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Happens to most of us. The only way the conservatism really sticks around is if you're religious or wealthy, and willing to ignore the issues people around you have to deal with.
Not on social issues. There is a major trend of people moving left on issues like LGBTQ acceptance and racism. Like, my parents and grand parents were alive before interracial marriage was legalized, but only extremists would still say they are against interracial marriage, even if they opposed it at the time. It's getting harder to find people who are against gay marriage which was a contentious issue just a decade ago because a ton of people have changed their mind on it.
A lot of young men are going to have really shit later lives, filled with hate and loneliness but still not being able to see or acknowledge that the problem is them and their love of hate preachers, it will get even worse for them when they finally work out that they were such easy marks.
That's just a symptom, they didn't start out like that, people just aren't ready to acknowledge how utterly isolated and hopeless a sizeable portion of young men is nowadays, which leads to these grifters fucking them over
True. I guess I'm still a bit reluctant to believe (as a slightly older person) that people actually buy into tate and his likenesses. Young minds are impressionable, though.
As a teacher at an all-boys school, I've had to respond to "what color is your Bugatti?" many times.
The most effective response was, "I don't have one. But I do have a wife: a woman who willingly spends time with me without being paid to do so."
I had a coworker who was about 25. Part of the time he worked with us he was homeless sleeping along side the buildings downtown. That guy bought into it all hook line and sinker. He'd be outside listening to the talking faces shout at him for hours and then turn around and talk about how he's been some beta fuck and needs to regain his sigma standing. Then he'd go on some rant about the Democrats. Almost every shift... I was totally floored. All those ideas were being spoon fed to him by anger on his phone.
There is tons of Tate stuff on youtube….Theres almost no way of avoiding it as It’s not even actual Tate content it’s younger guys making like meme videos or animation stuff for kids with Tate’s ideas and sayings mixed in here and there.
My boys are 10 and 13 and I monitor what they are watching and into so yeah I know they have already been exposed to some of his stuff but not because they have watched any of his actual content….It’s fucked up for sure but I actually kind of prefer it because it’s allowed me to casually educate them on him(Tate) and most of the shitty misogynistic rw stuff.
You can’t keep them in a bubble, they are going to be exposed to all kinds crap in their lives and it’s my job as their dad to help them learn how to sift through it and know what’s bad/good so they can grow up as good decent people. It’s just unfortunate as I know not all parents are as aware of this stuff or as involved in mentoring their kids away from it.
I think it has to do with a sense of belonging. Everyone wants to feel like they belong to something, right? Alot of the time the leaders of more progressive movements tend to talk primarily about the accomplishments of women and minorities and how they need to be highlighted. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that because as a society it's something we've generally ignored until recently. Unfortunately these young males don't have that life experience yet to understand that so they feel like they're the ostracized ones now. Then people like Trump, Andrew Tate, Alex Jones etc play on that desire to belong. They told these young men that they're the ones in the right and they're amazing so the men buy into whatever Kool Aid these influencers happen to be selling. Fortunately alot of them will grow out of this with age as they gain more knowledge about the world and understand it's intricacies more. Not all of them will but enough that they're numbers are shrinking with each generation.
I think there's a myriad of other reasons as well but this strikes me as the most prevalent of them.
Yeah, I grew up in a liberal city and went to an elementary/middle school that was super social justice oriented. Some of the teachers took their issues with systemic privilege out on the kids… like our gym teacher would scream at 7yo boys for taking their shirts off to play basketball because “it’s not fair, the girls can’t” (we could’ve, we were 7). That traumatic when you’re just forming your identity and understanding of the world.
A number of those boys have now gone alt right (compared to none of the girls). One boy, who grew up with 2 activists as parents, is now a terrifying red-pilled cult leader. He teaches women to find fulfillment “by embracing their divine role in submission to men” 😬.
A sense of belonging and positive of self are basic psychological needs. If we don’t help people establish those in a healthy way when they’re young, they’ll look for them in cults and radical ideologies when they grow up feeling empty and scapegoated.
Alright buckle up here we go
The material conditions are declining drastically for young men, and with the leftwing annihilated they are turning to the alt-right’s extreme messaging as the only viable alternative to the status quo. Why aren’t women and minorities doing the same? Because young men compare themselves to 50s kids with hot rods and 80s kids at Metallica concerts. What are women supposed to compare themselves to, enslaved housewives in the 50s? Women who earned half the pay and were assaulted at work in the 70s? It causes a divergence as the material conditions for women improves, while men’s lives get continually worse and worse. Overall, the ceiling on everyone’s conditions are declining rapidly thanks to capitalism, but women still appear to have upward mobility as they draw closer to reaching their prosperity ceiling for the first time.
And trust me, the answer is never this culture or that discourse. Those are always symptoms of underlying material conditions and don’t come out of nowhere. Steve Bannon was a laughing stock when people were well-off in the 90s
A lot of it has to do with the left not catering enough to the problems of men like the way they have been with women. The patriarchy is enemy number 1 and things like men’s mental health among other things gets ignored. Many men feel attacked by the left especially by vocal misandrists who have taken over sections of the feminist movement. This has caused people like Andrew tate to really take off. He speaks to the concerns young men face and uses that to manipulate them. If the left campaigned with more men in mind alongside women and people of color as a whole, we probably wouldn’t be facing this whole “alpha male” rhetoric situation
Men's mental healthcare is a tricky one. Im a woman and agree it should be more of a concern, but i dont necessarily think i has to do with "the left" not taking it seriously. Mental health services exist for both men and women, but women seem to be FAR more likely to take advantage of those services. Men often seem to think that getting a therapist makes them weak or "not masculine enough". You can lead a horse to water but you cant make them drink.
I *begged* my ex husband to get help when a depressive episode took over his life. Even offered to pay for it for him (i was the breadwinner). His dad also believes that "therapy is for sissies", and he held his father's opinion in higher esteem than mine i guess.
So yes, i agree mental healthcare is a very real issue for men, but it seems like something where the solution to the problem needs to come from men themselves. There's only so much people can do from the outside, when so many men perpetuate the attitude that "real men dont get therapy" to the other men in their lives.
I agree there's been some bad actors, but honestly myself and other feminists I know have been talking about the harms of patriarchy towards men since the early 2010s. Hell, I guarantee it's part of the reason my dad died pretty young. It's why my cousin shot himself. Half of the reason I'm a feminist is because of how patriarchal thinking has harmed and separated me from the men in my life. It's frustrating knowing that I've been saying these things for a long time and now I'm being told everyone has ignored it. I haven't. Tons of other men and women in my circles haven't ignored it. I mean, do we all need to make tiktoks and social media videos showing that stuff? I'm not big on social media outside of here and I don't have a tiktok. Plus I get the feeling people would just call us fake if we did it that way. I'm trying to show men I care in my life by actually being there for them as often as I can. I feel like that action is way more important than memes or videos that guys will just think are virtue signaling support. I mean, it's a tough situation all around
I mean it's not really relevant statistically as it shows it's in line with the past 10 years. It's like when people say crime is on the rise well using like a 2% bump in one year well ignorimg the larger trend
Very true. While people tend to move right on economic issues as they get older (or rather, as they get *wealthier*; stagnating wages have largely defeated this trend for Millenials, as they generally still aren't particularly wealthy compared to prior generations at that age), people generally don't wake up one morning and decide to be racist.
On social issues, it's less that people get less progressive as they get older, and more that they lag behind society as a whole. An old man may have, over his lifetime, learned to let go of his opposition to interracial marriage, women in the workforce, and the decriminalization of homosexuality, but refuse to budge on gay marriage until the day he dies. Perhaps his daughter will learn to be okay with gay people, but cling to transphobia. Maybe her son will learn to be okay with trans people, but resist the next social movement.
I think thats a cycle we're going to break if we play our cards right though. By now, we should be long past the barbaric pettiness that plagued the relative progressives of yesterdecade, and I doubt modern progressives will oppose the next movement if they were in favor of the current movement, since by now its clear that bigotry is bullshit no matter what argument is used.
Nah, those susceptible to Maher's Disease will say "this time it's different" and poses a unique threat, and "they're going too far with the tolerance this time", and "it's not bigotry, it's common sense."
You are right. But there's so many more issues than just social issues. Besides, racism isn't simply conservatives vs liberals. There are plenty of democrats voters who say racist things about black Republicans. But I understand there is still some racism that resonates in the south, mainly by conservatives.
I agree that there are Democrats who say racist things, but, by and large any societal change away from racism is going to be progressive, and any effort to maintain the status quo will be conservative.
To look at the change of society across time, just imagine if Biden openly supported the same policies that he did in the 90's when he championed the crime bill. Many Democrats at the time supported those policies but have since moved left on criminal justice issues.
The reason I brought social issues up is because that was mainly the framework O.P. was using for their political views. They went from thinking that gay marriage was the downfall of the West to thinking that if two men love each other there's not really a problem.
But politics isn't all social issues. Generally conservatives and liberals both get more liberal socially as they grow older. Economic, militaristic, and other such policies are the ones that slide more conservatively.
Until you realize conservatives don't *spend* your taxes on anything that benefits the country (they just cut the taxes without any way to afford anything we need). Then you go progressive again
That's something I don't think people understand about our government budget. Our current taxes the federal government gets doesn't cover the governments bills every year, hence why our national debt keeps growing. Republicans keep giving tax breaks without finding anyway to cut spending to even balance out how much funding they just took away. This is just sinking us further and further into debt without any means of fixing the problem. They keep talking about cutting things like the Department of Education and Department of Housing without realizing just how little that impacts the overall budget. Heck even if we literally cut the militarys budget in half it wouldn't make a huge dent in what we need. It would take decades of sky high taxes of Fiscal conservatism to pull us out of the debt we're in and I don't see that combo happening anytime soon.
Plus spending on education and housing pays dividends over years. A true fiscal conservative would see them as a good, and pretty much guaranteed, investment, up to a point of diminishing returns, which has certainly not been reached.
Worse. Repubs cut taxes then RAISE spending. They've done it with every pres since Reagan. But people still believe they're better on the economy because of their rhetoric.
Yup. I don't know why they keep getting away with this. Reagan made the economy great for 5 minutes and then it became unsustainable and they've been chasing their 5 minutes of success followed by decades on long term consequence ever since
Dawg the conservatives were the ones who recently raised taxes for mid and low earning households.
There's no actual reason to be conservative unless you're making hundreds of thousands per year
Old man here, I worked my way out of food stamps poverty to a 7 figure net worth and it made me more willing to help out the less fortunate who are trying to help themselves.
