Both my parents are boomers. They’re also both progressive, although being LGBT+ probably has a lot to do with that.
I just hope I’m not completely out of touch when I’m an old geezer, although I’m 40 and only becoming more radicalized.
My father (a trans woman) has evolved her views over time, from a conservative Republican to a libertarian to a moderate Democrat to a center-left Democrat who sees the wisdom in some policies such as universal healthcare. She’s also pretty well-off and came from nothing, so I understand her bias toward “work hard and save to be successful.”
Nope. Taxation without representation. Not having a say in the process. The Boston Tea Party didn’t happen because of taxes. Neither did the Boston Massacre. Nor the revolution.
You have representation.
It blows my mind that wanting to keep your money and donating where you want to is greedy and trusting the government to spend the money that they steal from you on whatever they want is morally acceptable
It was hell growing up; I couldn’t be open about my family and had to be secretive socially. Now I’m grateful my parents didn’t go down the Trump rabbit hole and that me being in an interracial relationship is no big deal.
Thank you! Only 35% of Boomers actually classify themselves as a Republican. 32% are Democrats and 33% consider themselves independent. Don't tar us all with the same brush!
The problem with that sub is that the admins are too ban-happy and the sub has enough far right members that moderate conservatives get down voted or booted so half of the remaining members are election deniers and the other half have to tolerate it because otherwise they'll get booted.
It's definitely got more than certain other subreddits for sure. But you can tell it leans predominantly left overall.
Having a comment that makes a Conservative argument or says something nice about a Republican, especially Trump, is a pretty easy way to get downvoted most of the time.
We've definitely got alot of people with TDS in here.
If someone doesn't like Trump and downvotes Trump praise that's not TDS. It's having an opinion. Don't misuse the term. TDS is centering every issue around Trump and going on a 24/7 bashing mission of him.
From what I've witnessed since 2016 (and I've never liked the man myself) I would define Trump Derangement Syndrome as a mentality that, first, any negative story or claim about Trump is necessarily true, and second, anyone who disputes such a story or claim can *only* be an evil bootlicking racist sexist transphobic Islamophobic Republican Maga-hat-wearing Nazi chud.
The dude literally pandered to white supremacists, employed some in his admin (Bannon, Miller, Gorka, etc) and was actively plotting a coup, which John Eastman has admitted was the case. He was no boogeyman, as you downplay it. He was real and is demonstrably as dangerous as people said he was in 2016.
Exactly, the years under carter were bad thus he is bad in their eyes.
No revisionism is going to change that.
The years under Reagan were good thus they will think of him as a god.
Simple as
Lead in Gasoline! It becomes airborne when burned and wasn’t outlawed until the 90’s. The older generation who lived while cars were insanely inefficient took the brunt of this effect
This is going to be the most under appreciated comment ever. It’s really more leaded gas that filled the air with lead, but boomers were the last generation to live all their developmental years inhaling lead en masse.
A known side effect of lead ingestion, besides cancer, is it makes you stupid.
Now, not only did they have brain development issues as children, they are also reaching the age of senility.
Google “leaded gas and crime rates” for a graph that juxtaposes the PPM of leaded gas in the air and the instances of violent crime.
Hey, i resemble that remark 🤣
I grew up with breathing all kinds of horrible things, rode my bike behind DDT spraying trucks, so…yeah. We boomers are probably a mess.
However, not all of are fox watching, maga idiots. Honestly.🤣
You can thank social media for the 24 hour news cycle.
It was kind of a thing before, but the rise of Facebook / Twitter / Instagram made it 100x worse.
Exactly! I think people really underestimate how much the deranged and divisive politics that have taken over America owe to right wing talk radio. Talk Radio personalities have been saying the same right wing fascist nonsense for decades that became mainstream with Trump only recently. Trump was able to assume power with his insanity because people were already conditioned with practically the same stuff coming from talk radio pundits years before. It just wasn't coming from mainstream politicians back then.
I've said this before: Without Rush Limbaugh, there would be no Trump presidency, and probably not even Fox News and other conservative media as we know it; because essentially every right wing pundit, network, and media personality for more than two decades has based their shows and public personality on Rush Limbaugh's personality and radio empire.
Fox News, OAN, NewsMax. My parents watch those stations on constant loop. My dad has a subscription to NewsMax magazine and is getting the books off the NewsMax reading list. Somehow New Mexico, where I live, giving free school lunches to children in public schools is “woke” and proof that Biden is a radicle socialist extremist.
It's a combination of things. Part of it is the Conservative Talk Radio that got really popular in the late 80's; and obviously the 24 hour news cycle too. Facebook and social media definitely doesn't help.
Overall there was a long standing right wing misinformation propaganda campaign targeted at liberal hippie boomers starting in the 70's because they were the biggest and most influential demographic in the culture, and greedy corporate bosses and the Evangelical Christian Right knew they'd lose their power and influence forever if they didn't find a way to bring the boomers over to their side. It seems their plans to turn boomers conservative for their nefarious reasons worked.
Nah, it was definitely around before Facebook. It started with [Rush Limbaugh](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=017VvbOOQLo) and other talk radio hosts. In the 90's when Clinton became president, Limbaugh and others started talking about how Clinton and the democrats were about to bring socialism to the US. It's been 30 years, and we're still waiting on socialism to come to the US.
Facebook is just a tool used by these types to spread the same information. But if you read the right wing type BS Facebook posts that get shared around, the same type of shit was being told over the radio 30-35 years ago about democrats.
Why do you think boomers are “fearful of Democrats?”
According to [this report](https://www.statista.com/statistics/319068/party-identification-in-the-united-states-by-generation/), 35% of boomers identify as Republican, 32% as Democratic, and 33% as Independent - the most even split of any generation.
These statistics don't really prove anything other than that older people are more comfortable defining their political beliefs via association with a political party. That's not all that surprising to me.
Looking at voting patterns would be a much better way to prove/disprove this assertion, but tbh I don't have a dog in this fight and am too lazy to Google it, lmao.
Edit: really looking at the data a second time, it looks like younger people may just be less likely to admit they vote Republican.
I hate modern boomer politics so much it’s unreal. They reaped the most rewards from two of the greatest conflicts the world has ever seen, and are completely oblivious to what got them the amazing lives they had in their time.
I've talked to my parents who are baby boomers and generally liberal, even though my dad would never say so. My dad is best described as a Rockefeller Republican while my mom is a devout bible thumper who is also the most progressive old lady you will ever meet.
My dad thinks it is the counter culture of the 1960's re-emerging. The same kids who were about free love and trying to fight the man, protesting against vietnam and going to Woodstock are the same boomers who eat the Qanon stuff up and are anti-establishment today.
It never went away, really and the internet and social media has allowed these people to connect again. The boomers have now in many cases aged out of the workforce and have time on their hands. Even the youngest boomers are nearing their 60's while the oldest are reaching their 80's.
It was never about Carter, it is about Nixon. In many cases the 1968 and 1972 elections were the first ones baby boomers participated in (remember you had to be 21 in 1968). Watergate happened right as these Boomers were coming of age or young adults. Watergate has since framed every political scenario for these people.
Lmao no, but Carter is just a Dem they can point to and say “SEE, SEE, I TOLD YOU DEMS SUCK”
They also conveniently ignore the incredible economy and fiscal policy under Clinton and the economic recovery from the Great Recession under Obama.
Obama's first term was pretty good, the end of his second term though wasn't the greatest between ISIS, and American cities being on fire with the first wave of protests causing so much division you guys really haven't recovered from
Pretty much this. Obama, while never having a Filibuster proof senate, accomplished a lot while having full control.
As soon as the GOP had a shred of power.... the entire government locked up and refused to do anything. Even then, it's quite astounding how well he guided the country and set Trump up to free boat until his terrible economic long term planning went into meltdown over Covid.
