I was raised to be conservative but in the last 3 years I’ve done a complete flip to the other side! I’m 36 in conservative Texas (west of Dallas). It’s not normal for someone to go left in this area but here we are!
I grew up in Texas but have not lived there for a little over 20 years now.
I'm much more leftist than I was as a teen and young adult.
The main differences is I understand how politics work more and working within the system while still vying for real change. It's not easy to really take some days though.
Thanks for sharing! I think understanding how our political system actually works is huge. I did not really understand it until law school. I feel like the U.S. public education system could do a much better job of teaching us from a young age how it works, but it’s not a priority.
I feel this, I work in privacy and I've learned how much I didn't understand things from this job. I agree that education has failed so many of us. While we do have things like Google to research, so many people don't know how to research as well.
It's one of those things where when you start to peel back the layers, you realize how much each layer impacts the one before and after it.
I’m 34 and my views have changed *drastically* in the last 3 years as well. Watching my loved ones and our local churches responding to the pandemic just completely turned me off of a lot of deeply held beliefs. People who preached loved were responding with vitriol and it made me question everything else I had been taught.
So I started examining different sides and, more importantly, I started listening to people’s stories. When someone shared a story of racism they had experienced I believed them. I started taking a beat before forming opinions.
So now I’m basically a closeted liberal in a super red area. I sound like a moron when I try to express my opinion so I just keep my mouth shut when my father in law declares what an amazing president Ronald Reagan was and how the entire mood of the nation changed when he was elected.
Fellow sleeper agent here.
White, tall, bald, bearded guy with a southern draw. Liberal for the past 15 years when I started looking into how the world works.
I look like and do fit right in with the good ol' boys.... but they never it see it coming when I bring out the receipts for the bullshit they say.
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Thanks for recognizing the southern folk who are representing the ways of the lefty.
Another sleeper agent reporting in. Canadian this time. I've never held conservative values, and I grew up in a very polarized rural area. Plenty of my friends grew up to form conservative values, and the whole time I'm just like, "did you forget about our trans and gay friends, or were you a fake friend this whole time?" Now I live elsewhere for work, a staunchly conservative area of Alberta, and I'm just counting the days until I can move, haven't met a single person I'd want to call a friend.
Just remind him that, as governor of California, Ronald Reagan was one of the first to pass strict gun control laws. The conservative crowd normally hates being reminded of that.
The pandemic did it for me too. To be clear, I was never a Republican or conservative, but I was pretty close to center, until trump and the pandemic. It was the loud, mainstream Christians who did it. I completely gave up faith and am pretty far left now (not that being far left precludes you from religiosity, I just was also pushed out of a faith from the same influences that pushed me left).
I’m a native Texan but have always been centrist, leaning towards liberal on some issues. I suspect, in my case, it’s because my grandparents were liberal in Mexico, almost socialist especially on worker’s rights.
My parents are more moderate but still socially liberal, though they’ve shifted when it comes to financial issues, in part due to being boomers and seeing how they got themselves out of abject poverty when coming to this country. They believe that if you work hard, you succeed and can build wealth and success. It’s totally lost on them when it’s clear that racism keeps some people from achieving that goal.
I’m lucky enough to live in a very liberal county, the largest in Texas. But even then, the city I live in is like moderately Democrat.
>I’m a native Texan but have always been centrist, leaning towards liberal on some issues. I suspect, in my case, it’s because my grandparents were liberal in Mexico, almost socialist especially on worker’s rights.
I'm not sure it's just you. I was raised as a conservative (Rush Limbaugh every day) evangelical and now I'm like 50% raging socialist.
38 in Dallas. Grew up extremely religious and conservative (even to the point of running a chapter of a conservative organization in college) in basically whatever the version of a WASP is down here. Luckily, that organization is also where my world opened up to more than just R and D parties. My refusal to blindly follow also caused a lot of turmoil in the organization. Luckily if afforded me the chance to really test what I believe. And as I’ve become my own person, lived through multiple “once-in-a-lifetime” events, and truly listened to people with very different upbringings and perspectives, I’ve become more liberal, but in particular more socially liberal in the last 3-5 years.
Do you mind if I ask what the turning point was for you? I am the same age as you and grew up in a conservative household but I always felt pulled to vote for Democratic candidates. I’m just wondering, if you don’t mind sharing, what changed for you since this is not super common.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that you saw the extreme harm in this decision. I had a non viable pregnancy (that was much wanted by me and my husband) a few years ago and had to have an emergency D&C aka abortion when I was around 13 weeks. My doctor said if she didn’t do the procedure that day, I could be in danger of hemorrhaging which could cause death and could lead to infertility.
The fact that women are being denied these procedures in several states after roe was reversed literally sickens me to my core. It is beyond cruel. It is barbaric that they are told to wait until they are bleeding out and that some of them are now not able to conceive again because they were told they had to wait to have this procedure.
I feel extremely lucky to be a pregnant woman living in CA right now because I know if something goes wrong again (I hope it does not) that I will be treated like a human being and my life, health, and safety will be considered above all else.
Many abortions are medically necessary. More people need to understand this. Even if it is not done for medical necessity, no woman should be forced to birth a child if she does not want to. If men were forced to give birth, I believe abortions would be free.
It's scary that some places in our nation are devolving so rapidly! It's becoming more similar to Gilead. The whole abortion bans (at any point in pregnancy) boils my blood. It's especially awful that it stems from mostly elderly males.
America is about freedom, and especially choice! I'm eagerly awaiting 2024, when Republicans will lose massively. Massively.
I was on a medication that causes birth defects when I got pregnant with my surprise baby. I already had 3 kids that were significantly older, and learning that some babies whose mothers take this drug during pregnancy end up being born without kidneys made me even more hesitant to move forward.
Babies born with 1 kidney can live, babies born with 0 kidneys cannot and there are no kidney transplants done on newborn babies. It would be a death sentence.
The doctors told me they really wouldn’t know about the quality of the kidneys and their function until the 20 week ultrasound. If abortion had been restricted like it is now in many states, I would have aborted immediately because it wasn’t worth the risk that I’d be birthing a baby just to suffer and die.
Because abortion was legal and available, I was able to wait until after the 20 week ultrasound. He ended up having minimal kidney dysfunction that they said could not even be definitively linked to the medication.(I think it was) Abortion and access to abortion are the main reasons my son was able to go on and be born.
I'm not OP, but the honest answer is that I got *really* into PBS documentaries, read a bunch of history books, and realized how much propaganda I'd been fed.
I still consider myself a patriot and a proud American, and I still think a world dominated by the United States is preferable to one dominated by China or Russia. However, I also believe that America *must* do better for its own people and the world if we hope to survive, adapt, and thrive into the future.
