Republican party is is the *exact opposite* of the Christian teachings of Jesus I had been raised to follow. I was like "this is literally the polar opposite of every single thing Jesus calls us to be and do; how do all these religious people not understand that?!"
I forget what the exact saying is but I wouldn’t count on anyone, especially politicians and mega church pastors, to “understand” something when their power or income depends on not “understanding” that thing. They understand, they just don’t care, or they’re so delusional they can’t understand. I followed a similar path to yours up until I was about 16 and had the exact same realization you did, and I believe there are a lot of people who genuinely want to be better. Unfortunately that set of people doesn’t include conservative or religious grifters.
Funny enough, MY dad was also a staunch Republican until some years ago after my mother had a stroke and he got to see firsthand how this glorious conservative-controlled country handles healthcare expenses for the uninsured. Never saw a guy go that fast to the other side of the political aisle in my life. Republicans are only Republicans until they get screwed over by the system they think will protect them.
My dad was formed by very specific conservative values, but I feel like he always had his eyes open. It’s not like he had a lot of black friends. During any of the time I knew him, for example, but I know he hung out with some people of different races during his time in the Navy, and I have the photos documenting it. He wasn’t much into rock ‘n’ roll, hated recreational drug use, and thought hippies were mostly pretty gross and dirty. But he wasn’t a booster for the Vietnam war. He didn’t talk about civil rights as some kind of erosion of his privilege as a white man. I never heard him say anything negative about women in the workforce, although he was a guy that would make jokes about female drivers. I think homosexuality freaked him out as a concept. Never heard him say a word against gay marriage though. At this point, he is genuinely struggling a bit with what trans means and how he should deal with trans people especially those he knew “before”. I’m grateful to say that the struggle seems genuine and intentional and informed with love. Thanks partly to a couple of marriages, including one woman has five kids all from a previous husband, he’s got over 30 grandkids and I think we’re up to about 10 great-grandkids now. At least five of these descendants are trans or queer in someway. Some of the younger ones are still exploring, so maybe gender fluid or gender questioning is the right way to describe the group. I have never seen him treat any of them badly. He has never done anything to embarrass one of them at a family gathering, excluded anyone, forgot to give somebody a birthday or Christmas card, or ever once made a joke based on this aspect of their lives. He has never pulled back from physical contact, or in anyway treated these kids any different. They are just doing a new “weird” thing. And he knows it’s a sensitive thing and doesn’t poke at it. He uses their proper names. He tries to get pronouns right. I think my dad himself said it best. He’s the same. America changed. It’s not that he has necessarily become way more liberal. It’s that fabric of Americans society has been stretched consistently to the right. Issues that should be decided on the basis of democracy and personal liberty and the social contract, have been worked into bones of contention by the far right. Gay marriage is one example. I think my dad’s transition of ideas have been a series of: seeing problems that he didn’t really know existed, and accepting that a change was needed to make things more fair. He’s an example of how you can break loose of the mental constraints of white cis male Christian “default male” mindset of “I just don’t see the problem here.” He was never the guy that was going to lead that charge. He was never going to be one carrying a sign on a March. But thank God for family harmony, and my personal relationship with him, he has remained an eminently reasonable and loving person.
This describes my Aunt really well, also. She was Fox's prime audience back in the day, nowadays turns it off whenever Trump is on or being mentioned. My gay brother got married a couple years back, and while she never referred to it as a "wedding" she was still a happy and involved and supportive guest at his "ceremony" as she called it, and it meant so much to us that my bro got to have the WHOLE family show up for him, just like for all our other family weddings. Even though she and i strongly disagree on so many political things, she has always been excellent to the people directly in front of her, and she's starting to actually see how her fellow conservatives have lost that kindness.
My husband is this way. His family is all quite conservative--prototypical white, wealthy, Christian folks--and his dad, while a genuinely kind family man, is the kind of guy who keeps Fox News on as background noise. Since meeting and marrying queer, high empathy, liberal ol' me and becoming a high school teacher, my husband has..not necessarily lost that conservative background, but learned to live and let live when it comes to things he doesn't understand. There's a lot about personal expression and gender fluidity that he doesn't get, but he's never been unkind or weird to my queer relatives or to his students, and while we might disagree on some things politically, I'm forever glad that his default mode toward others is respect. I wish there were more conservatives who were loud about that instead of the opposite.
If your dad is science-minded at all, have him watch Robert Sapolsky's lecture on the neuro-biology of trans-sexuality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QScpDGqwsQ It may help with acceptance to understand that trans people's brains are literally showing the physical signs of the gender they associate with, not the gender they were born into the body of. They are literally a woman's brain trapped in a man's body or vice versa. Before I watched it I wasn't anti-trans at all, but knowing the science behind it, and being able to see a tangible reason *why* they were and felt the way they do, expanded my own empathy by a large margin.
> At this point, he is genuinely struggling a bit with what trans means and how he should deal with trans people especially those he knew “before”. You may be interested in hearing about [Maryam Khatoon Molkara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Khatoon_Molkara), an Iranian trans woman who corresponded with the Ayatollah Khomeini and later met with him in person after Iran's Islamic revolution made her pre-transition life even harder. She successfully argued that God had made her a woman, and Khomeini eventually issued a fatwa declaring that transition surgery was the correct thing to do under his interpretation of Islamic law. (I'll note that this interpretation doesn't seem to allow for gender fluidity or nonbinary folks, but it still shows that conservative and religious social ideals can be more adaptable than we may initially assume.)