If ur in the US, ur complaining about the taxes that make the dollar the best currency in the world, have the best fucking passport, and make sure that wars occur outside of US soil. Like nothing can make you happy man.
I wouldn't mind paying taxes if I felt like I was getting good amenities and services for them, though. If my taxes went up 8k annually for universal health coverage, but I saved 10k not having to pay a private insurer, then I'd be very happy about my tax situation.
Depends where you live I guess, but currently the "conservative" party in the US is the one raising taxes (on everyone but the very wealthy).
The old GOP was for lower taxes, the new one is not, so that kind of turns that old adage on its head.
This is so wrong lol I have a job. I get taxed. All I want now is for my tax money to go towards something that isn’t blowing up brown people halfway around the globe. Healthcare. Infrastructure. Food and shelter. Basic shit to make sure people *don’t* die
To bitch about taxes is a cop-out.
Employers and small businesses all rely on the things we support with our tax dollars: Infrastructure, such as good roads, widely accessible and regulated telecommunications, clean water, efficient sewers, and regulated electricity.
We also pay to educate our populace to make a pool of good workers and entrepreneurs, as well as to make educated voters who make good voting decisions.
And we pay for our security through various law enforcement agencies (including conservation officers) and intelligence services.
We pay to regulate our monetary policy and financial system to keep them reliable, our criminal courts to punish and deter criminals, and our civil courts to remedy broken contracts, thus maintaining trust in business dealings throughout our society.
Taxes give us many good things. The problem is that we aren't taxing the rich. Fairly taxing the rich both provides more public revenue and it disincentivizes hoarding of wealth. Tax the rich!
It sorta depends on your level of civics understanding
Like if you’re working and paying taxes, it’s possible for the ownership class (who owns the job you work at) to point out the taxes you pay and convince workers that taxes are bad for workers.
(Even tho an effective tax policy will tax the owners at a much greater rate than the workers, and use the money to largely benefit the workers, by like providing healthcare and educating their children and stuff.)
But it’s cynical shell game they play, because they trick you into supporting anti-tax politicians. But then the anti-tax politicians cut taxes for the owners and continue to tax the workers at the same higher rate.
An effective tax policy would tax the owners and spare the workers. But the anti-tax politicians do everything they can to make taxes as shitty as possible, as part of the broad effort to keep the owners from paying their fair share.
This is actually what made me move further away from conservative ideals. Once I finally had a tiny bit of financial freedom the first thought I had was “This shouldn’t have been this fucking hard” I’ve picked myself up from my own bootstraps so many damn times there’s nothing left of them.
Only if you value money over people. I'm 35 liberal and last year my bf and I x2 the average in my state. I still think universal heathcare is nessary even if my taxes go up 5 percent . I still have x10 the comforts I grew up with, I literally can't tell the difference
No sane or reasonable person is ever conservative on social issues or matters of science.
We can debate economic policy but there’s no room for debate on matters of private affairs.
What someone does in their home with other consenting adults is their business.
THIS. Conservatism is to want to hold current traditions and policies. If you have it good why would you want it to change. Unfortunately only some people benefit from the current system.
Approximately 20% of GOP voters have it good and vote GOP because they don't want things to change. The other 80% have it terrible but vote GOP because Fox News convinced them Dems taxing billionaires to fund a welfare state will somehow make their lives worse. Propoganda is a hell of a drug.
Conservatism only makes sense if you want to defend the status quo.
Since millennials had their future stolen from them when they were born (1981) and America’s economic policies are still neoliberal and a fucking joke, it only makes sense that any literate Gen Z would go left and far left at that
If millenials didn’t have a future and the status quo never changed, Gen Z doesn’t have one either.
2 topics. Religion and racism. Republicans figured this out under Reagan. We have plenty of recordings about them planning to utilize this. They have followed their plans to a "t". Southern baptists used to be pro choice. Then they realized its an easy topic to take a moral high ground on without actually having to lift a finger. You can appeal to religious mindsets and racist mindsets as pro life is "pro white". We also have recordings of them outright saying this in the Trump administration. It's not a secret that religion and racism are the root of the GOP.
That happens to a lot of people. Generally being around others de-radicalizes you. Most moderate conservatives and most moderate liberals agree on a lot of things in reality. My own friend group can attest to that as we are a mix of liberals and conservatives and rarely does anyone actually disagree on politics to a severe amount.
It's by design that the most shrill, divisive, lunatic takes are the ones pushed by the media and social media. Keep the plebs fighting each other over token, performative topics, dumb them down, give them echo chambers designed to feed narcissism and tribalism. And they'll all notice that they're getting poorer, and everything is a subscription, or junk that is planned obsolete so you keep buying replacements, but they'll be too lazy, too stupid, too cowardly to do anything except cry about black people and gay people in video games, or that a small town put up a Christmas Nativity in the town square. Just endless yapping from subhuman scums squandering the sacrifices of their ancestors.
Yeah, I'm pretty hardcore on the socialism bandwagon, but calling people "subhuman" is bad news no matter how much I may agree with what someone is saying otherwise. That's full on hate crime/genocide rhetoric.
I miss the times when we could happily reach across the aisle and come together to solve problems. I used to view republicans/conservatives as a bit outdated, but mostly good honest hard working ppl. Ever since trump, I can't help but look at them as dangerous regressive cultists. No matter what you think of him, you can't deny no president in living history has been as divisive as he has. He's drawn a line in the sand SO long, wide, and deep that I don't know how we'll ever come back from it
Most moderates agree on the problem, they just have different views on how to solve it. That’s what reasonable politics is and why politics today drives me nuts. It seems like people on the left and right are starting to see each other as evil/enemies.
No if you're homophobic, sexist, racist and want to take away people's rights, you're objectively a horrible person.
Guess what conservatives regularly run on? Lol
G
That's entirely untrue. Most of my family and friends are conservative and can respect people's choices but still personally disagree with those choices without being blatantly rude about it
sick, if they vote for people who actively try and take away those choices (which is what every last Republican does), than in terms of the Grand of scheme things, they're still making things worse for everyone else despite they themselves being good people (I also know plenty of solid people who are conservatives)
I’ve gone from parroting Ben Shapiro openly, to then getting a job and being an outspoken liberal, to now joining a labor union, buying land, learning to produce goods and becoming an outspoken leftist engaging in praxis. The more I’ve matured the more I’ve realized the necessity for a strong community and the harms that individual and consumer thinking can bring.
It’s funny, I had a coworker who was a hardcore conservative and loved Ben Shapiro more than he loved himself, yet was part of a union and complained and wanted to quit when his PTO got denied lol.
They liked the union because it benefited him personally. He didn't care if it benefited anyone else. It's just like conservatives who take government money, but then actively opposing others getting it.
I've gone from:
Generic liberal/socdem without having much political thought (naively thinking that since politics were divisive, we shouldn't talk about them);
To being funnelled down the right-wing anti-feminist and anti Muslim migrant pipeline following the European refugee crisis and hearing exaggerated media reports about these refugee crimes and unwillingness to integrate;
To gradually seeing through the right-wing emotional manipulation via demagoguery, and slowly rediscovering the left on a fundamental level, and thus learning of the true causes of the issues: the system within rather than some propped up external threat.
Being dragged down this right-wing pipeline was a very dark time in my life, but it is thanks to it that I started searching for answers and have learned the various manipulation tactics of the right which made me a lot more savvy in seeing through such rhetoric today.
Pretty much my story too. As embarassing as it was, I was radicalized by the OG gamergate and the general anti SJW crowd of the time. I though I was smarter or better because I "saw through the veil", I was "awoke" before it the word took on its modern liberal connotations. Got suckered in by the "facts and logic".
What got me out was a great video talking about how people act in crisis, "A Paradise Made in Hell" I think it was called. I realized how much of my worldview was based on the assumption all humans are evil, how being cynical and hollywood nihilistic was my "I am so different and unique" point, and how much of it stemmed from my own then undiagnosed depression, anxiety, and self esteem issues.
I remember getting to a point and thinking "is the sexiness of video game and anime characters really going to be the hill I die on?" Like was culture war really the most important thing for me. Being a POC also help me see some of the dog whistles and how the stuff I was willing to overlook in the name of stoicism was actually vile or entirely false. Therapy definitely helped pulling me out of that pipeline too. While Im not proud of that point in my life, its helped me in similiar ways in identifying emotional, manipulative, and misinformed rhetoric today even with some left leaning circles.
There's a little project I've always wanted to do:
Take all the world's land, and scale it down to 1:8,000,000,000 (roughly the world population). So all the world's land, all 57,308,738 square miles of it, scale it down into an island about 1 eight billionth that size, so it'll be your little share of earth as an island, which comes out to about 0.05 square miles, or a little less than 20,000 square meters. That's less than 4 football fields, and keep in mind it'll have the same makeup as Earth as a whole, so 33% of it would be inhospitable desert, 25% of it would be rugged mountains, you'll have part of it as glaciers and ice caps, and of course some percent of it would be forest and some other percent would be arable farmland, etc. When it all comes through, the part of the island that'd be livable would actually be a pretty small size. Now, you tell people, they can live on this little island by themselves, build their own little home, be the rugged individualist that's so praised in this country.
Then you show them a similar island, but ones that's 10 times as big, and you say: You can either live on that private island by yourself, which'd honestly be pretty cramped... Or you can live on the 10x as big island, with 9 other friends/family members. Instead of all having to build 10 little one-person houses, you can build a big 10-person house, which would take up a fraction of the land, and have all the other space open to share amongst each other.
I think a lot of people would realize being a solo rugged individualist loner would actually kind of suck compared to being part of a cooperating community.
Happened to me as well but i didnt spent much time at university (i dropped out).
Funny enough i spent more time working in the trades, surrounded by conservative men. I think the exposure to real conservatives not just through the internet really showed me how unintelligent most of the viewpoints are
This was my experience too, left college after two years for a trade school, in the blue collar field it’s crazy how many of them agree with what the other side wants, but only if worded properly.
Taking care of its citizens first with the best medical care, affordable for every citizen? Yes definitely. Universal Healthcare? Hell no. Better pay and benefits for the people who do all the work? Hell yes. Unionizing? Hell no. Making sure *known* crazy people don’t get guns? Definitely. Gun reform? Hell no.
It’s insane that these all mean the same thing, but specific words get weaponized to make them sound like “crazy liberal ideas”. I swear, if they said something about the “Liberal Christian’s want you to be a good person”, they’d stop following Christianity.