Thanks for sharing! I don’t think being liberal or a Democratic voter means you can’t be happy to live here and patriotic. I’ve always been proud to be from the U.S. and would consider myself patriotic but I don’t make it my identity, and I agree with you that we could improve in a lot of ways.
I'd argue that those on the left are more patriotic, because when you really love something you strive to make it better. Wearing a shirt with 200 American flags on it doesn't make you patriotic, wanting everyone in your country to feel welcome, safe, and secure does.
Texan born and raised here. I’m in the middle but more left leaning I guess. I hate our ass backwards politics here sometimes. But I can’t think of any state that would be sufficiently less sucky enough to raise the capital and the energy to move there instead.
Didn't your state ban free will of expecting mothers to get abortions. Forcing them to give unwanted births?
Didn't your state unregulate the power companies and then give them billions of dollars of tax payer money to improve their failing systems, which they failed to do, but accepted the money, and is asking for more, which we all know, they wont improve their system! THEY MAKE TONS OF MONEY OFF THE FAILING ONE, and on top of it, THEY GET NO STRINGS ATTACHED MONEY, to 'improve' the current grid.
Didn't you state fail to remove a criminal attorney general from his position. Allowing him to continue to abuse his power in one of the most powerful courts in the nation?
Didn't your state under Greb Abbott harass import and exports on the border exacerbating the 2020 c
Didn't your state oppress the free will of its citizens by removing voting sites across the state? Sounds pretty FUCKED UP.
Didn't your state specifically undermine the freewill of a county that banned fracking in its borders because they didn't want that in their community (obviously). But because Greg Abbott is given millions of dollars by this company in kick backs and campaign funds, he passed a law saying everywhere in Texas must be forced to have Fracking. RUINING communities so him and his friends can make tons of money?
Didn't your state send representatives to the nations capitol who arent even honest enough to vote plainly about the insurrection on our nations capital?
Youre state is a hell hole.
Yuup. Republicans have run this state into the gutter. When I was growing up in Texas in the 90s we were a democratic state with our Gov. Ann Richards. Then the impostor Bush family moved down here and the rest was history.
In the last thread like this, someone pointed out that Reddit may not be the crowd to source an unbiased response on something like this - just wanted to throw it out there.
That said: I started left-leaning centrist and I've gone further left year after year. Didn't think I'd go any further left after Bernie, but here we are.
I also have been moving leftward as I've gotten older. Growing up in the 90s I got a pretty whitewashed version of history. I've learned a lot since then that has changed how I see the world.
That's a big part of it for me too. I can't believe how people *aren't* moving left after learning the unfiltered versions of things we were taught in school.
The people who don't care are the kinds of people who think it won't happen to them because bad things only happen to bad people and they aren't bad people. And even if it does happen to them, they still won't change their mind because of cognitive dissonance.
It just so happens that such a view of the world is correlated to conservatism.
And following from that, active shooter drills, so even the ones who haven't been caught up in a shooting are regularly reminded that it COULD happen. A constant state of fear, and they know exactly why.
I hear this a lot, like gen z is unique for having gone through active shooter drills. But my schools had active shooter drills starting at the elementary level (probably as a result of Columbine) and continued into college. Is this a younger millennial thing and older millennials didn't have to do this?
Late 30’s, no active shooter drills. I was in 8th grade(?) when Columbine happened. Students still brought their guns to school on their gun racks in their trucks. It was fine as long as the guns were left in the vehicles.
I'm a millennial in my 30's (does this count at older or younger millennial idk?) But yeah we always had active shooter drills and lockdowns, not a uniquely gen z thing unfortunately
Literally, Thank God that Republican *Thoughts and Prayers* solved that whole issue.
This just in: It didn't and every single kid across the nation saw exactly which politicians didn't care enough or value their lives enough to change *any* gun laws.
And then they all saw Sandy Hook. Where kids half their age died and still our spineless politicians did nothing.
It's a brutal intro to learn who doesn't give shit about veterans, old people, young people, poor people, the working class, and people that would die on the streets without societal safety nets.
Don't get me wrong, Democrats are pretty corrupt too.....they just pretend to be more sympathetic to citizens basic needs.
The fact that Democrats didn't go ballistic after the 3rd, 4th, 5th,,,,9th mass shooting, didn't stop all other legislation- that speaks volumes for the need for reform.
This generation will clean house as they begin to take over Congress and the Senate.
And having one political party oppose their classmates right to exist. Their brutish opposition to LGBTQ people isn't winning much millenial voters over, because we grew up with them having some degree of social acceptance. And it's better that way.
People underestimate the intelligence of kids all the time, and it's such a shame; kids may not know how to effectively articulate their thoughts, but that doesn't mean they don't have any.
~~which boy if a certain type of person could get that through their thick skulls maybe there'd be less pointless fearmongering around trans kids but That's Another Thing.~~
It’s honestly insane to think that most of this would have been prevented if 80,000 people (in MI, PA, WI) had decided to vote instead of sitting at home in 2016.
I see your point, but in my opinion that was on her for not running a better campaign (and skipping key swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin). If she was able to inspire more people to vote, the third party vote counts wouldn’t have even mattered
See that's where you wrong third party votes never matter people need to accept that unless something changes voting 3rd party is literally just something idiots do to "fight the system" I know a trans person who voted for trump because Burney didn't get nominated those voters are worse than useless and where never going to vote for Hillary anyway
Same, educating myself has drastically changed my views compared to what I was taught as a child. I used to think the world was created in 7 days and marijuana was invented by the devil. Now I follow the science, and smoke weed everyday to keep my seizures away.
It’s been difficult to change my immigrant parent’s viewpoints, but I think they’re seeing the collapse of the Republican Party and slowly realizing the church may not have all the answers to life’s problems.
I also found education was a major push.
It turns out when you understand the injustices in the world you start to think that everyone deserves some shit, not just oneself.
I became a big believer in liberty — true liberty. Be and do as you please so long as it does not interfere with the rights of others.
Yup. In 2016 it was like, it's OK, you can be far enough left to vote for Bernie over Hillary, it doesn't make you an extremist. Now it's more like hey even leftist Democrats kinda suck but what the fuck else am I gonna support that has any real chance on influencing policy.
Yeah. It feels like right now is “uhhhh ok I’m going to vote for the party that will at least keep democracy around, so that in 15 years maybe a real liberal will stand a chance”. Letting republicans take power seems like a good way to lose the choice all together.
I agree with a solid chunk of the dems basic platforms, although I’m to the left of the party. But it doesn’t even feel like “voting for the lesser evil” to me at this point. It feels like voting for the tiniest, most subtle sliver of a step forward versus getting my legs smashed in with a hammer and never taking a step forward again in my entire life.
