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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31755 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.)

The skin-in-the-game element seems obviously a factor. But there's another major one in play, and that's the sheer memetic dominance the left is throwing around. I occasionally check /all as a guilty pleasure, and I aggressively prune it. The second time I see some dumbfuck political crap (do I even have to specify that it's progressive crap?) I filter out the subreddit. 50+ subs filtered out, and the other day still had the front page with 5/25 posts that were just random, content-free slams against conservatives. Most media, most news, most of academia are in the "fish doesn't realize it's wet" phase. I'm an older Millennial, and my cohort has a sense that old people just sit and wat FAUX NEWS all day, but the awful truth is that most of us are trapped in a comparable echo chamber with a flipped valence and a bigger aquarium tank. Reddit, twitter, netflix, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, etc. It's just in the atmosphere. You pick up progressivism via osmosis.

So we have people who are having fewer of those conservative-making experiences (being responsible for stuff) while being bombarded with unprecedented amounts and degrees and styles of propaganda. And every person who might start to have a moment of awareness that maybe this nice sounding idea is actually kind of impractical has fewer real life friends and family to discuss it with (especially older ones!). And when they turn to the internet, they either get sucked into a redpill community or face a torrent of SMALL DICK NO BITCHES conformity-policing and flinch.

People are exposed to that elsewhere too but arent turning progressive. It seems more likely that "conservatives" have shat the bed spectacularly in both the US and UK, allowing for this memetic takeover. There is dominance but the reason it is allowed and works is because of the clownshow on the right.

People are exppsed to that elsewhere too but arent turning progressive.

Remember when countries with no black people were having BLM protests?

It seems more likely that "conservatives" have shat the bed spectacularly in both the US and UK, allowing for this memetic takeover.

To an extent, yes. But another part is the defection from classical liberal norms from progressives. In retrospect, conservatives do rather look like clowns for not banning leftists from the universities and Hollywood, don't they?

Remember when countries with no black people were having BLM protests?

As far as I remember, there were maybe one or two such protests in Finland, and they were typical fairly small solidarity protests that are very typical in European left scene regarding whatever issue is globally at stake in the media. Ie. one day you're organizing a BLM protests, another day

it's about Polish abortion laws, then on yet another day it's about Kurds in Syria or whatever.

On the scale of things the European BLM protests were very much a minor affair (outside of maybe UK?), yet they seem to be one of those things that continue to loom large on the subconsciousness of this forum, even though even among things that might serve as indicators of the spread of progressive American values globally or the general Americanization of European mind or so on, there are many better examples.

Remember when countries with no black people were having BLM protests?

We also get right-wing news of "random black person in the US commits X crime" variety. In Poland, where there are ~no black people.

It's just US cultural dominance.

Random current example. Title is "United States law collapsing and crime rising". (well, not news exactly, just video)

Remember when countries with no black people were having BLM protests?

Yet they aren't turning progressive electorally.

Yet they aren't turning progressive electorally

What does that mean? "Conservative" Britain is literally siccing the cops on people for misgendering.

both the US and UK

Not yet

Literally the opposite is happening.

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