Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Public House › Are millennial leftists aging into right-wingers? by J.J
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May 11, 2022 at 12:35 am #138824Billy_TParticipant
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/09/are-millennial-leftists-aging-into-right-wingers/
Opinion Are millennial leftists aging into right-wingers?
I was listening to a podcast the other day featuring two hard-left Americans in their late 30s. I won’t name names, but you know the type — socialist intellectuals who use terms like “dissident” to describe themselves.
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The conversation mainly centered around a few themes:1. The kids today are too self-righteous and judgmental.
2. The Democratic Party is corrupt and uninspiring.
3. Donald Trump wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone said.
4. I miss the good old days.
It came off as a portrait of the millennial generation midlife crisis-ing its way into voting Republican.
Many millennials (of which I am one) are now entering their 40s. It’s a firmly adult phase of life that tends to correlate with a recalibration of priorities, expectations and resentments. A substantial migration of millennial voters from left to right — including a significant chunk of those who might appear the unlikeliest of converts — will surely be one consequence.
Every generation of American progressive has seen it happen. Ronald Reagan created “Reagan Democrats” from aging members of the war generation who supported Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy but grew disillusioned with statism. One faction of boomer leftists aged into neoconservatives as they became more anxious about the Cold War; another made peace with neoliberal economics once they left college and got good jobs in the prosperous 1980s and ’90s.
Spend any time listening to left-wing millennials on their vast archipelago of blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels and Twitch streams and you’ll hear hints of the terms on which this generation’s shift will unfold; their growing distaste for their own political tribe seems as much a product of cultural alienation as anything.
Many millennial leftists say it openly: They’re apathetic about “social issues.” It’s the economic stuff that really concerns them — and certainly there are plenty of metrics that can be cited to argue millennials face generationally unique economic hardships. But if engagement with this reality rarely rises above a rote denunciation of the capitalist system itself — the continuation of which isn’t exactly an active debate in U.S. politics — then economic malaise probably isn’t going to dictate many votes one way or another.
Unless, that is, apathy toward social issues is seen as a form of economic justice unto itself.
America’s biggest brands have received a lot of fire from the millennial left in recent years for ostentatious virtue signaling — rainbow Oreos, Black Lives Matter shirts at Walmart, that sort of thing. There is rage at this imagined disingenuousness; corporate America is assumed to be full of a bunch of greedy hypocrites who don’t believe in the causes they’re exploiting to pitch products. Yet at some point this anger becomes indistinguishable from purely aesthetic distaste — instinctive revulsion at a new highly visible evolution in the culture that finds common cause with a populist right equally contemptuous of “woke capital” and the liberal politicians they finance.
Further overlap comes from a shared perception that the social causes of today simply aren’t worth much. Just as some boomers felt their progressive views on civil rights and feminism justified indifference — or hostility — to the gay rights movement that came later, aging millennials who feel they’ve proved themselves supportive of gay rights may find prissy and frivolous the younger generation’s insistence on things such as pronoun introductions and perfectly race- and gender-balanced workplaces. Layer on that most disorienting anxiety of middle-age — not knowing what’s offensive anymore — and you have a generation primed to be at least a little reactionary-curious.
However, a shared loathing of the liberal establishment is probably the right’s most convincing case for leftist conversion.
In the days of Reagan, or even Newt Gingrich, conservative politics was philosophical and policy-driven. Theoretically at least, voters either supported the “Contract with America” or didn’t. Today, however, the Republican Party has abandoned the idea of even offering a platform: You either hate the cringey, crooked lying libs or you don’t. A left that already enjoys dwelling on the misdeeds of the Democratic elite — “denying” Bernie Sanders the presidency and so on — is an open door for conservatives to push. In time, Democrats devolve in the millennial leftist imagination from being “no better” to objectively worse; the GOP rises from “making some good points” to being actively necessary.
Fueled in part by anti-liberal animus, Sanders-to-Trump voters were a well-documented phenomenon that helped Republicans retake the White House in 2016. Many of those voters never came back, and the Sanders coalition became smaller and more ideological in 2020. Yet the Sanders-to-Trump migration continued, with some polls taken before the 2020 vote suggesting the number of converts could be as high as 15 percent. Doubtless this played a role in Trump increasing his share of the millennial vote by 8 percent.
