1. S. Korea
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    11 Jul '20 00:18
    Socialism has went from a scare word to a useless word.

    It used to have a more precise meaning that was propagandized against, but now it just means radically different things to different people.
  2. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
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    12 Jul '20 14:51
    @mchill said
    Ask the Boomers about the opinions they held when they were Hippies.


    Well SH76 - I am one of those boomers that were Hippies. Over the last 50+ years I watched, as our unbridled capitalism, has poisoned our air and water, turned its back on the poor, enriched the rich, paid off lawmakers to stack the deck in their favor (the working poor DON'T write the laws now do they?) ...[text shortened]... arn by reading about them. Until you walk a mile in someone else's shoes, you really don't know. 😉
    You may be an exception, but people your age tend to be the most conservative voting demographic in the country.

    Just as in 30 years from now, the millennials will be the most conservative voting group in the country.
  3. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
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    12 Jul '20 14:55
    @teinosuke said
    Yes, but the 1960s generation got to experience the blessings of a particular form and phase of capitalism first-hand. They got to enter a thriving job market, bought property cheaply in the early 1970s, saw their mortgages wiped out by inflation over the course of that decade, benefited when the neo-liberal dispensation slashed their taxes in the 1980s, retired (more often ...[text shortened]... e in their thirties and even forties aren't moving to the right in the way that their forebears did?
    So, it's all the Boomers' fault?

    Sorry; not buying it.

    Everybody wants what's best for themselves. No generation is wholly better or worse than their parents or children.
    The pendulum swings back and forth. The rightward swing of the pendulum was tremendous between 1980 and, say, 2006.

    Now the pendulum is swinging left, with a massive assist from an incompetent Republican President and disarray in the Republican message. But sooner or later, the left will overplay its hand (as it's trying desperately to do right now) and the pendulum will come back.
  4. Standard memberno1marauder
    Naturally Right
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    12 Jul '20 15:081 edit
    @sh76 said
    You may be an exception, but people your age tend to be the most conservative voting demographic in the country.

    Just as in 30 years from now, the millennials will be the most conservative voting group in the country.
    I wouldn't count on millennials, the most racially diverse and best educated age grouping in US history to suddenly become right wing as they get older.

    We all know that minorities (soon to be the majority in the US) heavily vote Democratic and that age doesn't seem to affect that.

    As to education, whites with a college degree voted for Democrats at a 16% higher rate than those without one in 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/11/08/the-2018-midterm-vote-divisions-by-race-gender-education/

    So a diverse and better educated electorate is not one the present Republican Party is going to thrive in.
  5. Standard memberno1marauder
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    12 Jul '20 15:10
    @sh76 said
    So, it's all the Boomers' fault?

    Sorry; not buying it.

    Everybody wants what's best for themselves. No generation is wholly better or worse than their parents or children.
    The pendulum swings back and forth. The rightward swing of the pendulum was tremendous between 1980 and, say, 2006.

    Now the pendulum is swinging left, with a massive assist from an incompetent Republi ...[text shortened]... will overplay its hand (as it's trying desperately to do right now) and the pendulum will come back.
    A more likely scenario is that "conservative" in the US in 30 years will look more like conservatives in Western Europe than the extreme right wing version that has been adopted by the Republicans here.
  6. Germany
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    12 Jul '20 15:39
    @no1marauder said
    I wouldn't count on millennials, the most racially diverse and best educated age grouping in US history to suddenly become right wing as they get older.

    We all know that minorities (soon to be the majority in the US) heavily vote Democratic and that age doesn't seem to affect that.