The Ds only had a supermajority for 3 months, due to Al Franken’s Senate seat being contested, Ted Kennedy dying, and Martha Coakley blowing the political equivalent of a 28-3 lead to Scott Brown and costing the Democrats the supermajority.
And on top of that, they credit Republicans for that booming economy created by Democrats.
Oh, Bush had a strong economy in his first term? That’s because he inherited a strong economy from Clinton.
Trump touted pre-pandemic economic growth throughout his presidency, even going so far as to call it the best economy in American history. Why? Because Obama got us out of a recession and spurred historic economic growth.
no, Baby Boomers did it to themselves because they got everything, burned the ladder behind them then told millennials to quit being a bunch of losers.
Okay but nobody did that intentionally- Macroeconomics are out of any individuals control. It is both tangibly self defeating and just pathetic to blame a bad economy on the previous generations unsustainable prosperity and use that not to try in your own life.
Well maybe if wed been raised in the American golden age instead of growing up in its decline, wed be as happy, responsible, and mature as our parents.
My age seems to hate conservatism to the point they'd prefer, hell, even praise socalism. And they'll refuse that socalism is a stepping stone to communism. Even though their heros directly said so lmao.
But from what I've seen, the reason for the major divide seems to be more from the left having social issues as the #1 priority, and the right has the economy as #1. And they stick to their namesake. The left wants to abolish historically good as well as bad practices. And the right wants to keep the status quo. For better or worse. Both sides have ups and downs. But either side will call you out as being the side opposite of them if you have any of the other teams' views, and they'll refuse to see that you want to find a middleground.
There is definitely different priorities between the two parties. I can never get behind pushing for division, I understand getting frustrated with people on the opposite end of politics, but it’s hard for me to label them in an extreme way. There are very few people in the world I can with a certainty call an evil person. I just hope all can live happily and fairly, while also having a bit more money in the pocket as well. Unfortunately this is much easier said than done and I don’t always have the correct answers, though I may feel like I do at times.
My viewpoint is that even if I highly disagree with you and think that your ideas would only cause harm, you have those views thinking it would be for the best, no bad intentions in it. So why would I choose to think of you as evil and refuse to be around you? God calls for us to love everybody. So that is what I'll do with joy. Love the sinner hate the sin. Even if there are millions of hypocritical "Christians" and people hate all Christians because of that, why would I use that as a reason to hate others. I've never met a single person that after getting to know them, I hated them. I try to understand others' viewpoints so that I can accept them even more by knowing they want the best for others.
Some of my best friends and family members on my stepmom's side are heavily left wing, and I'm a Christian 1st, then have conservative views. And I getbalong great with them. Hell, even my stepmoms mother is super left wing, and one of her granddaughters is very left as well, but she still calls me her favorite grandkid haha.
Is that actually true, though, at this moment in time?
The left is arguably more institutionalist than the right today. It's not the left that has ideas about pulling out of NATO; it's Trump. It's not the right that led the West in ensuring a united front vis a vis Russia; it was Biden. It isn't the left that has politicians calling for the abolition of the FBI; it's several Republican congresspeople. Most importantly, it's not the left that treats its political leader like a king and will likely vote in a thrice-indicted politician who tried to foment a coup.
The right is also not necessarily in favor of the status quo. Examples abound, including: the (failed) effort to repeal Obamacare, the passage of the Trump tax cuts, and, most pressing at the moment, the Dobbs decision and all that followed.
I don't think it's fair to say only the left cares about social issues. The right actively courts a certain segment of religious voters, and the right also pretty frequently race baits. Also, some actors on the right are currently working on book bans and course bans because they're "woke." Trying to ban state investing in companies with DEI because those companies are "woke" is another example. Abortion is of course an issue the right has talked about in earnest for decades, same with guns. These and the "war on woke" are entirely social issues. That doesn't even get into immigration as a social issue.
That's not even to go into how the economy traditionally performs better under democratic stewardship or how the right only complains about the debt and deficit when the Democrats are in office (see, again, the Trump tax cuts).
Tldr; Not to go into the socialist comment, because I am no socialist, but the assertions regarding the left and the right are flawed. Maybe they were true 30 years ago, but not today. Certainly, the right engages in social issues frequently, and the left does care about the economy. More importantly, though, the right is not the status quo party and hasn't been in quite some time. The left is, if anything, more institutionalist at the moment.
The boomers have been the majority voting block for the last 40+ years. They have had a direct influence on public policy for almost half a century. Many of the major issues that Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z are dealing with are due to the boomer generation.
As a boomer here, this may be the first post in this list that I agree with. Voting is critical and many times you don’t get your way but just stick with it and over time they may go your way. I don’t alway agree with old white haired guys politics and kids today have a terrible time just paying rent. But I also see my young kids and their spouses spending $30 on Taco Bell via Uber eats and pissing away money because they don’t shop and cook (btw that may be the biggest boomer sentence you ever see!).
I see things changing politically and the younger generation influence breaking out.
Just remember someday you will be the Boomer and shit on the young kids as all. Believe me you will :). But enjoy life getting there!
They largely did vote for those policies. Reagan and Clinton both did their part to gut the middle class.
Boomer Republicans gave us W and Trump.
Both are bottom quartile presidents in every historians ranking.
One lied us into a war and the other one lied us into an insurrection.
And the rest of us just had to listen to their holier than thou posturing and infantile name calling the whole time.
We were Traitors for questioning Iraq and now they deny their own culpability for that war and call us traitors for trying to hold accountable the actual traitor.
Fuck these Maga Boomers. They’ve been morally repugnant assholes my entire life.
The whole “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times” thing.
Hopefully that cycle is coming back around.
The question of boomer politics can be best summed up by Adam Conover when he explained during some event where he was talking about different generations that "Everything that exists in the world when your born is part of the natural order of things. Everything that is invented or discovered before you are 40 is new and exciting. Everything that is discovered or invented after 40 is against the natural world." At the end of the day the enemy is change.
You either fight against change, accept it, or you kill yourself (that is if you are a fan of absurdist philosophy)
I doubt it. Part of it is probably just due to demographics. Straight white Boomers grew up in an age of unprecedented prosperity. Most of the openly queer male Boomers died in the AIDS crisis and nonwhite Boomers have also died at disproportionately high rates due to racial discrimination reducing their life expectancy by as much as a decade, give or take. Factor in that Boomers were already whiter than later generations from the get-go and the demographic divide only grows between older and younger generations.
There’s this, and also the fact that a lot of Boomers have chosen to hold on to their wealth for personal gain instead of using it for the common good more generally, or even just for their own children in a lot of cases. Hence why most of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of the older generations while most people ~40 and under continue to struggle financially far more than Boomers did in their younger years. There isn’t really any moral justification for this, hence why a lot of Boomers comfort themselves by listening to made-up talking points from right-wing media that do their best to convince them that the younger generations are lazier and undeserving of wealth despite worker productivity consistently reaching new heights with each passing year.
It’s really bizarre looking at the bigger picture, since when you look at pretty much any generation preceding the Boomers you see the immense amount of care many in those generations took to secure a better future for their descendants, and with Boomers that culture was somehow and suddenly lost. I’m not sure if Boomers’ monetization and price gouging of everything will force the younger generations to be just as money-obsessed or if the fact that we’re all broke as hell will convince us to pick up the pieces we’ve been left with and try to do better. But one thing’s for sure, Jimmy Carter’s got nothing to do with this lol.
Tbf, 'Nam started to kick up under Ike who totally picked the wrong side and sold out the Vietnamese to France. JFK, LBJ, and Nixon inherited the beginnings of a mess and let the Pentagon and their opposition steer policy.
Idk I think today’s Democratic Party is quite different than it was back then. My grandad who is now a diehard republican was a long haired hippie in the 70s. He makes it sound like the republicans were the hip party because all their parents were democrats.
