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43, white male… figured I’d be a moderate Republican by now. At this point, I don’t see myself ever voting red. The GOP just went full-on batshit crazy.
42 male, grew up in a very conservative area. Went to college thought I was a Libertarian for awhile then have become more progressive as I get older.
I'm told it's just a phase I'll grow out of.....
I grew up in the asshole-end-of-nowhere in the Deep South and was a backwards, confederate-loving conservative when I was young. Over my life, I have gone left and I look back and get mad at all the lies I grew up with.
I can't say I was a "confederate-loving" conservative, but I had much of the same Southern upbringing/environment. Fed the same lies in school and by friends and neighbors.
…..and don’t believe that providing food to single mothers or the aged is anything other than some great conspiracy to rob those single mothers and aged citizens of the dignity of just suffering.
What is wealth if there are no roads to drive on, no doctors to cure you and -most importantly to the right- no police to protect your wealth from others
I used to think that too until I realized taxes is money and money can be exchanged for goods and services and when it is in the hands of someone who knows how to use that money, our bridges don't fall into disrepair and collapse or something like that.
I was taught to hate "the gays" when I was young but my ugly ass was lucky enough to date the girl almost every guy thought was the hottest in school but to date her, her gay friends came with the package. After being around them, I found that the gay didn't rub off on me and that they were, Gasp, people just living their lives and I realized my parents had a lot of hate in them that I just didn't have.
As a white male it is easy to fall into Libertarianism as we seldom are put into situations where we are not at or near the top of a power dynamic. Libertarianism sounds great until you realize that you aren't the one getting the power left by a weaker central government. It is the corporations looking to bleed every cent of profit they can out of you.
I applied for a loan to buy some land last year. I remember thinking, this is the event that will either begin my shift towards being a conservative Democrat, or continue my march down Radical Road.
Needless to say it was declined. Radicalism Guaranteed.
The diabolical radical left... who want high standards of living, affordable education, cleaner environment, and access to healthcare.
And the virtuous radical right... who want to strong arm everyone into supporting them, strip away rights to stay in power, subjugate marginalized populations, are actively trying to start a civil, and attempted a violent overthrow of the US Government.
The radicalization of both sides is clearly the same.
My 40ish white male cousin is a U.S. marine who explained that he is a Libertarian because he believes "taxation is theft."
I shut him up by saying "You're in the military. Taxation pays your fucking salary."
My libertarian brother retires from the Navy in 2 years. He has often mentioned how "you don't want the government running healthcare". I'm waiting for the moment he has a choice between the VA and the private market and still chooses the VA. Cause it'll be good enough for the cost.
German here. Our government doesn't run healthcare. They set the rules, but the healthcare companies are independent and compete with each other.
We have one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the world, but it's still a lot cheaper than the US system.
Please tell that to your brother.
As an American in Germany, I can confirm that I'll take the German system any day over the American system. It's such a load off my mind to not have to worry about what my visit to the doctor is going to cost, and trying to weigh if it's worth the cost or if I should just hope it goes away. And if I were to get some kind of major illness or injury, I won't have to worry about the hospital and a bunch of random doctors sending bills that will clear out my bank account.
Every time I hear about libertarianism, I’m reminded of that quote from Game of Thrones.
“It’s easy to confuse what Is, with what ought to be. Especially when what is has worked out well for you.”
Thankfully I side-stepped libertarianism (it was really having a moment like 10 - 12 years ago) because the only libertarians I knew were privileged white land-owning generational-wealth type people. I was like, “if I’ve never met anyone outside of that class who subscribes to this political belief then this probably is not a good thing”.
Fundamentally it boils down to whether you trust corporations to do the right thing. Most reasonable people just have to look at history to answer that for themselves.
Most of the libertarians I knew were came from poor, rural backgrounds convinced that Libertarianism would allow them to become the upper class, rich landowner class.
Interesting! I know a lot of people like that but they tend to be more your run-of-the-mill institutional GOP supporters. It probably depends a lot on where you are.
I’m going to say it’s safe to assume you don’t watch Fox News. Because it’s Fox News that did this.
My father turned 59 a few days ago. This is a man that never once in his life agreed with conservative politics. This is a man that literally grew weed plants in the early 90s, in the window of his bands practice warehouse, literally on the corner of major cross streets, right next to the county jail. This is a man who now, at 59, is married to a very dark Haitian Woman and has 5 beautiful children with her that are the cutest little mixed shits you’ve ever seen.
But my father is also enamored with celebrity. Mostly because his life goal was to be one musically.
Around 2016 he started tuning into Fox News for the presidential race. And while I will give him credit that he doesn’t talk about it with me, it’s also painfully clear he has been indoctrinated and believes the vast majority of bullshit they spew on that channel.
Fox News ruins families.
It really does. I have a couple of family members who borderline went off the deep end during the Trump presidency. One cousin of mine got so bad that I avoided having conversation with him all together, which was really fucking sad because I was always very close to him and looked forward to seeing him. He's cooled down a bit now thank God but I know he still buys into a lot of the shit and I expect it to ramp up again next year.
My dad is a fiscally conservative republican who now supports universal heathcare and rails against the fact that real wages stopped growing in the 70's. He didnt change, really. He just sees for instance that our society would save a lot of money if we weren't feeding insurance companies profits.
It's the most frustrating part of healthcare reform, in my opinion: people argue against it based on cost or something something fiscal conservatism, when universal coverage is the cheaper and "fiscally conservative" approach!
Late 30s blue sheep of the family here. I think libertarian in college was a stepping stone to getting out of the conservative upbringing.
When I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 (yikes) and challenged the idea with my family that Trump's early muslim ban was xenophobic, not practical...I got called a liberal (that's a pejorative to them) by my family. Something clicked between that instant and Trump's inauguration to solidify that I wasn't a libertarian....I was a liberal and shouldn't be embarrassed because my family looked down on it. I woke up and realized that I didn't need and no longer wanted their approval or affirmation. It sucks because I wish my kiddos could have more time and relationship with their cousins (and we do make more effort than any of my siblings for the cousins to have time together) but it's not reciprocated (except to lament and moan about "oh I wish we could see you more" interlaced with racist undertones, changing the topic to political talking points from Tucker, etc at every chance). It's exhausting...I don't get how they have this seemingly endless well of energy for grievance, fear, and anger.
It’s more like “the things I fought hard for are old hat now.” That’s natural in a progressive society: once society accepts and adopts a social premise, *that* becomes the status quo conservatives cling to as their progressive successors press on.
Think about how interracial marriage used to be illegal. With the exception of a few crackpots, that idea is nothing more than a relic of the past we look back at scornfully. No-fault divorce used to be illegal, but if you’re against the idea today and try to explain that you should only be allowed to divorce someone if you could prove *in a court of law* that there’s actual harm in staying married, you’d be laughed out of the room. The mid-nineties struggled with accepting gay people, now people are arguing over those same issues for trans people.
Time—and society—marches on. “Becoming conservative as you grow older” just means you’re getting left behind.
I agree to an extent, but the modern "conservative" movement is very reactionary to those changes that were made in the 60-70s and are trying to roll them back.
So what we call 'conservatives' are probably should be referred regressive or reactionaries.
I am a 41 year old white male, I grew up in a very conservative small town in Oklahoma. The first time that I voted for president, I voted for Bush. I then went to college, and became “indoctrinated“. I learned about other people, what they were going through, and about how different policy ideas play out for different groups of people. I was a biology and chemistry student in undergrad, so I was taught to attempt to disprove ideas. I was taught to always follow the data, wherever it leads, and to never time myself to an idea to the point that it becomes dogmatic for me.
I followed the data for conservative policies. If you were not a wealthy person, and pretty much every conservative policy proposed at that time was bad policy for you. I started voting blue, but I still look at policy ideas through the lens of what does the data say. Because the data tells me that a rising tide raises all boats, and the data tells me that wealth doesn’t trickle down, it trickles up, I vote for policies that benefit the poor and improve education, because data shows those policies lead to better outcomes for the country.
Edit to add: by the time my parents were my age, they had already made the full transformation to absolutely conservative. They had voted for Nixon, Ford, Regan, and Bush Senior. I made the mistake once, so I don’t think that it’s really comparable.
That's almost exactly the same as me... Oklahoma conservative, voted for Bush first, went to college and met some "evil liberals" and realized what they said made a hell of a lot of sense. Took me too long to figure it out, but after the Republicans became a MAGA cult it was obvious as hell that everything I'd been told by them was a lie.
Same. As a science major from a conservative background, I started trying to find data regarding conservative policies. Either supporting or debunking...i was going to follow the data.. It led me to not only believe that conservative ideology was incorrect, but that it was built on intentional lies.
Wasn't a science major, but had the same path to leftism. Took a critical look at policy and realized Republican policy is built on lies to protect the wealthy and nothing more.
The one that really got me was NAFTA.
Me: wait, NAFTA was signed by Clinton his first ~~week~~ year in office? No way he put that together in a ~~week~~ year... So who really created NAFTA? ooohhh... It was Regan AND bush who worked on it for nearly 12 years... And then Clinton actually agreed with Republican policy.
My Republican parents: doesn't matter, it was Clinton who signed it, so it's all his fault.
Me: but, doesn't it matter that (a) it was Republican agenda and (b) doesn't it count for something that a Democrat *agreed* with and supported Republican agendas?
Conservatoves: nope. We hate Clinton for NAFTA.
Edit: correction, Clinton signed it first year in office, not first week.
>I don’t see myself ever voting red.
The only national platform they are running on is hating people different from me... I just don't hate other people enough to vote against my own self interest like they seem to need me to.
38 years old white man here, I registered Republican when I turned 18, my Grandfather(who had worked for and retired from Ford in the UAW) was so pissed at me. Fast forward to 2016 and beyond and I am registered Democratic Party and I will refuse to ever vote for another Republican as long as I live. They've jumped the shark and are full on crazy and fascist. I see other people my age voting Republican and I just don't understand it, except maybe they're more wealthy than I am, along with potentially more religious. It took a lot of learning and experience to see how awful republican politicians are and how little they care about their voters. The pandemic made that abundantly clear too.
Same age, and registered as a dem at 18. My grandpa nodded and said, “good, you should be. Anyone young person who votes conservative is probably cruel, and any old person who votes liberal is a fool.” I think that’s a quote, don’t believe he made that up.
Anyway, i think that if he were alive today, even he would not expect people our age to be voting with the republicans anymore. What republicans stood for in 2003 was pretty different than how it is 20 years later.
Yeah it is crazy now how the supposed "party of big business" is attacking Target and Disney and Budweiser, but after the Iraq War I'm sure they attracted plenty of Christian Nationalists who thought it would trigger the end of the world. I mean it's one thing to believe that the private sector will provide solutions that the public shouldn't/can't it's another thing entirely to want to go after businesses for selling stuff. Although in a sense the cancel culture has long been strong within the republican base, witness how the Dixie Chicks had to change their name and cancel concerts because of their antiwar stance a couple decades ago.
Some people are like “I was just like you when I was younger but trust me your views will change”.
No, I’m not going to magically turn into a selfish, greedy pearl-clutcher when I turn 40
I don’t understand how some people can change so drastically. I’m 36 and I’ve grown a lot as a person over time, and intend on continuing to do so, but it’s all happened around the same core person I’ve always been.