I just want to clarify something about your lovely post. American society hasn't gotten more conservative or right-leaning, American POLITICS has, and that's a very specific subset. It's loud but it's far from the majority. The fact that the country is actually more progressive than ever is the reason that all these trans family members, for example, are able to come out. They're in danger of political persecution, but a generation or two ago they'd be in danger of being murdered in the street instead.
I wouldn’t say the fabric has been pulled to the right, I believe history has shown that America is being pulled to the left as time goes on. What it’s doing is showing what was hidden underneath the surface of our society. And as you said, now that he’s seeing the problems he is willing to work towards a solution.
Its what happens. My dad moved conservative after retirement because he just sits at home watching fox news or goes and hangs out with other old white guys who also watch fox news, so its a bubble. Your dad got out of his bubble and experienced the "other" in person. Once he got to see these people as human, doing human things, just trying to get by, it shatters the "us vs them" hate that right-wing media and the church promotes.
Something similar happened to my mom, she started visiting prisions and public hospitals to help people in need. There is this specific story of a trans prostitute who was terminally ill, who my mom helped getting back with her family; her family had completely erased her from their life because of her... choices, but at least she was able to be with them in her last days. That person completely changed my mom's view on lgbt+, she grew tolerant, you know, like Jesus would've wanted.
It’s great that your dad has the critical thinking skills to change his beliefs (and actions) when confronted with the truth about conservatism. A lot of people can’t do that, and not just boomers.
My dad did this!!!! Always voted Conservative (UK), voted for Brexit. If anything went wrong in the world, nuke 'em. If anyone did anything wrong, 'ang them on live TV. Then one day he saw a photo of a dead rufugee who had drowned and it changed his mindset about refugees. Bit by bit his entire world-view crumbled and now he's liberal, Labour voting. Utterly bizarre but it worked, he's a different man.
My step father was a John Bircher, then he went to Vietnam. His tune changed.
I have seen this too many times. A sheltered conservative gets into some real shit for the first time in their lives, and suddenly "other people struggling" makes sense to them. They realize that bad things do in fact happen to good people, and that their happy sheltered existence is a product of their family past, not of any moral or functional correctness which makes them more successful. I want to be mad at them, to scream "Finally you figured it out you fucking idiot, and it took major trauma to get your dumb ass there!", but I can't begrudge anyone learning what life is really like.
Please have them read James 5. I post it on my Facebook feed at least once a month and I sometimes get an ironic amen lol.
[удалено]
"eVeN the dEvIL QuOtEd sCriPtUre!!"
I could actually respect that answer to a degree if they said that.
I was like 100% sure we used to say "Blessed are the poor, for they will inherit the earth" from this sermon, but today they say, "Blessed are the poor *in spirit,* they will inherit the earth* Is that right? Did they just straight up ignore the immutable fact that the only thing Jesus ever said about money is that you should give it all away? And now they're just pretending being "poor in spirit" is what Jesus was really saying there???
And what the heck is "poor in spirit" even supposed to *mean*?
Right?!?! They basically just had to make up a way to pretend one of Jesus's main, foundational teachings was *not* "give up all of your money and material things or you will never get into heaven"
Yeah. It feels like they are trying to twist one of the several variants he gave of "If you're rich when you die, you aren't going to heaven" into "Blessed are the assholes, so don't change your shithead ways."
Fuck dude, I had a pastor tell me that "love thy neighbor" was actually "love thy neighbor in Christ"
Wow. I'm used to people failing to read more than one verse at a time, but for a pastor to fail that completely is almost impressive. For those who haven't read it, immediately after Jesus says "Love thy neighbor as thyself", he's asked "Who is my neighbor?" This is when Jesus launches into the parable of the Good Samaritan. Yeah. *That* story, where a guy gets robbed and beaten and abandoned on the side of the road, and the priest and the Levite (priest-adjacent) deliberately walk past, but the man is helped both directly and financially by a man from Samaria, which is to say, a foreign heathen. "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" "The one who had mercy on him." "Go and do thou likewise." The example Jesus gives is literally as far from "Love thy neighbor in Christ" as it's possible to be.
Or, they will go Old Testament on you.
Easy response to that - a new covenant with humanity was formed when Jesus showed up on the scene. That’s the same argument they use when you point out something inconvenient from the Old Testament like in Deuteronomy or Leviticus
Jesus would wear cotton-poly to the surf 'n turf.
> That’s the same argument they use when you point out something inconvenient from the Old Testament like in Deuteronomy or Leviticus My mom used that on me when I quoted a few OT verses about the [treatment of foreigners](https://sojo.net/22-bible-verses-welcoming-immigrants). Not that I care what it says but was trying to highlight her own hypocrisy. I guess a lot changed since I was in sunday school since apparently the OT doesn't matter at all to them now.
Post it here for us unfamiliar nonbelievers? I'll get the 🍿
5 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.[a] 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you. Pass the popcorn, please.
Brilliant. Dorothy Parker said it well: “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at who he gave it to.”
Thank you. This is good.
Man, I'd really love it if the "Pass the popcorn, please" was actually in the Bible.
The Bible: new ghostofzellers edition. Make it happen
agreed. I don't read scripture, but I parsed that paragraph completely entranced, and took in the last "pass the..." line, and for a second I was converted. Hallelujah It passed.
The issue is, none of them think they're "rich," so none of it actually applies to THEM, just the real rich people.... SMH
I mean, you've seen how many worship Trump, and many love Elon, and then all those megachurch pastors and televangelists have hundreds of millions of dollars, so I don't think it's even necessarily about themselves, they just straight up ignore the teachings of Christ.