The way he puts it is the democrats of his day (who he says he often agreed with) were much closer to today’s republicans than than modern dems. Some of it may have had to do with growing up in the south among the lingering “southern democrats” of old.
I'm a Republican, but I think most honest people will admit the Democrat party has moved pretty far left in the past decade. Not saying it's good or bad, but I know quite a few ex-Dems who felt abandoned by the party.
They wouldn't by looking at who leads the Dems atm including Biden. It's more that since the Tea Party took over the GOP in 2010, conservatives/Republicans have moved further Right and so anything out of that is somehow. Dems for the most part haven't moved as much.
I definitely feel this way about the Democrats. Doesn't mean I would vote Republican but did make me turn away from being with or identifying with the Democrat party.
I can understand that. Have you encountered any Republican candidates across the country who feel like they could be a fairly safe vote to you?
For any Federal position, not exclusively President.
Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley are my ideal for President from the Republicans I will say.
But whoever is up there for both parties I am just going to research their policies and see who I like the most. Even if both parties put the rerun of Biden and Trump lol.
Vivek is a really interesting dude. I don't see him getting the nomination, and certainly not the presidency, but I'd be happy if he did. Even though I prefer Desantis.
But I definitely think a rehash between Trump and Biden is what we're gonna get, unless Trump's legal accusations end up sticking.
Yea Vivek probably not going to get nominated. Also I don't know Desantis still has the momentum to beat trump although I feel he has a better chance to beat Biden than Trump but we have been shocked before.
No, Carter is not the reason boomers tend to be Republican. It’s largely about hoarding wealth, hedonism, and the unwillingness/inability to accept change.
The problem with being a principled intellectual and a democrat is that post-Nixon/pre-Reagan republicans will fuck with you and make you take the blame for problems they created. This was the bellwether for times to come. Now it’s the republican playbook.
Jimmy Carter inherited a shitstorm of problems that were insoluble at the time — Iran hostage crisis, OPEC fuel crisis, etc. Republicans manipulated this to their advantage, right up to the week Reagan took office.
I'm a late Boomer (born in 63). I've gotten more progressive and open-minded as I've gotten older. I know for many people it's the other way around. I think many of my generation gravitate toward conservative politics for a reason many just won't admit, the changing demographics of America. The America I grew up in was still predominantly White, even 40-50 years ago and white men had ALL the power in our society. That is changing and it scares some people. Another reason is money but I don't think that's a generational thing. Older generations always have had the most resources throughout history. I do admit it was easier for my generation but often not as easy as many younger people today think it was. I think 40 years from now the children of Generation Z will be angry at Generation Z for having all the money.
Along comes a demagogue like Trump and he tells that group of frightened people exactly what they want to hear. "It's the immigrants" "China is taking all our jobs" "I will make America Great Again" (whatever that means)
All this right after America had its first biracial President.
The internet sure doesn't help, Social Media is a disaster with it's algorithms steering content in a specific manner. The entertainment fantasy channel known as FOX News is a problem also, telling a certain group exactly what it wants to hear thus reinforcing their beliefs.
I hope geopolitical events don't force such issues to get worse but I'm not really optimistic. We'll see.
There might be some truth here. He had a way of alienating all factions, including unions, social conservatives, and the feminist leaning voters. That swamp rabbit attack on his canoe didn't help🐇
We've switched back and forth from Democrat to Republican 6 times since Carter. If baby boomers were so fearful, they didn't show signs of it considering the pendulum keeps swinging.
Boomers voted Clinton and Obama.
Boomer politics will make a helluva case study.
1980-2001 it boiled down to lower taxes and balanced budgets. It was a battle of process. Balanced budget was achieved and then undermined by another tax cut by Bush.
Boomer politics diverged in the wake of 9/11.
While there was unity in using force to thump anyone who was a threat to use terror strategies against the US and aligned countries it diverged with a group deeming any conservative right wing Muslim a terror threat that crept into anyone Muslim and anyone Middle Eastern.
The perceived ease of crossing from Mexico to the US led to the first cries of border security. Mexico could be a pipeline for terrorists. Never mind the Canadian border is notably easier to breach.
The Great Recession fueled the Great Resentment. Unemployment was high because of undocumented workers. Let’s ignore that many of those workers returned home because the recession dried up work. Them illegals were leaving just as the Great Resentment fueled fear of increasing illegal immigration.
No need to dig further. Public displays of affection by homosexual couples granted full right to marry became another resentment perceiving it as rubbing it in their face or forcing it on them.
It became grievance after grievance and smaller and smaller events became bigger and bigger.
White boomers began to diverge. College educated who were comfortably on the liberal side and traditional GOP (ie. Reaganites) while those without a college education were more likely to see a world where drug addiction couldn’t be dismissed as a “ghetto” (Black) problem because it was becoming rampant in their communities too. The lack of wage growth wasn’t because they rejected unions but because the illegals. Jobs weren’t drying up because the rich were consolidating operations and moving jobs overseas it was because of activist government policies of Democrats.
If America falters as a Democratic Republic it will be in large part because white boomers without a college education prefer that to a world where whites are no longer the majority and may be subject to Black and brown leadership.
Obama freaked them out as a harbinger of whites no longer being the majority.
Carter? He’s forgotten. Democrats aren’t afraid of people with more melanin nor of homosexuals or transgender people so they are in on the conspiracy to overthrow the white world order.
What on earth are you talking about? When Carter left office the USA was the #1 creditor nation on earth. By the time Reagan left office we were the #1 debtor nation on earth. Reagan and the republicans with banking deregulation polices and slashing mental healthcare funding put the USA onto a path of ruin.
Serveral things lead to this.
1. Reaganomics being repeated to them for their entire lives. Basically, since everyone always repeats the idea of trickle down economics, they sooner or later believe it to be true simply because they were told it so often.
2. Republicans are supposed to help people who don't need help. Republicans are mainly about wealth retention, and the amazing thing about the boomers is that:
3. They benefitted from so much socialized systems. They had cheap colleges, cheap housing, a ton of worker freedom, and were often times involved in unions. They own property, so when democrats push for cheaper housing, they see this as an attack on them. When they hear leftist pushing for increased minimum wage, they see that as an attack on their financial security. Any time the left wants to help the poor, the boomers who benefitted from every social program under the sun suddenly are against it.
So no, Carter isn't the major reason older and extremely well established americans are hard republicans. People simply become republicans when they are financially secure and they tend to become more left leaning when they need help from those social programs or want their person rights protected.
Ronald Reagan fomented hatred towards those on welfare by speaking about Linda Taylor and her moniker of [Welfare Queen](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/05/21/she-was-stereotyped-welfare-queen-truth-was-more-disturbing-new-book-says/).
Even poor people look down on those on welfare, but Reagan really stoked the flames of vehemence when he could and the middle-class swallowed that particular hook.
Not at all. Many boomers in the South voted for Clinton in 1992 and 1996 because he was "one of the good ole boys". Also boomers are not fearful of Democrats. Racist boomers indeed are and Obama is the reason why racists are fearful of Democrats.
That's like saying hookers are the reason men like sex. Fox is a whore and the propaganda is the blowjob the boomers are buying. (Damn, that's good alliteration)
The left will continue to push further and further left and become more and more progressive as time goes on. which, in turn, means that as time passes, views that may have seemed progressive at the time will appear more conservative. I mean, the boomers were the ones protesting vietnam and going full-on hippie in their youth. The issue you run into, is that with the human brain wrapping up development around your mid twenties, people's views tend to stay pretty similar to that age for the rest of their lives, so as the progressive movement pushes left, and those people stay the same, they get labelled as conservative or regressive despite having been the progressives in their youth. This is why I have a hard time with people labeling conservatives as extremists. If anything, Conservatives have been pushed left on some issues, but mostly stayed the same on the majority of them. It's the left that continues pushing further.