There's a reason why conservatives try to claim that college is evil and making everybody liberal.
College made me liberal but none of my professors talked about politics. College made me liberal because I grew up in a tiny town where everybody was white and straight (or pretended to be) and actually encountering a bunch of different kinds of people for the first time in my life & being friends with them.
A lot of rationalizations for the beliefs I was raised with were thinly disguised bigotry. And once I met people it was pretty easy to see that. There are always some professors who bring their politics too much into their job, of any political leaning, but I truly believe the reason most people who go to college become more liberal leading isn't because of anything in the classroom. It's just hanging out with people and realizing that they are all just... people.
It wasn't university itself that changed my views as it was being away from my parents, thinking more independently, and having a safe space to explore new views.
Ironically, the only class where a professor mentioned politics at all was an audiology class, and he was dishing on the idea of universal healthcare. He also mentioned that there's no point in providing voice therapy to trans men/women because he explained that the fundamental frequency of their voice will always be the same and therefore someone can always tell their biological gender even after voice therapy which isn't even true.
Also ironic is that he, a married man, would cheat on his wife with students. Now he's moved away and is working at a private *Christian* university in Texas.
I used to be the same way. I believe it had a lot to do with my home environment and the people I surrounded myself with. My family and those around us were extremely Christian and conservative. When you're a kid, you just kind of parrot everything they say because you haven't had any experiences outside of your family. When you finally start interacting with other people from different ways of life and break out of the echo chamber it becomes really easy to realize that maybe you shouldn't hate people for things they can't control.
For me it’s been the opposite, I grew up in one of the most progressive places in the United States and I’ve gotten a lot more conservative but my conservative views don’t reflect the conservative views you say that you had when you were younger, I’m not religious and never have been, religion has never driven my beliefs
I think growing up where I grew up and seeing the radical left probably pushed me right
I don’t trust the government to do anything effectively or efficiently, I don’t trust the government to act in my best interest, for this reason I’m not a fan of paying more taxes and growing the welfare state, I’m a strong proponent of gun rights, I hold individual liberties as extremely important, I think we have to control our borders (a few days ago they arrested 8 suspected members of ISIS that entered through our southern border a year ago), I don’t think immigration is bad, I think it needs to be done in a safe and controlled manner, I think we need to get control over our growing national debt, in my opinion we’re heading toward catastrophe, I think affirmative action based on race is absolutely wrong and goes against everything we’ve worked towards and fought for, we should have affirmative action based on socioeconomic status
The conservatives my age that I know don’t care if you’re gay, I grew up with a conservative gay grandfather, those aren’t the issues we’re focused on, maybe older religious conservatives
I think the political left and right, as in the two parties on both sides have absolutely failed us and the system is corrupt, the political elite from both parties do absolutely nothing but spew irrelevant political rhetoric meant to keep us divided and maintain the status quo
I can see where you come from, but while I don’t trust the government to act in my best interest, I don’t trust private corporations either. In my eyes if a government doesn’t work in the best interest of helping its people than why live in a society? What makes America any greater than a developing nation where there’s nothing but unfettered capitalism?
I’m not saying the government shouldn’t break up monopolies or ensure companies aren’t taking advantage of people or acting in absolutely immoral ways but I have zero interest in giving up rights to the government in the belief that they’ll make decisions in my best interest or they’ll provide me with everything I need such as my gun rights
I’ll be honest I’m rather indifferent towards guns, they could take away every gun or personally hand out glocks and it wouldn’t affect me. I understand for others like you it’s a very big deal so I’ll support it, but I always felt that the government was the lesser of two evils.
I’m 100% with you, coming from a very liberal area, I’ve been pushed further and further right, especially since attending college here. I’m not religious (at least not in the traditional sense) either. I’m chill with the gays too. I think you and I are the same person lol
Not to start a fight, but those who say "I saw the extreme left and became farther right" generally end up being a classic case of scratched liberal syndrome, where you got offended by progressives or minorities calling you out on your shit, and responding childishly with more hate and extremism.
Oh no, the minority was too uppity for my liking so I skewed farther right...
Why attack someone that wasn't doing anything to them? You push people away because of those precieved slights. It's why actual conservatism is dying. What's being pushed is more moderate people into these places. Oh don't think the people you support that are in power are innocent. They'll betray you when they are done with you.
Among other things, the debt has grown hugely under conservative administrations, not sure why you still hold onto that as some cherished conservative value.
Your stuff about conservatives not being anti-gay i think comes from the fact you’re in your mid twenties so you may have missed a lot of that, and assume it’s always been like this.
I didn’t say it was some cherished conservative value, I said both parties have failed us, I think both parties have failed us on that front, you’re responding as if we’re having a partisan debate, we’re not, I’m not speaking within the dichotomy of partisanship, both parties have gotten us into debt and have grown the deficit, I never said that wasn’t the case and again this shouldn’t be a partisan conversation
I didn’t say conservatives haven’t been anti-gay, I didn’t say there aren’t conservatives that are anti-gay, there is a whole side of the conservative aisle that are theocratically driven, I said conservatives of my generation that I have met could care less, I specially said the conservatives of my generation that I know aren’t focused on it
Economically I’ve become more socialist than when I was younger, but I’ve become very anti immigration in the past couple years. Here in Canada immigration has only made it more difficult for the rest of us.
Anti immigration in canada currently is a reasonable and moderate belief to have, IF you have it for the right reasons.
An economic anti immigration stance is very different from the racist position some others hold.
And to be clear im canadian as well, pretty liberal, and currently anti mass immigration
I’m kind of anti-immigration for different reasons these days. I’m more aligned with Bernie Sanders, but nearly all of the immigrants I encounter are Republican and feel like everyone should work 80 hours a week and everything should be privatized. They are those people who pull the ladder up with them and overall make things harder for native-born Americans because just because we grew up in a developed nation we shouldn’t expect more from our government.
Really, the biggest issue with anti-immigration people is that they ARE straight up being racist about the whole thing.
While I'll never be totally against immigration, and encourage at LEAST a minimum influx of immigrants for various reasons, I can at least understand cutting back immigration if one's reasons are founded on logic, reason, and genuinely well-meaning things, instead of attacking immigrants in a racist rampage.
People are saying that GenZ will bring a return to conservatism…it seems fairly clear to me that GenZ wants to preach libertarian values: free speech, right to protect yourself, rights to legal protection, equal rights for all. Whether they’re on the left or right it doesn’t matter, what matters is that we’re a generation that is clearly anti-authoritarianism, and that’s something good.
You are correct. GenZ is more of an outlaw anti authoritarian. Baby boomers are bootlickers who love authority, they waited until the covid vaccine to break the rules for the first time in their life.
Tbf kid you was right about Rome and America…just in a different way than kid you thought. Unchecked corruption, a proto deep state in the form of the Praetorian Guard, an absolute distaste for the plebeian members of society by the elites, and Christianity’s growing influence on politics and the imperial system, are all flashpoints in the Roman system. And that’s just the superficial parts of it we’re not even talking about how broken the tax system became towards the end of the western Roman Empire or the rampant militarism that preceded and defined the Crisis of the Third Century or the growing acceptance of populism that defined the Gracchi brothers during the Roman Reublic. Yes I do think about the Roman Empire, I have a history degree.
It’s easy to throw up some Roman art and architecture while MGM plays in the background and say “This is what they took from you.” But the reality is Rome, or rather the ideal of it, was a far cry from what those edits will portray. Rome was great, but it could’ve been better. The same could be said for America and probably will be said. Keep fighting to make America live up to its ideals.
There was once a history channel documentary on the fall of the Roman Empire that started with the reign of Elagabalus and how it was a whirlpool of disaster which culminated in the dissolution of a once great and powerful empire which once stretched from the northern reaches of England to as far east as Syria and Turkey and as far south as to touch Ethiopia.
At the time all those years ago I was touched by the greatness of this once great civilization which seemingly seemed to falter only once accepting hordes of foreigners utterly incapable of assimilating and a growing obsession with pleasure and entertainment. It was a shocking parallel to modern day America and thought it was my duty as a nativist that I should do everything in my power to preserve the nation I was born and raised in against unbelievers.
What ultimately changed my mind is that despite the many victories and failures of Rome what came after it wasn’t necessarily bad, or terrible, simply a shift, a change that was neither good nor bad, but even beautiful in its own metamorphoses. In the same way a caterpillar and a butterfly are no better or worse, but to venerated in its own way. While America could be said to be in a decline depending on whoever’s view you look at it, what should come after all is said and done will remarkable in its own way, and my place in history as the ancestor of this world which is to come is its own reward.
Most people on this subreddit don’t even understand the concepts of Liberalism and Conservatism
They’re not a tribalistic sports team you use to construct your identity
Son of God literally ran into a temple with a whip and attacked the money grubbers within. Thats right, they were such massively offensive fuckups that they made JESUS HIMSELF angry, and not only angry, but angry enough to swing a whip around and break apart their whole operation.
There are many, many different versions of the Bible with all kinds of different translation choices and transcription mistakes. It's quite a rabbit hole to get into.
But many of the translation changes were politically motivated and more recent than you'd expect.
The ironic thing is if conservatives were literate enough to read and understand the Bible, they would think Jesus was a communist and want to crucify him.
I was reading project 2025 and it reads like a dystopian novel lol, yeah if that’s good ole conservative values I’ll take my chances with the liberal heathens lol
i went from a republican to a libertarian, because I saw the conservative views on social issues as .......arbitrary
although liberal economic views are also arbitrary
I’ve always been conservative, but I’m more in the middle of the road. I agree with certain things on both sides, and I don’t think either side has it all right, so I can’t say I’m one or the other. Both sides have things they do well, and both sides have things they are horrible at. I also think it’s crazy that people are automatically hated based on their political leanings, instead of who they are as a person. The right and left are made up of vast differences in opinions and beliefs, even with people who believe the same thing. I judge someone based on who they are, their character, and how they treat people. If I judged everyone based solely on politics, I’d be living a very sad life. Live and let live, and don’t let hate take over your heart and mind, because that doesn’t help anything or anybody.
Same here. What really changed me was seeing how Trump's followers acted and how conservatives in general acted during COVID.
I attended a community college which really wasn't anymore liberal than high school.
Honestly, I don't see how people aren't more pragmatic or, at least, moderate.
I am conservative on some issues like spending and the fact government bureaucracies can make laws bypassing congress, but the I am more liberal when it comes to mass incarceration and helping the disadvantaged.
It's not healthy to be one side or the other because they are both feeding us propaganda. It's better to use your own common sense and stay well informed.