Fast-forward a decade or two and imagine millennials in their 50s and 60s. Do you suppose we’ll find a crop of seniors still interested in being on the bleeding edge of left-wing politics? Or a generation that’s simply settled into a kind of conservatism they would have recognized in their parents and grandparents — a conservatism born from confidence that they did their part when it mattered, but what the nation needs now is a strong Republican government capable of keeping a new, illegitimate progressive movement from ruining the nation with its immature nonsense?
The second scenario strikes me as a matter of “when,” not “if” — and the “when” is already underway.
May 11, 2022 at 3:52 am #138837znModeratorHi BT. I had to clean that article up because it copied so much code with it. I am finding that often to post whole articles you should “clean” them first before posting here. The way I do that is just to pull up a simple word processing program you already use like word or word perfect. Paste into that, then immediately copy it and then paste it here. The word processing program “cleans it up.” That’s better than trying to edit all the code from an article you didn’t clean up–sometimes it’s way too much work to do it that way.
May 11, 2022 at 6:48 am #138838Billy_TParticipantHi BT. I had to clean that article up because it copied so much code with it. I am finding that often to post whole articles you should “clean” them first before posting here. The way I do that is just to pull up a simple word processing program you already use like word or word perfect. Paste into that, then immediately copy it and then paste it here. The word processing program “cleans it up.” That’s better than trying to edit all the code from an article you didn’t clean up–sometimes it’s way too much work to do it that way.
Thanks. Appreciate your efforts. I know about cleaning up the code — and that it really shouldn’t be necessary to this degree. I’ve been the webmaster, editor and publisher of my own site since 2008. I handle everything there, including the software, html and php coding (I know enough to be dangerous, and/or the right places to find help), uploads, and updates, and have moved the site four or five times to new hosts all by meself. :>)
I think all of this could very easily be fixed with updates and new software.
That said, I did try to clean it up using notepad++, but gave up on the idea for two reasons: wanted the internal links to function (without having to reconfigure them by hand again); figured the censor would reject it anyway.
Also, is the Chat app no longer viable as a way to reach the mods? I tried yesterday and didn’t get a response. It hasn’t seemed to work for me in months.
Regardless, looking forward to responses to the article, including from you.
Hope all is well . . .
May 11, 2022 at 7:19 am #138839Billy_TParticipantFollow-up to the WaPo article.
As most of you likely already saw, DeSantis signed yet another law mandating his preferred form of indoctrination in Florida schools. This time, “honoring the victims of communism.” Now, what could possibly go wrong there, with the far-right in charge of such a story?
Here’s an article listing some of the education mandates and bans imposed on Americans by the GOP and far-right.
Here’s the Long List of Topics Republicans Want Banned From the Classroom
By Sarah Schwartz & Eesha Pendharkar — February 02, 2022Republicans this year have drastically broadened their legislative efforts to censor what’s taught in the classroom, according to an Education Week analysis of active state bills.
What started in early 2021 as a conservative effort to prohibit teachers from talking about diversity and inequality in so-called “divisive” ways or taking sides on “controversial” issues has now expanded to include proposed restrictions on teaching that the United States is a racist country, that certain economic or political systems are racist, or that multiple gender identities exist, according to an Education Week analysis of 61 new bills and other state-level actions.
In Florida, a bill would ban teachers from saying “racial colorblindness” is racist. In South Carolina, a bill would ban teaching that “equity is a concept that is superior to or supplants the concept of equality.” In New Hampshire, “promoting a negative account or representation of the founding and history of the United States of America” could become illegal, if a bill were to pass.
In at least 10 states, legislators have proposed bills that would require administrators to list every book, reading, and activity that teachers use in their lessons, a process that educators argue would be cumbersome and expensive. Some of these bills also require districts to give parents prior right of review for new curriculum adoptions or library additions.
Since January 2021, 14 states have passed into law what’s popularly referred to as “anti-critical race theory” legislation. These laws and orders, combined with local actions to restrict certain types of instruction, now impact more than one out of every three children in the country, according to a recent study from UCLA.
Similar to legislation passed last year, many of these new bills propose withholding funding from school districts that don’t comply with these regulations. Some, though, would allow parents to sue individual educators who provide banned material to students, potentially collecting thousands of dollars.