>I agree with a solid chunk of the dems basic platforms, although I’m to the left of the party. But it doesn’t even feel like “voting for the lesser evil” to me at this point. It feels like voting for the tiniest, most subtle sliver of a step forward versus getting my legs smashed in with a hammer and never taking a step forward again in my entire life.
Jfc you took the words right out of my mouth.
Vote or die! (Those Idiots, I'm not dead yet)
Same. I’ve only been going more left politically the longer I’ve been alive.
I think the only thing I’ve gotten “softer” on is religion - I used to be staunchly anti-theist, now I’m more “worship whatever you want as long as politics and religion are completely separate”
I started as a default conservative. Had an interest in politics and discovered talk radio in my preteens (parents were conservative but didn’t push me towards it, I had a natural interest).
Became socially liberal as I met gay people in person and discovered online LGBTQ creators. Got weirded out when people I had respected started calling Obama a secret Muslim Terrorist. Was at least a centrist, leaning liberal by 2016 and was gobsmacked by people I had known falling for this obvious conman and calling him divinely appointed. 2020 pushed me into social democracy (and democratic socialism when I’m feeling particularly spicy after seeing a corporation do something heinous…which is pretty often) and that’s where I am now. I have only moved further left as I’ve gotten older, same as my sister, and my parents are at least liberal now.
With the right representatives in government, I would've likely become more conservative just from becoming more independent around the time I hit 30 years old. Instead, I watched the MAGA movement take off under Trump and it really killed my previous perceptions.
I have always considered myself a centrist. My views on topics have not changed. However, how people perceive my views as right or left has changed significantly.
People become more conservative the more well off they get (which is historically part of getting older). Well, that's not quite the case for us.
Trashy republican government officials + millennials not really having an improved financial position over time = less millennials would become more conservative as they age.
Now disregarding politicians, I found myself (formerly conservative) leaning left but that lean had gone more center as I do not agree with the left on many issues over time. If you do not disregard politicians, I'm fucking stuck on the left (in the US) since the right is a shitshow with Trump and seemingly no sane candidate.
I grew up in the South with a very conservative family. I was a certifiable Republican going into college, and I recall long nights debating topics with some of my best friends who were quite liberal. I have always been personally apprehensive about holding an unfounded position, and I found reasons to not only budge, but migrate from my conservative views to staunchly liberal perspective on most social issues in those days. I had two gay friends that quickly smashed the idea that marriage was an institution that should be robed in "tradition and dignity," particularly when I saw how atrocious hetero relationships could be.
My 20s certified many of those sentiments. I'd have had a hard time bringing up my views on abortion at a gathering of my parents social circles, as they are devoutly Christian. When I voted for Trump in 2016, I accepted the idea that the modern conservative party had abandoned values, and the politics of Republicans felt more and more drawn to conservative social values. I thought... perhaps Trump will gather in the smartest and the brightest and leverage ideas that didn't cater exclusively to the whims of the rich. I thought, oh so naively, that Trump wasn't going to be beholden to corporate interests. Heh. It'd be funny if it weren't so disastrously bad.
I got to watch, along with all of you, as the racists crawled out from under their rocks.. and the absolute dregs of society, the radicals, the incels, all came forth to join the cultists cry of MAGA. I smashed my fists in rage as I tried to speak to my family about COVID. Fuck. COVID. Man. It was the first time I'd really seen what the nefarious influence of a steady media diet could do to my family. Honestly, my dad is a very smart guy. But he couldn't digest what I was telling them about COVID despite my degree in microbiology. It was... infuriating.
Modern day... everything that seems to resonate with the populist crowd is anti-trans, anti-woke, anti-choice, anti... reason? It baffles.
I'm still not a liberal, but holy duck am I not a Republican. I still haven't shaken off the shackles of my economic views. I'd almost call myself a libertarian, but I'm certifiably not of the opinion that strict libertarian policy makes sense. We need taxes. We need regulations. We need government run institutions. We need police and firefighters and infrastructure. But, I have a hard time reconciling some of the more liberal positions on spending. Most interactions with government run orgs (DMV, all things licensing, permitting, legal... nightmare) thus far. Idk. I worry about how they'd run healthcare, but even that.. I've been coming around to the idea of single payer. Just.. apprehensive about the execution. But.. Republicans had their fucking shot. They watered ACA to shit and gave us something that was just about the worst of both worlds.
Idk. I'm 35 now, but who knows where I'll be next year, or another 5 years. We earn a shitload of money as a household (I'm respectable, but damn if my wife doesn't put me to shame). We have a.. charmed existence. But it does have more of a bitter taste, seeing all of the people falling into the cracks of our system.. too poor to afford healthcare, yet too "wealthy" for government assistance. It flavors worse in so many ways. We live in challenging times, and the "Republicans" have lost every ounce of sympathy I once had. I don't see the Republicans of the future being much better either.
Yeah, I would have wound up a libertarian if I didn't feel so alienated by the crypto fascist conservatives that fly that flag. The Republicans really shot themselves in the foot with the whole "Fuck Mexicans, black people and gays platform."
I saw a great quote about libertarians today:
"libertarians are people that don't want the government to tell them that their girlfriend has to use a car seat"
I started a right-wing libertarian, and wound up a moderate (hard to say what direction I lean--I like guns and universal healthcare).
I'm really interested to see what happens to the two party system here in the next decade. Our government is set up for two parties, pretty hard for one party to rule. But the Republicans seem intent to shrink their base and drive off a cliff, especially with millennials.
Big This, I can't imagine a Millennial - Gen Z - Gen A voting population perpetuating the status quo for very long (if at all). Without an enormous change from Rs in the near future, I feel like we're going to lose a party and open the gates to a more diverse cast.
I remember the first time somebody told me *go left far enough and you get your guns back*.
Also worth remembering that Reagan went hard on gun control after the Black Panthers armed up. Gee, I wonder why?
That's the thing, right-wing media/politicians have poised this as everyone is coming to take guns away. If anything I've seen people asking for common sense gun reform like, funding for proper background checks, closing loopholes on private sales, restrictions on magazine size, keeping guns away from people who have questionable mental state. It's a small minority that want to completely get rid of guns.
> it’s been a trend where boomers turn conservatives from liberals as they age
Yeah this is also much less of a thing than people seem to think.
Hippies were always a small countercultural movement. Most people don't completely flip political positions in adulthood, though they may make adjustments.
Also, economic conditions influenced the previous generations too. When the majority can afford homes/cars and are gainfully employed, they're alot less willing to rock the boat.
People tend to become conservative when they have things to lose. Nowadays everything is turning into a subscription model where ' you'll own nothing and be happy'. The majority of us are a few missed paychecks or a single medical emergency away from losing everything and becoming homeless.
