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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31759 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Let's start off (unless someone fires a link earlier) with this one: Millennials are shattering the oldest rule in politics

“If you are not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 35 you have no brain.” So said Winston Churchill. Or US president John Adams. Or perhaps King Oscar II of Sweden. Variations of this aphorism have circulated since the 18th century, underscoring the well-established rule that as people grow older, they tend to become more conservative.

The pattern has held remarkably firm. By my calculations, members of Britain’s “silent generation”, born between 1928 and 1945, were five percentage points less conservative than the national average at age 35, but around five points more conservative by age 70. The “baby boomer” generation traced the same path, and “Gen X”, born between 1965 and 1980, are now following suit.

Millennials — born between 1981 and 1996 — started out on the same trajectory, but then something changed. The shift has striking implications for the UK’s Conservatives and US Republicans, who can no longer simply rely on their base being replenished as the years pass.

The article goes on to show that previous generations in UK and US have indeed formed a remarkably similar pattern of starting out voting for left side main parties (Labour/Dems) and moving rightwards (to Tories/GOP) with age, but Millennials aren't doing that, and are if anything sticking firmer with the left side parties with age.

When it comes to Britain, in particular, I suspect that Brexit may have a lot to do with this. For Millennial Remainers, in particular, the whole thing has evidently been a horrorshow; from following various FBPE types and hearing from friends who have lived in the UK, the thinking basically goes; for your entire life your country has belonged to the EU, which has given you ease of travel and has seemed to be without issues, and suddenly a bunch of (mostly) Tory-voting boomers decides to take the country out of the Union, and no-one still has managed to explained to you exactly how Britain has benefitted from this, or what fundamental reason for this there even was for the whole Brexit, beyond "Well, it's not as big a disaster as Remoaners are claiming when you look into it" (or, possibly, "Fuck you, Remoaner! Elitist! Take back control!")

With the Tories then increasingly becoming the party of Brexit, it would be little wonder if such types would continue to give Tories the wide berth, even if they start getting to the age where traditionally Tories start becoming more and more attractive, as an option.

Of course, US and UK are a bit expectional in how strongly there's an age-related left/right split with young voting for left parties and the old voting for right parties. It would be interesting to see if this replicates in other countries where Millennials and younger voters have recently been trending rightwards and where centre-left parties have for some time been more popular among the old than the youth, like Sweden. (Indeed, I already saw on Twitter that the effect is not replicating in non-Anglophone West.)

I believe the mechanism underlying that generalization was that people trend leftward who haven’t had to work for a living yet (in school on loans) or whose only jobs have been entry-level jobs where they’re treated as fungible, replaceable components. When someone has to actually interact with the economy with agency, or find people relying on them to be responsible, they end up conservative because they have things at stake and have to game out their future choices in the world they find themselves in.

This theory suggests that something is massively altering the employment landscape, keeping Millennials in entry-level or fungible job positions longer than previous generations, or otherwise keeping them from being economically agentic.

I believe the silent killer of conservatism is young people not moving out of their parents’ homes. Taking out a mortgage on a home was considered a turning point in the American Dream, and even moving in with roommates to share costs was a Big Deal.

I believe the silent killer of conservatism is young people not moving out of their parents’ homes.

You are definitely on to something here. If you can find no decent place to live, conservatism doesn't really have an answer for you beyond 'find a better job'. Not helpful. Nominal conservatives are perhaps the firmest YIMBY block out there, and their platform just isn't all that appealing to people trapped in certain lifestyles.

Yeah I agree. The ur-emotion of millennials is betrayal by their elders. They feel like their ability to live an economically successful life has been actively robbed from them, climate change foisted on them, etc. Economic failure begets abdication of responsibility and without families to ground you people spiral. I saw a data point somewhere showing a vast gulf in opinion on trans issues depending on whether you had kids or not. If you have children, you are necessarily interested in making the world good and safe for them. If not…

Then add in mass addiction to social media and video games and an epidemic of mental illness (caused by anomie and failure to launch) and here we are.

I believe there is truth in this. But I do wonder, regarding their ability to live an economically successful life, why is it that most millennials are not doing well financially? Is it a lack of going to college? Or is it majoring in a useless degree that (they probably even knew beforehand) can't land you a job that pays anything? Or is it something else? Most of the people I know who complain about millennials' lack of earning ability fall very clearly into the useless degree category, and also knew very well beforehand that their degree was useless. But I probably am in a very strong filter bubble.

Housing prices seem to be a major factor. Adjusting for inflation, my sister and brother-in-law are each earning more than both of my parents combined were when they bought a house, but ended up paying more for a smaller house in a worse neighborhood.

And this isn't even in one of the cities that's known for having ridiculous real estate price increases.

Edit to add: Career-wise, both my father (at that point in his life) and my sibling + in-law would be considered very successful. I'm not at the same level, but still above the curve. Also worth noting that my mother was able to quit her job shortly after the purchase of the house, so my father alone was able to support them + later on kids.

why is it that most millennials are not doing well financially?