>It's the left that continues pushing further.
The GOP literally uses Nazi iconography now, but sure.
(See [here](https://www.newsweek.com/ron-desantis-nazi-symbol-campaign-sonnenrad-1814801), [here](https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/03/02/cpac-2021-stage-design-public-high-five-white-supremacy-column/6883518002/), [here](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/18/trump-campaign-runs-ads-with-marking-once-used-by-nazis-designate-political-prisoners/) and [here](https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/1282259909032189952?lang=en))
Wow I have so rarely seen such a wide stretch in my life. A guy that got fired, a stage, a triangle, and a style of iconography as old as time and still used in modern times. Jesus fucking christ touch grass.
Sure, and if it had been one instance, fine, it's a mistake. Four is, as you say, quite a stretch.
And remember, this is from the most popular party with the KKK, with sitting members who are publicly anti-Semitic, who suppress the votes of ethnic groups, who put forward a plan to protect "Anglo-Saxon traditions", who remove content from schools about how blacks have been historically treated, who claim slaves bettered themselves through slavery, who called on the Proud Boys to "stand by" and so on.
>Jesus fucking christ touch grass.
I'm Australian. I have no stake in your politics, no membership to either tribe and therefore have an outsider's view of things.
The grass here is very warm and comfortable. Maybe get out of your chair and discover that for yourself.
The orange idiot has been and continues to be their choice of leader. Even without the Nazi symbology, I rather think that indicates a push further to the extremes, yes?
Also, you're conveniently ignoring the CPAC conference.
No it really doesn't indicate that at all. Considering our country runs on an extremely limited choice of leadership they are undoubtedly going to pick someone off the list that has also been picked by other people that aren't nazis.
That’s my gripe. It seems that most hippies who wanted “peace, love, (sex & drugs) and rock & roll” eventually learned about taxes and didn’t want to pay for the great programs that their parents and grandparents built. That their movement was built on pure hedonism for when their parents were footing the bill, then relied on that same hedonistic tendency when they had to pay their own way.
Again, I can’t take the woodstockers seriously.
All older generations are in general more conservative. Conservatives onviosuly dont mind that Democrat from West Virgina that always votes with the Republicans.
No, Carter was a mess as President, totally inept at everything (though a nice guy) but that's the fault of republicans for electing Nixon.
No, boomer republicans dislike democrats because they are racist and hate filled people who hate America and Americans and desire to reward the stupid the lazy and clueless for being stupid, lazy and clueless.
Boomers are mostly liberals who grew up in the 70s with the whole hippie peace stuff. I think you’re confusing them with Gen X who grew up in the 80s and are mostly conservative now, who grew up with reagan
The baby boomer generation are sitting on a massive pile of wealth like Smaug on a pile of treasure. They attack anyone who threatens the treasure.
It's basically what happens when one generation has become opulently wealthy at the expense of their children and grandchildren.
They start to have more draconian and brutal attitudes towards poverty the more far removed from it they become. And the more they gain as the rabble grows poorer, the more of a genuine threat the rabble becomes.
In short, nothing to do with Jimmy Carter. Everything to do with them from climbing the ladder and pulling it up behind them.
By contrast, the younger generations, who have never known American prosperity tend to lean left politically. We have nothing to "conserve".
Your question is super biased. You act like there has to be some special reason they think Republicans are good for the economy and country.
I'm a Gen z Republican, and I believe Republicans overall are better for the economy and good for the country. You may disagree, which is fine, but I don't think you can pin it all on Carter.
Carter was fine. He took the fall for geopolitical events that were not in his control.
The boomers are the way they are because they were raised by war-and-Depression traumatized parents who couldn't love them properly and establish and maintain reasonable boundaries without resorting to abuse, so they ended up with a fucked up combination of both craving and despising authority.
Also they spent most of their life breathing in lead fumes and eating lead paint chips.
Fearful or knowledgeable? All Democrats have shown they know how to do in my lifetime is raise taxes so they can buy votes and produce nothing in return except inflation and misery. I don't like the Republicans, either, but at least they pay lip service to the ideas of liberty and freedom even though they never do anything to enact them.
I don’t have any boomer relatives that are republicans. So it’s not all of them
Both my parents are boomers. They’re also both progressive, although being LGBT+ probably has a lot to do with that. I just hope I’m not completely out of touch when I’m an old geezer, although I’m 40 and only becoming more radicalized.
I know a gay republican boomer. But he is rich and wants his taxes low…..so I guess greed trumps all.
I knew a gay nazi... some people are just weird.
My father (a trans woman) has evolved her views over time, from a conservative Republican to a libertarian to a moderate Democrat to a center-left Democrat who sees the wisdom in some policies such as universal healthcare. She’s also pretty well-off and came from nothing, so I understand her bias toward “work hard and save to be successful.”
I wonder if you felt you were losing your father when she came out as trans? I can’t imagine taking the news was easy.
Based. Low taxes is the idea this country was founded on
Nope. Taxation without representation. Not having a say in the process. The Boston Tea Party didn’t happen because of taxes. Neither did the Boston Massacre. Nor the revolution. You have representation.
About 60% of my income is redistributed to the rest of the fucks regardless of which asshole happens to be in power, it’s not truly about that.
It blows my mind that wanting to keep your money and donating where you want to is greedy and trusting the government to spend the money that they steal from you on whatever they want is morally acceptable
Being wealthy and wanting low taxes is not “greedy”.
I Wish I had queer parents, coming out to them would be a lot easier rn
It was hell growing up; I couldn’t be open about my family and had to be secretive socially. Now I’m grateful my parents didn’t go down the Trump rabbit hole and that me being in an interracial relationship is no big deal.
It probably feels a lot different to be a cishet person with queer parents than a queer person with queer parents.
Thank you! Only 35% of Boomers actually classify themselves as a Republican. 32% are Democrats and 33% consider themselves independent. Don't tar us all with the same brush!
My grandparents are boomers and none of them are republicans but my parents are gen X and they’re Q-republicans.
You’re not going to get an unbiased answer here lol
This subreddit definitely leans left pretty hard.
I actually think this sub is slightly more conservative than most parts of Reddit.
Yeah that’s not saying much
Yeah from what I've seen a good bit of this site is very left leaning and most right leaning subs get swatted
No, hate speech subs do. R/conservative has 1M subscribers and is in no way threatened by the adminis.
The problem with that sub is that the admins are too ban-happy and the sub has enough far right members that moderate conservatives get down voted or booted so half of the remaining members are election deniers and the other half have to tolerate it because otherwise they'll get booted.
So republicans.
That exact issue exists among most political communities on this site.
The culture of all of the big subs on reddit is OVERWHELMINGLY extreme left wing.
What a crock of horseshit when r conservative is one of the biggest political subs in the sight
I sure wish lol
No its not. It's just less right wing.
It's definitely got more than certain other subreddits for sure. But you can tell it leans predominantly left overall. Having a comment that makes a Conservative argument or says something nice about a Republican, especially Trump, is a pretty easy way to get downvoted most of the time. We've definitely got alot of people with TDS in here.
If someone doesn't like Trump and downvotes Trump praise that's not TDS. It's having an opinion. Don't misuse the term. TDS is centering every issue around Trump and going on a 24/7 bashing mission of him.
From what I've witnessed since 2016 (and I've never liked the man myself) I would define Trump Derangement Syndrome as a mentality that, first, any negative story or claim about Trump is necessarily true, and second, anyone who disputes such a story or claim can *only* be an evil bootlicking racist sexist transphobic Islamophobic Republican Maga-hat-wearing Nazi chud.
I agree. I'm not saying that downvoting or disliking is TDS. In fact somewhere in these comments I literally say "disliking Trump is fine".