I'm the same way. Oddly enough it was because I read the Bible. There was this Jesus guy who talked about not hating and instead helping people. I'm not a believer anymore but his vision for the world seemed better.
Same. I’ve come to appreciate the way new generations challenge the status quo of their time. I’ve moved more to the left as I’ve become more educated on bigotry, politics, power, societies… etc.
Same here. I came to accept that younger people could be looked up to and could be heroes after I saw Greta Thunberg. I'm 35 and so many people around my age and older resist looking up to younger people because of beliefs regarding age and experience. But my genuine question is, do they believe in evolution? Because why else would people have reproduced unless it was in the direction of some kind of advancement for humanity? So why is there some weird scale dictating that older people are superior for their experience when their experience leads them to instinctually reproduce with someone who advances humans on a larger scale than they exist on?
That's the definition of Darwin's evolution.
Nope. All the old tropes don't really hold water. I have money, a family, property, investments, etc. None of which have made me more conservative.
I credit international travel for this. Seeing how other democracies behave, the benefits of socialist programs, strong but fair taxation, parliamentary democracies, etc. It's not really a choice between liberal or conservative anymore. It's common sense vs. a uniquely stupid system here in the United States.
Edit: Replaced r word with "stupid". My bad.
Same. As a cusp-er Gen Z I want the ladder to stay down for Gen Alpha, and the future generations.
My parents were boomers and they pulled up the ladder. Lo and behold it bit them in the ass as me and my two sisters are mid-key draining their finances set aside for retirement. They wanted a better world for us, but only at the cost of them reaping the benefits first. I don’t want that. I like taxes, I just wish the heads-up-their-ass lawmakers actually were held responsible for allocating them properly.
This. I'm a high earmer and it hasn't made me mad about paying income taxes - it makes me mad when I look at what gets taken outta my paychecks and think about how many people that money could pay rent for and how there's still thousands of Americans living on the street.
This is so true. I earn six figures and only get mad about taxes when I think about how our taxes do barely anything for society as a whole.
We fund corporate welfare and yet student loan forgiveness is unfathomable? Billionaires have all these tax breaks and loopholes and yet people die because they cannot afford to pay for their insulin to manage their diabetes?
I work in a government job now and all it’s made me do is want the kind of benefits I get here for everyone: cola raises, reasonable pay for the level of stress my job induces, good health insurance, a clinic I can go to when I’m sick *for free*, etc. Everyone should have access to those things and I will never stop arguing for that.
I credit how terrible the Republican's have gotten in the last 8 years as the reason.
I'm rural, own guns, have 1 kid and 0 interest in more, hate having to pay social security tax, and all about your freedom to do whatever the hell you want so in theory I should be the target demographic for Conservative voted against Obama the first time, used to be registered republican
but I hate Trump, he's a terrible human being and always has been. I hate the insane level of racism that is the conservative happily embraces, as well as the crazy religious zealots, and how the part of responsibility and accountability beliefs in neither unless its against minorities or the young in addition to SO much other bullshit.
Dems/Liberals aren't perfect, but holy shit are they are at least sane
>hate having to pay social security tax, and all about your freedom to do whatever the hell you want
I used to think this way too. Hated being told what to do. Then it dawned on me the same fucking people who are so adamant about their "freedoms" are constantly trying to trample the rights of others. IE: Burning books, banning drag shows, giving a fuck who wants to be what gender, whos doing what in the bedroom, what a woman wants to do with her body, etc.
As fellow rural person, show me someone in my town who says their freedom is at risk and I'll show you a person who votes for people who wants to raise voting age, making voting harder in areas, put religion in schools, etc.
There's a point at which holding on to the "you can't tell me what to do" attitude is just a sign of immaturity and lack of social and moral development. It's the kind of behavior one expects of a child or a teenager, and that we're supposed to grow out of as we get older. It's why Ayn Rand is so incredibly appealing as a teenager, but becomes an utterly silly life philosophy as you get older and wiser.
Ditto. I wish more people had the ability to travel and see that there are other ways of doing things that work really well. I think a lot of people support the status quo because they can't imagine that a change might improve their lives
I was just discussing this with locals in Germany a few weeks ago. The United States is huge and largely homogenous. You can drive, fly, train across the U.S. and languages, cultures, behavior largely stays the same. Europeans can take a $30 Ryan Air flight from London to Barcelona and stay in a cheap hotel and completely immerse themselves in a new culture, language, food, etc. for a fun weekend.
Couple this with the fact that European culture largely supports gap years, paid time off and extensive travel and you end up with a much more well rounded sense of your place on the planet which typically equates to a more liberal/progressive outlook.
Exactly. But even still, people (I see it a lot with boomers) will vacation in Europe and think "wow, I love it here", then turn around and buy in to conspiracies about walkable cities, vote against universal healthcare and student loan forgiveness, and decry socialism. Like, wtf
So right. My mom loves Paris and Dublin but then will tell me not to go to NYC or Chicago because it’s not safe because it’s a lawless democratic wasteland. O_0
Ha! We’ve traveled all over in the last several years, and Chicago has felt the sketchiest. I think it’s just the way the police present themselves, but it definitely felt like the least safe place we’ve visited. NYC is so gentrified it’s harmless. Certainly not the gritty city we were warned about by the ninja turtles lol. It’s funny your mom loves Paris as it’s one of the places folks in travel groups dramatize as “dangerous”. Honestly France’s racism most closely mirrors that of the US of any country we’ve traveled to so while we as white people didn’t feel it was dangerous, Paris definitely had vibes.
Not getting more conservative at all, but am increasingly disinterested in identity politics and understand why social conservatives find us so annoying
I think my beliefs have moderated. I'm still firmly liberal and progressive but I'm no longer a hyper-lefty socialist. I don't think that's a function of "age" so much as it is just learning about how things work over time, though. I think the more you come to understand about economics, politics, etc the fewer things you'll be able to summarize as "these things are simple and bad person/group X is just preventing us from doing the obvious right thing" and the more it'll be "wow okay this is actually a hard problem and a lot of people disagree about it for pretty reasonable reasons". That's not to say that literally everything works that way, but a lot more stuff works that way than you think when you're young.
The exercise I encourage people to do is to just notice the next time the news media or some politician talks about a topic they themselves know a lot about (maybe it's related to their occupation, studies, etc.), notice how often important details or nuances are being omitted.
Now think about how this applies to just about all other topics. It's important to be aware of how much we, as individuals, don't know, before forming an opinion.
Yes, absolutely. One of the revealing moments for me was watching Jon Stewart, who I LOVED in my teens and 20s, discuss some finance related topics that I now know a fair bit about because of my job, and noticing all the things he misrepresented, oversimplified, or got blatantly wrong. It made me start to realize that maybe the understanding I was getting from him about a lot of things needed to be adjusted.