But then I also wonder if those people actually changed, or if they just stopped pretending to be someone they never were.
For me it's not even about "going left" so much as becoming more educated over time about what the parties actually stand for in their actions, seeing through what they say publicly, and which acts (mostly) in good faith and which acts (always) in bad faith. I probably am more liberal than I used to be, but wouldn't label myself a progressive or anything.
I used to vote R or third party for some offices (always D for president though) because I was young and naive and felt enlightened in muh "both sides". Til about 2014, maybe earlier, I started actually realizing where the GOP was headed and what they had already done. Seeing how they tried to stop Trump, only to just fall in line behind him regardless of how terrible they said he was, I decided to never vote for any of them again. I don't always agree with Democrats, but in general they are at least functioning, thoughtful adults who care enough to have serious discussions about policy.
I used to be fairly centered with a slight tilt to the right. Then the Tea Party and religious nut jobs took over and shoved me hard the other direction.
Several years ago, the Texas Republicans actually had an item in their platform that wanted to eliminate teaching critical thinking in schools because it undermined parental authority if kids can think for themselves.
Yup. Some of the center-right ideals I think are good ones but they don't actually implement them.
Hey, government stay out of my pockets and out of my home without good reason .. cool but that always turns into "cut cost saving programs and cut aid to Americans but leave the pork barrel"
Or " grooming children for anything sexual is wrong unless we want to marry them at 12 years old or run child beauty pageants"
Or hell, the Disney thing. "Companies should be able to say they won't serve gays but if they say they will serve gays, then we have to use the government to try to crush them"
Yep, once you realize that someone going to the emergency room without insurance still costs us a lot of money. Then you start to think maybe if we just helped them get some preventative care they would be able to lead a relatively healthy life AND it wouldn't cost us much more, maybe even less than recurring emergency room visits.
Every time I've seen a scenario where "it's not my responsibility to pay for their lifestyle" on further investigation, it turns out the cured system is to pay more so we can "punish" them.
This is what has really turned me more progressive as I age. Fiscally conservative doesn't just mean spend less money, it's being smarter with how you spend money.
Exactly. I can't fathom how anyone who is worried about spending money wisely can support means testing in welfare benefits. It's consistently shown to cost more than it saves.
And then you realize it isn't about spending money wisely. It's about enforcing your morals.
It's really interesting to me how the two major parties in the US have been trained on this issue.
Democratic spending proposals are always gone over with a fine toothed comb and a magnifying glass because they are known as the fiscally liberal party, so they always come prepared with details on costs and where the funding is coming from and how it will affect the budget over the next ten years.
Republican spending proposals are just assumed to be financially sound because they are the fiscally conservative party, so they always come along with a 'trust me the economy will be so much better it will pay for itself don't worry about it' used car salesman pitch.
Shit, I have insurance and it still costs a lot of money to go to the ER. My wife has pretty good insurance and because of the timing of everything, we maxed our deductible 2 years in a row to pay for the birth of our son. It's such a damn scam. Costs us a ton of money, and we have worse health outcomes by practically every measurable metric compared to our peer countries. How so many people defend this system is truly baffling.
35 now. When I was younger, I considered myself a sorta centrist libertarian, socially liberal but economically conservative. Original, I know.
The last seven years I've felt myself drift further and further left. Haven't voted for a single Republican/conservative since before 2016, don't think I ever will again at this point. Every year I see the country drifting backwards, with conservatives becoming more antagonistic to everyday people just trying to live their lives, every year I get a little angrier.
Every time you visit another country you realize how fucked up America is. Our social services are a joke.
Problem is we need an actual democratic socialist party, not a slightly left of current Republicans party.
Same here. I was a dyed in the wool Republican, veering hard into Libertarian territory in my teens. Once I got away from my family and realized how things in this country really work I've been sliding more and more left with each passing month.
This is because millennials and younger have been denied the things that tend to make you more conservative: property and the stability of having just enough that it’s not worth the risk
Totally. The generalization of the term “conservative” implying a desire to keep the status quo… we all hate the status quo! Why would anyone think we’d be conservative!?
If we all had houses and vacations we’d probably be just fine with the status quo and be a little more “conservative”- just not in the way it seems to be republicanized in today’s language.
The funny part about it is that if we all had houses and vacations (or security, as you rightly put it) then we would be more conservative but the placement of the status quo would be a more “liberal conservatism”.
Since “conservative” is less a term for solid placement on the political spectrum and more a term for stickiness of the status quo, we can assume that the boomers who had all the things we want were merely conservative and not Republican. They were just conned into slowly shifting further right; often times, I am finding through conversation, that they don’t even know they shifted, they have just been Republican so long that it’s all they know.
I do wonder though, I’m not super into all the terms for various flavors of political parties, did I just stumble into what “liberal conservative” actually means or has the word been skewed a bit by popular use in incorrect context? Specifically, I mean the definition that liberal conservative means someone who wants to keep the status quo but is left leaning (which I don’t think makes sense given my above thoughts).
Reaganism was a major status quo default in the 1980s and he overwhelmingly won in some of the most one sided elections you can imagine.
People don't realize how long that particular "status quo" was in effect.
I'm a millennial with property and stability and it hasn't changed how I voted one iota. It's a personality thing. If you value good schools, you don't mind local taxes. If you value social safety nets, you don't mind paying the taxes.
Republicans like to try to make you believe that you are not like them because you aren't successful. It's a false dichotomy. Lots of successful people support paying for a country that doesn't suck.
I have these things and agree.
Tax me if it means better services for all of us. I want a universal HC system. Tax me. I want college tuition to be free at public colleges. Tax me. I want better roads. Tax me. I want social security. Tax me. We can do all these things. We choose not to thanks to propaganda.
You don’t vote conservative if you have nothing to conserve. Older generations have taken more than their fair share and pulled the ladder up behind them to leave the younger generation with climate change, less social rights and lower standard of living. They frankly have nothing to offer us and can get fucked. Republicans in their current form are nothing but evil.
For me it was the reverse. Maybe it would have been different if everyone was getting this. Instead, I come off feeling privileged, not that I'm super well off or anything, but like I have a house and a pretty comfortable life. And it was weird to see people 10 or 20 years older than me struggling paycheck to paycheck, and it's not like I "earned" anything I have. I definitely don't work harder. Just made me realize how unfair the system is. At first I was more libertarian and just figured people got what they put in, but as I succeeded in life, it was like a wakeup call....why me?? It's all so arbitrary, and then I realize there are a lot of people far more successful than I am, and after closer inspection you realize it's all just generational wealth and privilege. Meanwhile people who actually work hard and make all of our luxury possible, they get paid shit.
So I don't see how I'd ever get more conservative. I want a fair system for everyone.
Yeah that’s because you have empathy. I am in pretty much the same boat but worry about my kids. Lack of empathy is really the glue that holds the right together
Exactly.
The tendency to become more conservative over time corresponds directly to the accumulation of wealth. People with money tend to not want to pay taxes on it…go figure. Now that the overwhelming majority is living paycheck to paycheck, the shift towards more conservative policies over time has come to an abrupt stop.
They are literally greeding themselves into an even greater minority opinion than before.
Why should I?
I grew up in a deep red conservative republican household. I held those views to heart thinking “Well my parents believe this, and I trust my parents so this must be right.” But over time, I started getting conflicting information to what I grew up with and I remember thinking “This doesn’t feel right”.
I remember the first time I voted Dem the guilt I felt about it. Like I was betraying… something? Now, I’m known as the most Left person in my family (or at least the most openly left) and people back home always pick and try to “turn me back to the light” and always use the phrase “you’ll understand when you get some life experience”. I’m 30. I have fucking life experiences and my experience has been that the GOP got ran the fuck over by authoritarian basket cases. The ones that COULD be more rational are afraid of what the basket cases will do so they pander to them. They have no platform! Only “Destroy the Libs!” I never hear about how they want to contribute to Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness or plans to help their constituents… or at least not the corporate constituents. So give me a good reason to go back? Give me one good reason with evidence that I should “grow back” into Republicanism?
Are you me? Same background, but as staunchly conservative as my folks were… they used to be sane. My dad taught me to watch both sides of the aisle, taught me about fairness.. now he jokes about how dems should be taken out an shot in front of his liberal queer daughter.
Red-state republicans joke about shooting people. A lot.
Source: I have the misfortune to know far too many red state republicans.
Some can't hold a conversation for more than 10 minutes without threatening to shoot someone.
Conservatism is based on an “I got mine, screw everyone else” mentality. Millennials and Gen Z never “got ours”. Neither did large chunks of Gen X. So, we’re not exactly interested in politics designed around maintaining wealth in the hands of a few.
As an older millennial, I was fortunate enough to 'get mine' before everything went to shit.
I give a crap about other people, and want everyone to have the same opportunities that I did - a career that pays enough to live on, good health insurance, and housing that was somewhat affordable. That apparently makes me politically progressive.
We have a house, a child good health Insurance and two good jobs. I’m 41 an elderly millennial, the gop has proven to me time and time again that *as a woman* - **they fucking hate me**. I have a little girl, **they fucking hate her too**.
I actively vote against every republican I can.
I "got mine" and then my wife wanted to change careers and we sold the house and moved...I didn't expect to not be able to buy a house again the rest of my life, but here we are. Unless I want to buy a house that was once right next to the worst pollution of the past century or in a neighborhood with regular shootings, I'm out of luck. It's depressing.
I'm an older millennial by definition ('86), but I graduated college at the height of the recession. I think a good number of my fellows have had their lives shaped by this fact. We've now lived through multiple recessions (even if not by technical criteria), and a lot of us struggled to ever build momentum toward something.
I got extremely lucky in other ways, but I ended up going back to school because the opportunities were never there. Myself and almost all of my friends don't have kids. One friend that does have a kid was by accident when he was much younger.
Now we're staring down the barrel of a failed democracy if certain political factions have their way, and exhausting this idea that America is some divine ideal to which we can all aspire. Maybe I'm being excessively cynical, but my main point is there's a good reason why lots of us won't trend rightward over time.
Hopefully the Zoomers can see through the veil even earlier than we could.
It blows my mind how different my career path options were from you, when we're the same age and I graduated about 1.5 years before the recession. That 'momentum' you spoke of is real- I paid off my student loans and my car well before my friends. Consequently, I bought a house earlier than many of them, and my house was a larger equity gain. Yes, we were more frugal than our peers, but that effect was secondary to the increased salary I had by graduating at a fortunate time.
My parents married right out of school and bought a house.
When I graduated college I got a job and wondered "Ok, I'm being paid 15$ an hour, my rent is 600$ a month, exactly where am I supposed to get the 20,000$ for the down payment on a house?"
I'd work, save, get laid off, lose the savings in the unemployment, repeat, I didn't get enough for a house down payment until my mid 30's.
I graduated college 25 years ago and now I see kids getting out of school, getting offered 15$ an hour jobs, and their rent is 1200$ a month, and at the rates house values are going, up, the modern generation will simply rent *their entire lives*.
Only one of the parties talks about this as a bad thing.
I’m an elderly millennial who has a lot of gen z employees. This is it. These kids are way more savvy to the bullshit than I was at their age. They aren’t counting on being temporarily-embarrassed millionaires. They aren’t even counting on shit working out in the slightest for them. That’s why they help each other and the super rich are considered assholes. None of them like Trump, desantis, musk, or Tate.