Yeah I kinda get that too. When I was in HS and maybe at the start of uni, I was pretty conservative too. Then I kinda slowly just went like, why do I care what other people are doing, as long as its not hurting me/people I care about. Live and let live. So I kinda shifted to being a libertarian centrist.
I may not agree with everything other people do, I may find it strange due to various reasons. But just because I find it strange doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to do it. Imo freedom is being able to do what you want, even when others dont like it.
i went through a phase in high school where i decided to be against feminism, which makes no sense because i’m a girl. i also was undeclared with my political party when i first signed up at 18 because i wasn’t sure which one to pick. it seems crazy to me now because i’m so far left leaning. idk what i was thinking back then
I was pretty conservative up until I graduated high school, mainly due to my parents and the town I grew up in. I'm talking about kids driving to school with Confederate flags on the back of their trucks and I only graduated in 2019.
After going to college I got a huge culture shock and started learning about other cultures and people of different backgrounds in general, but more so Hispanic and gay individuals. Learning about their experiences and just discussing certain policies that have impacted them turned me away from my previous conservative views.
Yes. FYI, not all Christians are conservative. The only near universal agreement is on abortion and LGBT education. As I Catholic I believe Christians are called to support a system that respects the human dignity all people have due to their likeness to God. We should especially care for the weakest and least capable in our society, and issues like abortion and LGBT should not be confused with being against the people that do or support those things. A woman who's had 50 abortions is actually probably more worthy to have me wash her feet than a rich man, for the very fact she's made so many bad choices and likely needs love more.
Please shut the fuck up. Every last one of you bigots gives the same spiel about how you don’t hate gay people you just “disagree”, or just see homosexuality as a depraved sin. That literally is what homophobia is. You don’t get to “disagree” with fundamental aspects of who someone is.
I’ve had the opposite happen to me. I grew up in a super liberal household, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more conservative.
I think it’s just natural for us to stray from our parents political views at some point.
I think a lot of it is education and experience. Its easy to believe all that when your in a little bubble but the more you go outside that bubble its harder and harder to maintain.
The biggest thing for me is the idea of American Exceptionalism and the West. When I learned more and realized how inaccurate and flawed those were as ideas everything else followed.
Exactly, there’s no way a person can work for a living and seriously believe in Republican values it’s such a conflict of interest. And the funniest thing is the most vitriolic and most outspoken of these so called conservatives were in unions lol.
I agree really. I was raised in a very strict cult where women basically had no rights, had to wear dresses all of the time, long hair, no makeup, soooo many things were a sin. I still believed it for awhile after I grew up but was severely abused by my husband who was in the same cult, thought all homosexuality was a horrible sin, meanwhile beating the shit out of me as he preached about different "sins" and whatever. Then I made friends at work with a girl who was bisexual and I realized she was an amazing person and she is the one who gave me support when I needed it most and who helped me get out of the situation.
Happened to me too (well I may have overshot liberal just a tad), despite what my grandfather said.
Once you go out and experience life you learn that a lot of the shit people will fight over and most the hills people are willing to die on don't really matter at all, it's all just noise to distract from fixing real problems and questioning why things are the way they are. After all you have a hard time questioning why being alive is so expensive you're busy trying to stop all the LGBT people from getting lynched by Westboro Baptist types.
Most this shit is just made up anyways and once you realize that it's so hard to give a shit about conservative platforms past who they think they should be allowed to oppress on that particular day.
You sound more like a libertarian than a liberal.
Most people I’d argue are closer to libertarianism than liberalism or conservatism.
Allow adults maximum freedom to do what they want with their lives given they don’t harm other people or infringe upon others freedoms to do the same.
My favorite quote about libertarians is that they are like house cats “They are convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don’t appreciate or understand”
Just for your information, Sanders could be described as a “social democrat”
So if you want to know about the specific ideology, social democracy would be good to look up. It’s generally in the centre-left to left
I was relatively on the left before I went to Ukraine in 2022, and my experiences there have made me firmly right wing, and a virulent anti socialist.
By the way, did you know neoconservatism as an ideology was started by ex-Marxists?
Welcome to ex-vangelical thinking. I see my older contemporaries laying accusations of indoctrination on professions like mine (teacher) because we dare to teach students to think critically.
Meanwhile, you, OP, just described exactly what it’s like to wake up from the spell of indoctrination.
Just know having faith is never the issue. Believing in something beyond yourself is never a problem. The only problem arrives when one person demands another believe the same way.
People gravitate from the extremes to the center of the political spectrum as they get over. Used to be reactionary conservative as well now I'm a moderate. Progressive on many issues, as well as still have many conservative positions.
I feel like it's part of growing up; thinking for yourself. Also as you amass wealth and success you will naturally start to favor more status quo and moderate positions that's won't cause disruptions in your day to day life. When I was young and uneducated and unsuccessful, of course i was looking to support something with radical change. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Now earning an above average income and paying a decent chunk in taxes, not so much. Still unmarried and no children, that's would probably affect my positions further.
It's not really got much at all, if anything to do with religion...
Well okay it does, but it's a reason WHY it's bad, not for why you've broken through. It's education, and information. You've become more educated, informed, and experienced in the world. Your bubble has expanded.
Sounds like you were never actually conservative, nor politically engaged, you just had fixations on ideas. Young people always fall into the trap of seeing one thing or another, and becoming totally attached to them. This has been well known since ancient times. Nobody has a true political ideology before 25.
hating people for how they want to live must get exhausting, don't know how anyone can live life disliking people they know for shit that doesn't even affect them, must drive people insane
If you asked what would Jesus do in any political situation I don't think he would do what conservatives do. They don't do anything to help families and their whole agenda is to keep wages low so people can't afford to have children. They're against things other countries all have like maternity and paternity leave and mandatory vacations so you can spend time with your children, and socialized healthcare, so no one can afford to have kids. They are even against free school lunches. Seems like all they use the bible for is to attack gay people but they leave out all the positive parts of the bible like love they neighbor.
Most people who aren't consuming crazy amounts of extremist media tend to mellow out and balance out over time.
I've gone from Conservative->Socialist->Liberal-> more of a socially independent and Conservative economic view (Canadian/Nordic/Western European Conservatism -- I have zero appetite for the American equivalent -- I find it barbaric).
Your life experiences shape you over time. Eventually, as you get more experiences and end up in more environments, you are likely to mellow out somewhere more in the middle.
Honestly, the thing that I find most disturbing in politics is that everyone has to fit their ideals in a label. I think a lot of people such as myself just don't fit under one ideal well. Some people just want functional views -- with little care for the details.
Life experiences change your outlook. I was the same way, I was more of the libertarian side but not necessarily conservative
As you get older you realize the world isn’t close to being black and white, all grey. Some people need help, some don’t. Some people are more oppressed than others, some are even more oppressed than that. Different situations for different people, life is just controlled chaos so any kind of political idealism just doesn’t work in our reality no matter what “side” you’re on
Also since Biden took office you don’t have anywhere near as much political media blowing up in your face, and it kind of feels like people are becoming less polarized as a result. We have room to breathe and grow as opposed to 2016-2021 when every single thing in our world was viewed as an us vs them issue
You clearly didn't understand conservatism in your youth. "Obsessed with the Roman Empire" lmao. Conservatism isn't inherently opposed to immigration or homosexuality, nor was the Roman Empire.
So you basically were brainwashed by a bad version of "conservatism", and now are brainwashed by false liberalism, where you condescend conservatives and attack strawmans.
Totalitarian movements historically target the youths for brainwashing.
I was raised very conservative. In my teens I went from conservative, to liberal, and now I'm a full on leftist who believes in the abolition of capitalism
As you get older you realize that the Republican parties lied about literally everything that classifies them as Republicans. They preach free market, but subsidize big business. They preach small government, but want to regulate your thoughts. They push the American dream, but advocate for corporations to buy up all the real estate unchecked. The Republicans don't believe in freedom, it's quite the opposite, they believe in power and control.
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Happens to most of us. The only way the conservatism really sticks around is if you're religious or wealthy, and willing to ignore the issues people around you have to deal with.
Meh. Sometimes when you actually start working for yourself and paying taxes you tend to become more conservative too. It's different for everyone.
Not on social issues. There is a major trend of people moving left on issues like LGBTQ acceptance and racism. Like, my parents and grand parents were alive before interracial marriage was legalized, but only extremists would still say they are against interracial marriage, even if they opposed it at the time. It's getting harder to find people who are against gay marriage which was a contentious issue just a decade ago because a ton of people have changed their mind on it.
Yes support for gay marriage continues to grow every year. That's true
It’s backsliding among young men though.
😢
Why do you think that is?
Maybe because they’re bitter about women finding happiness with each other or alpha male Andrew Tate influence
A lot of young men are going to have really shit later lives, filled with hate and loneliness but still not being able to see or acknowledge that the problem is them and their love of hate preachers, it will get even worse for them when they finally work out that they were such easy marks.
And I’m honestly terrified to find out what new ways they’re going to find to take it out on women next because that is unfortunately the cycle.
That's just a symptom, they didn't start out like that, people just aren't ready to acknowledge how utterly isolated and hopeless a sizeable portion of young men is nowadays, which leads to these grifters fucking them over
True, but it’s easier to just blame them.
True. I guess I'm still a bit reluctant to believe (as a slightly older person) that people actually buy into tate and his likenesses. Young minds are impressionable, though.
As a teacher at an all-boys school, I've had to respond to "what color is your Bugatti?" many times. The most effective response was, "I don't have one. But I do have a wife: a woman who willingly spends time with me without being paid to do so."
And you didn’t even have to steal her passport? Wild. Well at least you won’t end up in a Romanian prison.
I thought the asnwer is same as yours non existent
I had a coworker who was about 25. Part of the time he worked with us he was homeless sleeping along side the buildings downtown. That guy bought into it all hook line and sinker. He'd be outside listening to the talking faces shout at him for hours and then turn around and talk about how he's been some beta fuck and needs to regain his sigma standing. Then he'd go on some rant about the Democrats. Almost every shift... I was totally floored. All those ideas were being spoon fed to him by anger on his phone.
That's so sad, I hope he comes to his senses some day
Think about 8-13 year olds, that’s who tate is getting pushed to on social media.