In interviews with Education Week, state representatives said these new bills are designed to prevent teachers from telling children what to think, encouraging them to see divisions, or asking them to adopt perspectives that are different from those of their parents on issues like policing, Black Lives Matter, gender identity, and human sexuality.
Doug Richey, a Missouri Republican who introduced a Parents’ Bill of Rights in that state, said that families are upset that schools have turned to a “quasi-activist approach.”
“I filed this bill because there has been an obvious erosion of trust, and I want that trust to be rebuilt,” he said.
But opponents of these bills argue that the legislation is aimed at stifling conversation about racism and oppression. Heather Fleming, the founder of the Missouri Equity Education Partnership, an advocacy organization that supports anti-bias and anti-racist education, said the bills are designed to privilege the desires of white parents over others.
“They’re packaging some of these laws as ‘parents’ bill of rights.’ What parents? Because my daughter is entitled to see her culture and her heroes, people who look like her, in the curriculum, too,” said Fleming, who is Black.
Both the bills’ supporters and critics agree that providing students’ families with more avenues to challenge materials would fuel the ongoing battles on local school boards, where heated debates have already erupted over instruction that addresses racism, oppression, and gender identity.
Local pressures against “critical race theory” have led to educators self-censoring, districts abandoning equity initiatives, and equity officers receiving threats, according to the UCLA study. A lot of the 900 districts were in states with no ban on lessons about race or gender, researchers found.
Legislators expand lists of ‘divisive concepts’“Parents’ rights” has taken off as an issue for Republican legislators over the past year, as communities have fought school boards over pandemic-era policies like students masking, and remote learning has given many families up-close access to teachers’ lessons.
During the 2021 legislative session, though, only a handful of state bills concerned curriculum transparency or parents’ rights to object to classroom materials. Instead, most prohibited teaching a list of “divisive concepts,” which originally appeared in an executive order signed by then-President Donald Trump in fall 2020.
The order banned certain types of diversity training in federal agencies, preventing trainers from saying, for example, that one race or sex is inherently better than another, that all people of a certain race have unconscious bias, or that the United States is a fundamentally racist or sexist country.
Other conservative advocacy groups, some with ties to Trump, developed model legislation that would ban public schools from teaching these concepts—in some cases labeling them as “critical race theory.” The term refers to the academic theory that racism is perpetuated by structural forces like laws and policies rather than individual acts of bias, but proponents of these bills have used the term to refer to a broad swath of lessons about racism, oppression, and other social issues.
Thirty-six bills introduced this year still include this list of prohibited concepts, and 30 ban the teaching of “critical race theory” outright. But more legislators have broadened the scope of banned topics, beyond the original list in Trump’s executive order.
In several states, teachers are not allowed to teach that America is fundamentally or irredeemably racist.
A Virginia bill would prevent teachers from saying that “market-based economics is inherently racist,” while several Mississippi bills would ban teaching that “the concepts of capitalism, free markets, or working for a private party in exchange for wages are racist and sexist.”
In Indiana, lawmakers are trying to ban “race-based scapegoating.”
Robert May, a Republican representative who introduced a South Carolina bill, said schools should make clear that the American judicial system is based on equality under the law, rather than equity of outcome. “The idea that the entire jurisprudence system is based on systematic racism is ridiculous,” he said.
More bills also include language about “controversial” social and political issues, preventing schools from asking teachers to discuss these topics, and requiring that if teachers do, they evenly present both sides.
More bills target lessons on gender and sexual identityStill, a number of bills banning certain instructional topics don’t mention race at all. Instead, they’re focused on gender and sexuality.
In Arizona, Florida, and Indiana, students have to seek permission from parents before being taught about “human sexuality” and districts have to disclose to parents what those lessons would entail.
One proposed bill from Indiana requires parent permission before students learn about topics such as abortion, “transgenderism,” and gender identity.
Students also need written permission from parents before receiving counseling or medical attention related to abortion, gender-transitioning, hormone blockers, gender-reassignment surgery and “pronoun selection.”
The same bill also requires that students “must receive instruction that socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are incompatible with and in conflict with the principles of freedom upon which the United States was founded.”
The author of the bill, Republican State Rep. John Prescott, did not respond to requests for comment.