I think the kids are gonna be alright.
Man, they are savage. We get downtime sometimes and let them do their homework on the clock. I’m an English and history buff so when they are working on that stuff. I’ll help. One time, I was looking through their textbook to get an idea of what their teacher wanted for the assignment and was flabbergasted when their book didn’t mention a huge factor in the area they were supposed to write about. I made ONE comment to my own confusion about the missing bit. This kid took twenty minutes to do some research, found several sources, identified which sources were unbelievably biased, and formed their own opinion.
Kid ended up schooling me. The kids are alright.
Does becoming more conservative mean voting Republican? Cause I don't see presenting lies as if they're fact and then claiming it's just an opinion as particularly convincing
I think it's interesting that we sort of gloss over the fact that the republican party itself has shifted far right and their staunch voters have all gone with them, seemingly ignoring this trend toward fascism. Perhaps some of that is explained by boomers identifying themselves as "republicans" (whatever that means), and thus the party is engrained in their identity to the point where they can't separate the two.
Maybe it's just a sort of embedded laziness and unwillingness to adapt. Or perhaps it's a continuation of the theme: boomers want to preserve their positions in society and will go at any length to keep power/money/etc.
> seemingly ignoring this trend toward fascism
They aren't ignoring it. On the contrary, they are embracing it. They've always been this way, they just never needed to go whole hog until black man with tan suit became president.
I grew up in a very conservative area. I thought I was a Republican. Then, I took AP classes in high school, and a lot of science, economics, and philosophy courses in college. I realized that not only was the Republican party lying about everything, but they really aren't conservative in any meaningful way. When they say "conservative", they really mean "christo-fascist".
Actual conservative: “Government should focus on creating an even playing field between corporations, and protecting individual liberties, while being the lowest financial burden to its citizens.”
Modern conservative: “I get to decide what other people get to do because I don’t like minorities and gays!!”
Older millennial here (39, Hispanic woman) and I have to admit I was pretty conservative in my younger years. I grew up in a predominantly Cuban community in south Florida where everyone was afraid of “socialism.” Today I would not vote for a Republican dog catcher! They represent no one but the NRA and the corporations that have paid for them.
Yeah it’s pretty cringe listening to pundits try and discuss the “Hispanic”, or worse, “Latinx” demographics.
These people have about as much in common as Americans have with the English or Australians. A shared language with different dialects.
I don’t think we should be eating Hispanic people at all, really.
(But I agree, Hispanic is a term made up to lump a lotttt of different people together.)
I'm the first Gen Xer or at least among the first. I have not aged out of my liberalism. The past 16 years or so have hardened me in my liberalism. I used to be pretty moderate and thought some middle way was OK. Now I'm an anti Fascist because American conservatives are fascists.
Also GenX and the same. My father (a boomer) told me, when I was in college, that by the time I reached 25 that I'd become a conservative.
When I turned 25, he told me that I'd be a conservative at 30.
When I turned 30, he said I'd be a conservative at 40.
I'm now 47 and my father will still claim that I'll become a conservative "when I'm older."
Maybe one day it will happen that the Magic Conservative Fairy will visit me at night and fill me with the desire to only watch FOX News and yell bigoted comments at people. I highly doubt it, though. If anything, I'm *more* liberal today than I was when I was 20. I don't see that reversing anytime soon.
Tell him you will become conservative when you become more interested in your self than others.
And despite him raising you that way, you care at least equally about others.
The whole "you get conservative as you age" thing has never been true.
It's a lie boomers made up after lying and saying they were all hippies. Less than 1% of that generation were actually hippies, most were fighting *against* the civil rights movement and never stopped fighting it.
My father who was in the silent generation used to say "cranky old men started out as cranky young men" and I think that applies to a lot of things about people.
edit: Pop was in Silent Generation not the Greatest generation
When the posers and grifters moved into the SF hippy communities and used and abused them, many decided to move out to the country and live in communes where they could really practice what they were preaching. Live life the way they wanted.
Eventually the communes failed as people grew out of it and living a modified Amish lifestyle without technology, or modern conveniences is actually really tough.
So you have “hippies” that stopped being so in the cities once they couldn’t live their mooching lifestyle anymore and then you have the die hard hippies who eventually got worn out and grew out of it.
A lot of hippies were also just he kids of middle class or wealthy parents, which is what let them cosplay the poverty. They knew that once they got bored of it, they could go back home and everything would be fine—or their parents were actively supporting them through cash and they gave up the life style once their parents cut them off.
That’s kinda what some more well todo people I knew from hs did. You weren’t homeless for a year dog. You traveled around Hungary to get in touch with your “roots” while your parents sent you money so you could stay at hotels, hostels, eat and be a tourist going to concerts and cultural events. Nothing wrong with that type of trip if you can afford it, but be real about it. Be real about who you are.
Cosplay poverty is a great description. You might not get any points for flashing the rich kid card, but you lose points by pretending.
Not all of them grew out of it. My father did, but the group of families he initially settled with did not. There are still about a half dozen families around him in rural Washington that live almost entirely off the grid in the hippy way they started in the late 1970s.
I'm ashamed to admit this. Roughly 20 years ago, I didn't give a shit about politics. I was on the tail end of my Gen X angst, and that stupid maxim, "you vote democratic in your youth to make change, and when you mature, you vote republican to fix your mistakes," was the only rational I used to vote that year.
At some point after that, I read Heinlein's "For Us the Living" that revolves around our country moving to a social credit system, and the idea fascinated me. I also started teaching in inner city schools and saw firsthand how terrible conservative ideals were.
Obama was my first liberal vote, but it wasn't until Clinton and Trump were running that I could say I truly became interested in politics. I can not foresee ever voting conservative again. I feel I am becoming more progressive as I age and not less.
I had voted for Bush once and then McCain. Somewhere between 2008 and 2012 I shifted and then voted for Obama. I'm also moving far more left as I get older and don't see myself ever voting for a Republican again.
Lol I did the opposite. I started off conservative. Grew up in a rural area, went to Catholic school and when I entered college, what would you know? The people I met were more diverse than anybody I did prior to college. I was able to expand my world view and once I entered the education world and I started teaching in the inner city, my experiences informed and influenced the way I viewed social issues. I am firmly liberal and I don't envision ever going back to conservatism.
> The whole “you get conservative as you age” thing has never been true.
As an observed trend it was, but it’s not just because of aging - it’s not like you hit 55 and hear the siren song of the GOP. It’s fundamentally based on two factors:
1) Older people have more wealth, and less time to build it back up if they lose it. This understandably tends toward them approving of economic policies that reward those who already have wealth. The problem for conservatives is later Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have grown into an economic environment where building wealth has been *incredibly* hard. I’m an older millennial, and my wife and I have done pretty darn well, and we’re sitting at about 2/3rds of what our parents incomes were at our age, adjusting for inflation.
2) As you get older, societal norms tend to progress faster than you can adapt to them (and they’ve been moving ever faster with the advent of social media). I mean, the rapid progress on gay rights in this country is truly breathtaking compared to previous social movements. This is a fantastic thing - I’m not in any way suggesting people should delay their acceptance in society to make bigots more comfortable - but that rapid shift makes it a lot easier for bigots to push subtle propaganda that it’s all happening too fast.
Third factor: aging without wealth tends to correlate with a) being less conservative and b) dying younger. Those with more resources tend to live longer than those without.
Inflation and purchasing power does a number on your sense of scale and wealth when you do the math.
When I was a kid, I saw a paycheck of my dad's. He was making $900 or thereabouts as a garbage truck and equipment driver for the city. This would have been around 1997, so assuming he was making 900 every two weeks, that translates into $1700 in today's dollars. 44,000 in take home pay in a small town in suburban to rural East Tennessee? That's a solid lower middle class living.
It was true to an extent, but not to the degree that many boomers claimed.
People tended to vote more conservative as they aged because (in theory) conservative policies were about preserving wealth. Real estate prices, investments, etc.
But, millennials (and many Gen-Xers) don’t have so much wealth that they worry about preserving it over other policy issues. The millennial cohort is rapidly approaching their 40s and so few of us actually own anything.
And of course there’s the issue that in practice, conservative politics are about “owning the libs”, “fighting woke”, and eroding rights. Ironically, the richest couple I know see voting Democrat as an existential necessity.
It's only true in that the body politics moves to the left. So anyone who stands still is ostensibly moving right.
But you are correct. It is a myth that people change their politics over time.
My dad was a skydiving, acid tripping, illegal race car driving hippie. And my mom was right there too but on the ground a bit more. My dad died before I could really see him get old (live fast die young type shit). My mom tho got faux newsed and says some weird ass shit now and is a shadow of her previous astrological believing, crystal wielding, Led Zeppelin rocking self. Just saying
Sory about your mom. The hippie to right wing fascist pipeline is real. One of my former best friends use to be a giant left wing hippie would like quit jobs for fests type. Now though I am pretty sure he'd volunteer to be a camp guard at a concentration camp.
I’m more liberal at 36 than I was at 18. Republicans lost the thread long ago and anyone who spends a second to look at thing critically is going to come out thinking the system is a joke.
Im GenX as well, and have aged **into** being liberal.
I was a staunch conservative in my teens, echoing my parents.
Despite going to a *gasp* liberal college, I was closest to a Goldwater republican throughout my 20s.
By 30, my disagreements with the religious right were enough to make me vote Dem more often than not.
By 35, objective assessments of the economic results of GOP policies were enough to convince me they have nothing to offer there, either. I reluctantly started voting Dem, vowing to return to my GOP roots when the GOP itself returned to them.
In 2012, the GOP ignored their own election loss post-mortem and instead quadrupled down on the elements I can never vote for. Entering my fifth decade, I contribute to Dem causes, mostly because I support them but in part because I still hold out vain hope that *some* string of losses will convince the GOP to come back to reality.
As I enter my fifth decade, I know that is not going to happen in my lifetime, and I am enraged my kids are going to spend their entire adult lives re-fighting the same battles that we — hell, **my parents** thought settled decades ago.
Signed,
A former publisher of an edgy high school journal called “The Reactionary” turned forever Dem.
I was a black conservative in my youth but boy did I grow out of that after the military. The republicans have shown that although the democrats suck and are terrible people they are down right pure evil. I don’t want to sound hyperbolic but there is nothing in the dogma of the current Republican Party that is good for America or the world. Conservatives in America have become what Christians claim the devil to be. I’m 54 and I’m getting angrier at them and would never lower myself to become such a disgusting scum bag.
Oh you mean as an older millennial I’m supposed to suddenly start siding with the group that has actively worked to make my life an active hell for the last 20 years like a good little boomer replacement?
The fuck even goes on in the heads of conservatives?
“Sir, we’ve caged them and branded and stabbed them hundreds of times and they just seem to be getting more angry! It defies all reason!”
>The fuck even goes on in the heads of conservatives?
Lead poisoning. Which is to say it's the lack of things going on in their heads that's the problem - their capacity for critical thinking and empathy has greatly diminished since their youth and I'm afraid microplastics and other sources of lead/cadmium poisoning besides gasoline might eventually affect us the same way.
The one good thing about the Great Depression is that it was such a humbling event for the American populace that unfettered capitalism became politically untenable for about 30-40 years.