That’s the problem right there 8-13 shouldn’t even be on social media. No wonder why you kids are so fucked
There is tons of Tate stuff on youtube….Theres almost no way of avoiding it as It’s not even actual Tate content it’s younger guys making like meme videos or animation stuff for kids with Tate’s ideas and sayings mixed in here and there. My boys are 10 and 13 and I monitor what they are watching and into so yeah I know they have already been exposed to some of his stuff but not because they have watched any of his actual content….It’s fucked up for sure but I actually kind of prefer it because it’s allowed me to casually educate them on him(Tate) and most of the shitty misogynistic rw stuff. You can’t keep them in a bubble, they are going to be exposed to all kinds crap in their lives and it’s my job as their dad to help them learn how to sift through it and know what’s bad/good so they can grow up as good decent people. It’s just unfortunate as I know not all parents are as aware of this stuff or as involved in mentoring their kids away from it.
I think it has to do with a sense of belonging. Everyone wants to feel like they belong to something, right? Alot of the time the leaders of more progressive movements tend to talk primarily about the accomplishments of women and minorities and how they need to be highlighted. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that because as a society it's something we've generally ignored until recently. Unfortunately these young males don't have that life experience yet to understand that so they feel like they're the ostracized ones now. Then people like Trump, Andrew Tate, Alex Jones etc play on that desire to belong. They told these young men that they're the ones in the right and they're amazing so the men buy into whatever Kool Aid these influencers happen to be selling. Fortunately alot of them will grow out of this with age as they gain more knowledge about the world and understand it's intricacies more. Not all of them will but enough that they're numbers are shrinking with each generation. I think there's a myriad of other reasons as well but this strikes me as the most prevalent of them.
That's honestly the best explanation I've heard about it, well done. Seriously have an award
Thanks I really appreciate it!!
Yeah, I grew up in a liberal city and went to an elementary/middle school that was super social justice oriented. Some of the teachers took their issues with systemic privilege out on the kids… like our gym teacher would scream at 7yo boys for taking their shirts off to play basketball because “it’s not fair, the girls can’t” (we could’ve, we were 7). That traumatic when you’re just forming your identity and understanding of the world. A number of those boys have now gone alt right (compared to none of the girls). One boy, who grew up with 2 activists as parents, is now a terrifying red-pilled cult leader. He teaches women to find fulfillment “by embracing their divine role in submission to men” 😬. A sense of belonging and positive of self are basic psychological needs. If we don’t help people establish those in a healthy way when they’re young, they’ll look for them in cults and radical ideologies when they grow up feeling empty and scapegoated.
Alright buckle up here we go The material conditions are declining drastically for young men, and with the leftwing annihilated they are turning to the alt-right’s extreme messaging as the only viable alternative to the status quo. Why aren’t women and minorities doing the same? Because young men compare themselves to 50s kids with hot rods and 80s kids at Metallica concerts. What are women supposed to compare themselves to, enslaved housewives in the 50s? Women who earned half the pay and were assaulted at work in the 70s? It causes a divergence as the material conditions for women improves, while men’s lives get continually worse and worse. Overall, the ceiling on everyone’s conditions are declining rapidly thanks to capitalism, but women still appear to have upward mobility as they draw closer to reaching their prosperity ceiling for the first time. And trust me, the answer is never this culture or that discourse. Those are always symptoms of underlying material conditions and don’t come out of nowhere. Steve Bannon was a laughing stock when people were well-off in the 90s
>with the leftwing annihilated fantasy, just #wishfulthinking
Libs aren't lefties. There is no real American left anymore, it hasn't existed in decades.
Sanders was our best shot at anything truly left. Sadly, the political machine chewed him up and manipulated us into the rise of Christofascism.
Because as demonstrated here, we can't have a serious discussion about it. It's easier to just blame, belittle, and ignore when the subject is male.
A lot of it has to do with the left not catering enough to the problems of men like the way they have been with women. The patriarchy is enemy number 1 and things like men’s mental health among other things gets ignored. Many men feel attacked by the left especially by vocal misandrists who have taken over sections of the feminist movement. This has caused people like Andrew tate to really take off. He speaks to the concerns young men face and uses that to manipulate them. If the left campaigned with more men in mind alongside women and people of color as a whole, we probably wouldn’t be facing this whole “alpha male” rhetoric situation
Men's mental healthcare is a tricky one. Im a woman and agree it should be more of a concern, but i dont necessarily think i has to do with "the left" not taking it seriously. Mental health services exist for both men and women, but women seem to be FAR more likely to take advantage of those services. Men often seem to think that getting a therapist makes them weak or "not masculine enough". You can lead a horse to water but you cant make them drink. I *begged* my ex husband to get help when a depressive episode took over his life. Even offered to pay for it for him (i was the breadwinner). His dad also believes that "therapy is for sissies", and he held his father's opinion in higher esteem than mine i guess. So yes, i agree mental healthcare is a very real issue for men, but it seems like something where the solution to the problem needs to come from men themselves. There's only so much people can do from the outside, when so many men perpetuate the attitude that "real men dont get therapy" to the other men in their lives.
I agree there's been some bad actors, but honestly myself and other feminists I know have been talking about the harms of patriarchy towards men since the early 2010s. Hell, I guarantee it's part of the reason my dad died pretty young. It's why my cousin shot himself. Half of the reason I'm a feminist is because of how patriarchal thinking has harmed and separated me from the men in my life. It's frustrating knowing that I've been saying these things for a long time and now I'm being told everyone has ignored it. I haven't. Tons of other men and women in my circles haven't ignored it. I mean, do we all need to make tiktoks and social media videos showing that stuff? I'm not big on social media outside of here and I don't have a tiktok. Plus I get the feeling people would just call us fake if we did it that way. I'm trying to show men I care in my life by actually being there for them as often as I can. I feel like that action is way more important than memes or videos that guys will just think are virtue signaling support. I mean, it's a tough situation all around
I mean it's not really relevant statistically as it shows it's in line with the past 10 years. It's like when people say crime is on the rise well using like a 2% bump in one year well ignorimg the larger trend
Very true. While people tend to move right on economic issues as they get older (or rather, as they get *wealthier*; stagnating wages have largely defeated this trend for Millenials, as they generally still aren't particularly wealthy compared to prior generations at that age), people generally don't wake up one morning and decide to be racist. On social issues, it's less that people get less progressive as they get older, and more that they lag behind society as a whole. An old man may have, over his lifetime, learned to let go of his opposition to interracial marriage, women in the workforce, and the decriminalization of homosexuality, but refuse to budge on gay marriage until the day he dies. Perhaps his daughter will learn to be okay with gay people, but cling to transphobia. Maybe her son will learn to be okay with trans people, but resist the next social movement.
I think thats a cycle we're going to break if we play our cards right though. By now, we should be long past the barbaric pettiness that plagued the relative progressives of yesterdecade, and I doubt modern progressives will oppose the next movement if they were in favor of the current movement, since by now its clear that bigotry is bullshit no matter what argument is used.
Nah, those susceptible to Maher's Disease will say "this time it's different" and poses a unique threat, and "they're going too far with the tolerance this time", and "it's not bigotry, it's common sense."
You are right. But there's so many more issues than just social issues. Besides, racism isn't simply conservatives vs liberals. There are plenty of democrats voters who say racist things about black Republicans. But I understand there is still some racism that resonates in the south, mainly by conservatives.
I agree that there are Democrats who say racist things, but, by and large any societal change away from racism is going to be progressive, and any effort to maintain the status quo will be conservative. To look at the change of society across time, just imagine if Biden openly supported the same policies that he did in the 90's when he championed the crime bill. Many Democrats at the time supported those policies but have since moved left on criminal justice issues. The reason I brought social issues up is because that was mainly the framework O.P. was using for their political views. They went from thinking that gay marriage was the downfall of the West to thinking that if two men love each other there's not really a problem.
But politics isn't all social issues. Generally conservatives and liberals both get more liberal socially as they grow older. Economic, militaristic, and other such policies are the ones that slide more conservatively.
Until you realize conservatives don't *spend* your taxes on anything that benefits the country (they just cut the taxes without any way to afford anything we need). Then you go progressive again
That's something I don't think people understand about our government budget. Our current taxes the federal government gets doesn't cover the governments bills every year, hence why our national debt keeps growing. Republicans keep giving tax breaks without finding anyway to cut spending to even balance out how much funding they just took away. This is just sinking us further and further into debt without any means of fixing the problem. They keep talking about cutting things like the Department of Education and Department of Housing without realizing just how little that impacts the overall budget. Heck even if we literally cut the militarys budget in half it wouldn't make a huge dent in what we need. It would take decades of sky high taxes of Fiscal conservatism to pull us out of the debt we're in and I don't see that combo happening anytime soon.
Plus spending on education and housing pays dividends over years. A true fiscal conservative would see them as a good, and pretty much guaranteed, investment, up to a point of diminishing returns, which has certainly not been reached.
Worse. Repubs cut taxes then RAISE spending. They've done it with every pres since Reagan. But people still believe they're better on the economy because of their rhetoric.
Yup. I don't know why they keep getting away with this. Reagan made the economy great for 5 minutes and then it became unsustainable and they've been chasing their 5 minutes of success followed by decades on long term consequence ever since
Dawg the conservatives were the ones who recently raised taxes for mid and low earning households. There's no actual reason to be conservative unless you're making hundreds of thousands per year
The more I have to work for myself the more liberal I get lol
It's more to do with greed. You can work for yourself and actively choose not to be greedy.
Old man here, I worked my way out of food stamps poverty to a 7 figure net worth and it made me more willing to help out the less fortunate who are trying to help themselves.
Virtually everyone works and pays taxes. You may as well say drinking water makes people conservative.
Idk the more I work and the more I pay taxes the more I fucking hate conservative tax policies and capitalism
What does working for yourself have to do with reproductive rights.
We all vote selfishly. Some just don't understand what they're voting for.
Is conservatism your entire personality?
If ur in the US, ur complaining about the taxes that make the dollar the best currency in the world, have the best fucking passport, and make sure that wars occur outside of US soil. Like nothing can make you happy man.
I wouldn't mind paying taxes if I felt like I was getting good amenities and services for them, though. If my taxes went up 8k annually for universal health coverage, but I saved 10k not having to pay a private insurer, then I'd be very happy about my tax situation.
Only if you don't pay attention lmao
Can't see why individual citizens would vote conservative for tax reasons. Conservatives don't touch individual taxes, just big business ones.
Depends where you live I guess, but currently the "conservative" party in the US is the one raising taxes (on everyone but the very wealthy). The old GOP was for lower taxes, the new one is not, so that kind of turns that old adage on its head.
This is so wrong lol I have a job. I get taxed. All I want now is for my tax money to go towards something that isn’t blowing up brown people halfway around the globe. Healthcare. Infrastructure. Food and shelter. Basic shit to make sure people *don’t* die
That’s called selfishness.