    As to education, whites with a college degree voted for Democrats at a 16% higher rat ...[text shortened]... iverse and better educated electorate is not one the present Republican Party is going to thrive in.
    Older people are always the more conservative and bigoted within a society. But what that means does change over time. While the Republican Party has now openly embraced racism, still a large chunk of their voter base is opposed to things like segregation and miscegenation laws. Even when the Johnson administration was implementing sweeping social-democratic and anti-racist reforms, America was a lot more racist than it is now.
  7. Standard memberno1marauder
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    12 Jul '20 15:53
    @kazetnagorra said
    Older people are always the more conservative and bigoted within a society. But what that means does change over time. While the Republican Party has now openly embraced racism, still a large chunk of their voter base is opposed to things like segregation and miscegenation laws. Even when the Johnson administration was implementing sweeping social-democratic and anti-racist reforms, America was a lot more racist than it is now.
    One should also consider that a sizable portion of the Republican base is religious conservatives still complaining about cultural issues like abortion, gay rights, etc. etc. Millenials are far more socially liberal and less religious and it seems highly doubtful that substantial portions of that age group are going to become more intolerant and culturally conservative in the future (I doubt CSA statutes are going to be a wedge issue in 2050). Thus, I have my doubts that a party looking anything like the present Republicans will gain enhanced support from them.
  8. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
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    12 Jul '20 18:07
    @no1marauder said
    A more likely scenario is that "conservative" in the US in 30 years will look more like conservatives in Western Europe than the extreme right wing version that has been adopted by the Republicans here.
    That's possible.

    But either way, it is what will pass for conservative at the time. The youth will no doubt think their millenial-elders are backwards sticks-in-the-mud.
  9. Joined
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    12 Jul '20 18:342 edits
    @sh76 said
    So, it's all the Boomers' fault?

    Sorry; not buying it.

    Everybody wants what's best for themselves. No generation is wholly better or worse than their parents or children.
    The pendulum swings back and forth. The rightward swing of the pendulum was tremendous between 1980 and, say, 2006.

    Now the pendulum is swinging left, with a massive assist from an incompetent Republi ...[text shortened]... will overplay its hand (as it's trying desperately to do right now) and the pendulum will come back.
    Not exactly the Boomers' fault; they just took advantage of the situation they found themselves in. But actually I think they were appreciably more selfish than earlier generations, since they grew up in a time of steadily increasing prosperity which bred complacency, never had to face a crisis like the war which encouraged solidarity and collective action, and were largely emancipated from religion, the most effective means of ameliorating human selfishness.

    The pendulum swung to the right because, essentially, social democracy was the victim of its own success; people fostered in the benign economic environment of the early postwar era easily got rich, and thus gravitated toward the economic right. Although many dominant right-wing parties in the 1980s still espoused socially conservative postures which the economic elite generally didn't endorse, they bit the bullet and voted for them anyway so that their taxes would be cut.

    The pendulum is swinging left now because a generation hasn't found the free-market economy to be to their advantage. People who came of age since the millennium found house ownership out of reach, secure jobs almost non-existent, and above all found it tough to find the means of marrying and raising a family. Since basically people become conservative when they get jobs, buy houses and start families, it's no wonder that the present younger generations aren't following the usual trajectory.

    The left is, as you say, overplaying its hand... above all as far as social issues are concerned. If everyone voted on economic grounds, the left would have been as triumphant worldwide during the Great Recession as the Roosevelt Democrats and Swedish Social Democrats were during the 1930s. Since scepticism about the left's social agenda is the one thing that stands between it and broad electability, I can't help feeling that the right has a secret vested interest in keeping Woke issues at the forefront of political debate.
  10. Germany
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    12 Jul '20 18:38
    @no1marauder said
    One should also consider that a sizable portion of the Republican base is religious conservatives still complaining about cultural issues like abortion, gay rights, etc. etc. Millenials are far more socially liberal and less religious and it seems highly doubtful that substantial portions of that age group are going to become more intolerant and culturally conservative in ...[text shortened]... bts that a party looking anything like the present Republicans will gain enhanced support from them.
    Yeah sure, but to most of the young "progressives" who supported Johnson's War on Poverty legalizing gay marriage would be quite radical. Obama expressed opposition to gay marriage as late as in the mid-2000s. Today, a significant fraction of Republican voters supports gay marriage. In fact, in the Netherlands support for gay rights has become a central plank of reactionary, racist parties who view Muslims as a threat to the "traditional" tolerance towards gays. I would predict that Republicans will adopt a similar position in the near future, perhaps in the 2030s or 2040s. Haters gonna hate, but who they're hating changes over time.
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