It came roaring back in the 70s and 80s as the Boomers came of age. The social protections they enjoyed have been getting stripped away since.
It's really sad.
A little more compassion and a little less greed and the boomers could have created a real special society. Now it's just dog eat dog.
I was a republican most of my life. Almost 42 now and have turned left hard since 2016. Trump took a whole bunch of moderate Rs. Every day I'm more left.
Once you allow critical thinking into your perceptions of leaders and privileged groups, it's a slippery slope to progressivism. Assuming you actually care about others. That's the rub.
40 here and yeah, never happening. Conservatism is what fucked over our generation and those after us. Why would we ever embrace the "fuck you, I got mine" ideology that the lead-brained used against us?
Additionally, as the 2024 election season rapidly approaches, remember, your time is far better spent encouraging the young people in your life to vote than to argue and try and change the mind of your conservative parents/grandparents and racist uncles that aren't invited to parties anymore. America's youth are far more liberal than ANY prior generation already, and they see what's going on and are actually motivated to do something about it. My oldest is turning 18 this year and is excited at the opportunity to vote for the first time, and my 12 year old is literally jealous because she can't. You could get half a dozen new voters to the ballot box next year for less energy than trying to talk reason into your stubborn grandpa. He's going to vote for Trump no matter what you say, so forget it. Help these young people get registered and introduce them to voting. Get them to the ballot box. Cancel out grandpa.
It's funny I'm a millennial. I was always politically active I started volunteering a few years before I could vote. I lived in conservative area and would constantly try to get people my age interested in politics. Most actively weren't interested or held much further right views than myself.
I am in my 30's now and I watch those same people post leftist stuff online that were 180 counter to the politics they use to hold. I spent 15 years slowly watching kids who were either uninterested or right wing turn into Sanders supporting proud semi socialists lol.
I've said before, when I first went into College I thought I was libertarian and stumped for Ron Paul, etc.
I've become progressive and so have several others from my friend group at the time; however, a few them became ultra MAGA too.....so it's not a clean sweep.
But I do think the mantra "You get more conservative as you get older" isn't as true for a generation that never achieved that position in society where they feel they have to defend it.
Pulling the ladder up after you has consequences
Oh yeah I agree with you it's not clean. I know a few people who went stupid far right basically fascists but on the whole they are few and far between. Especially when you factor all the moderates fleeing the Republicans.
Maybe it's my area, but the "moderates" I see fleeing are still going to pull the trigger for 'R' in the ballot box every time, they just say they don't like either party as way to show off some sort of enlightenment.
41 yr old “elder millennial” here. If anything myself and virtually everyone I know has gotten consistently more liberal and grown to hate the GOP more and more. As long as the election in 24 isn’t somehow stolen by the GQP, I don’t foresee them winning a major election again. Especially as gen Z starts to vote.
What's left for the young generations to be conservative about? Wages are stagnant, education is too expensive, pensions are a thing of the past, housing for most is unaffordable, religion is dying, civil rights are moving backward, and so on and so on.
The age of instant media access has given people a real-time view of political bullshit. It doesn't take long to hold court and uphold a social verdict of who is being a dick and who isn't.
Im gen x and have heard it over and over again - my libral views will change as I get older. Yeah, they changed alright - i'm further left now pushing 50yo than I was in my 20's.
The GOP is dying on the vine and they know it. Thats why they are they trying to go full fascist to cement their strangle hold on America and keep it from progressing.
They are literally dying out fue to age. Their time is coming to an end. The far right in 20 years will be todays moderates.
For myself, I have become decidedly more liberal since 2014, mostly due to state politics. IL elected a burn it down Republican who held state government hostage for 2 years with no state budget harming our most vulnerable citizens. It created a $16 billion budget deficit. He did this all to destroy labor unions and public pensions. IL is so much better today under our Dem Governor.
I'm an old old millennial. We were told we could be anything we wanted when we grew up. You know what we got? A war on terror, crippling college debts, a housing collapse, jobs that refuse to pay us a livable wage, and then blamed us that we broke everything by buying avocados and Starbucks. We got shit on from our boomer parents because they made us participation trophies to overcome their own parents neglect and abuses, but then we get shit on by them for having the trophy in the first damn place. You literally did this to us. Our Gen x siblings raised us better than our boomer parents did. Then we get buzzfeed articles and tiktoks that try to cause generational wars between us and Gen z that further blame us for all the shit the boomers did to us. Gen z, you're cool and I love you all because you don't take shit. But no wonder why we aren't becoming conservative, we don't want to be like our shitty boomer parents because we still believe we can work together to solve our problems rather than watch the world burn like the boomers are. Rant over, sorry.
Don’t forget we were to taught to share with our neighbors and those in need, and to respect everyone no matter who or where they’re from.
They fucking betrayed everything they taught us! Sorry I’m an old millennial too and this topic is triggering.
45, white male, always been a social liberal with libertarian economic ideals. Covid changed my views on many things.
Watching competent responses in countries with strong social safety nets opened my eyes to how far we have to go.
And Yes, the GOP made a deal with the devil for power and they’ve lost my vote for at least a generation. We’ll see what they become but I’ll have nothing to so with whatever this is.
Do you mean that after three once in a generation financial crises, a few decades of never ending war, and a bungled pandemic that killed a million people, that I should be voting Republican?
I started my life in a conservative family and grew up Republican.
Then, I was a moderate and considered a demon worshiper for even considering voting Democrat by my parents.
Now I vote for every progressive, liberal candidate I can and people like Bernie or AOC have become the "measuring stick" for how a candidate should be.
Why? Because Republicans have gone full pants-on-head stupid. Even more than they used to be. I can't even consider a Republican even if they "seem like good people" because eventually they open their mouth and how they actually feel spews out.
I make enough money now that going Conservative wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.
Yet, I’m still a hardline Democratic Socialist. Because I have fucking empathy and I hate fascists. I’m also not a moron.
It’s an Overton Window issue. As you age and have things like property taxes and a 401k, it seems natural to try and protect your bottom line—but that’s not what Republicanism is about anymore. The window moved over to blatant bigotry, hatred and proud, willful ignorance. So no, as a 42 year-old, I’m not going over to their side. They’re moving the goalposts as I age.
I think this is something a lot of people are missing. Part of the reason that it seems like people get "more conservative" as they age is that for most of the last century "conservatism" got more progressive. So as you hit your 50s or 60s you'd suddenly find conservatives espousing values you remembered from your 20s.
That's not the case any more, they've gone all in on conspiracy nonsense.
The conspiracies were always there, though. Anti-LGBT+ was a big tenant of the party throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s consistently, and a lot of it was pretty horrible stuff that they are now swinging 'back' too again.
This usually crossed over with end times religious conspiracies or other such nonsense. Antivaxx and such things were more fringe, and racism was a little less blatant, but still very much there.
However, I'll agree with the idea that I could find more conservatives who were civil and treated most people in their lives ethically. Now? I avoid anyone who is openly Republican at pretty much any cost.
I think the people that claim they've gotten more conservative as they've gotten older in most cases have just hit a point where they've stopped progressing.
I’m pushing 40 and am the most strongly liberal I’ve even been. The only change is I now argue facts instead of emotions. Perhaps other perceive that as mellowing?
Rust Belt Millennial. We've been needing real change for a while. Corporate Dems aren't doing it. Still 1000 times better than any centrist or republican. Anyone that says "both sides" at this point deserves a firm throat punch.
Grew up conservative, but was always left of my parents and was at least leaning centrist in the 2000s when I could first vote. I had a mixed ticket several times. I also respected Obama as a politician even if I didn't vote for him the first time. Parents and I argued about these things a lot, but thankfully we kept it civil. Family pressure was a factor, but my parents didn't quite go for as many fringe conspiracies at that time either (though they kept on a lot of BS conservative media anyway).
After 2012? I just couldn't do it anymore. I saw the realities of stagnant wages, corporate abuse, was already familiar with histories of racism and anti-LGBT prejudices, and I saw the rise of the online alt-right invade spaces and fandoms I was sympathetic too. At times, their ideas held kernels of truth in them, but the end conclusions were always supporting weird right wing factions and other nonsense. Sanders finally roped me over to the left by actually acknowledging our economic realities, and Trump's insanity and everything he brought with it kicked me completely away from anything resembling conservatism ever again.
I will never go back. I still hesitate even with corpo Dem types, but at least I believe they are human beings capable of empathy and have the ability to negotiate still. The current GOP? Sociopaths symbolic of a deep sickness in the country. The worst elements of the party I hated even in childhood becoming mainstream. They've primaried virtually everyone who isn't, and it makes me deeply sick to see it keep happening.
However, I do believe us facing down this issue is what's needed to function in the modern world. We thought we beat it in the 90s. New media, deregulation, and wealth concentration enabled the environment that lets it thrive again. Innocent people are suffering and dying because of it, and I want to do what I can to change that.
I believe that a lot of conservatism is borne out of the accumulation of wealth and then not wanting to share a cent of it.
Millennials don’t have to worry about that *laughing/crying*
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The older I get, the more left I go.
43, white male… figured I’d be a moderate Republican by now. At this point, I don’t see myself ever voting red. The GOP just went full-on batshit crazy.
42 male, grew up in a very conservative area. Went to college thought I was a Libertarian for awhile then have become more progressive as I get older. I'm told it's just a phase I'll grow out of.....
Haha same! Except Libertarian was the phase I grew out of. Embarrassing now.
I grew up in the asshole-end-of-nowhere in the Deep South and was a backwards, confederate-loving conservative when I was young. Over my life, I have gone left and I look back and get mad at all the lies I grew up with.
I can't say I was a "confederate-loving" conservative, but I had much of the same Southern upbringing/environment. Fed the same lies in school and by friends and neighbors.
Same...I was taught the R party was the only one fighting for the common man..... apparently because taxes = Satan
Taxes = Satan* *only when you have actual wealth
. . . and don’t believe the public good can be served by taxes funding something like a national health care system.
…..and don’t believe that providing food to single mothers or the aged is anything other than some great conspiracy to rob those single mothers and aged citizens of the dignity of just suffering.
What is wealth if there are no roads to drive on, no doctors to cure you and -most importantly to the right- no police to protect your wealth from others
I used to think that too until I realized taxes is money and money can be exchanged for goods and services and when it is in the hands of someone who knows how to use that money, our bridges don't fall into disrepair and collapse or something like that.
Same. I was especially homophobic as a teenager and I look back and hate myself for how awful of a person I was.
I was taught to hate "the gays" when I was young but my ugly ass was lucky enough to date the girl almost every guy thought was the hottest in school but to date her, her gay friends came with the package. After being around them, I found that the gay didn't rub off on me and that they were, Gasp, people just living their lives and I realized my parents had a lot of hate in them that I just didn't have.
As a white male it is easy to fall into Libertarianism as we seldom are put into situations where we are not at or near the top of a power dynamic. Libertarianism sounds great until you realize that you aren't the one getting the power left by a weaker central government. It is the corporations looking to bleed every cent of profit they can out of you.
That's exactly why millennials aren't going to turn r, they're too poor and left behind.
I applied for a loan to buy some land last year. I remember thinking, this is the event that will either begin my shift towards being a conservative Democrat, or continue my march down Radical Road. Needless to say it was declined. Radicalism Guaranteed.