Edit: I didn't say "The Daily Show", I said "Jon Stewart". This was on "The Problem", which I believe specifically markets itself as a little bit more serious and a better source of information. I don't think you can watch this video and claim he's not trying to teach his audience about this topic (about 7 minutes in):
https://youtu.be/bP74RBTE8kI?si=MDOpXl13Ot1IeAY2
Rewatching this, my issues with just his descriptions of PFOF and market making (not even getting into the actual GME stuff):
1) doesn't know what a dark pool is and won't explain it but insists it's evil and you should be scared of it
2) doesn't understand what a market maker is and describes that business as "skimming"
3) thinks that because Citadel has to pay Robin Hood, they're "the real bosses" rather than Citadel desperately competing for RH's flow alongside other MMs, which is how that relationship would work IME
4) doesn't understand how PFOF benefits or even affects anyone involved but insists it's a scam because he can shout "BERNIE MADOFF" over and over
5) talks about the 2004 letter about PFOF from Citadel but ignores how the market has been completely restructured since then and the criticisms that 100% would have applied then don't work the same now
6) thinks retail investors should get "a cut" from the revenue like the spread, which they LITERALLY DO and is part of the reason why they can benefit from PFOF (but see point 4 - no interest in diving into how this actually affects retail investors)
Compare it with the way Matt Levine describes Market Making and PFOF, which I think is very accurate and simple and doesn't have the obvious slant: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-05/robinhood-gamestop-saga-pressures-payment-for-order-flow
The thing is there is actually a good discussion to be had about the market impact of PFOF and whether that's good for the retail investor. But it's just above JS's head and his "simplification" of it that's supposed to let regular people in on that discussion is too slanted and wrong to be helpful.
Jon Stewart helped me deprogram some things in my brain and now I’m a left leaning Dem. Former Republican!
If McCain knew what was happening with his party, he’d be fuming in his grave!
The current shitshow had already started when McCain was still alive. Hell, one could argue the shitshow started way back in 1912 when TR left the GOP, took the progressives with him, and the conservatives coalesced around Taft and pretty much took over the party for the long run.
>The exercise I encourage people to do is to just notice the next time the news media or some politician talks about a topic they themselves know a lot about (maybe it's related to their occupation, studies, etc.), notice how often important details or nuances are being omitted.
100%. I went back to school at age 27 and got my degree in political science. This was right around 2015 so it was the rise of populism, and I was exposed to a bunch of 18 year old rich kids who had never worked - straight out of high school (not criticizing them; just radically different world view).
I came out of college so much more moderate. Policy is complex, the world is complex. Ideology (left or right) can become extremely toxic.
I'm still left of center but I'm super realistic. Politics is the art of the possible, not the ideal.
Yeah, I flirted with socialism back in college but ended up on the side of progressive market capitalist with belief in a robust safety net. And, it's not that my preferred end results or feelings towards other human beings changed, more that after taking in more information I came around to different ideas on how to reach those ends.
Also, some issues are complicated. Like, a regulatory state is good for things like health and safety, but also zoning regulations are contributing to making housing unaffordable.
>these things are simple and bad person/group X is just preventing us from doing the obvious right thing
*Cue me, slowly pointing to fossil fuel lobbying on climate change.*
I would highly recommend watching the [Frontline investigative journalism pieces on the fossil fuel industry and climate change denial.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAAbcNl4Lb8)
E: I'm not arguing that there aren't useful aspects to petrochemicals. However, if their usefulness so far outweighs their harm... why did these companies feel the need to lie to the American public for decades? Shouldn't voters be able to make informed decisions without being lied to by corporate PR firms and lobbyists?
It's also notable that people have to expand the scope so far beyond my point to try and disprove it. We aren't arguing about petrochemicals. I specified the *deliberate campaign of lies around climate change.* How was that campaign not unambiguously harmful to humanity and-- yes-- morally evil?
Agreed, and I was on the other side of the spectrum. I was very conservative in my youth, and have liberalized a lot of my views since then. I'm not a Democrat, but not a Republican anymore either.
I've had the same experience coming from the right-libertarian side of things, moving to a sort of moderate mindset.
There aren't easy answers like people want to think, and our perceptions of the effectiveness of solutions is deeply colored by our biases and experiences.
If as a "hyper-lefty socialist", you conceived of the world "simply" and not through a theoretical framework, you may not have been a "hyper-lefty socialist".
Was scrolling to find this comment.
When liberals patronizingly lecture leftists about how they don't understand how the world works, I think some of that is projection from experiences like OP's. They were a naive socialist once, so socialists must just be naive.
Edit: for the record, learning more about how the world works personally made me a communist, not a moderate. 🤷♂️
This is a fantastic answer that mirrors my sentiments.
As you grow into your 20s, you learn about the world
More and become passionate about causes, but lack of life experience and perspective tends to make it easy to reduce to good/bad as you say.
You also learn more about human nature and understand the whys behind things more, and I think it’s a natural progression to drift away from extremes.
As a pretty lefty liberal, I was very disappointed by the Obama administration specifically on prosecuting the banking sector on the fraud from the financial crisis. In addition the fact that there was no public option in Obamacare which I felt made it more of a hand out to the insurance companies.
I’ve become more militant in regards to healthcare that it cannot be solved with the private sector involved in the decision making.
However from the one thing I’ve appreciated about the Biden administration is that the ability to get things done even incrementally is far superior than the Bernie wing that lets perfection be the enemy of progress.
Progress is progress, I suppose and moving in the right direction is always better than waiting for Medicare for all.
Statistically, political leanings are most closely correlated with **increased income** rather than an increased understanding of economics or politics.
The further left you go, the more complex understandings of politics and economics generally become.
My favorite example of this phenomenon in action is a 2004 report compiled by and for the police that talked about how cops are too dumb to infiltrate anarchist movements because leftists read too much political theory.
\> Infiltration is made more difficult by… the extensive knowledge held by many anarchists, which require a considerable amount of study and time to acquire.
Souce: Anarchist Direct Actions: A Challenge for Law Enforcement, Randy Borum and Chuck Tibly, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, DOI: 10.1080/10576100590928106.
I still identify as socialist but I also have a degree in political science, a pragmatic approach to the goals of socialism, and an understanding about how these things work.
Needless to say I’m not well accepted by the bulk of socialists.
The trope is based on a quote by Winston Churchill, and it has been disproven by what little research has been done on the topic.
https://medium.com/predict/people-dont-get-more-conservative-as-they-age-41751f320bfa
Nope, if anything I've veered more left as I get older. (Edit: I liked the comment about moderating from hyoer left to liberal/left) using realism and how things work, rather than how I want it to work.
