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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.)

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!")

I would say that it's less been "evidently" a horrowshow and it's more that they've been told that it's a horrowshow. Anyone who wasn't plugged into news media would probably struggle to articulate any way in which Brexit has actually materially affected their life. Marginally more waiting times at airports to go on holiday?

Freedom of movement is almost never used in practice, indeed 55% of brits never move very far away from where they're born;

https://www.showhouse.co.uk/news/55-of-brits-live-within-15-miles-of-hometown/

Most of my investigations of people who whine about the ending of FoM reveal that they, yep, still live in the UK, despite the fact that they had what, 5 years to get out for free after the Brexit vote?

Anyone who wasn't plugged into news media would probably struggle to articulate any way in which Brexit has actually materially affected their life. Marginally more waiting times at airports to go on holiday?

If it doesn't affect your life in any other way expect to make you wait more time at airports, it has affected your life in a negative way, no? Which then just leads back to the issue of your country making this change for absolutely no reason that no-one has been able to explain beyond "gave Boris a chance to play PM for a bit", with large promises of extra cash for NHS and various other benefits that didn't come. Which is my point; why should millennial Remainers vote for Tories if what they get for voting Tories is... that?

Freedom of movement is almost never used in practice, indeed 55% of brits never move very far away from where they're born;

But I was not talking about 55 % of Brits. I was talking about Millennial Remainers.

If it doesn't affect your life in any other way expect to make you wait more time at airports, it has affected your life in a negative way, no?

Compared to all the doom and gloom that everyone was predicting, the answer rounds down to "no".

Which then just leads back to the issue of your country making this change for absolutely no reason that no-one has been able to explain

There's plenty of reasons. It's just that the Brexiters were betrayed.

Again, all of this is at the crux of the issue. If even the Brexiteers cannot offer better answers to questions like "What good did the Brexit actually do to anyone?" or "Why didn't the promises made to achieve Brexit come through?" than "Well, it wasn't as bad as the Remainers claimed" or "Brexiteers were betrayed" or "The fault lies with EU coming after Britain for doing Brexit", well... none of those really answer those questions?

If the question is whether Brexit was good or not, "not as bad as claimed" or "well, you see, there were problems but it wasn't due to Brexiteers" are, at the very least, not particularly arguments for it being actually good. If a general loses a battle then he has lost a battle, no matter how much his latter memoirs talk about how the battle wasn't lost as badly as others claim or how his superiors shared the blame or how the enemy used unfair tactics or whatever.

I disagree. Simply put, I'm happy to concede the way Brexit was done was pointless, but that doesn't change the fact that in the best case Remainers were wrong about the consequences of Brexit, and in the worst case were just lying about them to discourage it.

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