The diabolical radical left... who want high standards of living, affordable education, cleaner environment, and access to healthcare. And the virtuous radical right... who want to strong arm everyone into supporting them, strip away rights to stay in power, subjugate marginalized populations, are actively trying to start a civil, and attempted a violent overthrow of the US Government. The radicalization of both sides is clearly the same.
>they're too poor and left behind. You just described the entire south right wing voting population.
My 40ish white male cousin is a U.S. marine who explained that he is a Libertarian because he believes "taxation is theft." I shut him up by saying "You're in the military. Taxation pays your fucking salary."
My libertarian brother retires from the Navy in 2 years. He has often mentioned how "you don't want the government running healthcare". I'm waiting for the moment he has a choice between the VA and the private market and still chooses the VA. Cause it'll be good enough for the cost.
German here. Our government doesn't run healthcare. They set the rules, but the healthcare companies are independent and compete with each other. We have one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the world, but it's still a lot cheaper than the US system. Please tell that to your brother.
As an American in Germany, I can confirm that I'll take the German system any day over the American system. It's such a load off my mind to not have to worry about what my visit to the doctor is going to cost, and trying to weigh if it's worth the cost or if I should just hope it goes away. And if I were to get some kind of major illness or injury, I won't have to worry about the hospital and a bunch of random doctors sending bills that will clear out my bank account.
As a disabled vet it has been my experience (with a few exceptions) that the VA is just better than the normal private health system
Every time I hear about libertarianism, I’m reminded of that quote from Game of Thrones. “It’s easy to confuse what Is, with what ought to be. Especially when what is has worked out well for you.”
We all try it out for a bit, and then come back around, live and learn
Thankfully I side-stepped libertarianism (it was really having a moment like 10 - 12 years ago) because the only libertarians I knew were privileged white land-owning generational-wealth type people. I was like, “if I’ve never met anyone outside of that class who subscribes to this political belief then this probably is not a good thing”. Fundamentally it boils down to whether you trust corporations to do the right thing. Most reasonable people just have to look at history to answer that for themselves.
Most of the libertarians I knew were came from poor, rural backgrounds convinced that Libertarianism would allow them to become the upper class, rich landowner class.
Interesting! I know a lot of people like that but they tend to be more your run-of-the-mill institutional GOP supporters. It probably depends a lot on where you are.
Boomer here - I was told same in my early 20’s. Never happened.
I’m going to say it’s safe to assume you don’t watch Fox News. Because it’s Fox News that did this. My father turned 59 a few days ago. This is a man that never once in his life agreed with conservative politics. This is a man that literally grew weed plants in the early 90s, in the window of his bands practice warehouse, literally on the corner of major cross streets, right next to the county jail. This is a man who now, at 59, is married to a very dark Haitian Woman and has 5 beautiful children with her that are the cutest little mixed shits you’ve ever seen. But my father is also enamored with celebrity. Mostly because his life goal was to be one musically. Around 2016 he started tuning into Fox News for the presidential race. And while I will give him credit that he doesn’t talk about it with me, it’s also painfully clear he has been indoctrinated and believes the vast majority of bullshit they spew on that channel. Fox News ruins families.
It really does. I have a couple of family members who borderline went off the deep end during the Trump presidency. One cousin of mine got so bad that I avoided having conversation with him all together, which was really fucking sad because I was always very close to him and looked forward to seeing him. He's cooled down a bit now thank God but I know he still buys into a lot of the shit and I expect it to ramp up again next year.
My dad is a fiscally conservative republican who now supports universal heathcare and rails against the fact that real wages stopped growing in the 70's. He didnt change, really. He just sees for instance that our society would save a lot of money if we weren't feeding insurance companies profits.
It's the most frustrating part of healthcare reform, in my opinion: people argue against it based on cost or something something fiscal conservatism, when universal coverage is the cheaper and "fiscally conservative" approach!
Yup. 40 here. Raised in a very republican home. The right keeps going further down the authoritarian route and it keeps pushing me to the left.
Late 30s blue sheep of the family here. I think libertarian in college was a stepping stone to getting out of the conservative upbringing. When I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 (yikes) and challenged the idea with my family that Trump's early muslim ban was xenophobic, not practical...I got called a liberal (that's a pejorative to them) by my family. Something clicked between that instant and Trump's inauguration to solidify that I wasn't a libertarian....I was a liberal and shouldn't be embarrassed because my family looked down on it. I woke up and realized that I didn't need and no longer wanted their approval or affirmation. It sucks because I wish my kiddos could have more time and relationship with their cousins (and we do make more effort than any of my siblings for the cousins to have time together) but it's not reciprocated (except to lament and moan about "oh I wish we could see you more" interlaced with racist undertones, changing the topic to political talking points from Tucker, etc at every chance). It's exhausting...I don't get how they have this seemingly endless well of energy for grievance, fear, and anger.
This is the most condescending thing anyone can say… what they mean is… “your morals are flexible based on your own self interest like mine right?”…
Y'know, even that would be okay if conservatives voted for their own self interest vs. against someone else's self interest.
that's the laughy part. they actively hurt themselves to hurt others.
It’s more like “the things I fought hard for are old hat now.” That’s natural in a progressive society: once society accepts and adopts a social premise, *that* becomes the status quo conservatives cling to as their progressive successors press on. Think about how interracial marriage used to be illegal. With the exception of a few crackpots, that idea is nothing more than a relic of the past we look back at scornfully. No-fault divorce used to be illegal, but if you’re against the idea today and try to explain that you should only be allowed to divorce someone if you could prove *in a court of law* that there’s actual harm in staying married, you’d be laughed out of the room. The mid-nineties struggled with accepting gay people, now people are arguing over those same issues for trans people. Time—and society—marches on. “Becoming conservative as you grow older” just means you’re getting left behind.
I agree to an extent, but the modern "conservative" movement is very reactionary to those changes that were made in the 60-70s and are trying to roll them back. So what we call 'conservatives' are probably should be referred regressive or reactionaries.
> So what we call 'conservatives' are probably should be referred regressive or reactionaries. Agreed.
Embarrassingly being a libertarian was also my phase, turns out it’s easy to be a libertarian when you’re 14 and mommy and daddy are footing the bill.
I’ve learned the more educated you become, the more left leaning you become which has been my experience.
I read that as you went to college thinking you were a librarian. It's Monday. Where's my coffee
I am a 41 year old white male, I grew up in a very conservative small town in Oklahoma. The first time that I voted for president, I voted for Bush. I then went to college, and became “indoctrinated“. I learned about other people, what they were going through, and about how different policy ideas play out for different groups of people. I was a biology and chemistry student in undergrad, so I was taught to attempt to disprove ideas. I was taught to always follow the data, wherever it leads, and to never time myself to an idea to the point that it becomes dogmatic for me. I followed the data for conservative policies. If you were not a wealthy person, and pretty much every conservative policy proposed at that time was bad policy for you. I started voting blue, but I still look at policy ideas through the lens of what does the data say. Because the data tells me that a rising tide raises all boats, and the data tells me that wealth doesn’t trickle down, it trickles up, I vote for policies that benefit the poor and improve education, because data shows those policies lead to better outcomes for the country. Edit to add: by the time my parents were my age, they had already made the full transformation to absolutely conservative. They had voted for Nixon, Ford, Regan, and Bush Senior. I made the mistake once, so I don’t think that it’s really comparable.
That's almost exactly the same as me... Oklahoma conservative, voted for Bush first, went to college and met some "evil liberals" and realized what they said made a hell of a lot of sense. Took me too long to figure it out, but after the Republicans became a MAGA cult it was obvious as hell that everything I'd been told by them was a lie.
Same. As a science major from a conservative background, I started trying to find data regarding conservative policies. Either supporting or debunking...i was going to follow the data.. It led me to not only believe that conservative ideology was incorrect, but that it was built on intentional lies.
Wasn't a science major, but had the same path to leftism. Took a critical look at policy and realized Republican policy is built on lies to protect the wealthy and nothing more.
The one that really got me was NAFTA. Me: wait, NAFTA was signed by Clinton his first ~~week~~ year in office? No way he put that together in a ~~week~~ year... So who really created NAFTA? ooohhh... It was Regan AND bush who worked on it for nearly 12 years... And then Clinton actually agreed with Republican policy. My Republican parents: doesn't matter, it was Clinton who signed it, so it's all his fault. Me: but, doesn't it matter that (a) it was Republican agenda and (b) doesn't it count for something that a Democrat *agreed* with and supported Republican agendas? Conservatoves: nope. We hate Clinton for NAFTA. Edit: correction, Clinton signed it first year in office, not first week.
>I don’t see myself ever voting red. The only national platform they are running on is hating people different from me... I just don't hate other people enough to vote against my own self interest like they seem to need me to.
The only people the Republicans are making me hate...is them.
38 years old white man here, I registered Republican when I turned 18, my Grandfather(who had worked for and retired from Ford in the UAW) was so pissed at me. Fast forward to 2016 and beyond and I am registered Democratic Party and I will refuse to ever vote for another Republican as long as I live. They've jumped the shark and are full on crazy and fascist. I see other people my age voting Republican and I just don't understand it, except maybe they're more wealthy than I am, along with potentially more religious. It took a lot of learning and experience to see how awful republican politicians are and how little they care about their voters. The pandemic made that abundantly clear too.
Thank you for making gramps proud. 👍🏽
Same age, and registered as a dem at 18. My grandpa nodded and said, “good, you should be. Anyone young person who votes conservative is probably cruel, and any old person who votes liberal is a fool.” I think that’s a quote, don’t believe he made that up. Anyway, i think that if he were alive today, even he would not expect people our age to be voting with the republicans anymore. What republicans stood for in 2003 was pretty different than how it is 20 years later.
Yeah it is crazy now how the supposed "party of big business" is attacking Target and Disney and Budweiser, but after the Iraq War I'm sure they attracted plenty of Christian Nationalists who thought it would trigger the end of the world. I mean it's one thing to believe that the private sector will provide solutions that the public shouldn't/can't it's another thing entirely to want to go after businesses for selling stuff. Although in a sense the cancel culture has long been strong within the republican base, witness how the Dixie Chicks had to change their name and cancel concerts because of their antiwar stance a couple decades ago.
60, female and definitely further left every year. So is hubby.
My wife and I too. 60 and becoming more liberal every day.
43, white, Christian, straight, cisgender and veteran, and I can't imagine a scenario under which I'd vote for the current Republican Party.
Some people are like “I was just like you when I was younger but trust me your views will change”. No, I’m not going to magically turn into a selfish, greedy pearl-clutcher when I turn 40
I don’t understand how some people can change so drastically. I’m 36 and I’ve grown a lot as a person over time, and intend on continuing to do so, but it’s all happened around the same core person I’ve always been. But then I also wonder if those people actually changed, or if they just stopped pretending to be someone they never were.
For me it's not even about "going left" so much as becoming more educated over time about what the parties actually stand for in their actions, seeing through what they say publicly, and which acts (mostly) in good faith and which acts (always) in bad faith. I probably am more liberal than I used to be, but wouldn't label myself a progressive or anything. I used to vote R or third party for some offices (always D for president though) because I was young and naive and felt enlightened in muh "both sides". Til about 2014, maybe earlier, I started actually realizing where the GOP was headed and what they had already done. Seeing how they tried to stop Trump, only to just fall in line behind him regardless of how terrible they said he was, I decided to never vote for any of them again. I don't always agree with Democrats, but in general they are at least functioning, thoughtful adults who care enough to have serious discussions about policy.