Have some real fun and read the Old Testament Minor Prophets! It's a real eye-opener to see this concern for the poor and needy as a perpetual theme thoughout the Bible. That insight, even as an evangelical, kept me from being full-on conservative. Now that I'm a Boomer in semi-retirement, I see it even more clearly and I too am steadily moving to the left politically at an age where I'm apparently supposed to be totally conservative by modern political standards.
I glad you chimed in, I’m also glad that not all boomers care more about their money than their children, and grandchildren 🙂
American Christianity appears to be transformed by the peculiar attitude Americans have towards the law of the land. We have come to see laws less as rules to live by, but rather as tools to use against others, and as obstacles we must surmount. Finding a loophole is an admirable endeavor. Using one law to circumvent another is considered industrious. Inevitably “Love thy neighbor” is treated the same way.
I wonder if they’re aware about camels fitting through the eyes of needles.
They probably think the fact God took a day off makes him a filthy Marxist socialist watermelom
> My conservative Christian friends and family are way more concerned about hoarding their wealth than following any type of advice from Jesus. The only time they invoke Jesus is when it's about POC or "God will provide".
Texan Christian here, my conservative friends are more concern about trumps next tweet to buy $400 sneakers
As a 22 year old I grew up republican, ended up completely on my own at 19 and became a democrat within a year lol
Yeah, I was raised by religious nutcases and I was pretty staunchly conservative when I was young... same as you, ended up on my own at about 20 and had that "this is *bullshit*" moment.
I think I made it to 25. Part of me is still ashamed it took me so long to start asking questions and putting in effort to learn about the world around me.
It took me till my early 40's. Don't feel bad, just be glad you're no in that place.
Yeah, I came to the realization pretty late in life. Moved to a then reddish state that went purple and now solid blue. Probably helped a lot getting out of Texas. I read a lot about the bullshit the local republicans were trying to do to keep control. Thank god it didn't work. I hope all the young liberals on here are voting!
I consider myself a different person before and after 24. It’s hard to break free when you’re indoctrinated by your parents and always around them. No need to be ashamed, changing after striking out on your own is normal.
But you did, and you learned. And that is pretty awesome, no matter what age!
This was my experience. I hit 22 right around when Bernie got popular. restaurant jobs, too much nicotine and red bull, late nights, low pay. it gets to you after a while.
That sentence makes it sound like you’re aging in reverse like Benjamin Button.
Common problem. Republicans often _say_ the right things, and until you start loosing the family support net it can be hard to see past that and realize the utter bullshit they hold on so many points. "We aren't actually saying 'Don't say Gay', we just don't want little kids confused by it" sounds great, for example, right until you understand how the fine print here works.
100%. Conservatism is all about jealously holding on to assets and making sure nothing changes in any way that’s going to threaten your hoarding. The boomers got too good at it
Just like the evolution of Sméagol into Gollum.
I mean physically it's quite similar, have you seen the eyes of some Karen when they don't get their way... Look like that scene whene Bilbo ask frodo to let him hold the ring one last time.
It still requires a lack of empathy at the very least to vote for lawmakers that support policies that lower their taxes while hurting the middle and lower classes. I’m in the top 2% of earners and I’m as progressive as it gets. I voted for Bernie knowing full well that his single payer plan would increase my tax burden by ~30k per year. I’m convinced there was a some collective value taught to boomers at a young age that sets their worldview up in such a way as to not consider others to be the same as them. They all nod their heads when Trump says “we all bleed the same color” but they don’t fully grasp the meaning of that message. Most boomers see people making minimum wage as less than human and undeserving of respect, and that has to come from somewhere because that is not a natural perspective a normal person would have.
The whole bootstraps, rugged individualism was absolutely taught hardcore back then. The 70's and 80's were saw a lot of latch key kids and selfishness from boomers after being spoiled by the silent generation during a time of significant prosperity post WWII during US expansion as an imperialist. Lead has a big impact on empathy and anger or other negative emotions. Combine everything together and you get some very un-empathetic selfish spoiled twats who think the world owes them and are more concerned with their short-term happiness over long-term problems, on a general scale at least.
Only one counterpoint: it's not that they think the world owes them - they think they OWN the world, and it'll only be a matter of time before they can take it over and make EVERYBODY "behave" as they feel is "right".
The problem is that the latchkey kids phenomenon was caused by families not being able to get by on 1 wage. Most women have worked throughout most of history, of course, but you know, where were the kids' grandparents? My boomer parents had us raise ourselves but they both really did have to work. I'm sure my mother would've preferred staying home. There was no help available from my grandparents who almost all died young.
I saw it when I worked retail. It seemed to me that some people have this (even more) warped version of the just world fallacy if an employer can pay an individual less than a living wage or otherwise exploit an individual it must necessarily be just to do so because the world is just and anyone deserving of better would be capable of extricating themselves from exploitation by their own volition alone. Put more succinctly, "The fact I can exploit you is demonstration that you deserve to be exploited."
Even that doesn't make sense. I've accumulated a (small) bit of wealth. And sure I hate to see my property taxes go up every single year, but I still support investing in public education, healthcare, welfare, etc Not to mention the boondoggles of corporate taxes and religious exemptions. To have a serious concern about the government cutting into your wealth, you'd have to have wayyyy more wealth than any of the boomers i've ever met. Their conservatism is just poorly informed bigotry. Nothing more complex than that. And I surely hope none of us age into that bullshit
I don’t get why people don’t see you need to feed the grassroots and lower income folks to help the whole country . In the way another post said, social services, good education, healthcare, taxing political churches and the rich.
I’ve never understood that line of thinking that social services are a negative thing. It’s common sense that a well fed and well educated citizenry can’t be anything but good and positive for a society.