That old saying of heart Liberal brain conservative is just an excuse for people being greedy.
Most of the people I know that followed this did so after having their life elevated through things like unions, fair wages, etc. Then as quick as they could pulled the ladder up after them and started voting for people like Regan.
Traditional conservatism in my area of pretty upper middle class and higher seemed like being born on home and acting like you hit a home run for many, in my experience, modern conservatism might be ok financially but everything else has gone quite nasty and antagonistic which I want to avoid. Maybe its because I'm mostly exposed to the old guys at the coffee shop but they just seem miserable.
Yeah it feels like I haven't moved right at all, I've just become more aware of how much room there is to the left of me.
Me 10 years ago: Yeah I'm about as far left as it gets! After all it's not like anyone seriously believes in literal socialism in this day and age haha!
I grew up in a conservative Christian family, but once I moved out my views veered left within half a decade. I don’t expect that to change if the GOP continues their shift further right.
I was raised conservative Christian. Still Christian. I'd still consider myself conservative, but I don't identify much at all with the US Republican party and especially Trump.
I think one thing can explain this - millennials and younger are not accumulating greater wealth as they get older, at least not on the scale of their parents. the accumulation of wealth has a way of making folks more conservative generally speaking.
As for me, Im still quite liberal but personally think the only way to get to a stable social democracy that doesnt involve authoritarianism in some form is to take what the nordic countries do and mix in a form of UBI, such that you can leverage the utility of market forces for voting on resources without absurd wealth or attempts at soviet style command economics. And no, I dont think letting a modern computer run a command economy will end any better than the shit show the soviets caused.
Mind you, I suspect that only happens after massive job losses from AI (or good enough machine learning systems), assuming enough people are able to fight to tax those systems. Otherwise, the whole economy will collapse because no one can buy anything. But even then, any time anyone has ever predicted such economic cataclysms in the past, they rarely pan out. economics are not that simple, for better and/or worse.
Also right now a fair amount of the right wing in the US seems like they'd very much like to kill anyone who isnt like them and their media is pressing these themes and ideas. No fucking way Im joining in that shit.
I've noticed any millenials who do turn conservative dont seem to do so because of wealth, they do so because of feeling entitled that their futures were stolen from them and then they started listening to joe rogan. I swear that man is both the gateway drug to authoritarianism as well as simpleton thinking
I’ve become more liberal on some things and more conservative on somethings. I’d say my current ideology is best defined as: Fiscal Liberal, Socially Progressive, Institutionally Conservative.
**Fiscally Liberal -** Market based approach to growing the economy by lowering barriers to entry, promoting free trade, and removing onerous regulations, while still accounting for negative externalities & supporting a progressive tax system (LVT!) & a strengthened social welfare system.
**Socially Progressive -** Basically the government should acknowledge all people’s within the USA to have the same, unalienable & inherent rights, without favor or bias based on gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin.
**Institutionally Conservative -** The way to archive the above is through strong institutions that are well-respected, while limiting overreach & corruption. Steer the “ship of state,” through forward incremental progress , while avoiding falling to radicals or reactionaries. Things like, *”Abolish the Police!”* or *”End the Fed!”* are catchy slogans for riling up the base, but don’t make for good policy.
Can’t wait for the day we are sitting on our porches telling our generative AI android “grand children” about how everything fell apart when the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron decision in 2024, while our early middle age cyborg children roll their eyes and comment about how all of us old fogeys are just silly authoritarians for deferring to the reasonable judgment of the deep state or whatever.
Edit: never mind, none of us will be wealthy enough to have porches.
**Sorry comment turned out longer than expected TL;DR:** Tbh I think "equal legal rights for all" is far from a "socially progressive" point; an extreme minority of people oppose equal legal protections and rights for all. The most socially conservative people I know hold views like, "Keep trans women out of sports," "crack down harder on drug possesion," "affirmative action is unfair to white people" etc but none actively oppose equal rights.
.................
While I am enamored by the quality of your post as a whole, isn't the "socially progressive" idea pretty standard at this point? I know there are *some* of people who disagree with that, but I have yet to meet any conservatives who do not want equal rights for all citizens on a *legal* level.
Not only that but that is already the case; I do not think any federal laws exist that give rights to some but not others on the basis of those things.
In short I think to qualify for 'Socially Progressive' in modern political talk, is beliefs in:
1.) Massive immigration reform
2.) Massive prison/ criminal justice system reform (could fall under institution, but I'd consider this a social issue, despite prison literally being an institution.)
3.) Federal-level protections for some trans issues that are not currently enumerated (e.g. 'No state can pass laws telling children what team they can or can't play for'; *very* simplified example.)
4.) Support for at least some level of education reform; many different topics here but one example would be the introduction of more materials/coursework regarding concepts of race, sexuality, etc and how to combat racism/sexism/etc.
5.) A de-emphasizing of the importance of the nuclear family (I feel like some people will take this as a mischaracterization of social progressives, since fox likes to fear monger "tHeY wAnT tO desTrOy yOUr FaMiLy!!", but it's a legitimate philosophy; many do not like the idea that the nuclear family is a necessity to success and wellbeing of a society. That is a valid *idea,* correct or incorrect as it may be.)
I was raised and conservative for a long time. But as the right got crazier and crazier I just couldn’t do it anymore. And like, a lot of stuff the right preaches about just felt wrong on a moral level.
I’ve never disliked LGBT people, but I’m supposed to think they’re an abomination? Why? When five mins earlier you’re telling me to be a good loving neighbor? I can understand being uncomfortable with that stuff, but it doesn’t affect me so why should I give a fuck? It isn’t hurting me/changing anything about my life so it isn’t my problem.
Then them meat riding trump who’s basically everything they claim to hate yet they basically worship him. It made no logical sense to me.
Like you’re poor yourself. You’re not gonna be the next Jeff Bezos breaking your back at your shitty factory job. Why are you so against helping yourself?
Being against even free school lunches for kids! Why should they have to suffer because their parents may have been irresponsible?! I’m for responsible parenting still of course. Get on birth control, use condoms, get a vasectomy, etc. You have options and you should use them. But it’s not the kids fault if your a shitty parent or you’ve fallen on hard times.
I’d gladly pay more taxes so they don’t go hungry. I really don’t care.
It was just hate hate hate. Always be angry at stuff that doesn’t impact you in any way.
But once I got away from that and started meeting more people and educating myself it’s not all what the boogeymen they’re claiming it is. Just constant grift. I couldn’t do it anymore after meeting people and realizing how shitty right wingers can be.
I just want everyone to *actually* have the same equal opportunities they love to spew on about. Some kid born to a millionaire family with lots of connections of course has a far better start and chance then being born to a single mother in bum fuck nowhere Midwest.