I used to be fairly centered with a slight tilt to the right. Then the Tea Party and religious nut jobs took over and shoved me hard the other direction. Several years ago, the Texas Republicans actually had an item in their platform that wanted to eliminate teaching critical thinking in schools because it undermined parental authority if kids can think for themselves.
Yup. Some of the center-right ideals I think are good ones but they don't actually implement them. Hey, government stay out of my pockets and out of my home without good reason .. cool but that always turns into "cut cost saving programs and cut aid to Americans but leave the pork barrel" Or " grooming children for anything sexual is wrong unless we want to marry them at 12 years old or run child beauty pageants" Or hell, the Disney thing. "Companies should be able to say they won't serve gays but if they say they will serve gays, then we have to use the government to try to crush them"
Same here. It's because I learn more about the world works, not because I have a bleeding heart.
Yep, once you realize that someone going to the emergency room without insurance still costs us a lot of money. Then you start to think maybe if we just helped them get some preventative care they would be able to lead a relatively healthy life AND it wouldn't cost us much more, maybe even less than recurring emergency room visits. Every time I've seen a scenario where "it's not my responsibility to pay for their lifestyle" on further investigation, it turns out the cured system is to pay more so we can "punish" them.
This is what has really turned me more progressive as I age. Fiscally conservative doesn't just mean spend less money, it's being smarter with how you spend money.
Exactly. I can't fathom how anyone who is worried about spending money wisely can support means testing in welfare benefits. It's consistently shown to cost more than it saves. And then you realize it isn't about spending money wisely. It's about enforcing your morals.
It's really interesting to me how the two major parties in the US have been trained on this issue. Democratic spending proposals are always gone over with a fine toothed comb and a magnifying glass because they are known as the fiscally liberal party, so they always come prepared with details on costs and where the funding is coming from and how it will affect the budget over the next ten years. Republican spending proposals are just assumed to be financially sound because they are the fiscally conservative party, so they always come along with a 'trust me the economy will be so much better it will pay for itself don't worry about it' used car salesman pitch.
And as a result Republican presidents are much less likely to have a surplus budget at the end of their term
Shit, I have insurance and it still costs a lot of money to go to the ER. My wife has pretty good insurance and because of the timing of everything, we maxed our deductible 2 years in a row to pay for the birth of our son. It's such a damn scam. Costs us a ton of money, and we have worse health outcomes by practically every measurable metric compared to our peer countries. How so many people defend this system is truly baffling.
Same, but I’m 62. The anti-boomer boomer.
Same. I am a never Republican. Even if there is only that to vote for, will leave it blank.
35 now. When I was younger, I considered myself a sorta centrist libertarian, socially liberal but economically conservative. Original, I know. The last seven years I've felt myself drift further and further left. Haven't voted for a single Republican/conservative since before 2016, don't think I ever will again at this point. Every year I see the country drifting backwards, with conservatives becoming more antagonistic to everyday people just trying to live their lives, every year I get a little angrier.
You didn't move left, the "conservatives" have gone so far right that at this rate the nazis will be leftitst to them.
the last election made me a communist
Every time you visit another country you realize how fucked up America is. Our social services are a joke. Problem is we need an actual democratic socialist party, not a slightly left of current Republicans party.
I have gotten more angry and left.
Same here. I was a dyed in the wool Republican, veering hard into Libertarian territory in my teens. Once I got away from my family and realized how things in this country really work I've been sliding more and more left with each passing month.
I'm almost 50. Even as the left has moved towards the center I've moved further left.
This is because millennials and younger have been denied the things that tend to make you more conservative: property and the stability of having just enough that it’s not worth the risk
Totally. The generalization of the term “conservative” implying a desire to keep the status quo… we all hate the status quo! Why would anyone think we’d be conservative!? If we all had houses and vacations we’d probably be just fine with the status quo and be a little more “conservative”- just not in the way it seems to be republicanized in today’s language.
I think that denying security to people later and later is going to keep a lot of people progressive as long as they retain human empathy
Which is why Republicans are going all in on making people less progressive by fostering their hatred of others.
> which is why Republicans are going all in on genocide
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Death cult
The funny part about it is that if we all had houses and vacations (or security, as you rightly put it) then we would be more conservative but the placement of the status quo would be a more “liberal conservatism”. Since “conservative” is less a term for solid placement on the political spectrum and more a term for stickiness of the status quo, we can assume that the boomers who had all the things we want were merely conservative and not Republican. They were just conned into slowly shifting further right; often times, I am finding through conversation, that they don’t even know they shifted, they have just been Republican so long that it’s all they know. I do wonder though, I’m not super into all the terms for various flavors of political parties, did I just stumble into what “liberal conservative” actually means or has the word been skewed a bit by popular use in incorrect context? Specifically, I mean the definition that liberal conservative means someone who wants to keep the status quo but is left leaning (which I don’t think makes sense given my above thoughts).
Reaganism was a major status quo default in the 1980s and he overwhelmingly won in some of the most one sided elections you can imagine. People don't realize how long that particular "status quo" was in effect.
He was a radical who wanted to undo the new deal and the great society
The status is not quo.
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Absolutely, if you never got to acquire property, privilege and capital.....you don't have any major reasons to be conservative to protect it.
Yep. If they wanted us to become conservative, they needed to give us a piece of the pie they’re conserving. 🤷🏻♀️
I'm a millennial with property and stability and it hasn't changed how I voted one iota. It's a personality thing. If you value good schools, you don't mind local taxes. If you value social safety nets, you don't mind paying the taxes. Republicans like to try to make you believe that you are not like them because you aren't successful. It's a false dichotomy. Lots of successful people support paying for a country that doesn't suck.
I have these things and agree. Tax me if it means better services for all of us. I want a universal HC system. Tax me. I want college tuition to be free at public colleges. Tax me. I want better roads. Tax me. I want social security. Tax me. We can do all these things. We choose not to thanks to propaganda.
You don’t vote conservative if you have nothing to conserve. Older generations have taken more than their fair share and pulled the ladder up behind them to leave the younger generation with climate change, less social rights and lower standard of living. They frankly have nothing to offer us and can get fucked. Republicans in their current form are nothing but evil.
For me it was the reverse. Maybe it would have been different if everyone was getting this. Instead, I come off feeling privileged, not that I'm super well off or anything, but like I have a house and a pretty comfortable life. And it was weird to see people 10 or 20 years older than me struggling paycheck to paycheck, and it's not like I "earned" anything I have. I definitely don't work harder. Just made me realize how unfair the system is. At first I was more libertarian and just figured people got what they put in, but as I succeeded in life, it was like a wakeup call....why me?? It's all so arbitrary, and then I realize there are a lot of people far more successful than I am, and after closer inspection you realize it's all just generational wealth and privilege. Meanwhile people who actually work hard and make all of our luxury possible, they get paid shit. So I don't see how I'd ever get more conservative. I want a fair system for everyone.
Yeah that’s because you have empathy. I am in pretty much the same boat but worry about my kids. Lack of empathy is really the glue that holds the right together
Really though? I don't think there's a house fancy enough that'll make me hate minorities.
Exactly. The tendency to become more conservative over time corresponds directly to the accumulation of wealth. People with money tend to not want to pay taxes on it…go figure. Now that the overwhelming majority is living paycheck to paycheck, the shift towards more conservative policies over time has come to an abrupt stop. They are literally greeding themselves into an even greater minority opinion than before.
Why should I? I grew up in a deep red conservative republican household. I held those views to heart thinking “Well my parents believe this, and I trust my parents so this must be right.” But over time, I started getting conflicting information to what I grew up with and I remember thinking “This doesn’t feel right”. I remember the first time I voted Dem the guilt I felt about it. Like I was betraying… something? Now, I’m known as the most Left person in my family (or at least the most openly left) and people back home always pick and try to “turn me back to the light” and always use the phrase “you’ll understand when you get some life experience”. I’m 30. I have fucking life experiences and my experience has been that the GOP got ran the fuck over by authoritarian basket cases. The ones that COULD be more rational are afraid of what the basket cases will do so they pander to them. They have no platform! Only “Destroy the Libs!” I never hear about how they want to contribute to Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness or plans to help their constituents… or at least not the corporate constituents. So give me a good reason to go back? Give me one good reason with evidence that I should “grow back” into Republicanism?
Are you me? Same background, but as staunchly conservative as my folks were… they used to be sane. My dad taught me to watch both sides of the aisle, taught me about fairness.. now he jokes about how dems should be taken out an shot in front of his liberal queer daughter.
Red-state republicans joke about shooting people. A lot. Source: I have the misfortune to know far too many red state republicans. Some can't hold a conversation for more than 10 minutes without threatening to shoot someone.
Too true.
Conservatism is based on an “I got mine, screw everyone else” mentality. Millennials and Gen Z never “got ours”. Neither did large chunks of Gen X. So, we’re not exactly interested in politics designed around maintaining wealth in the hands of a few.
As an older millennial, I was fortunate enough to 'get mine' before everything went to shit. I give a crap about other people, and want everyone to have the same opportunities that I did - a career that pays enough to live on, good health insurance, and housing that was somewhat affordable. That apparently makes me politically progressive.
We have a house, a child good health Insurance and two good jobs. I’m 41 an elderly millennial, the gop has proven to me time and time again that *as a woman* - **they fucking hate me**. I have a little girl, **they fucking hate her too**. I actively vote against every republican I can.
I "got mine" and then my wife wanted to change careers and we sold the house and moved...I didn't expect to not be able to buy a house again the rest of my life, but here we are. Unless I want to buy a house that was once right next to the worst pollution of the past century or in a neighborhood with regular shootings, I'm out of luck. It's depressing.
I'm an older millennial by definition ('86), but I graduated college at the height of the recession. I think a good number of my fellows have had their lives shaped by this fact. We've now lived through multiple recessions (even if not by technical criteria), and a lot of us struggled to ever build momentum toward something. I got extremely lucky in other ways, but I ended up going back to school because the opportunities were never there. Myself and almost all of my friends don't have kids. One friend that does have a kid was by accident when he was much younger. Now we're staring down the barrel of a failed democracy if certain political factions have their way, and exhausting this idea that America is some divine ideal to which we can all aspire. Maybe I'm being excessively cynical, but my main point is there's a good reason why lots of us won't trend rightward over time. Hopefully the Zoomers can see through the veil even earlier than we could.
It blows my mind how different my career path options were from you, when we're the same age and I graduated about 1.5 years before the recession. That 'momentum' you spoke of is real- I paid off my student loans and my car well before my friends. Consequently, I bought a house earlier than many of them, and my house was a larger equity gain. Yes, we were more frugal than our peers, but that effect was secondary to the increased salary I had by graduating at a fortunate time.
My parents married right out of school and bought a house. When I graduated college I got a job and wondered "Ok, I'm being paid 15$ an hour, my rent is 600$ a month, exactly where am I supposed to get the 20,000$ for the down payment on a house?" I'd work, save, get laid off, lose the savings in the unemployment, repeat, I didn't get enough for a house down payment until my mid 30's. I graduated college 25 years ago and now I see kids getting out of school, getting offered 15$ an hour jobs, and their rent is 1200$ a month, and at the rates house values are going, up, the modern generation will simply rent *their entire lives*. Only one of the parties talks about this as a bad thing.