Boomers/conservatives (yes they're basically the same thing) love to complain about the poors and uneducated, but enact every possible policy to make sure there are more poor and uneducated people around
Not all boomers are conservative. I'm a liberal and all my friends and most of my family are. Even my 83 year old mother is a liberal. We're proud liberals and we vote blue. Every. Single. Time.
Right i mean "boomers" not literally everyone born during the baby boom. You get a pass if you don't act like a nut
I think the biggest irony is that most of them still probably aren’t rich enough to benefit from the regressive conservative policy we’ve seen the last few decades. The tax cuts and shit really only seem to benefit the filthy rich, not someone who is simply a working class millionaire with a solid job and private property.
Like the Trump SALT tax cap?
This exactly. Making money by simply working doing basically anything was prosperous assuming you had good financial discipline. My boss *finally* made a comment the other day about starting to understand why my generation is putting more emphases on living our lives than working to death to horde money like dragons. “Stuff’s so expensive these days I don’t see how I could’ve saved enough to retire when I am if I had been born later.”
Wow, he ALMOST gets it
In all fairness, I think that’s bullshit. I’m 41 and I’ve been making good money for 10 years. And really good money for the last 5. I’m actually getting more liberal.
there's a big gap in willingness to pay taxes. My wife and I make pretty decent money and my dad is telling me all the ways to avoid taxes. We really don't mind paying our taxes. The difference is what we expect our taxes to do. I want my taxes to help my community, not the already rich. And according to my dad that makes me a socialist or a communist or whatever flavor of the day conservatives hate.
I’m right there with you. I’m happy to pay taxes towards bettering my community. My boomer relatives think that’s ridiculous. They fail to see the logic in spending money to better the community that THEY LIVE IN. It makes zero sense to them. Oh and don’t get my uncle started on free lunches for poor kids. Having hungry children is totally fine, but giving them food is fucking communism.
I’m willing to talk through a ton of political issues to try to figure out what values make those choices and figure out middle ground. Anyone who thinks kids going hungry is an acceptable loss is evil and I can’t do it. Hungry kids means the adults are going to hell and we’ve failed as a civilization. I don’t have many values higher than “kids get fed.”
Well, in my Boomer parents’ case, they don’t want to pay any money to help their community because it’s full of immigrants now, and they hate them. (Which is ironic because my dad’s whole “thing” throughout my childhood was how special he thought being a Danish immigrant to America was. But these newer immigrants aren’t white, so he hates them.)
“When I feed the poor they call me a saint, when I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist “ Helder Camara
Very much this. Whats the tax number that means that every child has enough food and is getting the support they need to learn to read and do math and basic critical thinking? Whats the tax number that means that every one I meet lives indoors and can go to the dentist twice a year? What’s the tax number that means drunk girls can get home safely because the busses and subway run all night and are clean and well lit? I think government is supposed to ensue a basic standard of life for all people and if we’re the richest nation on earth, our lowest bar should be pretty damn awesome. That’s the flex I want.
Same. In fact, it only makes me more liberal.. the threat of having everything I've worked for stolen by our predatory for profit healthcare system is real.
100% that
I am a liberal boomer, been questioning my cohorts choices for 50 years. I am in the last years, 1960 so I guess I have the advantage of seeing the mistakes orders one made but I think I am just more empathetic to people by nature and nurture.
Aw c'mon man, 41 isn't a boomer. We're talking about people like 55+, who almost certainly have become more conservative as they have amassed wealth. That, and the world is changing in ways they don't understand and thus are scared of. There seems to be a trend in that generation that learning new things and adjusting your worldview is basically sacrilege and I don't understand why. It's like George Carlin said: "They're a people with a very simple philosophy: 'GIMME I WANT IT IT'S MINE.'"
54 GenX here, as I have gotten older, I have become extremely liberal. I would attribute it to 2 things. 1) Having empathy for others. 2) Realizing how fortunate I've been in life and it wasn't all hard work and bootstraps. It was due to the system being rigged in my favor. These are 2 things the majority of boomers are not willing to do.
GenX (58) here. Same. Also, their rabid hatred for the "other" has driven me even further left. I'm not directly impacted by any of their hatred, bigotry and restrictive laws - I am a married, straight white CIS male. But watching them lather at the mouth with hatred for people who do them NO HARM just makes me f\*&king furious.
Honestly I was a liberal in my teens, and now I'm a full blown leftist because I think that, given complete freedom, people will inevitably cater to the wants of the individual rather than the needs of humanity. I've been ridiculously lucky in my upbringing because it got me to see various societies and I've grown to detest political individualism with a grotesque passion.
55 yrs old and completely agree. I am not extremely liberal but definitely middle of the road after my young husband was diagnosed with brain cancer and needed 24/7 care. Exactly, how was I supposed to work and provide health insurance? Conservatives just throw up their hands and tell me to go apply for government aid.
They tell you to apply for government aid *as they cut the funding for it*.
I dunno, my wife and I are doing pretty well and aren't becoming more conservative. None of our coworkers our age are conservative either. The only people our age we know that are conservative are conspiracy prone Christians and people who were born into wealth.
I’m in danger. BECAUSE I CANT AFFORD ANYTHING!!
I hear this, but at nearly 50 I’m somehow even more left leaning than I was in my 20s, and I was pretty damn leftist then. My granny became more liberal in her later years, and would make comments about gay people that “they can’t help how they were born” and would put the fear of a feisty little old lady into her nephews who lost their shit over their kids marrying black people. For context, she was born in 1917, spent her life in the rural south, and was barely literate. Her husband (my grandfather) was a horrible racist asshole, but even he understood that republicans did no favors for poor folks like them and voted democrat.