Another bill, introduced in Oklahoma, would ban school libraries from housing, and teachers from using, “books that make as their primary subject the study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender issues or recreational sexualization.” The bill clarifies that recreational sexualization means “any form of non-procreative sex.”
A similar Oklahoma bill would prohibit school libraries from having books “that make as their primary subject the study of sex, sexual preferences, sexual activity, sexual perversion, sex-based classifications, sexual identity, or gender identity or books that are of a sexual nature that a reasonable parent or legal guardian would want to know of or approve of prior to their child being exposed to it.”
The author of this second Oklahoma bill, Republican Sen. Rob Standridge, did not respond to requests for an interview. But in a Facebook post from December, he claimed that the availability of books on gender identity, sexual orientation, drag, and consent in school libraries contributed to “oversexualization of children in our public schools,” calling it “grooming.”
“Public school libraries are not the appropriate place to provide and promote such sexual material; this is exclusively the role of parents and guardians unless a parent or guardian explicitly gives informed permission for such sexual training,” he wrote.
Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, the executive director of the LGBTQ advocacy group, GLSEN, sees these bills as evidence that LGTBQ students are the newest target in the fight against “critical race theory.”
The proposed legislation is a backlash to the increased visibility and rights the community has gained over the past decade, she said, noting that the Black Lives Matter movement following George Floyd’s murder in 2020 also was met with similar pushback.
“It’s about the advancement of the recognition and the representation of these distinct minority communities,” Willingham-Jaggers said. “Both of these communities have long been silenced, marginalized … kept out of power and positive representation, and I think that there is a coming together for both of these communities.”
‘Parents’ Bills of Rights’ enable curriculum review, book challengesUnlike bills that restrict teaching around race and gender, “parents’ rights” bills don’t generally name specific topics that families might object to. But some of these bills’ sponsors have drawn a link between anti-critical race theory legislation and the parents’ rights push.
All share the common aim of directing “more focus on core academic concepts and less of a focus on cultural factors,” said Dave LaRock, a Virginia Republican who introduced a parents’ rights bill in the state.
Many of these “parents’ bills of rights” share language with a Florida law of the same name, signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in June 2021.
The law states that school districts cannot withhold information from parents related to minor children’s “health, well-being, and education.” It also requires schools to develop a procedure for parents to object to instructional materials, based on concerns about “morality, sex, and religion or the belief that such materials are harmful.”
Texas’s governor, Republican Greg Abbott, introduced a similar proposal last month.
There’s also model legislation on the issue: The American Legislative Exchange Council, a free-market, limited-government group, has a model bill that proposes involving parents in pre-approval of all instructional material used in social studies courses and posting lists of all those materials online.
But some experts say parents already have options for questioning instruction or materials that they feel emphasize the wrong lessons.
“Teachers do hand out syllabi, libraries do have open access to the catalogs. This is assuming that there is an adverse relationship when there isn’t one,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Most school libraries also have a procedure in place for parents who want certain materials reconsidered, she said. The ALA recommends that libraries put such a policy in place, she added, and provides a toolkit that can help them craft one.
When it comes to in-class readings, teachers usually share the outlines of a course, but they’re less likely to post a list of every worksheet a student might do or every in-class reading they might assign, said Marc Turner, the president-elect of the South Carolina Council for the Social Studies, and a high school teacher. But, he added, there’s a reason why this isn’t common practice.
Most teachers aren’t just using a textbook, instead pulling from a lot of different sources to craft their lessons. And these plans often change day to day and week to week, especially during the pandemic when school schedules are so often disrupted.
A requirement that teachers post all of the materials they use could encourage district leaders to standardize teachers’ lessons out of caution, potentially sacrificing the opportunities for critical thinking that students gain when they can compare the perspective of multiple sources, Turner said. “It would just push people back to things like textbooks.”
Anti-racism advocates worry that ‘outrage motivates’In interviews with Education Week, representatives who introduced these bills said it’s necessary to codify parents’ rights to review curriculum into law, even if they might place administrative burdens on educators.
“What we’re asking for is not to do new paperwork, but simply to provide us with the lesson plans that we have now, the paperwork that we have now,” said Rep. John Wiemann, a Missouri Republican who introduced a parents’ rights bill. “We just want to make sure that’s transparent to parents.”