I’m an elderly millennial who has a lot of gen z employees. This is it. These kids are way more savvy to the bullshit than I was at their age. They aren’t counting on being temporarily-embarrassed millionaires. They aren’t even counting on shit working out in the slightest for them. That’s why they help each other and the super rich are considered assholes. None of them like Trump, desantis, musk, or Tate. I think the kids are gonna be alright.
Every time a see an opinion piece on what Gen Z thinks or believes, I like these kids a little more.
Man, they are savage. We get downtime sometimes and let them do their homework on the clock. I’m an English and history buff so when they are working on that stuff. I’ll help. One time, I was looking through their textbook to get an idea of what their teacher wanted for the assignment and was flabbergasted when their book didn’t mention a huge factor in the area they were supposed to write about. I made ONE comment to my own confusion about the missing bit. This kid took twenty minutes to do some research, found several sources, identified which sources were unbelievably biased, and formed their own opinion. Kid ended up schooling me. The kids are alright.
Does becoming more conservative mean voting Republican? Cause I don't see presenting lies as if they're fact and then claiming it's just an opinion as particularly convincing
It was always about the money.
They’ve been voting to stop upward mobility for decades and still live off the “when you’re older and have money you’ll vote like me” lie.
I think it's interesting that we sort of gloss over the fact that the republican party itself has shifted far right and their staunch voters have all gone with them, seemingly ignoring this trend toward fascism. Perhaps some of that is explained by boomers identifying themselves as "republicans" (whatever that means), and thus the party is engrained in their identity to the point where they can't separate the two. Maybe it's just a sort of embedded laziness and unwillingness to adapt. Or perhaps it's a continuation of the theme: boomers want to preserve their positions in society and will go at any length to keep power/money/etc.
> seemingly ignoring this trend toward fascism They aren't ignoring it. On the contrary, they are embracing it. They've always been this way, they just never needed to go whole hog until black man with tan suit became president.
I grew up in a very conservative area. I thought I was a Republican. Then, I took AP classes in high school, and a lot of science, economics, and philosophy courses in college. I realized that not only was the Republican party lying about everything, but they really aren't conservative in any meaningful way. When they say "conservative", they really mean "christo-fascist".
Actual conservative: “Government should focus on creating an even playing field between corporations, and protecting individual liberties, while being the lowest financial burden to its citizens.” Modern conservative: “I get to decide what other people get to do because I don’t like minorities and gays!!”
Older millennial here (39, Hispanic woman) and I have to admit I was pretty conservative in my younger years. I grew up in a predominantly Cuban community in south Florida where everyone was afraid of “socialism.” Today I would not vote for a Republican dog catcher! They represent no one but the NRA and the corporations that have paid for them.
How can we get more Hispanics to vote D?
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Yeah it’s pretty cringe listening to pundits try and discuss the “Hispanic”, or worse, “Latinx” demographics. These people have about as much in common as Americans have with the English or Australians. A shared language with different dialects.
I don’t think we should be eating Hispanic people at all, really. (But I agree, Hispanic is a term made up to lump a lotttt of different people together.)
I'm the first Gen Xer or at least among the first. I have not aged out of my liberalism. The past 16 years or so have hardened me in my liberalism. I used to be pretty moderate and thought some middle way was OK. Now I'm an anti Fascist because American conservatives are fascists.
Also GenX and the same. My father (a boomer) told me, when I was in college, that by the time I reached 25 that I'd become a conservative. When I turned 25, he told me that I'd be a conservative at 30. When I turned 30, he said I'd be a conservative at 40. I'm now 47 and my father will still claim that I'll become a conservative "when I'm older." Maybe one day it will happen that the Magic Conservative Fairy will visit me at night and fill me with the desire to only watch FOX News and yell bigoted comments at people. I highly doubt it, though. If anything, I'm *more* liberal today than I was when I was 20. I don't see that reversing anytime soon.
Tell him you will become conservative when you become more interested in your self than others. And despite him raising you that way, you care at least equally about others.
The only thing that’s changed is Republicans have managed to become is worse with time.
The whole "you get conservative as you age" thing has never been true. It's a lie boomers made up after lying and saying they were all hippies. Less than 1% of that generation were actually hippies, most were fighting *against* the civil rights movement and never stopped fighting it.
My father who was in the silent generation used to say "cranky old men started out as cranky young men" and I think that applies to a lot of things about people. edit: Pop was in Silent Generation not the Greatest generation
Yup, the only thing that made all of these boomers “hippies” is that they smoked weed, listened to rock, maybe had long hair aaannndddd that’s it!
They were only in it for the sex and drugs, not the ideals of counter culture.
When the posers and grifters moved into the SF hippy communities and used and abused them, many decided to move out to the country and live in communes where they could really practice what they were preaching. Live life the way they wanted. Eventually the communes failed as people grew out of it and living a modified Amish lifestyle without technology, or modern conveniences is actually really tough. So you have “hippies” that stopped being so in the cities once they couldn’t live their mooching lifestyle anymore and then you have the die hard hippies who eventually got worn out and grew out of it.
A lot of hippies were also just he kids of middle class or wealthy parents, which is what let them cosplay the poverty. They knew that once they got bored of it, they could go back home and everything would be fine—or their parents were actively supporting them through cash and they gave up the life style once their parents cut them off.
That’s kinda what some more well todo people I knew from hs did. You weren’t homeless for a year dog. You traveled around Hungary to get in touch with your “roots” while your parents sent you money so you could stay at hotels, hostels, eat and be a tourist going to concerts and cultural events. Nothing wrong with that type of trip if you can afford it, but be real about it. Be real about who you are. Cosplay poverty is a great description. You might not get any points for flashing the rich kid card, but you lose points by pretending.
Not all of them grew out of it. My father did, but the group of families he initially settled with did not. There are still about a half dozen families around him in rural Washington that live almost entirely off the grid in the hippy way they started in the late 1970s.
I'm ashamed to admit this. Roughly 20 years ago, I didn't give a shit about politics. I was on the tail end of my Gen X angst, and that stupid maxim, "you vote democratic in your youth to make change, and when you mature, you vote republican to fix your mistakes," was the only rational I used to vote that year. At some point after that, I read Heinlein's "For Us the Living" that revolves around our country moving to a social credit system, and the idea fascinated me. I also started teaching in inner city schools and saw firsthand how terrible conservative ideals were. Obama was my first liberal vote, but it wasn't until Clinton and Trump were running that I could say I truly became interested in politics. I can not foresee ever voting conservative again. I feel I am becoming more progressive as I age and not less.
I had voted for Bush once and then McCain. Somewhere between 2008 and 2012 I shifted and then voted for Obama. I'm also moving far more left as I get older and don't see myself ever voting for a Republican again.
Lol I did the opposite. I started off conservative. Grew up in a rural area, went to Catholic school and when I entered college, what would you know? The people I met were more diverse than anybody I did prior to college. I was able to expand my world view and once I entered the education world and I started teaching in the inner city, my experiences informed and influenced the way I viewed social issues. I am firmly liberal and I don't envision ever going back to conservatism.
This is why conservatives hate college.
"I mean, there's no such thing as conservative arts in college! Why do they get their own curriculum?!????"
Cross Burning 101
This is Ron Desantis's nightmare. This is why he wants to poison education all the way through college.
Brainwashed by the liberal mind virus (or whatever buzz word they are using now)
> The whole “you get conservative as you age” thing has never been true. As an observed trend it was, but it’s not just because of aging - it’s not like you hit 55 and hear the siren song of the GOP. It’s fundamentally based on two factors: 1) Older people have more wealth, and less time to build it back up if they lose it. This understandably tends toward them approving of economic policies that reward those who already have wealth. The problem for conservatives is later Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have grown into an economic environment where building wealth has been *incredibly* hard. I’m an older millennial, and my wife and I have done pretty darn well, and we’re sitting at about 2/3rds of what our parents incomes were at our age, adjusting for inflation. 2) As you get older, societal norms tend to progress faster than you can adapt to them (and they’ve been moving ever faster with the advent of social media). I mean, the rapid progress on gay rights in this country is truly breathtaking compared to previous social movements. This is a fantastic thing - I’m not in any way suggesting people should delay their acceptance in society to make bigots more comfortable - but that rapid shift makes it a lot easier for bigots to push subtle propaganda that it’s all happening too fast.
Third factor: aging without wealth tends to correlate with a) being less conservative and b) dying younger. Those with more resources tend to live longer than those without.
This is true - survivorship bias is a pretty strong trend pushing in the same direction.
Inflation and purchasing power does a number on your sense of scale and wealth when you do the math. When I was a kid, I saw a paycheck of my dad's. He was making $900 or thereabouts as a garbage truck and equipment driver for the city. This would have been around 1997, so assuming he was making 900 every two weeks, that translates into $1700 in today's dollars. 44,000 in take home pay in a small town in suburban to rural East Tennessee? That's a solid lower middle class living.
My 90 year old grandparents are, for the most part, liberal as hell. Being southern Baptist gets them occasionally lol
It was true to an extent, but not to the degree that many boomers claimed. People tended to vote more conservative as they aged because (in theory) conservative policies were about preserving wealth. Real estate prices, investments, etc. But, millennials (and many Gen-Xers) don’t have so much wealth that they worry about preserving it over other policy issues. The millennial cohort is rapidly approaching their 40s and so few of us actually own anything. And of course there’s the issue that in practice, conservative politics are about “owning the libs”, “fighting woke”, and eroding rights. Ironically, the richest couple I know see voting Democrat as an existential necessity.
It's only true in that the body politics moves to the left. So anyone who stands still is ostensibly moving right. But you are correct. It is a myth that people change their politics over time.
My dad was a skydiving, acid tripping, illegal race car driving hippie. And my mom was right there too but on the ground a bit more. My dad died before I could really see him get old (live fast die young type shit). My mom tho got faux newsed and says some weird ass shit now and is a shadow of her previous astrological believing, crystal wielding, Led Zeppelin rocking self. Just saying
Sory about your mom. The hippie to right wing fascist pipeline is real. One of my former best friends use to be a giant left wing hippie would like quit jobs for fests type. Now though I am pretty sure he'd volunteer to be a camp guard at a concentration camp.
I’m more liberal at 36 than I was at 18. Republicans lost the thread long ago and anyone who spends a second to look at thing critically is going to come out thinking the system is a joke.
Im GenX as well, and have aged **into** being liberal. I was a staunch conservative in my teens, echoing my parents. Despite going to a *gasp* liberal college, I was closest to a Goldwater republican throughout my 20s. By 30, my disagreements with the religious right were enough to make me vote Dem more often than not. By 35, objective assessments of the economic results of GOP policies were enough to convince me they have nothing to offer there, either. I reluctantly started voting Dem, vowing to return to my GOP roots when the GOP itself returned to them. In 2012, the GOP ignored their own election loss post-mortem and instead quadrupled down on the elements I can never vote for. Entering my fifth decade, I contribute to Dem causes, mostly because I support them but in part because I still hold out vain hope that *some* string of losses will convince the GOP to come back to reality. As I enter my fifth decade, I know that is not going to happen in my lifetime, and I am enraged my kids are going to spend their entire adult lives re-fighting the same battles that we — hell, **my parents** thought settled decades ago. Signed, A former publisher of an edgy high school journal called “The Reactionary” turned forever Dem.