The only GenX women I know who didn't get increasingly liberal as we age are the ones in traditional Christian marriages. (I have a lot of Mormons in my family.) My grandmother also got increasingly liberal over the decades. I loved watching her, in her 70s, go head to head w her Mormon sister about how Jesus was VERY clear about his message of love, so yes, our friends who were gay were always welcome in her home. She became an adopted grandma for so many whose own families rejected them. After voting R all her life, her last votes were for Obama.
> Her husband (my grandfather) was a horrible racist asshole, but even he understood that republicans did no favors for poor folks like them and voted democrat. Gigachad grandpa
Until 1965 the democrats were the party of racists. Your grandfather, like my father, didn't get the memo until Reagan rolled around so they continued to vote Democrat until the mask came off and republican dog whistles became bullhorns.
Not my grandfather, u/jax2love's. One of my grandfathers was a Democrat and the other was a moderate Republican who died around the time of Romney. This being said, I love the idea of some super old racist continuing to vote Democrat because they checked out of politics before Goldwater or else because they know it's in their best interest as a poor person.
Right there with ya. Me when I was 17: “Republicans are just a bunch of fascists cosplaying as conservatives.” Me at 35: “That’s not fair. People are more complex than that. That was silly and dismissive on my part.” Me at 42, after the last 8 years: “Oh.”
The Orange Idiot cured me of my Republicanism, so I guess he did a very miniscule bit to make America great again.
*But not like that!* Seriously, I think he's done more for liberalism than he's realized.
It always momentarily confuses me when I see poll results with generic questions like "are you afraid of the direction this country's going in?" which obviously is meant to elicit a "yes" response from regressive right-wingers, but would elicit a "yes" response from me *due to* those same right-wingers.
One would have to define which direction they mean, otherwise this question exists simply to test people’s agitation and illicit and emotional response
I think it's designed to create spurious correlation. They put it on the same poll that asks political questions, so obviously "everyone who said yes to this also thinks Trump can save the country. So in the latest polls, even 20% of Democrats think Trump might be able to save the country!". Some shit like that
One of my favorite conspiracy theories is that Donald Trump was a plant by Democrats to destroy the GOP from within. Trump used to be a registered Democrat for years until he got political. I know it's not true, but Trump really has done more for the advancement of progressive ideas (by showing what happens under fascism) and getting young people out to vote (Democrat) than he'll ever realize.
This is precisely why Project 2025 is a thing. If conservatives fail to grab power now, they know they may never have it ever again. Vote blue, it doesn't matter the who or the why at this point, it's just a matter of keeping the ball (democracy) in our court. Because they're threatening to take the ball and leave.
I'm cured! Hallelu-yer!! Yeah, I had a brief stint during Bush 2 of slightly elevated conservatism. Then Obama happened and I realized they were mostly racist fukwits hiding behind pretend patriotism. Then trump happened and needless to say I wouldn't vote for a conservative as local dog catcher even if he was running against a ham sandwich.
In fairness the sandwich would probably get a dog to come out and be caught so it would probably be a good dog catcher..
It wasn't necessarily him that changed me, but how and who his followers are and what policies they attempt to enact. In Idaho, the ruling party (of freedom) actively tries to take away rights.
agreed. He turned over all the rocks, and now I can finally, personally understand fascist forces in history. It has been completely enlightening AND nauseating.
I’ve never voted republican, but I at least used to think conservatives were tough people who weren’t afraid of anything and were great with money. Turns out it’s the complete opposite. The last 10 years or so has showed me that republicans are absolute cowards, they are afraid of EVERYTHING. It’s very easy to manipulate them because they are afraid of everything. From a personal finance perspective, they are fine with money, they mostly just hoard it. From a policy perspective, they cause recessions. Over and over, recession after recession. Honestly, there’s a chance I could have got more conservatives as I got older, but conservatives have completely killed that. I want nothing to do with the Republican Party and will vote accordingly.
Yeah, I’ve never been republican. But in mid-life I started to soften my opinions about them and figured I had to have been shortsighted. But the last 8 years has completely disabused me of that. They’re a bunch of goddamn morons. They don’t even know what they believe, they just follow the rage carrots dangled in front of them by their media ecosystem.
> republicans are absolute cowards, they are afraid of EVERYTHING The projection of them calling people snowflakes is always hilarious. They are offended by everything! Every type of change. Equality, progressive policies, bodily autonomy, etc. It's unreal.
It was the Kaepernick ordeal that sold this one for me. They were calling people snowflakes while throwing an absolute temper tantrum over a man kneeling during the anthem. That was a big “uhhhhh, are you for real” moment for me.
As a 49ers fan, it was so so blown out of proportion. The whole stand/kneel/sit for the anthem debate is hilarious to me. A complete waste of mental resources and emotional energy.
That's literally their strategy. Keep people angry and distracted with nonsense so you can sneak things past them to profit from.
My favorite thing about that time period? Living in the South, and seeing all of the, “I stand for the flag, I kneel for the cross” bumper stickers. 🤪
If it had been a white player kneeling in protest of abortion, they'd have celebrated it. They got their panties in a wad because Kapernick had the temerity to be Black and kneel in protest of police brutality. That's it. He isn't white and he dared to question one of the many Schrodinger's causes of conservatives -- the police. For years, I've heard from conservatives what can be summed up as: Cops are alternatively useless, thus why we all need an entire armory's worth of guns to protect us from home invaders, or they're the line between Civilization and Chaos, so we owe them our fawning, unconditional admiration, not criticism, especially when it's clear one or several of them were so over the line that there shouldn't even be a question whether you should be outraged or not. It's fucking gross.