Some bills, including ones in Indiana, Missouri, and Virginia, go farther, giving parents prior right of review before new materials are added to the library or new curriculum is selected. LaRock said these provisions are necessary to filter out books that don’t have “any value to children.”
Caldwell-Stone said that ignores the professional training and judgment of librarians and educators, who have detailed protocols for selecting resources. This kind of policy would also be an “administrative nightmare,” she added.
But, more importantly, she said, one parent shouldn’t have the right to make decisions for school libraries that serve entire, diverse communities.
“School libraries do more than support the curriculum,” Caldwell-Stone continued. “For many students, they may be the only library that students have access to. … They provide entertainment, artistic expression, access to literature that may not be part of the curriculum.”
In some cases, these bills would allow parents to challenge school districts and individual educators directly in court and collect damages.
A bill in Oklahoma would require individual educators to personally pay up to $10,000 in damages if parents find them to be teaching “critical race theory.” Under proposed legislation in Missouri, parents could collect up to $5,000 from a school district per violation, if the district doesn’t provide lists of all materials used and honor parents’ requests to review materials or opt out their children.
Richey, the Missouri representative who filed this bill, said it includes safeguards against parental overreach—parents can lodge a complaint with the school board, which has the power to reject it. Schools shouldn’t have to “chase after every frivolous interest or concern that a parent might be able to come up with,” he said.
Even so, Fleming, of the Missouri Equity Education Partnership, worries that this bill and others like it could have a chilling effect on teachers if signed into law. The proposed legislation suggests that teachers are spreading messages in public schools that families should object to, she said.
“When we look at the general public, outrage motivates.”
May 11, 2022 at 7:21 am #138840Billy_TParticipantThe article has a good series of graphs on the issue, easy to view on the site itself:
May 11, 2022 at 2:19 pm #138844ZooeyModeratorI don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish with this, Billy. You just made me bleed out of my ears and eyes.
May 11, 2022 at 3:08 pm #138845wvParticipantI dont share much i-dee-ology with that first writer (he called AOC the ‘hard left’ in another article) — but I have often thought about this dynamic:
“…Fueled in part by anti-liberal animus, Sanders-to-Trump voters were a well-documented phenomenon that helped Republicans retake the White House in 2016. Many of those voters never came back, and the Sanders coalition became smaller and more ideological in 2020. Yet the Sanders-to-Trump migration continued, with some polls taken before the 2020 vote suggesting the number of converts could be as high as 15 percent. Doubtless this played a role in Trump increasing his share of the millennial vote by 8 percent…”
I think ‘that’ is an interesting, complex, often infuriating, sometimes faceplanting topic.
‘Part’ of the phenomenon (to me) seems simple — capitalism has dummed down American voters. Often they simply do not know much about policies. They just dont. And so they can ‘get mad’ at this or that party and end up wildly flipping to something else. I dont think they know what they are doing.
They were never really Bernie-bros and they arent really Trumpies now. They just end up places.
Capitalism dums people down, politically. They dont have critical-thinking-skills POLITICALLY. They might have them in other ways, but not politically.
I think politicians know this, of course.
Anyway, looks like the duopoly will be having very very close elections
for the rest of our lifetimes.
…i told my 92-year-old mom somethin yesterday. It just came out of my mouth. Didnt give it much thought. Totally spontaneous. But i knew in a millisecond it was coming from a deep place, and i meant it:
“I’m never voting in this country again”
w
v
May 11, 2022 at 4:30 pm #138848Billy_TParticipantI think the first article speaks to a broad range of troublesome trends for leftists, and points to the need for strategic changes, at least. And while the author may be far away from our own political commitments — I don’t know his politics — I think he paints with a relatively accurate brush. Here’s a good section to highlight:
In the days of Reagan, or even Newt Gingrich, conservative politics was philosophical and policy-driven. Theoretically at least, voters either supported the “Contract with America” or didn’t. Today, however, the Republican Party has abandoned the idea of even offering a platform: You either hate the cringey, crooked lying libs or you don’t. A left that already enjoys dwelling on the misdeeds of the Democratic elite — “denying” Bernie Sanders the presidency and so on — is an open door for conservatives to push. In time, Democrats devolve in the millennial leftist imagination from being “no better” to objectively worse; the GOP rises from “making some good points” to being actively necessary.