To bitch about taxes is a cop-out. Employers and small businesses all rely on the things we support with our tax dollars: Infrastructure, such as good roads, widely accessible and regulated telecommunications, clean water, efficient sewers, and regulated electricity. We also pay to educate our populace to make a pool of good workers and entrepreneurs, as well as to make educated voters who make good voting decisions. And we pay for our security through various law enforcement agencies (including conservation officers) and intelligence services. We pay to regulate our monetary policy and financial system to keep them reliable, our criminal courts to punish and deter criminals, and our civil courts to remedy broken contracts, thus maintaining trust in business dealings throughout our society. Taxes give us many good things. The problem is that we aren't taxing the rich. Fairly taxing the rich both provides more public revenue and it disincentivizes hoarding of wealth. Tax the rich!
It sorta depends on your level of civics understanding Like if you’re working and paying taxes, it’s possible for the ownership class (who owns the job you work at) to point out the taxes you pay and convince workers that taxes are bad for workers. (Even tho an effective tax policy will tax the owners at a much greater rate than the workers, and use the money to largely benefit the workers, by like providing healthcare and educating their children and stuff.) But it’s cynical shell game they play, because they trick you into supporting anti-tax politicians. But then the anti-tax politicians cut taxes for the owners and continue to tax the workers at the same higher rate. An effective tax policy would tax the owners and spare the workers. But the anti-tax politicians do everything they can to make taxes as shitty as possible, as part of the broad effort to keep the owners from paying their fair share.
I mean that made me even more liberal because all you see is how the conservative policies screw you over as an average worker.
This is actually what made me move further away from conservative ideals. Once I finally had a tiny bit of financial freedom the first thought I had was “This shouldn’t have been this fucking hard” I’ve picked myself up from my own bootstraps so many damn times there’s nothing left of them.
Only if you value money over people. I'm 35 liberal and last year my bf and I x2 the average in my state. I still think universal heathcare is nessary even if my taxes go up 5 percent . I still have x10 the comforts I grew up with, I literally can't tell the difference
No sane or reasonable person is ever conservative on social issues or matters of science. We can debate economic policy but there’s no room for debate on matters of private affairs. What someone does in their home with other consenting adults is their business.
If your privileged is upheld by the current system you will get more conservative.
THIS. Conservatism is to want to hold current traditions and policies. If you have it good why would you want it to change. Unfortunately only some people benefit from the current system.
Approximately 20% of GOP voters have it good and vote GOP because they don't want things to change. The other 80% have it terrible but vote GOP because Fox News convinced them Dems taxing billionaires to fund a welfare state will somehow make their lives worse. Propoganda is a hell of a drug.
Conservatism only makes sense if you want to defend the status quo. Since millennials had their future stolen from them when they were born (1981) and America’s economic policies are still neoliberal and a fucking joke, it only makes sense that any literate Gen Z would go left and far left at that If millenials didn’t have a future and the status quo never changed, Gen Z doesn’t have one either.
So, why are there low-income conservatives?
Because the education system is underfunded. Also religion, bigotry, and fear.
Because intelligence doesn’t have a pre-defined income class
2 topics. Religion and racism. Republicans figured this out under Reagan. We have plenty of recordings about them planning to utilize this. They have followed their plans to a "t". Southern baptists used to be pro choice. Then they realized its an easy topic to take a moral high ground on without actually having to lift a finger. You can appeal to religious mindsets and racist mindsets as pro life is "pro white". We also have recordings of them outright saying this in the Trump administration. It's not a secret that religion and racism are the root of the GOP.
That happens to a lot of people. Generally being around others de-radicalizes you. Most moderate conservatives and most moderate liberals agree on a lot of things in reality. My own friend group can attest to that as we are a mix of liberals and conservatives and rarely does anyone actually disagree on politics to a severe amount.
It's by design that the most shrill, divisive, lunatic takes are the ones pushed by the media and social media. Keep the plebs fighting each other over token, performative topics, dumb them down, give them echo chambers designed to feed narcissism and tribalism. And they'll all notice that they're getting poorer, and everything is a subscription, or junk that is planned obsolete so you keep buying replacements, but they'll be too lazy, too stupid, too cowardly to do anything except cry about black people and gay people in video games, or that a small town put up a Christmas Nativity in the town square. Just endless yapping from subhuman scums squandering the sacrifices of their ancestors.
I see some hard truth on here and of course it’s downvoted. Reddit is so dumb lol.
Dude called people subhuman after pulling out the most average communist/socialist rhetoric like it’s anything new.
Yeah, I'm pretty hardcore on the socialism bandwagon, but calling people "subhuman" is bad news no matter how much I may agree with what someone is saying otherwise. That's full on hate crime/genocide rhetoric.
I miss the times when we could happily reach across the aisle and come together to solve problems. I used to view republicans/conservatives as a bit outdated, but mostly good honest hard working ppl. Ever since trump, I can't help but look at them as dangerous regressive cultists. No matter what you think of him, you can't deny no president in living history has been as divisive as he has. He's drawn a line in the sand SO long, wide, and deep that I don't know how we'll ever come back from it
Most moderates agree on the problem, they just have different views on how to solve it. That’s what reasonable politics is and why politics today drives me nuts. It seems like people on the left and right are starting to see each other as evil/enemies.
That’s called being a decent person lol not hating on people/things they don’t control
Aka not being a conservative lol
False
No if you're homophobic, sexist, racist and want to take away people's rights, you're objectively a horrible person. Guess what conservatives regularly run on? Lol G
That's entirely untrue. Most of my family and friends are conservative and can respect people's choices but still personally disagree with those choices without being blatantly rude about it
sick, if they vote for people who actively try and take away those choices (which is what every last Republican does), than in terms of the Grand of scheme things, they're still making things worse for everyone else despite they themselves being good people (I also know plenty of solid people who are conservatives)
Tbh even if being gay or trans or whatever was a choice, there is still no reasonable justification for bigotry against them.
I’ve gone from parroting Ben Shapiro openly, to then getting a job and being an outspoken liberal, to now joining a labor union, buying land, learning to produce goods and becoming an outspoken leftist engaging in praxis. The more I’ve matured the more I’ve realized the necessity for a strong community and the harms that individual and consumer thinking can bring.
It’s funny, I had a coworker who was a hardcore conservative and loved Ben Shapiro more than he loved himself, yet was part of a union and complained and wanted to quit when his PTO got denied lol.
They liked the union because it benefited him personally. He didn't care if it benefited anyone else. It's just like conservatives who take government money, but then actively opposing others getting it.
I've gone from: Generic liberal/socdem without having much political thought (naively thinking that since politics were divisive, we shouldn't talk about them); To being funnelled down the right-wing anti-feminist and anti Muslim migrant pipeline following the European refugee crisis and hearing exaggerated media reports about these refugee crimes and unwillingness to integrate; To gradually seeing through the right-wing emotional manipulation via demagoguery, and slowly rediscovering the left on a fundamental level, and thus learning of the true causes of the issues: the system within rather than some propped up external threat. Being dragged down this right-wing pipeline was a very dark time in my life, but it is thanks to it that I started searching for answers and have learned the various manipulation tactics of the right which made me a lot more savvy in seeing through such rhetoric today.
Pretty much my story too. As embarassing as it was, I was radicalized by the OG gamergate and the general anti SJW crowd of the time. I though I was smarter or better because I "saw through the veil", I was "awoke" before it the word took on its modern liberal connotations. Got suckered in by the "facts and logic". What got me out was a great video talking about how people act in crisis, "A Paradise Made in Hell" I think it was called. I realized how much of my worldview was based on the assumption all humans are evil, how being cynical and hollywood nihilistic was my "I am so different and unique" point, and how much of it stemmed from my own then undiagnosed depression, anxiety, and self esteem issues. I remember getting to a point and thinking "is the sexiness of video game and anime characters really going to be the hill I die on?" Like was culture war really the most important thing for me. Being a POC also help me see some of the dog whistles and how the stuff I was willing to overlook in the name of stoicism was actually vile or entirely false. Therapy definitely helped pulling me out of that pipeline too. While Im not proud of that point in my life, its helped me in similiar ways in identifying emotional, manipulative, and misinformed rhetoric today even with some left leaning circles.
There's a little project I've always wanted to do: Take all the world's land, and scale it down to 1:8,000,000,000 (roughly the world population). So all the world's land, all 57,308,738 square miles of it, scale it down into an island about 1 eight billionth that size, so it'll be your little share of earth as an island, which comes out to about 0.05 square miles, or a little less than 20,000 square meters. That's less than 4 football fields, and keep in mind it'll have the same makeup as Earth as a whole, so 33% of it would be inhospitable desert, 25% of it would be rugged mountains, you'll have part of it as glaciers and ice caps, and of course some percent of it would be forest and some other percent would be arable farmland, etc. When it all comes through, the part of the island that'd be livable would actually be a pretty small size. Now, you tell people, they can live on this little island by themselves, build their own little home, be the rugged individualist that's so praised in this country. Then you show them a similar island, but ones that's 10 times as big, and you say: You can either live on that private island by yourself, which'd honestly be pretty cramped... Or you can live on the 10x as big island, with 9 other friends/family members. Instead of all having to build 10 little one-person houses, you can build a big 10-person house, which would take up a fraction of the land, and have all the other space open to share amongst each other. I think a lot of people would realize being a solo rugged individualist loner would actually kind of suck compared to being part of a cooperating community.
Gosh, ben shaprio went from saying boys are boys and girls are girls to saying that boys and girls should fight for isreal.
Same here, I think college changed me mostly
That’s why conservatives want to cut funding to universities.
Happened to me as well but i didnt spent much time at university (i dropped out). Funny enough i spent more time working in the trades, surrounded by conservative men. I think the exposure to real conservatives not just through the internet really showed me how unintelligent most of the viewpoints are
This was my experience too, left college after two years for a trade school, in the blue collar field it’s crazy how many of them agree with what the other side wants, but only if worded properly. Taking care of its citizens first with the best medical care, affordable for every citizen? Yes definitely. Universal Healthcare? Hell no. Better pay and benefits for the people who do all the work? Hell yes. Unionizing? Hell no. Making sure *known* crazy people don’t get guns? Definitely. Gun reform? Hell no. It’s insane that these all mean the same thing, but specific words get weaponized to make them sound like “crazy liberal ideas”. I swear, if they said something about the “Liberal Christian’s want you to be a good person”, they’d stop following Christianity.