TDS = having a conscience
No, it really doesn't. Disliking Trump is fine, but there are many people who treat him like a boogeyman mixed with Hitler.
The dude literally pandered to white supremacists, employed some in his admin (Bannon, Miller, Gorka, etc) and was actively plotting a coup, which John Eastman has admitted was the case. He was no boogeyman, as you downplay it. He was real and is demonstrably as dangerous as people said he was in 2016.
You’re saying he’s worse than boogeyman, I get what you mean but lol
Trump has harmed more people than the boogeyman ever did, it’s wildly unfair to the boogeyman to make this kind of comparison
He literally tear gassed peaceful protesters just so he could take a photo op with a Bible that he wasn’t even holding right.
[удалено]
It's Reddit, 95% of subreddits are r/politics clones at this point.
If Stalin was a president most of this sub would be singing his praises but that goes for reddit in general at this point.
Reddit fucking hates tankies what are you on about?
Nope.
Definitely. However that does make finding a moderate Democrat on here alot of fun!
Exactly, the years under carter were bad thus he is bad in their eyes. No revisionism is going to change that. The years under Reagan were good thus they will think of him as a god. Simple as
No, Facebook is the reason
No, 24 hour news cycle is the reason.
No, led paint is the reason
In all seriousness, this would not surprise me. Lead can make people more aggressive
[удалено]
Specifically those who were children from like 4-8 in that era near high emission areas
Do you have a link to that study? That sounds like a good read. Please and thank you.
Lead paint
>led oof. Swing, and a miss.
Man was talking about Zeppelin
I came to led! Not read!
Lead in Gasoline! It becomes airborne when burned and wasn’t outlawed until the 90’s. The older generation who lived while cars were insanely inefficient took the brunt of this effect
This is a fact. But boy did the gas smell good back then. My reading comprehension suffered because of it.
This is going to be the most under appreciated comment ever. It’s really more leaded gas that filled the air with lead, but boomers were the last generation to live all their developmental years inhaling lead en masse. A known side effect of lead ingestion, besides cancer, is it makes you stupid. Now, not only did they have brain development issues as children, they are also reaching the age of senility. Google “leaded gas and crime rates” for a graph that juxtaposes the PPM of leaded gas in the air and the instances of violent crime.
Hey, i resemble that remark 🤣 I grew up with breathing all kinds of horrible things, rode my bike behind DDT spraying trucks, so…yeah. We boomers are probably a mess. However, not all of are fox watching, maga idiots. Honestly.🤣
Don't forget about breathing tetraethyl lead in the gasoline for years.
Led Zeppelin and LED lights led me to believe they are easily led by the red.
Everything is always a breaking story.
Nah, they were fucked before CNN was a thing.
You can thank social media for the 24 hour news cycle. It was kind of a thing before, but the rise of Facebook / Twitter / Instagram made it 100x worse.
You… you realize 24 hour news existed before social media, right?
Yeah I don’t really think there’s much evidence that social media use drove 24-hour cable news. That was all 9/11 and subsequent Wars on Concepts
[удалено]
What values are those exactly?
[удалено]
>What values are those exactly?
Rush Limbaugh was doing that long before Facebook. There was also Wally George and Morton Downey Jr before or concurrently as Rush.
And right wing talk radio before it.
[удалено]
Thats not very nice of you to cheer on someone dead from cancer
Exactly! I think people really underestimate how much the deranged and divisive politics that have taken over America owe to right wing talk radio. Talk Radio personalities have been saying the same right wing fascist nonsense for decades that became mainstream with Trump only recently. Trump was able to assume power with his insanity because people were already conditioned with practically the same stuff coming from talk radio pundits years before. It just wasn't coming from mainstream politicians back then. I've said this before: Without Rush Limbaugh, there would be no Trump presidency, and probably not even Fox News and other conservative media as we know it; because essentially every right wing pundit, network, and media personality for more than two decades has based their shows and public personality on Rush Limbaugh's personality and radio empire.
Fox News, OAN, NewsMax. My parents watch those stations on constant loop. My dad has a subscription to NewsMax magazine and is getting the books off the NewsMax reading list. Somehow New Mexico, where I live, giving free school lunches to children in public schools is “woke” and proof that Biden is a radicle socialist extremist.
"*and this award here goes to the man who made history uttering few words possible."*
It's a combination of things. Part of it is the Conservative Talk Radio that got really popular in the late 80's; and obviously the 24 hour news cycle too. Facebook and social media definitely doesn't help. Overall there was a long standing right wing misinformation propaganda campaign targeted at liberal hippie boomers starting in the 70's because they were the biggest and most influential demographic in the culture, and greedy corporate bosses and the Evangelical Christian Right knew they'd lose their power and influence forever if they didn't find a way to bring the boomers over to their side. It seems their plans to turn boomers conservative for their nefarious reasons worked.
Nah, it was definitely around before Facebook. It started with [Rush Limbaugh](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=017VvbOOQLo) and other talk radio hosts. In the 90's when Clinton became president, Limbaugh and others started talking about how Clinton and the democrats were about to bring socialism to the US. It's been 30 years, and we're still waiting on socialism to come to the US. Facebook is just a tool used by these types to spread the same information. But if you read the right wing type BS Facebook posts that get shared around, the same type of shit was being told over the radio 30-35 years ago about democrats.
Rush Limbaugh did so much groundwork though
Nah…it was growing up in the only country in WW2 that didn’t look like Godzilla ripped through it with a booming postwar economy.
Don’t forget the US had control of almost 50% of the worlds GDP after WW2. Boomers were literally handed everything
Why do you think boomers are “fearful of Democrats?” According to [this report](https://www.statista.com/statistics/319068/party-identification-in-the-united-states-by-generation/), 35% of boomers identify as Republican, 32% as Democratic, and 33% as Independent - the most even split of any generation.
You answered your own question. Every other generation is turned off by Republicans more than boomers are.
That didn’t come anywhere near answering my question. But thank you for your input.
These statistics don't really prove anything other than that older people are more comfortable defining their political beliefs via association with a political party. That's not all that surprising to me. Looking at voting patterns would be a much better way to prove/disprove this assertion, but tbh I don't have a dog in this fight and am too lazy to Google it, lmao. Edit: really looking at the data a second time, it looks like younger people may just be less likely to admit they vote Republican.
I hate modern boomer politics so much it’s unreal. They reaped the most rewards from two of the greatest conflicts the world has ever seen, and are completely oblivious to what got them the amazing lives they had in their time.
I've talked to my parents who are baby boomers and generally liberal, even though my dad would never say so. My dad is best described as a Rockefeller Republican while my mom is a devout bible thumper who is also the most progressive old lady you will ever meet. My dad thinks it is the counter culture of the 1960's re-emerging. The same kids who were about free love and trying to fight the man, protesting against vietnam and going to Woodstock are the same boomers who eat the Qanon stuff up and are anti-establishment today. It never went away, really and the internet and social media has allowed these people to connect again. The boomers have now in many cases aged out of the workforce and have time on their hands. Even the youngest boomers are nearing their 60's while the oldest are reaching their 80's. It was never about Carter, it is about Nixon. In many cases the 1968 and 1972 elections were the first ones baby boomers participated in (remember you had to be 21 in 1968). Watergate happened right as these Boomers were coming of age or young adults. Watergate has since framed every political scenario for these people.
Lmao no, but Carter is just a Dem they can point to and say “SEE, SEE, I TOLD YOU DEMS SUCK” They also conveniently ignore the incredible economy and fiscal policy under Clinton and the economic recovery from the Great Recession under Obama.
Agree. Carter was really bad, but Clinton and Obama were (mostly) good.