Have said this a gazillion times: they both suck. Both parties. But by every objective measure, on every issue, the GOP is far worse, and it’s not close. On the environment, they’re “drill, baby, drill!” and welcome the “Climate Change is a Chinese hoax!” crowd with open arms. The Dems at least believe in the science, and aren’t actively waging war on endangered species and ecosystems, which the political right is, using xenophobic fearmongering along the way. On mass incarceration, the GOP is all in for Lock em up and throw away the key. Trump said publicly that police should rough up people they arrest and stop treating them with kid gloves, and recently we learned he wanted the military to just shoot BLM protestors. And nuke hurricanes. And invade Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and send missiles into Mexico to blow up drug labs. But Clinton was the warmonger threat?
I get why young leftists would be disgusted by the two parties. But I find it appalling that they’d choose the GOP over the Dems, rather than just saying a pox on both houses. And I think we older leftists have a duty not to make their pathway to the right easier. Leftists shouldn’t even think about finding common cause with the right, to go after those evil corporate Dems, say. How does that get us closer to our goals? It just helps the GOP gain and keep power, and all indications are they’re willing to do anything in order to retain it. It’s sheer madness to even want to partner with them in any way, shape, or form.
Anyway, more later. Will respond to your response, WV, tomorrow.
May 11, 2022 at 8:46 pm #138851wvParticipant…I get why young leftists would be disgusted by the two parties. But I find it appalling that they’d choose the GOP over the Dems, rather than just saying a pox on both houses..
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Well, sure, its appalling. Its beyond words. But (1) I dont think that particular group was ever really ‘young leftists’. I think they were dummed-down-young-americans. And (2), I dont think there’s anything we can do about it, because late-stage-capitalism has won. Its massacred its leftist-opponent ideologically. There’s virtually no actual-left in the US. Dems and Reps. Where’s the ‘left’ ?
I know there’s an argument that Bernie and AOC and the Squad, and some of the ‘democratic socialists’ have showed that there’s a growing movement, etc.
But I just dont buy that, anymore. I dont think they are leftists and I dont think it would matter if they were, cause they are a tiny minority.
Dark view, I know. Just how i see it.
I’ve turned to nature. Planting seeds, etc. Non-human stuff. Thats how i deal with it.
w
v
May 12, 2022 at 9:05 am #138853Billy_TParticipantWell, sure, its appalling. Its beyond words. But (1) I dont think that particular group was ever really ‘young leftists’. I think they were dummed-down-young-americans. And (2), I dont think there’s anything we can do about it, because late-stage-capitalism has won. Its massacred its leftist-opponent ideologically. There’s virtually no actual-left in the US. Dems and Reps. Where’s the ‘left’ ? I know there’s an argument that Bernie and AOC and the Squad, and some of the ‘democratic socialists’ have showed that there’s a growing movement, etc. But I just dont buy that, anymore. I dont think they are leftists and I dont think it would matter if they were, cause they are a tiny minority. Dark view, I know. Just how i see it. I’ve turned to nature. Planting seeds, etc. Non-human stuff. Thats how i deal with it. w v
I agree with pretty much all of that. In a sense, if a person is willing to join forces with the GOP, they were never leftists to begin with. They couldn’t be. Our worldviews are in direct opposition. Our sense of the world as it is, and as it should be, are in direct opposition.
Zooming out, moving away from the particular kids in question, the issue is that there is no organized left in America. Individual leftists exist, obviously. We just have no organization. No money. No mainstream media, and very little media overall, period.
Nature. A return to nature. Hickel and other ecologists make the point that our stance toward the non-human must shift in a revolutionary way. For far too long we’ve seen Nature as the Other, not as a part of a continuum we inhabit too. As in, we are Nature, so our destruction of it is suicidal . . . not just in (obvious) effect, but in a same-entity sense. He draws a contrast between Animism and Descartes, and throws in one of my beloved philosophers, Spinoza, as an additional remedy. Animism and Spinoza, rather than capitalism, Descartes, and “dominion over the earth,” etc.
May 12, 2022 at 9:23 am #138854Billy_TParticipantAlso, I think we’d all agree that AOC, the Squad, etc. etc. . . . would be considered mainstream center-left in Europe. Mainstream social democrats. I can’t speak to their actual philosophical views, or if they fit any definition of “leftist” in their hearts. I like them tremendously, but can’t say I know them that well. Plus, politicians are always constrained by external, systemic limits, and those on “the left” far exceed any other portion of the spectrum. So there’s always going to be a major split between what lefty politicians actually believe and want and what they try to push through in bills.