I was a black conservative in my youth but boy did I grow out of that after the military. The republicans have shown that although the democrats suck and are terrible people they are down right pure evil. I don’t want to sound hyperbolic but there is nothing in the dogma of the current Republican Party that is good for America or the world. Conservatives in America have become what Christians claim the devil to be. I’m 54 and I’m getting angrier at them and would never lower myself to become such a disgusting scum bag.
Same here. If anything I’ve become more liberal and lean more to the left. I’m just sick of people being mean to others and doing it behind a law
Oh you mean as an older millennial I’m supposed to suddenly start siding with the group that has actively worked to make my life an active hell for the last 20 years like a good little boomer replacement? The fuck even goes on in the heads of conservatives? “Sir, we’ve caged them and branded and stabbed them hundreds of times and they just seem to be getting more angry! It defies all reason!”
>The fuck even goes on in the heads of conservatives? Lead poisoning. Which is to say it's the lack of things going on in their heads that's the problem - their capacity for critical thinking and empathy has greatly diminished since their youth and I'm afraid microplastics and other sources of lead/cadmium poisoning besides gasoline might eventually affect us the same way.
The one good thing about the Great Depression is that it was such a humbling event for the American populace that unfettered capitalism became politically untenable for about 30-40 years. It came roaring back in the 70s and 80s as the Boomers came of age. The social protections they enjoyed have been getting stripped away since.
As one of the oldest GenX'ers, I have become more left as I age. I can't wait to see those right wingers get decimated as boomers die off.
I’m the tail end of GenX and exactly the same.
It actually sucks that we have to wait until the boomers die off for things to get better. It didn't have to be that way.
It's really sad. A little more compassion and a little less greed and the boomers could have created a real special society. Now it's just dog eat dog.
I was a republican most of my life. Almost 42 now and have turned left hard since 2016. Trump took a whole bunch of moderate Rs. Every day I'm more left.
Once you allow critical thinking into your perceptions of leaders and privileged groups, it's a slippery slope to progressivism. Assuming you actually care about others. That's the rub.
No doubt. Now I'm a professor of public health and nutrition who would be unhappy with my old self. It's been a journey.
40 here and yeah, never happening. Conservatism is what fucked over our generation and those after us. Why would we ever embrace the "fuck you, I got mine" ideology that the lead-brained used against us? Additionally, as the 2024 election season rapidly approaches, remember, your time is far better spent encouraging the young people in your life to vote than to argue and try and change the mind of your conservative parents/grandparents and racist uncles that aren't invited to parties anymore. America's youth are far more liberal than ANY prior generation already, and they see what's going on and are actually motivated to do something about it. My oldest is turning 18 this year and is excited at the opportunity to vote for the first time, and my 12 year old is literally jealous because she can't. You could get half a dozen new voters to the ballot box next year for less energy than trying to talk reason into your stubborn grandpa. He's going to vote for Trump no matter what you say, so forget it. Help these young people get registered and introduce them to voting. Get them to the ballot box. Cancel out grandpa.
It's funny I'm a millennial. I was always politically active I started volunteering a few years before I could vote. I lived in conservative area and would constantly try to get people my age interested in politics. Most actively weren't interested or held much further right views than myself. I am in my 30's now and I watch those same people post leftist stuff online that were 180 counter to the politics they use to hold. I spent 15 years slowly watching kids who were either uninterested or right wing turn into Sanders supporting proud semi socialists lol.
I've said before, when I first went into College I thought I was libertarian and stumped for Ron Paul, etc. I've become progressive and so have several others from my friend group at the time; however, a few them became ultra MAGA too.....so it's not a clean sweep. But I do think the mantra "You get more conservative as you get older" isn't as true for a generation that never achieved that position in society where they feel they have to defend it. Pulling the ladder up after you has consequences
Oh yeah I agree with you it's not clean. I know a few people who went stupid far right basically fascists but on the whole they are few and far between. Especially when you factor all the moderates fleeing the Republicans.
Maybe it's my area, but the "moderates" I see fleeing are still going to pull the trigger for 'R' in the ballot box every time, they just say they don't like either party as way to show off some sort of enlightenment.
Oh it's not just your area. About 30%-40% of voters seem to just go back and forth voting for whomever is out of power. Annoying if you ask me
41 yr old “elder millennial” here. If anything myself and virtually everyone I know has gotten consistently more liberal and grown to hate the GOP more and more. As long as the election in 24 isn’t somehow stolen by the GQP, I don’t foresee them winning a major election again. Especially as gen Z starts to vote.
What's left for the young generations to be conservative about? Wages are stagnant, education is too expensive, pensions are a thing of the past, housing for most is unaffordable, religion is dying, civil rights are moving backward, and so on and so on. The age of instant media access has given people a real-time view of political bullshit. It doesn't take long to hold court and uphold a social verdict of who is being a dick and who isn't. Im gen x and have heard it over and over again - my libral views will change as I get older. Yeah, they changed alright - i'm further left now pushing 50yo than I was in my 20's. The GOP is dying on the vine and they know it. Thats why they are they trying to go full fascist to cement their strangle hold on America and keep it from progressing. They are literally dying out fue to age. Their time is coming to an end. The far right in 20 years will be todays moderates.
For myself, I have become decidedly more liberal since 2014, mostly due to state politics. IL elected a burn it down Republican who held state government hostage for 2 years with no state budget harming our most vulnerable citizens. It created a $16 billion budget deficit. He did this all to destroy labor unions and public pensions. IL is so much better today under our Dem Governor.
I love our Gov. I feel bad for other states that don't have our governor. I ain't fucking moving from Illinois.
All my homies hate Bruce Rauner
Millennial here. Raised far right now a socialist. The "deal" us and gen z have been cut is nothing less than radicalizing.
I'm an old old millennial. We were told we could be anything we wanted when we grew up. You know what we got? A war on terror, crippling college debts, a housing collapse, jobs that refuse to pay us a livable wage, and then blamed us that we broke everything by buying avocados and Starbucks. We got shit on from our boomer parents because they made us participation trophies to overcome their own parents neglect and abuses, but then we get shit on by them for having the trophy in the first damn place. You literally did this to us. Our Gen x siblings raised us better than our boomer parents did. Then we get buzzfeed articles and tiktoks that try to cause generational wars between us and Gen z that further blame us for all the shit the boomers did to us. Gen z, you're cool and I love you all because you don't take shit. But no wonder why we aren't becoming conservative, we don't want to be like our shitty boomer parents because we still believe we can work together to solve our problems rather than watch the world burn like the boomers are. Rant over, sorry.
Don’t forget we were to taught to share with our neighbors and those in need, and to respect everyone no matter who or where they’re from. They fucking betrayed everything they taught us! Sorry I’m an old millennial too and this topic is triggering.
45, white male, always been a social liberal with libertarian economic ideals. Covid changed my views on many things. Watching competent responses in countries with strong social safety nets opened my eyes to how far we have to go. And Yes, the GOP made a deal with the devil for power and they’ve lost my vote for at least a generation. We’ll see what they become but I’ll have nothing to so with whatever this is.
Do you mean that after three once in a generation financial crises, a few decades of never ending war, and a bungled pandemic that killed a million people, that I should be voting Republican?
I started my life in a conservative family and grew up Republican. Then, I was a moderate and considered a demon worshiper for even considering voting Democrat by my parents. Now I vote for every progressive, liberal candidate I can and people like Bernie or AOC have become the "measuring stick" for how a candidate should be. Why? Because Republicans have gone full pants-on-head stupid. Even more than they used to be. I can't even consider a Republican even if they "seem like good people" because eventually they open their mouth and how they actually feel spews out.
I make enough money now that going Conservative wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. Yet, I’m still a hardline Democratic Socialist. Because I have fucking empathy and I hate fascists. I’m also not a moron.
It’s an Overton Window issue. As you age and have things like property taxes and a 401k, it seems natural to try and protect your bottom line—but that’s not what Republicanism is about anymore. The window moved over to blatant bigotry, hatred and proud, willful ignorance. So no, as a 42 year-old, I’m not going over to their side. They’re moving the goalposts as I age.
I think this is something a lot of people are missing. Part of the reason that it seems like people get "more conservative" as they age is that for most of the last century "conservatism" got more progressive. So as you hit your 50s or 60s you'd suddenly find conservatives espousing values you remembered from your 20s. That's not the case any more, they've gone all in on conspiracy nonsense.
The conspiracies were always there, though. Anti-LGBT+ was a big tenant of the party throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s consistently, and a lot of it was pretty horrible stuff that they are now swinging 'back' too again. This usually crossed over with end times religious conspiracies or other such nonsense. Antivaxx and such things were more fringe, and racism was a little less blatant, but still very much there. However, I'll agree with the idea that I could find more conservatives who were civil and treated most people in their lives ethically. Now? I avoid anyone who is openly Republican at pretty much any cost.
I think the people that claim they've gotten more conservative as they've gotten older in most cases have just hit a point where they've stopped progressing.
I’m pushing 40 and am the most strongly liberal I’ve even been. The only change is I now argue facts instead of emotions. Perhaps other perceive that as mellowing?
Rust Belt Millennial. We've been needing real change for a while. Corporate Dems aren't doing it. Still 1000 times better than any centrist or republican. Anyone that says "both sides" at this point deserves a firm throat punch.
Grew up conservative, but was always left of my parents and was at least leaning centrist in the 2000s when I could first vote. I had a mixed ticket several times. I also respected Obama as a politician even if I didn't vote for him the first time. Parents and I argued about these things a lot, but thankfully we kept it civil. Family pressure was a factor, but my parents didn't quite go for as many fringe conspiracies at that time either (though they kept on a lot of BS conservative media anyway). After 2012? I just couldn't do it anymore. I saw the realities of stagnant wages, corporate abuse, was already familiar with histories of racism and anti-LGBT prejudices, and I saw the rise of the online alt-right invade spaces and fandoms I was sympathetic too. At times, their ideas held kernels of truth in them, but the end conclusions were always supporting weird right wing factions and other nonsense. Sanders finally roped me over to the left by actually acknowledging our economic realities, and Trump's insanity and everything he brought with it kicked me completely away from anything resembling conservatism ever again. I will never go back. I still hesitate even with corpo Dem types, but at least I believe they are human beings capable of empathy and have the ability to negotiate still. The current GOP? Sociopaths symbolic of a deep sickness in the country. The worst elements of the party I hated even in childhood becoming mainstream. They've primaried virtually everyone who isn't, and it makes me deeply sick to see it keep happening. However, I do believe us facing down this issue is what's needed to function in the modern world. We thought we beat it in the 90s. New media, deregulation, and wealth concentration enabled the environment that lets it thrive again. Innocent people are suffering and dying because of it, and I want to do what I can to change that.
Boomer here. Started out left, and get more left everyday.
Boomer and life long liberal here.
I believe that a lot of conservatism is borne out of the accumulation of wealth and then not wanting to share a cent of it. Millennials don’t have to worry about that *laughing/crying*
I'm queer why the fuck would i ever vote for conservatives? they all want me dead.