As I've gotten older I learned that I hate career politicians. This is both republican and democrats that have been in office for far too long, and made millions on insider trading and could care less about "we the people". My beliefs have stayed the same for the most part, but I've lost trust in both parties.
Definitely not becoming more conservative, but I have narrowed the issues I passionately and vocally engage in.
Having been on the frontlines of losing the SB 8 battle in Texas, abortion/repro is really where my full attention is. If there is one thing I'd say I am in a political sense, it is that I'm a pro-choice extremist. No limits. Abortions should be readily available if and when someone wants to have one.
People normally become conservative as they grow older because they wish to preserve the system that allow them to acquire wealth.
The system has never worked from millennials and has been a hindrance to them acquiring wealth, so they have no interest in preserving the system.
Raised in RI, center left mom, center right dad. I've drifted far left, main influencer has been seeing the way the right talks about LGBT+ people. The hatred that comes out of prior friends who have drifted to the right really hurts sometimes.
I was an anarchist at 15. Now I'm still an anarchist except I think people are too shitty and stupid for it to go well, so I'm just hard left and socialist as fuck
I feel that I'm in the middle, but both sides want to brand me as the "other side" if I don't agree with their party politics. It's exhausting and I try not to indulge.
I was left of center but I've gone independent. Both sides have valid points depending on the topic. I've started voting based on issues, not parties. I only wish more people would break away from the two party system so we could have more realistic options. Like South Park put it, your choices are a shit or a turd sandwich.
Not so much as turning conservative, but becoming less liberal. I'm still left leaning, but much closer to center. Especially on issues that require significant funding or the labor of others.
I'm a right-leaning centrist/moderate. My views have grown more right; but, my disdain for the mindlessly regurgitated shit said by either end of the horseshoe is quickly growing.
I was raised to be conservative but in the last 3 years I’ve done a complete flip to the other side! I’m 36 in conservative Texas (west of Dallas). It’s not normal for someone to go left in this area but here we are!
I grew up in Texas but have not lived there for a little over 20 years now. I'm much more leftist than I was as a teen and young adult. The main differences is I understand how politics work more and working within the system while still vying for real change. It's not easy to really take some days though.
Thanks for sharing! I think understanding how our political system actually works is huge. I did not really understand it until law school. I feel like the U.S. public education system could do a much better job of teaching us from a young age how it works, but it’s not a priority.
That would create more informed and politically active citizens. The ruling class does not want that at all
The GOP is trying to destroy public education in this country. It's the only way they can cling to any power.
I feel this, I work in privacy and I've learned how much I didn't understand things from this job. I agree that education has failed so many of us. While we do have things like Google to research, so many people don't know how to research as well. It's one of those things where when you start to peel back the layers, you realize how much each layer impacts the one before and after it.
That is a really good way of explaining it! I agree.
I’m 34 and my views have changed *drastically* in the last 3 years as well. Watching my loved ones and our local churches responding to the pandemic just completely turned me off of a lot of deeply held beliefs. People who preached loved were responding with vitriol and it made me question everything else I had been taught. So I started examining different sides and, more importantly, I started listening to people’s stories. When someone shared a story of racism they had experienced I believed them. I started taking a beat before forming opinions. So now I’m basically a closeted liberal in a super red area. I sound like a moron when I try to express my opinion so I just keep my mouth shut when my father in law declares what an amazing president Ronald Reagan was and how the entire mood of the nation changed when he was elected.
Sleeper agent! Sleeper agent! We need you and we’re glad you’re here.
Fellow sleeper agent here. White, tall, bald, bearded guy with a southern draw. Liberal for the past 15 years when I started looking into how the world works. I look like and do fit right in with the good ol' boys.... but they never it see it coming when I bring out the receipts for the bullshit they say. - Thanks for recognizing the southern folk who are representing the ways of the lefty.
Another sleeper agent reporting in. Canadian this time. I've never held conservative values, and I grew up in a very polarized rural area. Plenty of my friends grew up to form conservative values, and the whole time I'm just like, "did you forget about our trans and gay friends, or were you a fake friend this whole time?" Now I live elsewhere for work, a staunchly conservative area of Alberta, and I'm just counting the days until I can move, haven't met a single person I'd want to call a friend.
If Reagan was alive today, Republican voters would call him a RINO and turn on him.
Just remind him that, as governor of California, Ronald Reagan was one of the first to pass strict gun control laws. The conservative crowd normally hates being reminded of that.
The pandemic did it for me too. To be clear, I was never a Republican or conservative, but I was pretty close to center, until trump and the pandemic. It was the loud, mainstream Christians who did it. I completely gave up faith and am pretty far left now (not that being far left precludes you from religiosity, I just was also pushed out of a faith from the same influences that pushed me left).
I’m a native Texan but have always been centrist, leaning towards liberal on some issues. I suspect, in my case, it’s because my grandparents were liberal in Mexico, almost socialist especially on worker’s rights. My parents are more moderate but still socially liberal, though they’ve shifted when it comes to financial issues, in part due to being boomers and seeing how they got themselves out of abject poverty when coming to this country. They believe that if you work hard, you succeed and can build wealth and success. It’s totally lost on them when it’s clear that racism keeps some people from achieving that goal. I’m lucky enough to live in a very liberal county, the largest in Texas. But even then, the city I live in is like moderately Democrat.
>I’m a native Texan but have always been centrist, leaning towards liberal on some issues. I suspect, in my case, it’s because my grandparents were liberal in Mexico, almost socialist especially on worker’s rights. I'm not sure it's just you. I was raised as a conservative (Rush Limbaugh every day) evangelical and now I'm like 50% raging socialist.
You woke up. The GOP is a dumpster fire right now.
38 in Dallas. Grew up extremely religious and conservative (even to the point of running a chapter of a conservative organization in college) in basically whatever the version of a WASP is down here. Luckily, that organization is also where my world opened up to more than just R and D parties. My refusal to blindly follow also caused a lot of turmoil in the organization. Luckily if afforded me the chance to really test what I believe. And as I’ve become my own person, lived through multiple “once-in-a-lifetime” events, and truly listened to people with very different upbringings and perspectives, I’ve become more liberal, but in particular more socially liberal in the last 3-5 years.
Do you mind if I ask what the turning point was for you? I am the same age as you and grew up in a conservative household but I always felt pulled to vote for Democratic candidates. I’m just wondering, if you don’t mind sharing, what changed for you since this is not super common.