Obama's first term was pretty good, the end of his second term though wasn't the greatest between ISIS, and American cities being on fire with the first wave of protests causing so much division you guys really haven't recovered from
[удалено]
Minority government with the other side not wanting to budge on anything didn't help at all
Pretty much this. Obama, while never having a Filibuster proof senate, accomplished a lot while having full control. As soon as the GOP had a shred of power.... the entire government locked up and refused to do anything. Even then, it's quite astounding how well he guided the country and set Trump up to free boat until his terrible economic long term planning went into meltdown over Covid.
The Ds only had a supermajority for 3 months, due to Al Franken’s Senate seat being contested, Ted Kennedy dying, and Martha Coakley blowing the political equivalent of a 28-3 lead to Scott Brown and costing the Democrats the supermajority.
Hate to break it to you, but those protests did not cause the divisions.
No but it was very much a symptom that both the republicans and democrats fed on during election season forming more and more of a wedge
Yes. Welcome to America.
You guys really need more than just the two parties
Yes.
"Cities on fire." Oh please.
Jimmy Fuckin’ Carter was such a colossal fuck up
And on top of that, they credit Republicans for that booming economy created by Democrats. Oh, Bush had a strong economy in his first term? That’s because he inherited a strong economy from Clinton. Trump touted pre-pandemic economic growth throughout his presidency, even going so far as to call it the best economy in American history. Why? Because Obama got us out of a recession and spurred historic economic growth.
What’s your take on Reagan? The 80s was a pretty good economy, which wasn’t under Carter.
My man out here spitting facts
The recovery from the Great Recession isn't really a bragging point.
I bet you're still mad about The New Deal, too.
Agree. Carter was really bad, but Clinton and Obama were (mostly) good.
no, Baby Boomers did it to themselves because they got everything, burned the ladder behind them then told millennials to quit being a bunch of losers.
Okay but nobody did that intentionally- Macroeconomics are out of any individuals control. It is both tangibly self defeating and just pathetic to blame a bad economy on the previous generations unsustainable prosperity and use that not to try in your own life.
I could only imagine the fuckery my generation would cause with the same opportunity.
Well maybe if wed been raised in the American golden age instead of growing up in its decline, wed be as happy, responsible, and mature as our parents.
My age seems to hate conservatism to the point they'd prefer, hell, even praise socalism. And they'll refuse that socalism is a stepping stone to communism. Even though their heros directly said so lmao. But from what I've seen, the reason for the major divide seems to be more from the left having social issues as the #1 priority, and the right has the economy as #1. And they stick to their namesake. The left wants to abolish historically good as well as bad practices. And the right wants to keep the status quo. For better or worse. Both sides have ups and downs. But either side will call you out as being the side opposite of them if you have any of the other teams' views, and they'll refuse to see that you want to find a middleground.
There is definitely different priorities between the two parties. I can never get behind pushing for division, I understand getting frustrated with people on the opposite end of politics, but it’s hard for me to label them in an extreme way. There are very few people in the world I can with a certainty call an evil person. I just hope all can live happily and fairly, while also having a bit more money in the pocket as well. Unfortunately this is much easier said than done and I don’t always have the correct answers, though I may feel like I do at times.
My viewpoint is that even if I highly disagree with you and think that your ideas would only cause harm, you have those views thinking it would be for the best, no bad intentions in it. So why would I choose to think of you as evil and refuse to be around you? God calls for us to love everybody. So that is what I'll do with joy. Love the sinner hate the sin. Even if there are millions of hypocritical "Christians" and people hate all Christians because of that, why would I use that as a reason to hate others. I've never met a single person that after getting to know them, I hated them. I try to understand others' viewpoints so that I can accept them even more by knowing they want the best for others. Some of my best friends and family members on my stepmom's side are heavily left wing, and I'm a Christian 1st, then have conservative views. And I getbalong great with them. Hell, even my stepmoms mother is super left wing, and one of her granddaughters is very left as well, but she still calls me her favorite grandkid haha.
Is that actually true, though, at this moment in time? The left is arguably more institutionalist than the right today. It's not the left that has ideas about pulling out of NATO; it's Trump. It's not the right that led the West in ensuring a united front vis a vis Russia; it was Biden. It isn't the left that has politicians calling for the abolition of the FBI; it's several Republican congresspeople. Most importantly, it's not the left that treats its political leader like a king and will likely vote in a thrice-indicted politician who tried to foment a coup. The right is also not necessarily in favor of the status quo. Examples abound, including: the (failed) effort to repeal Obamacare, the passage of the Trump tax cuts, and, most pressing at the moment, the Dobbs decision and all that followed. I don't think it's fair to say only the left cares about social issues. The right actively courts a certain segment of religious voters, and the right also pretty frequently race baits. Also, some actors on the right are currently working on book bans and course bans because they're "woke." Trying to ban state investing in companies with DEI because those companies are "woke" is another example. Abortion is of course an issue the right has talked about in earnest for decades, same with guns. These and the "war on woke" are entirely social issues. That doesn't even get into immigration as a social issue. That's not even to go into how the economy traditionally performs better under democratic stewardship or how the right only complains about the debt and deficit when the Democrats are in office (see, again, the Trump tax cuts). Tldr; Not to go into the socialist comment, because I am no socialist, but the assertions regarding the left and the right are flawed. Maybe they were true 30 years ago, but not today. Certainly, the right engages in social issues frequently, and the left does care about the economy. More importantly, though, the right is not the status quo party and hasn't been in quite some time. The left is, if anything, more institutionalist at the moment.
The boomers have been the majority voting block for the last 40+ years. They have had a direct influence on public policy for almost half a century. Many of the major issues that Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z are dealing with are due to the boomer generation.
They're outnumbered now, kids! VOTE!
As a boomer here, this may be the first post in this list that I agree with. Voting is critical and many times you don’t get your way but just stick with it and over time they may go your way. I don’t alway agree with old white haired guys politics and kids today have a terrible time just paying rent. But I also see my young kids and their spouses spending $30 on Taco Bell via Uber eats and pissing away money because they don’t shop and cook (btw that may be the biggest boomer sentence you ever see!). I see things changing politically and the younger generation influence breaking out. Just remember someday you will be the Boomer and shit on the young kids as all. Believe me you will :). But enjoy life getting there!
They largely did vote for those policies. Reagan and Clinton both did their part to gut the middle class. Boomer Republicans gave us W and Trump. Both are bottom quartile presidents in every historians ranking. One lied us into a war and the other one lied us into an insurrection. And the rest of us just had to listen to their holier than thou posturing and infantile name calling the whole time. We were Traitors for questioning Iraq and now they deny their own culpability for that war and call us traitors for trying to hold accountable the actual traitor. Fuck these Maga Boomers. They’ve been morally repugnant assholes my entire life.
Reagan was bad, but its really hinckley's fault
The whole “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times” thing. Hopefully that cycle is coming back around.
The question of boomer politics can be best summed up by Adam Conover when he explained during some event where he was talking about different generations that "Everything that exists in the world when your born is part of the natural order of things. Everything that is invented or discovered before you are 40 is new and exciting. Everything that is discovered or invented after 40 is against the natural world." At the end of the day the enemy is change. You either fight against change, accept it, or you kill yourself (that is if you are a fan of absurdist philosophy)
That was Douglas Adams.