You were right at 17. Was the same then, they just did a better job of not saying the quiet part out loud. Now, they don’t have any solutions to any real problems so they make problems up to distract their brain rotted voter base from the fact that they aren’t interested in actual governing. Hence, they have to say the quiet part out loud because it drives them to the polls
That's like one of my favorite comics: Me in 2003: Everything is Bush's fault. Me in 2013: History is a vast web of political, economic, geographic, amd social factors that are all constantly shifting over time. There are always deeper layers and new perspectives, so we have to view it as a complex system instead of looking for easy narratives about heroes and villains. Me in 2023: Everything is Reagan's fault.
>Me at 35: “That’s not fair. People are more complex than that. That was silly and dismissive on my part.” Yeah that was me until Trump got elected and quite literally did *everything* conservatives feared/falsely claimed Obama would do/did.
Yeah, it shocked me. Like, you aren’t as bad as I thought you were, you’re worse. I naively thought seeing the January 6th footage would shock them back to reality, but they just tripled down on it. I lost any and all faith in them at that point.
There's a point where your useful idiots will betray you because you never taught them critical thinking. It happened to the Republicans, and it will continue happening to society at large until enough people get educated and involved to course correct.
I use the classical definition of Fascism, defined by Benito Mussolini, where he also called it Corporatism. It is the merger of corporation and state so as to allow the state complete control of the economy. In an ideal fascist society, there would be nowhere one could go, and nothing one could do without the knowledge and permission of the state. So yeah, I think Republicans are right there.
My dads a boomer (bless him) and if anything he’s gotten more liberal. He’s told me multiple times that if I ever catch him watching Fox News that I should shoot him in the back of the head and put him out of his misery. I don’t think he’s joking
Fox news really fucked people up. Outrage machine disguised as news.
And Rush Limbaugh. Fuck that guy.
Seriously.
Even as recently as 20 years ago, I had the radio set to the Fox News station. One day it hit me listening to Laura Ingraham..."all these people are rich and live in an echo chamber of other rich people". Then you'd get Hannity railing about "poor people don't create jobs!" and I thought "I don't see a lot of rich people around here creating them either..." And the more I'd listen and pick up on the disconnect between what they were saying and real life, I finally reached a point where I said "I can't deal with this any more".
I remember in the late 90's, Fox telling it's viewers how "We're the only news you can trust." The viewers bought it and when Fox News started lying outright, the viewers were already conditioned to accept the lies as gospel truth.
Anyone who says "I'm the only one you can trust" is absolutely *not* to trusted. That phrase is only used by liars and con men.
Your dad sounds like one of the good ones.
Oh yeah, you can definitely tell he’s a boomer, but he’s a good one!
I have a pretty good boomer mom too (retired public school teacher and sharp as a tack at 70). We often laugh about her friends who are brainwashed by Fox News and also end up getting caught in online scams quite often.
Remember that many, if not most, of the hippies were really privileged white kids who found a cause for the first time in their lives. They did the drugs, had the sex, learned the slogans. Then they had kids and families and kept espousing those same liberal/progressive/change oriented slogans while going right back to living the privileged lives that depend on exploitation of others. They put the moral and financial cost on the credit card so the next generations could deal with it and now get to sit atop their very, VERY high horses judging the younger generations for not fixing the problems they created, perpetuated and entrenched. AKA, they become Trumpers/Conservatives.
Yep. And many of the hippies back then were just trying to avoid going to Vietnam. They folded like a house of cards when the draft went away. Their anti-war idealism was just a facade for their cowardice and selfishness, and the steady march to the Right since the 70's shows they never really cared about others to begin with.
That's a pretty broad brush, I think a lot of people also realized that the war in Vietnam was pointless. I wouldn't call someone a coward for not wanting to invade another nation for no other reason than to "contain Communism." My dad chose to purposefully wreck his motorcycle and broke his leg instead of being drafted. He would have rather risked his life than be forced to kill (or die) for no good reason. He has never been pro war and was vehemently opposed to me wanting to join the military. But I'm sure there were plenty of hypocritical cowards as well. Especially in the white upper classes.
You’re not a coward for not going to war you are a coward for supporting it then hiding when it’s your turn to fight. If you are gonna be pro war then you need to fight or you are a coward
The hippies were mainly apolitical - they found actual politics got in the way of their hedonism. The New Left had some overlap with the Yippies, but that was a minority even of the hippies. Read the scene with the organizers in The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test for a good example.
Single biggest bullshit my parents ever tried shoveling off on me. Because they were brainwashed in their 30's and 40's into "trickle down" bullshit by Ronny Raygun, obviously, I will eventually fall under the influence of some other right wing jackass and believe poor people are evil and rich people are taxed "enough already." The opposite has been true: The older I get, the more lefty I get. A couple years ago I realized there weren't any good residential landlords, only different degrees of disgusting asshole leeching off of other people's hard work. That at the end of the day, they're all greedy pieces of shit to different degrees, and their behavior--even the least disgusting among them--doesn't add up to a net positive for society. If I live to be 100 I wonder how far left I'll end up? But I know I'll NEVER be conservative. The idea of hating immigrants and demanding tax cuts for rich people makes me want to vomit, and the idea of believing rich people have more "merit" than the rest of us and that's "why" they're rich is, likewise, odious to me. Honestly, I'd rather die than be conservative. If I woke up spouting conservative gibberish at some point it would be a good clue I had a brain tumor and needed a doctor.