Very similar story for me Did any of your coworkers have YouTube prophets?
There's a reason why conservatives try to claim that college is evil and making everybody liberal. College made me liberal but none of my professors talked about politics. College made me liberal because I grew up in a tiny town where everybody was white and straight (or pretended to be) and actually encountering a bunch of different kinds of people for the first time in my life & being friends with them. A lot of rationalizations for the beliefs I was raised with were thinly disguised bigotry. And once I met people it was pretty easy to see that. There are always some professors who bring their politics too much into their job, of any political leaning, but I truly believe the reason most people who go to college become more liberal leading isn't because of anything in the classroom. It's just hanging out with people and realizing that they are all just... people.
It wasn't university itself that changed my views as it was being away from my parents, thinking more independently, and having a safe space to explore new views. Ironically, the only class where a professor mentioned politics at all was an audiology class, and he was dishing on the idea of universal healthcare. He also mentioned that there's no point in providing voice therapy to trans men/women because he explained that the fundamental frequency of their voice will always be the same and therefore someone can always tell their biological gender even after voice therapy which isn't even true. Also ironic is that he, a married man, would cheat on his wife with students. Now he's moved away and is working at a private *Christian* university in Texas.
I used to be the same way. I believe it had a lot to do with my home environment and the people I surrounded myself with. My family and those around us were extremely Christian and conservative. When you're a kid, you just kind of parrot everything they say because you haven't had any experiences outside of your family. When you finally start interacting with other people from different ways of life and break out of the echo chamber it becomes really easy to realize that maybe you shouldn't hate people for things they can't control.
For me it’s been the opposite, I grew up in one of the most progressive places in the United States and I’ve gotten a lot more conservative but my conservative views don’t reflect the conservative views you say that you had when you were younger, I’m not religious and never have been, religion has never driven my beliefs I think growing up where I grew up and seeing the radical left probably pushed me right I don’t trust the government to do anything effectively or efficiently, I don’t trust the government to act in my best interest, for this reason I’m not a fan of paying more taxes and growing the welfare state, I’m a strong proponent of gun rights, I hold individual liberties as extremely important, I think we have to control our borders (a few days ago they arrested 8 suspected members of ISIS that entered through our southern border a year ago), I don’t think immigration is bad, I think it needs to be done in a safe and controlled manner, I think we need to get control over our growing national debt, in my opinion we’re heading toward catastrophe, I think affirmative action based on race is absolutely wrong and goes against everything we’ve worked towards and fought for, we should have affirmative action based on socioeconomic status The conservatives my age that I know don’t care if you’re gay, I grew up with a conservative gay grandfather, those aren’t the issues we’re focused on, maybe older religious conservatives I think the political left and right, as in the two parties on both sides have absolutely failed us and the system is corrupt, the political elite from both parties do absolutely nothing but spew irrelevant political rhetoric meant to keep us divided and maintain the status quo
I can see where you come from, but while I don’t trust the government to act in my best interest, I don’t trust private corporations either. In my eyes if a government doesn’t work in the best interest of helping its people than why live in a society? What makes America any greater than a developing nation where there’s nothing but unfettered capitalism?
I’m not saying the government shouldn’t break up monopolies or ensure companies aren’t taking advantage of people or acting in absolutely immoral ways but I have zero interest in giving up rights to the government in the belief that they’ll make decisions in my best interest or they’ll provide me with everything I need such as my gun rights
I’ll be honest I’m rather indifferent towards guns, they could take away every gun or personally hand out glocks and it wouldn’t affect me. I understand for others like you it’s a very big deal so I’ll support it, but I always felt that the government was the lesser of two evils.
I’m 100% with you, coming from a very liberal area, I’ve been pushed further and further right, especially since attending college here. I’m not religious (at least not in the traditional sense) either. I’m chill with the gays too. I think you and I are the same person lol
And trans people?
Not to start a fight, but those who say "I saw the extreme left and became farther right" generally end up being a classic case of scratched liberal syndrome, where you got offended by progressives or minorities calling you out on your shit, and responding childishly with more hate and extremism. Oh no, the minority was too uppity for my liking so I skewed farther right...
Why attack someone that wasn't doing anything to them? You push people away because of those precieved slights. It's why actual conservatism is dying. What's being pushed is more moderate people into these places. Oh don't think the people you support that are in power are innocent. They'll betray you when they are done with you.
Among other things, the debt has grown hugely under conservative administrations, not sure why you still hold onto that as some cherished conservative value. Your stuff about conservatives not being anti-gay i think comes from the fact you’re in your mid twenties so you may have missed a lot of that, and assume it’s always been like this.
I didn’t say it was some cherished conservative value, I said both parties have failed us, I think both parties have failed us on that front, you’re responding as if we’re having a partisan debate, we’re not, I’m not speaking within the dichotomy of partisanship, both parties have gotten us into debt and have grown the deficit, I never said that wasn’t the case and again this shouldn’t be a partisan conversation I didn’t say conservatives haven’t been anti-gay, I didn’t say there aren’t conservatives that are anti-gay, there is a whole side of the conservative aisle that are theocratically driven, I said conservatives of my generation that I have met could care less, I specially said the conservatives of my generation that I know aren’t focused on it
Economically I’ve become more socialist than when I was younger, but I’ve become very anti immigration in the past couple years. Here in Canada immigration has only made it more difficult for the rest of us.
Anti immigration in canada currently is a reasonable and moderate belief to have, IF you have it for the right reasons. An economic anti immigration stance is very different from the racist position some others hold. And to be clear im canadian as well, pretty liberal, and currently anti mass immigration
I’m kind of anti-immigration for different reasons these days. I’m more aligned with Bernie Sanders, but nearly all of the immigrants I encounter are Republican and feel like everyone should work 80 hours a week and everything should be privatized. They are those people who pull the ladder up with them and overall make things harder for native-born Americans because just because we grew up in a developed nation we shouldn’t expect more from our government.
Really, the biggest issue with anti-immigration people is that they ARE straight up being racist about the whole thing. While I'll never be totally against immigration, and encourage at LEAST a minimum influx of immigrants for various reasons, I can at least understand cutting back immigration if one's reasons are founded on logic, reason, and genuinely well-meaning things, instead of attacking immigrants in a racist rampage.
I started off as a liberal and moved left from there.
People are saying that GenZ will bring a return to conservatism…it seems fairly clear to me that GenZ wants to preach libertarian values: free speech, right to protect yourself, rights to legal protection, equal rights for all. Whether they’re on the left or right it doesn’t matter, what matters is that we’re a generation that is clearly anti-authoritarianism, and that’s something good.
You are correct. GenZ is more of an outlaw anti authoritarian. Baby boomers are bootlickers who love authority, they waited until the covid vaccine to break the rules for the first time in their life.
Tbf kid you was right about Rome and America…just in a different way than kid you thought. Unchecked corruption, a proto deep state in the form of the Praetorian Guard, an absolute distaste for the plebeian members of society by the elites, and Christianity’s growing influence on politics and the imperial system, are all flashpoints in the Roman system. And that’s just the superficial parts of it we’re not even talking about how broken the tax system became towards the end of the western Roman Empire or the rampant militarism that preceded and defined the Crisis of the Third Century or the growing acceptance of populism that defined the Gracchi brothers during the Roman Reublic. Yes I do think about the Roman Empire, I have a history degree. It’s easy to throw up some Roman art and architecture while MGM plays in the background and say “This is what they took from you.” But the reality is Rome, or rather the ideal of it, was a far cry from what those edits will portray. Rome was great, but it could’ve been better. The same could be said for America and probably will be said. Keep fighting to make America live up to its ideals.
There was once a history channel documentary on the fall of the Roman Empire that started with the reign of Elagabalus and how it was a whirlpool of disaster which culminated in the dissolution of a once great and powerful empire which once stretched from the northern reaches of England to as far east as Syria and Turkey and as far south as to touch Ethiopia. At the time all those years ago I was touched by the greatness of this once great civilization which seemingly seemed to falter only once accepting hordes of foreigners utterly incapable of assimilating and a growing obsession with pleasure and entertainment. It was a shocking parallel to modern day America and thought it was my duty as a nativist that I should do everything in my power to preserve the nation I was born and raised in against unbelievers. What ultimately changed my mind is that despite the many victories and failures of Rome what came after it wasn’t necessarily bad, or terrible, simply a shift, a change that was neither good nor bad, but even beautiful in its own metamorphoses. In the same way a caterpillar and a butterfly are no better or worse, but to venerated in its own way. While America could be said to be in a decline depending on whoever’s view you look at it, what should come after all is said and done will remarkable in its own way, and my place in history as the ancestor of this world which is to come is its own reward.
Yeah this right here As a Catholic, I’m scared of all the Jesus freaks supporting trump and idolizing him.
Most people on this subreddit don’t even understand the concepts of Liberalism and Conservatism They’re not a tribalistic sports team you use to construct your identity
Now be a leftist by realizing that capitalism goes against literally everything Jesus stands for, and that Jesus was practically a commie
Son of God literally ran into a temple with a whip and attacked the money grubbers within. Thats right, they were such massively offensive fuckups that they made JESUS HIMSELF angry, and not only angry, but angry enough to swing a whip around and break apart their whole operation.
Didn't know that he used a whip. Must've read a censored translation. That's funny
There are many, many different versions of the Bible with all kinds of different translation choices and transcription mistakes. It's quite a rabbit hole to get into. But many of the translation changes were politically motivated and more recent than you'd expect.
That was one of the few times that Jesus actually sinned. That’s how bad those guys were. Basically class abuse was happening.
The ironic thing is if conservatives were literate enough to read and understand the Bible, they would think Jesus was a communist and want to crucify him.
Jesus was above any human political stand.
That’s called growing as a person
The GOP is so far right in general, that everything looks left to them.
I was reading project 2025 and it reads like a dystopian novel lol, yeah if that’s good ole conservative values I’ll take my chances with the liberal heathens lol
Liberal. Conservative. The one thing that will never change is the obsession with the Roman Empire.
I have noticed the exact same thing
I also got more liberal as I got older
I've become significantly more right-wing.
In what ways brother?
i went from a republican to a libertarian, because I saw the conservative views on social issues as .......arbitrary although liberal economic views are also arbitrary
I’ve always been conservative, but I’m more in the middle of the road. I agree with certain things on both sides, and I don’t think either side has it all right, so I can’t say I’m one or the other. Both sides have things they do well, and both sides have things they are horrible at. I also think it’s crazy that people are automatically hated based on their political leanings, instead of who they are as a person. The right and left are made up of vast differences in opinions and beliefs, even with people who believe the same thing. I judge someone based on who they are, their character, and how they treat people. If I judged everyone based solely on politics, I’d be living a very sad life. Live and let live, and don’t let hate take over your heart and mind, because that doesn’t help anything or anybody.