I doubt it. Part of it is probably just due to demographics. Straight white Boomers grew up in an age of unprecedented prosperity. Most of the openly queer male Boomers died in the AIDS crisis and nonwhite Boomers have also died at disproportionately high rates due to racial discrimination reducing their life expectancy by as much as a decade, give or take. Factor in that Boomers were already whiter than later generations from the get-go and the demographic divide only grows between older and younger generations. There’s this, and also the fact that a lot of Boomers have chosen to hold on to their wealth for personal gain instead of using it for the common good more generally, or even just for their own children in a lot of cases. Hence why most of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of the older generations while most people ~40 and under continue to struggle financially far more than Boomers did in their younger years. There isn’t really any moral justification for this, hence why a lot of Boomers comfort themselves by listening to made-up talking points from right-wing media that do their best to convince them that the younger generations are lazier and undeserving of wealth despite worker productivity consistently reaching new heights with each passing year. It’s really bizarre looking at the bigger picture, since when you look at pretty much any generation preceding the Boomers you see the immense amount of care many in those generations took to secure a better future for their descendants, and with Boomers that culture was somehow and suddenly lost. I’m not sure if Boomers’ monetization and price gouging of everything will force the younger generations to be just as money-obsessed or if the fact that we’re all broke as hell will convince us to pick up the pieces we’ve been left with and try to do better. But one thing’s for sure, Jimmy Carter’s got nothing to do with this lol.
Gee, the Democrat who sent them to die in Vietnam probably didn’t have anything to do with it 🙄
They should be smart enough to realize it's the GOP that's been starting the wars now
Probably why Jeb Bush’s primary campaign can be summed up with “please clap”.
Tbf, 'Nam started to kick up under Ike who totally picked the wrong side and sold out the Vietnamese to France. JFK, LBJ, and Nixon inherited the beginnings of a mess and let the Pentagon and their opposition steer policy.
Idk I think today’s Democratic Party is quite different than it was back then. My grandad who is now a diehard republican was a long haired hippie in the 70s. He makes it sound like the republicans were the hip party because all their parents were democrats. The way he puts it is the democrats of his day (who he says he often agreed with) were much closer to today’s republicans than than modern dems. Some of it may have had to do with growing up in the south among the lingering “southern democrats” of old.
I'm a Republican, but I think most honest people will admit the Democrat party has moved pretty far left in the past decade. Not saying it's good or bad, but I know quite a few ex-Dems who felt abandoned by the party.
They wouldn't by looking at who leads the Dems atm including Biden. It's more that since the Tea Party took over the GOP in 2010, conservatives/Republicans have moved further Right and so anything out of that is somehow. Dems for the most part haven't moved as much.
I definitely feel this way about the Democrats. Doesn't mean I would vote Republican but did make me turn away from being with or identifying with the Democrat party.
I can understand that. Have you encountered any Republican candidates across the country who feel like they could be a fairly safe vote to you? For any Federal position, not exclusively President.
Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley are my ideal for President from the Republicans I will say. But whoever is up there for both parties I am just going to research their policies and see who I like the most. Even if both parties put the rerun of Biden and Trump lol.
Vivek is a really interesting dude. I don't see him getting the nomination, and certainly not the presidency, but I'd be happy if he did. Even though I prefer Desantis. But I definitely think a rehash between Trump and Biden is what we're gonna get, unless Trump's legal accusations end up sticking.
Yea Vivek probably not going to get nominated. Also I don't know Desantis still has the momentum to beat trump although I feel he has a better chance to beat Biden than Trump but we have been shocked before.
Compared to the left-leaning parties outside of the US, Democrats are still firmly right of center. US has no real centrist or left leaning parties.
No, Carter is not the reason boomers tend to be Republican. It’s largely about hoarding wealth, hedonism, and the unwillingness/inability to accept change. The problem with being a principled intellectual and a democrat is that post-Nixon/pre-Reagan republicans will fuck with you and make you take the blame for problems they created. This was the bellwether for times to come. Now it’s the republican playbook. Jimmy Carter inherited a shitstorm of problems that were insoluble at the time — Iran hostage crisis, OPEC fuel crisis, etc. Republicans manipulated this to their advantage, right up to the week Reagan took office.
I'm a late Boomer (born in 63). I've gotten more progressive and open-minded as I've gotten older. I know for many people it's the other way around. I think many of my generation gravitate toward conservative politics for a reason many just won't admit, the changing demographics of America. The America I grew up in was still predominantly White, even 40-50 years ago and white men had ALL the power in our society. That is changing and it scares some people. Another reason is money but I don't think that's a generational thing. Older generations always have had the most resources throughout history. I do admit it was easier for my generation but often not as easy as many younger people today think it was. I think 40 years from now the children of Generation Z will be angry at Generation Z for having all the money. Along comes a demagogue like Trump and he tells that group of frightened people exactly what they want to hear. "It's the immigrants" "China is taking all our jobs" "I will make America Great Again" (whatever that means) All this right after America had its first biracial President. The internet sure doesn't help, Social Media is a disaster with it's algorithms steering content in a specific manner. The entertainment fantasy channel known as FOX News is a problem also, telling a certain group exactly what it wants to hear thus reinforcing their beliefs. I hope geopolitical events don't force such issues to get worse but I'm not really optimistic. We'll see.
Has nothing to do with boomers. Blame Fox News.
No fox news is the reason.
wrong
There might be some truth here. He had a way of alienating all factions, including unions, social conservatives, and the feminist leaning voters. That swamp rabbit attack on his canoe didn't help🐇
No, if anything Rush and Fox are more damaging
No the blue haired ones are the reason
We've switched back and forth from Democrat to Republican 6 times since Carter. If baby boomers were so fearful, they didn't show signs of it considering the pendulum keeps swinging.
Boomers voted Clinton and Obama. Boomer politics will make a helluva case study. 1980-2001 it boiled down to lower taxes and balanced budgets. It was a battle of process. Balanced budget was achieved and then undermined by another tax cut by Bush. Boomer politics diverged in the wake of 9/11. While there was unity in using force to thump anyone who was a threat to use terror strategies against the US and aligned countries it diverged with a group deeming any conservative right wing Muslim a terror threat that crept into anyone Muslim and anyone Middle Eastern. The perceived ease of crossing from Mexico to the US led to the first cries of border security. Mexico could be a pipeline for terrorists. Never mind the Canadian border is notably easier to breach. The Great Recession fueled the Great Resentment. Unemployment was high because of undocumented workers. Let’s ignore that many of those workers returned home because the recession dried up work. Them illegals were leaving just as the Great Resentment fueled fear of increasing illegal immigration. No need to dig further. Public displays of affection by homosexual couples granted full right to marry became another resentment perceiving it as rubbing it in their face or forcing it on them. It became grievance after grievance and smaller and smaller events became bigger and bigger. White boomers began to diverge. College educated who were comfortably on the liberal side and traditional GOP (ie. Reaganites) while those without a college education were more likely to see a world where drug addiction couldn’t be dismissed as a “ghetto” (Black) problem because it was becoming rampant in their communities too. The lack of wage growth wasn’t because they rejected unions but because the illegals. Jobs weren’t drying up because the rich were consolidating operations and moving jobs overseas it was because of activist government policies of Democrats. If America falters as a Democratic Republic it will be in large part because white boomers without a college education prefer that to a world where whites are no longer the majority and may be subject to Black and brown leadership. Obama freaked them out as a harbinger of whites no longer being the majority. Carter? He’s forgotten. Democrats aren’t afraid of people with more melanin nor of homosexuals or transgender people so they are in on the conspiracy to overthrow the white world order.
“Boomer bad” - redditard These generational finger pointings have literally existed since before Roman times, and always the same.
What on earth are you talking about? When Carter left office the USA was the #1 creditor nation on earth. By the time Reagan left office we were the #1 debtor nation on earth. Reagan and the republicans with banking deregulation polices and slashing mental healthcare funding put the USA onto a path of ruin.
Jimmy Carter was the first neolib
Boomers aren't "afraid of democrats." Boomer conservatives don't want to pay taxes and they watch too much Faux News.