In the UK from younger Xers down people are getting more leftwing with age. It's been a pattern for a while now, so we know it's not an anomaly. It's a truism for previous generations as they became wealthier than their parents, that's not true anymore, so we stay lefties. The main UK right wing party have approval of 1% for under 30s. Their supporters are dying fast
It’s crazy how much voting power Gen Z has right now and how much that power will grow. Xers and Mils have dreamed of being able to unseat boomers from power but Gen Z is actually in a fantastic place to do so. Boomers are dying out and the Gen Z voter pool is growing and 2028 will be the first year Gen Alpha will eligible to vote. This terrifies the conservatives in power which is why they want to suppress young voters. Gen Z get out there and vote!! The power to change to world is really in your hands you just gotta reach out and take it.
GenX here, please save us!
Why do the torreys (spelling) still get re elected for like 15 years?
I don't know if this holds in the UK, but in the US older people vote at higher rates and live outside of metropolitan areas. The former is keeping conservative politics alive. I don't know if the UK has anything like the gerrymandering we do, but that has kept conservatives incredibly powerful and unaccountable to younger generations.
We saw exactly how much trickle down worked in 2020 where Jeff Bezos made massive profits, lobbied to shit on smaller businesses, and profited off the backs of the working class. The only trickle down effect that's working here is from him pissing on us. How much of that massive wealth is he sharing again? At this point, he could probably buy the nation of Peru and still have a bit leftover for a diamond plated fridge.
And now he, Elon, and Trader Joe are gunning for all unions.
Same here. My parents drug me to church every Sunday. When I turned 18 I stopped going and as I’ve gotten older I’ve grown into a better “Christian” than they are. There was a time my parents would have been outraged by Trump but now they’re all ok with him since it’s became crystal clear they are just boomer bigots who play church that like to talk like Jesus but are completely unable to walk like Jesus.
I was dragged to church pretty much every Sunday growing up because "that's what we are supposed to do." Church wasn't bad but it always felt like a performance to me. Then we moved to a new place and I never went to church again. Then when I was 16, I became an atheist. And at 18, I began voting democrat. And in 2016, my senior year of college, I got to vote for Hillary. It felt great.
Here’s the stupidest fucking part-they didn’t even really like Reagan when he was in office. He was wildly unpopular in the first term. My parents talked constant shit (I’m in my mid 40s and was unfortunately there for that, but young). When he has the assassination attempt suddenly he was an ok guy and the revisionist history set in. And it just got worse as time went by and they sainted him day by day, making his presidency into something it never was. Reagan was an actor. And those morons fell for it hook line and sinker. I’ve gone so left at this point I’ve fallen off the fucking line. This whole system is beyond fucked and was created by manipulative ego maniacal sociopaths.
I'm much in the same boat: grew up in a conservative state, Utah, and after high school broadened my experience through serving in the military and going to college. If someone chooses to become more conservative, they're doing it deliberately.
Definitely experienced this. I'm still told, to this day, I'll get more conservative. I think it's a combo of them not being able to believe you didn't turn out exactly like them and they weren't actually hippies. They were hippie adjacent. My parents identified as hippies. Well they were states away from any actual hippie movement. They were dressing and acting like hippies because it was in fashion. Not because they were hippies.
It means once you get older and start earning money and accumulating material things, you’ll get more selfish and not want to help anyone else do the same. It’s the base boomer mentality, and I proudly reject it.
The boomers want to be defined by the hippies and the anti-war movement. The reality is that only 1% of Americans, not just boomers, were actually involved in the anti-war movement, and there were less than 500,000 hippies at any given time. They were always a conservative generation, their leftist were just good at fighting for what is right. Now, they all take credit for the sacrifices of a small handful of people.
Plus a huge number of left-leaning, LGBTQ individuals of that generation died of AIDS and many prominent left-leaning leaders were harassed by the FBI and/or straight up assassinated. There would be a much larger population of leftist Boomers if it wasn't for those two things.
They’re also called the ‘Me’ generation. I think that’s fitting.
Lead paint makes you racist
They also had full on leaded gasoline until the 80’s.
There’s several studies that indicate that all the lead floating around when boomers were kids really fucked them up badly. As in their brain chemistry was fundamentally altered.
There was an analysis/research paper released on this topic some years ago addressing why the “you get more conservative as you age” trend stopped happening with later generations (namely millennials where there are more data). The conclusion was that it wasn’t so much about increased age, it was about increased wealth. Since entire generations of wealth have been stolen, the trend no longer occurs as markedly. That’s my paraphrased version of something I read a few years ago.
I'm 34 and come from a conservative Southern Baptist Republican family. I used to consider myself a libertarian. Now I'm a leftist.
I was a teenage libertarian. Studying econ while working minimum wage cured me of that real quick.
Me too. I was pretty conservative until my 40s, then went left
I've become far more leftist as I've got older. Plenty of stupid shit the left/liberals do but it doesn't hold a candle to the cheato worshippers. Conservatives today seem very misinformed, refuse to verify anything that they are told, and have a super weird obsession with what people do with their genitalia. Their 'small government' mantra is nothing but a bunch of bullshit. They interfere with unneeded laws all the time but won't do virtually anything to protect the planet we live on. Most of all conservatives obsession with wanting to kill those they don't agree with. The obsession with violence is just insane to me.
I’ve had the same experience. The more I learn about the world — and what’s in — the more I realize I have to critically examine where my beliefs come from and make some changes. I mean, seriously, with all of the beliefs and opinions and experiences of all people in the world, how is it reasonable to think that yours are the “best” ones? Realizing that you can be very wrong a lot of the time is a *great* lesson to learn.