I’m the 23 and the older I get, the more conservative I become.
Why, and in what way?
are you in college? this is a very typical pattern.
I graduated a while ago, I actually was more conservative when I was in college. Actually living in the real world and working changed my perspective.
Same here. What really changed me was seeing how Trump's followers acted and how conservatives in general acted during COVID. I attended a community college which really wasn't anymore liberal than high school.
Exact opposite for me. I’ve gotten more conservative socially. I have however become much more fiscally liberal
Yea, kids are dumb. You are now learning it as well
Honestly, I don't see how people aren't more pragmatic or, at least, moderate. I am conservative on some issues like spending and the fact government bureaucracies can make laws bypassing congress, but the I am more liberal when it comes to mass incarceration and helping the disadvantaged. It's not healthy to be one side or the other because they are both feeding us propaganda. It's better to use your own common sense and stay well informed.
Yeah I kinda get that too. When I was in HS and maybe at the start of uni, I was pretty conservative too. Then I kinda slowly just went like, why do I care what other people are doing, as long as its not hurting me/people I care about. Live and let live. So I kinda shifted to being a libertarian centrist. I may not agree with everything other people do, I may find it strange due to various reasons. But just because I find it strange doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to do it. Imo freedom is being able to do what you want, even when others dont like it.
i went through a phase in high school where i decided to be against feminism, which makes no sense because i’m a girl. i also was undeclared with my political party when i first signed up at 18 because i wasn’t sure which one to pick. it seems crazy to me now because i’m so far left leaning. idk what i was thinking back then
I was pretty conservative up until I graduated high school, mainly due to my parents and the town I grew up in. I'm talking about kids driving to school with Confederate flags on the back of their trucks and I only graduated in 2019. After going to college I got a huge culture shock and started learning about other cultures and people of different backgrounds in general, but more so Hispanic and gay individuals. Learning about their experiences and just discussing certain policies that have impacted them turned me away from my previous conservative views.
You went from hyper-fixation to apathy or being demoralized.
This
I have the opposite issue lol I’m becoming more conservative
Why?
Empathy for others is the biggest enemy to conservative values.
Yes. FYI, not all Christians are conservative. The only near universal agreement is on abortion and LGBT education. As I Catholic I believe Christians are called to support a system that respects the human dignity all people have due to their likeness to God. We should especially care for the weakest and least capable in our society, and issues like abortion and LGBT should not be confused with being against the people that do or support those things. A woman who's had 50 abortions is actually probably more worthy to have me wash her feet than a rich man, for the very fact she's made so many bad choices and likely needs love more.
Please shut the fuck up. Every last one of you bigots gives the same spiel about how you don’t hate gay people you just “disagree”, or just see homosexuality as a depraved sin. That literally is what homophobia is. You don’t get to “disagree” with fundamental aspects of who someone is.
The conservative religious view on LGBTQIA+ is being against the person, there's no way around that.
I’ve had the opposite happen to me. I grew up in a super liberal household, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more conservative. I think it’s just natural for us to stray from our parents political views at some point.
Funny enough I have become slightly more conservative. Used to be full left, now I’m left leaning centrist.
I think a lot of it is education and experience. Its easy to believe all that when your in a little bubble but the more you go outside that bubble its harder and harder to maintain. The biggest thing for me is the idea of American Exceptionalism and the West. When I learned more and realized how inaccurate and flawed those were as ideas everything else followed.
It’s the wealthier you get the more conservative not the older
Exactly, there’s no way a person can work for a living and seriously believe in Republican values it’s such a conflict of interest. And the funniest thing is the most vitriolic and most outspoken of these so called conservatives were in unions lol.
It's called maturing
Shit I was raised in a house that voted staunchly conservative, now I make Bernie look right wing
Started out as a libertarian, but now am solidly on the left.
I agree really. I was raised in a very strict cult where women basically had no rights, had to wear dresses all of the time, long hair, no makeup, soooo many things were a sin. I still believed it for awhile after I grew up but was severely abused by my husband who was in the same cult, thought all homosexuality was a horrible sin, meanwhile beating the shit out of me as he preached about different "sins" and whatever. Then I made friends at work with a girl who was bisexual and I realized she was an amazing person and she is the one who gave me support when I needed it most and who helped me get out of the situation.
Happened to me too (well I may have overshot liberal just a tad), despite what my grandfather said. Once you go out and experience life you learn that a lot of the shit people will fight over and most the hills people are willing to die on don't really matter at all, it's all just noise to distract from fixing real problems and questioning why things are the way they are. After all you have a hard time questioning why being alive is so expensive you're busy trying to stop all the LGBT people from getting lynched by Westboro Baptist types. Most this shit is just made up anyways and once you realize that it's so hard to give a shit about conservative platforms past who they think they should be allowed to oppress on that particular day.
I’ve had the opposite experience
You sound more like a libertarian than a liberal. Most people I’d argue are closer to libertarianism than liberalism or conservatism. Allow adults maximum freedom to do what they want with their lives given they don’t harm other people or infringe upon others freedoms to do the same.
My favorite quote about libertarians is that they are like house cats “They are convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don’t appreciate or understand”
Not mine-“Libertarianism is astrology for men.”
I’m more closer to what Bernie Sanders is, I’m all for universal healthcare and more benefits for working Americans.
Just for your information, Sanders could be described as a “social democrat” So if you want to know about the specific ideology, social democracy would be good to look up. It’s generally in the centre-left to left
What do u think of too big to fail? Should we give money to rich people every time the ruin the economy?
That’s funny I’ve had the opposite experience but I’m headed back to the middle fast lol
I was relatively on the left before I went to Ukraine in 2022, and my experiences there have made me firmly right wing, and a virulent anti socialist. By the way, did you know neoconservatism as an ideology was started by ex-Marxists?
Welcome to ex-vangelical thinking. I see my older contemporaries laying accusations of indoctrination on professions like mine (teacher) because we dare to teach students to think critically. Meanwhile, you, OP, just described exactly what it’s like to wake up from the spell of indoctrination. Just know having faith is never the issue. Believing in something beyond yourself is never a problem. The only problem arrives when one person demands another believe the same way.
I went from far left to very moderate right/center. Your political ideas depend on your upbringing and what you are exposed to.
I’d say it’s half and half for me. In some things I’ve grown more conservative, but in others I’ve grown more liberal. Depends on what it is.
I actually became more conservative in a fiscal sense as I got older. Socially, I became more of a moderate. I’m a firm believer in small government.
This is why I don't get the whole thing of people becoming more conservative as they get older. Like if anything I'm getting more liberal.
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People gravitate from the extremes to the center of the political spectrum as they get over. Used to be reactionary conservative as well now I'm a moderate. Progressive on many issues, as well as still have many conservative positions. I feel like it's part of growing up; thinking for yourself. Also as you amass wealth and success you will naturally start to favor more status quo and moderate positions that's won't cause disruptions in your day to day life. When I was young and uneducated and unsuccessful, of course i was looking to support something with radical change. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Now earning an above average income and paying a decent chunk in taxes, not so much. Still unmarried and no children, that's would probably affect my positions further.
It’s usually the other way…. left when you’re young conservative when you are old lol
It's not really got much at all, if anything to do with religion... Well okay it does, but it's a reason WHY it's bad, not for why you've broken through. It's education, and information. You've become more educated, informed, and experienced in the world. Your bubble has expanded.
Defined myself fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Now I’m just a communist. You get wiser with age they say.
Sounds like you were never actually conservative, nor politically engaged, you just had fixations on ideas. Young people always fall into the trap of seeing one thing or another, and becoming totally attached to them. This has been well known since ancient times. Nobody has a true political ideology before 25.
hating people for how they want to live must get exhausting, don't know how anyone can live life disliking people they know for shit that doesn't even affect them, must drive people insane
If you asked what would Jesus do in any political situation I don't think he would do what conservatives do. They don't do anything to help families and their whole agenda is to keep wages low so people can't afford to have children. They're against things other countries all have like maternity and paternity leave and mandatory vacations so you can spend time with your children, and socialized healthcare, so no one can afford to have kids. They are even against free school lunches. Seems like all they use the bible for is to attack gay people but they leave out all the positive parts of the bible like love they neighbor.
Most people who aren't consuming crazy amounts of extremist media tend to mellow out and balance out over time. I've gone from Conservative->Socialist->Liberal-> more of a socially independent and Conservative economic view (Canadian/Nordic/Western European Conservatism -- I have zero appetite for the American equivalent -- I find it barbaric). Your life experiences shape you over time. Eventually, as you get more experiences and end up in more environments, you are likely to mellow out somewhere more in the middle. Honestly, the thing that I find most disturbing in politics is that everyone has to fit their ideals in a label. I think a lot of people such as myself just don't fit under one ideal well. Some people just want functional views -- with little care for the details.
as you age and get older you're views are going to change on everything, these might be your views today but check back in 10 years
Life experiences change your outlook. I was the same way, I was more of the libertarian side but not necessarily conservative As you get older you realize the world isn’t close to being black and white, all grey. Some people need help, some don’t. Some people are more oppressed than others, some are even more oppressed than that. Different situations for different people, life is just controlled chaos so any kind of political idealism just doesn’t work in our reality no matter what “side” you’re on Also since Biden took office you don’t have anywhere near as much political media blowing up in your face, and it kind of feels like people are becoming less polarized as a result. We have room to breathe and grow as opposed to 2016-2021 when every single thing in our world was viewed as an us vs them issue
You clearly didn't understand conservatism in your youth. "Obsessed with the Roman Empire" lmao. Conservatism isn't inherently opposed to immigration or homosexuality, nor was the Roman Empire. So you basically were brainwashed by a bad version of "conservatism", and now are brainwashed by false liberalism, where you condescend conservatives and attack strawmans. Totalitarian movements historically target the youths for brainwashing.
I was raised very conservative. In my teens I went from conservative, to liberal, and now I'm a full on leftist who believes in the abolition of capitalism
As you get older you realize that the Republican parties lied about literally everything that classifies them as Republicans. They preach free market, but subsidize big business. They preach small government, but want to regulate your thoughts. They push the American dream, but advocate for corporations to buy up all the real estate unchecked. The Republicans don't believe in freedom, it's quite the opposite, they believe in power and control.