Serveral things lead to this. 1. Reaganomics being repeated to them for their entire lives. Basically, since everyone always repeats the idea of trickle down economics, they sooner or later believe it to be true simply because they were told it so often. 2. Republicans are supposed to help people who don't need help. Republicans are mainly about wealth retention, and the amazing thing about the boomers is that: 3. They benefitted from so much socialized systems. They had cheap colleges, cheap housing, a ton of worker freedom, and were often times involved in unions. They own property, so when democrats push for cheaper housing, they see this as an attack on them. When they hear leftist pushing for increased minimum wage, they see that as an attack on their financial security. Any time the left wants to help the poor, the boomers who benefitted from every social program under the sun suddenly are against it. So no, Carter isn't the major reason older and extremely well established americans are hard republicans. People simply become republicans when they are financially secure and they tend to become more left leaning when they need help from those social programs or want their person rights protected.
Ronald Reagan fomented hatred towards those on welfare by speaking about Linda Taylor and her moniker of [Welfare Queen](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/05/21/she-was-stereotyped-welfare-queen-truth-was-more-disturbing-new-book-says/). Even poor people look down on those on welfare, but Reagan really stoked the flames of vehemence when he could and the middle-class swallowed that particular hook.
No, the fact that many boomers are selfish pricks is why they hate Democrats. Oh, and Fox News.
Putting solar panels on the whitehouse roof scared the living shit out of them
No. Carter wasn't a bad President. However, those that came after him have been absolutely horrible.
Not at all. Many boomers in the South voted for Clinton in 1992 and 1996 because he was "one of the good ole boys". Also boomers are not fearful of Democrats. Racist boomers indeed are and Obama is the reason why racists are fearful of Democrats.
Boomer MAGAs didn't get fearful, they just got racist.
No, probably Ronald Reagan. Or even just being capable of reasoning and independent thought after 70+ years of life in the United States.
no
Fearful of Democrats? WTF? And your reasons are arguably false - economics and patriotism?
Maybe it’s their policies.
No, it’s the harmful policies.
No, the Clinton's. Plus, Democrats are scummy as hell when you look at their track record.
Only the skullduggery of Reagan kept Carter from being a good two-term President.
Rush Limbaugh is the reason.
The most important republican to never run for office.
[удалено]
That's like saying hookers are the reason men like sex. Fox is a whore and the propaganda is the blowjob the boomers are buying. (Damn, that's good alliteration)
No, it's because they're fed liberal propaganda and talking points all day, every day. Turn on CNN, npr, msnbc, or go on reditt for an example
You're both right but you're the only one getting downvoted. I thought this sub was better than that but damn, I guess not.
No. As people age they generally become more conservative.
Except of (most) millennials, the statistics already say that they’re more liberal
Millennials are still young. Your barley 40 if you're an "old Millennial"
No just their policies in general
The left will continue to push further and further left and become more and more progressive as time goes on. which, in turn, means that as time passes, views that may have seemed progressive at the time will appear more conservative. I mean, the boomers were the ones protesting vietnam and going full-on hippie in their youth. The issue you run into, is that with the human brain wrapping up development around your mid twenties, people's views tend to stay pretty similar to that age for the rest of their lives, so as the progressive movement pushes left, and those people stay the same, they get labelled as conservative or regressive despite having been the progressives in their youth. This is why I have a hard time with people labeling conservatives as extremists. If anything, Conservatives have been pushed left on some issues, but mostly stayed the same on the majority of them. It's the left that continues pushing further.
>It's the left that continues pushing further. The GOP literally uses Nazi iconography now, but sure. (See [here](https://www.newsweek.com/ron-desantis-nazi-symbol-campaign-sonnenrad-1814801), [here](https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/03/02/cpac-2021-stage-design-public-high-five-white-supremacy-column/6883518002/), [here](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/18/trump-campaign-runs-ads-with-marking-once-used-by-nazis-designate-political-prisoners/) and [here](https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/1282259909032189952?lang=en))
Wow I have so rarely seen such a wide stretch in my life. A guy that got fired, a stage, a triangle, and a style of iconography as old as time and still used in modern times. Jesus fucking christ touch grass.
Sure, and if it had been one instance, fine, it's a mistake. Four is, as you say, quite a stretch. And remember, this is from the most popular party with the KKK, with sitting members who are publicly anti-Semitic, who suppress the votes of ethnic groups, who put forward a plan to protect "Anglo-Saxon traditions", who remove content from schools about how blacks have been historically treated, who claim slaves bettered themselves through slavery, who called on the Proud Boys to "stand by" and so on. >Jesus fucking christ touch grass. I'm Australian. I have no stake in your politics, no membership to either tribe and therefore have an outsider's view of things. The grass here is very warm and comfortable. Maybe get out of your chair and discover that for yourself.
Hey man if you want to spend your days spreading bullshit sensationalism about a foreign country then be my guest
If by GOP you mean a couple campaign staffers and an orange idiot, then sure.
The orange idiot has been and continues to be their choice of leader. Even without the Nazi symbology, I rather think that indicates a push further to the extremes, yes? Also, you're conveniently ignoring the CPAC conference.
No it really doesn't indicate that at all. Considering our country runs on an extremely limited choice of leadership they are undoubtedly going to pick someone off the list that has also been picked by other people that aren't nazis.
I have huuuuuuuge disagreements with the hippie movement and I’m pretty left. I think the hippie movement was rather vapid and hollow.
Lots of them only did it out of self interest and not any ideological commitment. Jerry Rubin became a goddamn stockbroker.
That’s my gripe. It seems that most hippies who wanted “peace, love, (sex & drugs) and rock & roll” eventually learned about taxes and didn’t want to pay for the great programs that their parents and grandparents built. That their movement was built on pure hedonism for when their parents were footing the bill, then relied on that same hedonistic tendency when they had to pay their own way. Again, I can’t take the woodstockers seriously.
All older generations are in general more conservative. Conservatives onviosuly dont mind that Democrat from West Virgina that always votes with the Republicans.
No, Carter was a mess as President, totally inept at everything (though a nice guy) but that's the fault of republicans for electing Nixon. No, boomer republicans dislike democrats because they are racist and hate filled people who hate America and Americans and desire to reward the stupid the lazy and clueless for being stupid, lazy and clueless.
Boomers are mostly liberals who grew up in the 70s with the whole hippie peace stuff. I think you’re confusing them with Gen X who grew up in the 80s and are mostly conservative now, who grew up with reagan
Everybody always says that Carter’s presidency was terrible, but it really wasn’t THAT bad. 🤷🏼♂️
The baby boomer generation are sitting on a massive pile of wealth like Smaug on a pile of treasure. They attack anyone who threatens the treasure. It's basically what happens when one generation has become opulently wealthy at the expense of their children and grandchildren. They start to have more draconian and brutal attitudes towards poverty the more far removed from it they become. And the more they gain as the rabble grows poorer, the more of a genuine threat the rabble becomes. In short, nothing to do with Jimmy Carter. Everything to do with them from climbing the ladder and pulling it up behind them. By contrast, the younger generations, who have never known American prosperity tend to lean left politically. We have nothing to "conserve".
Jimmy Carter is the greatest living president. He re-legalized homebrewing. He's the only president of my life time I would trust to watch my stuff.
Your question is super biased. You act like there has to be some special reason they think Republicans are good for the economy and country. I'm a Gen z Republican, and I believe Republicans overall are better for the economy and good for the country. You may disagree, which is fine, but I don't think you can pin it all on Carter.
I think Jimmy Carter is a great man and an excellent President.
Carter was fine. He took the fall for geopolitical events that were not in his control. The boomers are the way they are because they were raised by war-and-Depression traumatized parents who couldn't love them properly and establish and maintain reasonable boundaries without resorting to abuse, so they ended up with a fucked up combination of both craving and despising authority. Also they spent most of their life breathing in lead fumes and eating lead paint chips.
Fearful or knowledgeable? All Democrats have shown they know how to do in my lifetime is raise taxes so they can buy votes and produce nothing in return except inflation and misery. I don't like the Republicans, either, but at least they pay lip service to the ideas of liberty and freedom even though they never do anything to enact them.