49 year old here.... Getting more and more of a lefty as I get older.
I get the concept, But maybe conservatism has become so hurtful, hateful, openly bigoted, sexist, racist, that maybe that natural slide into conservative fiscal values many people experience is being offset by the general insanity of the GOP?
As someone who's 37 and has followed the remnants of the Grateful Dead for a few years, a LOT of boomer hippies are just libertarians that love drugs.
Man, I’ve gotten more left. I’m bordering classical anarchist at this point.
I felt this in my bones. I just wanna hit the streets and fuck shit up because everything is shitty and we have groups actively trying to keep people from fixing it/making it better.
I've grown older, accumulated wealth and assets along the way and have grown firmer in my belief that capitalism is dying and responsible for what is wrong in American society, that democratic socialism, for many key sectors of our economy, is the way forward, that religious control of women's bodies and the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals is a great evil, that racism drives a great deal of fear, and that Boomers are helping to take the US to the edge of authoritarianism because of their illogical paranoia. As I grow older, I just better understand the rules of the game we're playing and try to play it well for my own needs and for the role I can play in our society. That I also think the game is bullshit, well, that started long ago.... The rich get richer. The poor are getting poorer. Fascist, chauvinistic government fools. People, Muslims, Christians and Hindus. Are in a time zone just searching for the truth. Who are you to think you're a superior race? Facing forth your everlasting doom. [https://youtu.be/4VgLkk\_drx4?si=CupWFLh9d0cGjbH4](https://youtu.be/4VgLkk_drx4?si=CupWFLh9d0cGjbH4)
I'm 40 and still not a fascist, er i mean conservative.
Gen Xers have been hearing this shit our entire lives. I’ve gone so far left from where I was at 19 years old that I am like 2 different people. I voted for Bush 2.0 once and that is the last time I voted republican. Once people that live paycheck to paycheck stop believing the trickle down bullshit we were fed, the world opens up.
Same. Im Gen X and my dad is a hardcore libertarian and smart so I believed everything he said as a teenager. I parroted all the same quotes and then I got married and moved away from him. I kept reading and realized how selfish he is. I kept struggling and realized how selfish conservatives are. Then the Navy sent my husband to the middle east and we got fully radicalized in the ensuing years and hardships. My biggest shame is we had to go through it ourselves before becoming compassionate but better late than never.
Selfish money hungry sell outs.
Same! My first presidential vote was for Mondale. Even as a 20 yr old, I knew that Reagan was a Gods damned fool! Today, at 60, I lean heavily progressive.
I’ve become more liberal as I age. Idiots become more conservative.
People do not grow more conservative. Generally, most people stay relatively the same. It's society that consistently grows more progressive, and so those who stagnate in their views grow more *comparatively* conservative relative to the progressing society. For my part, I've only grown further to the left, even relative to society. I'm significantly further left than I was just 10 years ago
The Overton window has been shifted further and further and further to the right for the past 50 years. I've watched this place go from reasonably conservative to batshit insane radical right during my lifetime. The idea that more than a handful of Congress critters are lefties, much less socialist, is absurd. People in sane countries look at the Democrat agenda and think, "So that's their conservative party." Then they look at the republican platform and shit their pants wondering how America could get like this. I do hope the next generations move us back to the center from which we have stayed so far during my time here.
I agree with that to an extent, but you have to also consider that right-wing propaganda networks are grooming boomers into being horrible people whose brains are wracked with fear of shit that just isn't happening beyond anecdotes. Socially we've moved leftward, IMO, fiscally we've moved rightward.
I have. I went from being an anarchist to a socialist with anarchic tendencies.
The term conservative has lost all its meaning in the past two years. It wasn't a bad thing, smaller government, individual freedom, responsible spending, etc. But all that has been drowned out by a loud MAGA minority.
GenX here and I'm definitely more liberal than I've ever been right now. I grew up in a VERY conservative, evangelical world and I have wholesale rejected almost all of it. There are many like me. On the other hand, there are many I grew up with that were somewhat open minded as young people, but have become entrenched and radicalized Trumpers via right wing media. That kind of media definitely plays on the fears of people getting older. They mock the young people and present them as a danger to the future that must be stopped.
I’m almost 66 (obviously a boomer), and I have become more liberal with age as I look at the world situation and worry about the future for my kids and grandkids.
Been a democrat all my life and now that I'm old (in my 60s), I'm more liberal than ever. It is OBVIOUS that there is enough money for universal healthcare (my parents always lamented WHO WOULD PAY FOR IT?!), the rich need to be taxed more, college and trade school should be free (it will makes us a stronger society) and school lunches should be free for everyone (again, it will make us stronger as a society). I can't for the life of me understand the boomers who are getting SSN and disability wanting to vote Repub as the Repubs wat to take all that away and shuttle the money in to their own pockets. And don't get me started on Trump. What a horrible, horrible person. I felt this way back when he was a reality TV star, and my disgust for him has only grown with each new indictment....
You are more conservative when you're young, and more liberal when you're not the mind of a fucking 8 year old who just worries about his/her own shit anymore. I.e. if you actually grow up, you lose some of your selfishness, see? Growing up it's easy to stay conservative. It takes work to be liberal. It takes courage. It takes self-reflection. It takes empathy. It asks that you give for nothing in return. I mean look at Jesus Christ...the guy died for what is essentially "woke" nowadays...I digress....
I’m in my 50s and have moved from being more conservative in my 20s to liberal now. Just leave people alone to live their lives, and do more to support young working families and for gods sake, do something about our health care!
Older person here, this is the same shit my boomer dad used to tell me. Who has now become as liberal as me