As in, AOC and company may be serious leftists, but think they can only project a very moderate form of social democracy. They may be anti-capitalists — my personal “main” dividing line between leftists and non-leftists — but think they can’t even begin to talk about desperately needed alternatives.
Constrained. Repressed. Suppressed. They do what they can, and they’re waay outnumbered even within their own party.
Pipe-dreams, of course, but if the Squad had several dozens of members, instead of five total (?), I think we’d see a lot of those constraints fall away, and we’d all be far better off . . .
May 12, 2022 at 11:19 am #138856ZooeyModeratorFirst of all, whoever wrote that piece in the WaPo doesn’t know what the left even is. He/She was listening to “hard-left” podcasters? Really? No, the fuck they weren’t. So that’s just the starting point.
Secondly, the ENTIRE argument is based on anecdotal nonsense. There is not a shred of evidence to support the idea that millennials were left to begin with, or that they are moving right. The entire piece is basically fiction, painting a narrative the author wants to believe, right along the old trope that people grow more conservative as they age.
Sure there is a lot of dissatisfaction with Democrats. Duh. But that doesn’t mean anybody is moving to the right.
I am not saying that there aren’t millennials out there floundering around, groping for answers the system isn’t providing. I’m sure there are. But the idea that that generation is buying into GOP ideology has no basis. Hell, a LOT of the MAGA/Trump crowd hate GOP ideology. They’re there for the anger, resentment, and racism.
May 12, 2022 at 12:23 pm #138857Billy_TParticipantFirst of all, whoever wrote that piece in the WaPo doesn’t know what the left even is. He/She was listening to “hard-left” podcasters? Really? No, the fuck they weren’t. So that’s just the starting point. Secondly, the ENTIRE argument is based on anecdotal nonsense. There is not a shred of evidence to support the idea that millennials were left to begin with, or that they are moving right. The entire piece is basically fiction, painting a narrative the author wants to believe, right along the old trope that people grow more conservative as they age. Sure there is a lot of dissatisfaction with Democrats. Duh. But that doesn’t mean anybody is moving to the right. I am not saying that there aren’t millennials out there floundering around, groping for answers the system isn’t providing. I’m sure there are. But the idea that that generation is buying into GOP ideology has no basis. Hell, a LOT of the MAGA/Trump crowd hate GOP ideology. They’re there for the anger, resentment, and racism.
Zooey, I don’t read the author as making as sweeping a judgment about an entire generation as you do. Of course, I could be misreading you and the author. But I think he/she is saying a certain segment, not the entire cohort. And that does happen with each “generation” — a rather useless and arbitrary category to begin with, right?
As for aging into conservatism. I’ve long seen that piece of conventional wisdom as based on a lot of truth — with tons of exceptions and a host of nuance.
Not from the point of view that its “naturalness” gives the trajectory any moral or ethical support. It doesn’t, in any way, shape, or form. But the biological component presents an obstacle to all of us to remain hopeful, open to the entire world, to the Other, to the notion of “a better world.” Basically, I think we’re more likely to be truly open, compassionate, and empathetic to a greater range of humanity and the non-human when young, and a lot of that is beaten out of us over time. It’s also aged out of us, as we lose cognitive firepower — and no one escapes that if they live long enough. We will always need to battle that within ourselves.
This is overly simplistic, but in a nutshell I see the left and the right as a moral/ethical continuum of selflessness to selfishness, equality to inequality, advocacy for the oppressed to indifference toward the oppressed . . . etc. Time works against idealism. A combination of endless gaslighting by the usual suspects, and our own biology, make it more and more difficult to fight the good fight, to have the energy to go beyond “why bother?” Boiled down, it’s a hell of a lot easier to just be a selfish bastard, and our system rewards those who are . . . not the good-fight folks.
May 13, 2022 at 2:18 pm #138885wvParticipant… Zooming out, moving away from the particular kids in question, the issue is that there is no organized left in America. Individual leftists exist, obviously.
We just have
no organization.
No money.
No mainstream media,
and very little media overall, period.
…
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Yes.
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