I can't speak for every millennial out there, but for me it is the rent, the rent, and the rent. I have a job that on paper looks better than my parents', but I am unable to live anywhere near the place they did when they were my age - it costs too much. The house they bought and where my mother still lives is inattainably expensive: mom has floated the idea of selling it and having my siblings and I use the split gains for down payments, just because of how bad it is. Mind you, the Dutch real estate market is a wreck in a way few others are, but struggling with housing is an issue millennials face in many places.

I remember hearing a review of “Turning Red” as “yet another movie where evil parents apologize to their heroic children,” which was just about the inverse of most media I consumed: parents were wiser than children.

My dad said The Simpsons would be the downfall of civilization. I wish I’d recognized his wisdom at the time.

I was born in '89, so I remember my very conservative mother forbidding our family from watching The Simpsons while growing up (and she still seems to think it's terrible as of a few months ago) but I never understood what her objection was to the show specifically. Is there a primer on why the show was seen as liberal or controversial when it debuted? Was it just edgy humor or was there something more objectionable to conservatives specifically about the show?

It's the trope codifier of the father figure as a completely retarded and negligent/malevolent manchild, with just enough of a veneer of a lesson learned at the end of the episode to avoid outright parody.

The Simpsons is incredibly conservative, if you think about it; Homer and Marge are married to each other, they have three kids none of which were born out of wedlock, this is their first marriage for both of them, they haven't had affairs (even if tempted/opportunity put in their way), so far as we know Bart, Lisa and Maggie are straight and cis, Homer is the breadwinner while Marge is the homemaker - extremely old-fashioned.

From "The Simpsons and Cultural Decline" by Free Northerner:

I’ve been watching the first two seasons of the Simpsons the last couple weeks. It’s been years since I’ve watched the show, but I still remember the first ten seasons or so as some of the best TV yet produced.

The first season came out in 1989-90, just 25 years ago, and I remember the show being controversial when it came out; I wasn’t allowed to watch it until some time in high school, about a decade after it first started showing. It was controversial enough that Bush actually used the Simpsons as a negative example of a family. Yet, re-watching now, it’s amazing how tame and traditional it is compared to media offerings today.

Obviously the ‘offensive’ humour in the Simpsons is nothing compared to stuff like Family Guy or South Park, but that’s not the whole of it or even the most important part. It’s not the stated messages, but the basic assumptions in the show.

The Simpsons family is intact and stable, if slightly dysfunctional, and hold to functional, almost traditional, family values. They all love each other, however much they might bicker. Homer is a flawed man, often selfish or stupid, but still loving and caring towards his family. Marge is shown to love and respect Homer, despite her occasional anger at his flaws. Bart disrespects Homer occasionally, but it is shown as a clear deviancy for laughs; it also clearly shown that he does look up to and admire Homer. The kids fight, but at heart care for each other.

...

The Simpsons has a subtext of Homer as patriarch. A few times in the first couple of seasons Homer makes a family decision, whether it is selling the TV to attend counseling, buying a new TV, or choosing a camping spot, to name a few examples. The rest of the family complains or looks unhappy, yet it is not even questioned that, however flawed he or his decision may be, it is Homer’s place to decide these things. The show just assumes the father makes the major family decisions.

...

The episode Homer’s Night Out, centres around a picture of Homer dancing with a belly dancer at a bachelor party. The (non-nude) picture creates a town-wide scandal, brands Homer as a ‘swinger’, and is seen as something fundamentally deviant and abnormal.

...

The show assumes that normal people go to church on Sundays and say grace at mealtime. Prayer is a casually accepted part of the show, as is religion.

...

Other, less remarkable, moral lessons are also included. The pro-family/loyalty message of Life on the Fast Lane. How Marge’s sisters constant denigration of Homer is shown as negative, destructive behaviour. In one episode, Marge is casually referred to as Mrs. Homer Simpson.

All this is not to say the Simpsons is a font of traditional values, it is a liberal show, it does have some fem-centrism, and is rather subversive, but it is a good example of just how fast our culture is collapsing. Just a couple decades ago, the Simpsons was a controversial show that was held up by the president as an example of family dysfunction. Yet compared to today’s cultural wasteland, where broken families are common, disrespect and degeneracy are the norm, and the husband as the head of the family is, at best, a joke, it is very tame, almost traditional.

I remember the comments on EmpLemon's video about "Homer's Enemy" (which also analyzes Homer Simpson as a flawed human being still capable of good, and how he's arguably the Modern American Hero) pointed out how Homer Simpson actually has it good compared to millennials, being that he has a house, a car, a family, and a decent job with a decent salary.

Just a couple decades ago, the Simpsons was a controversial show that was held up by the president as an example of family dysfunction

That was widely ridiculed contemperaneously. GHW Bush compared "The Waltons" to "The Simpsons"... but the joke immediately (probably before Groening's response of "We're praying for the end of the Depression too") became that the Simpsons were much less dysfunctional than the Waltons.

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