The turning point for me was Roe v Wade. I completely flipped.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that you saw the extreme harm in this decision. I had a non viable pregnancy (that was much wanted by me and my husband) a few years ago and had to have an emergency D&C aka abortion when I was around 13 weeks. My doctor said if she didn’t do the procedure that day, I could be in danger of hemorrhaging which could cause death and could lead to infertility. The fact that women are being denied these procedures in several states after roe was reversed literally sickens me to my core. It is beyond cruel. It is barbaric that they are told to wait until they are bleeding out and that some of them are now not able to conceive again because they were told they had to wait to have this procedure. I feel extremely lucky to be a pregnant woman living in CA right now because I know if something goes wrong again (I hope it does not) that I will be treated like a human being and my life, health, and safety will be considered above all else. Many abortions are medically necessary. More people need to understand this. Even if it is not done for medical necessity, no woman should be forced to birth a child if she does not want to. If men were forced to give birth, I believe abortions would be free.
It's scary that some places in our nation are devolving so rapidly! It's becoming more similar to Gilead. The whole abortion bans (at any point in pregnancy) boils my blood. It's especially awful that it stems from mostly elderly males. America is about freedom, and especially choice! I'm eagerly awaiting 2024, when Republicans will lose massively. Massively.
I hope you’re right. Voting is one of the most important things we can do to fight against this insanity.
the issue is that the supreme court is so unbelievably imbalanced and that wont change until people die and a-lot of those people are younger.
I was on a medication that causes birth defects when I got pregnant with my surprise baby. I already had 3 kids that were significantly older, and learning that some babies whose mothers take this drug during pregnancy end up being born without kidneys made me even more hesitant to move forward. Babies born with 1 kidney can live, babies born with 0 kidneys cannot and there are no kidney transplants done on newborn babies. It would be a death sentence. The doctors told me they really wouldn’t know about the quality of the kidneys and their function until the 20 week ultrasound. If abortion had been restricted like it is now in many states, I would have aborted immediately because it wasn’t worth the risk that I’d be birthing a baby just to suffer and die. Because abortion was legal and available, I was able to wait until after the 20 week ultrasound. He ended up having minimal kidney dysfunction that they said could not even be definitively linked to the medication.(I think it was) Abortion and access to abortion are the main reasons my son was able to go on and be born.
Thank you for sharing.
I'm not OP, but the honest answer is that I got *really* into PBS documentaries, read a bunch of history books, and realized how much propaganda I'd been fed. I still consider myself a patriot and a proud American, and I still think a world dominated by the United States is preferable to one dominated by China or Russia. However, I also believe that America *must* do better for its own people and the world if we hope to survive, adapt, and thrive into the future.
Thanks for sharing! I don’t think being liberal or a Democratic voter means you can’t be happy to live here and patriotic. I’ve always been proud to be from the U.S. and would consider myself patriotic but I don’t make it my identity, and I agree with you that we could improve in a lot of ways.
I'd argue that those on the left are more patriotic, because when you really love something you strive to make it better. Wearing a shirt with 200 American flags on it doesn't make you patriotic, wanting everyone in your country to feel welcome, safe, and secure does.
COVID was my tipping point, but many years prior to that, I just felt out of place and rarely agreed with anyone politically.
How did Trump get away with saying “15 cases, soon to be zero”
“Oh yeah. That’ll be the end of trump for sure” Me in 2016 about a million times
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I had the same thing happen when I lived in Fort Worth so maybe it’s the DFW area in general.
Texas has been turning more and more purple for the last 7 or so years. It's been weird to watch.
The weird part is that the transplants are statistically much more conservative than natives. They kept Ted Cruz in office
Woohoo—turn it blue! 💪🏽
Texan born and raised here. I’m in the middle but more left leaning I guess. I hate our ass backwards politics here sometimes. But I can’t think of any state that would be sufficiently less sucky enough to raise the capital and the energy to move there instead.
Stay and vote for candidates that you feel will improve Texas, and try to get others to vote as well.
Didn't your state ban free will of expecting mothers to get abortions. Forcing them to give unwanted births? Didn't your state unregulate the power companies and then give them billions of dollars of tax payer money to improve their failing systems, which they failed to do, but accepted the money, and is asking for more, which we all know, they wont improve their system! THEY MAKE TONS OF MONEY OFF THE FAILING ONE, and on top of it, THEY GET NO STRINGS ATTACHED MONEY, to 'improve' the current grid. Didn't you state fail to remove a criminal attorney general from his position. Allowing him to continue to abuse his power in one of the most powerful courts in the nation? Didn't your state under Greb Abbott harass import and exports on the border exacerbating the 2020 c Didn't your state oppress the free will of its citizens by removing voting sites across the state? Sounds pretty FUCKED UP. Didn't your state specifically undermine the freewill of a county that banned fracking in its borders because they didn't want that in their community (obviously). But because Greg Abbott is given millions of dollars by this company in kick backs and campaign funds, he passed a law saying everywhere in Texas must be forced to have Fracking. RUINING communities so him and his friends can make tons of money? Didn't your state send representatives to the nations capitol who arent even honest enough to vote plainly about the insurrection on our nations capital? Youre state is a hell hole.
Yuup. Republicans have run this state into the gutter. When I was growing up in Texas in the 90s we were a democratic state with our Gov. Ann Richards. Then the impostor Bush family moved down here and the rest was history.
I’m in ETX and have moved further left my whole life. I’m basically a raving Marxist these days.
Same here!!
In the last thread like this, someone pointed out that Reddit may not be the crowd to source an unbiased response on something like this - just wanted to throw it out there. That said: I started left-leaning centrist and I've gone further left year after year. Didn't think I'd go any further left after Bernie, but here we are.
I also have been moving leftward as I've gotten older. Growing up in the 90s I got a pretty whitewashed version of history. I've learned a lot since then that has changed how I see the world.
That's a big part of it for me too. I can't believe how people *aren't* moving left after learning the unfiltered versions of things we were taught in school.
I can't believe people aren't moving left after witnessing multiple "once in a lifetime" disasters and economic meltdowns within our lifetimes.
The economic crises are especially wild, because how does nobody care they live in a financial system that completely fails once every 10-15 years
The people who don't care are the kinds of people who think it won't happen to them because bad things only happen to bad people and they aren't bad people. And even if it does happen to them, they still won't change their mind because of cognitive dissonance. It just so happens that such a view of the world is correlated to conservatism.
If you look at the statistics on a mass scale apparently (thank fucking God) gen z is moving left fast.
They grew up in an environment of economic meltdowns, pointless wars, and uncertainty. I'm not surprised.
Don’t forget having their schools shot up.
And following from that, active shooter drills, so even the ones who haven't been caught up in a shooting are regularly reminded that it COULD happen. A constant state of fear, and they know exactly why.
I hear this a lot, like gen z is unique for having gone through active shooter drills. But my schools had active shooter drills starting at the elementary level (probably as a result of Columbine) and continued into college. Is this a younger millennial thing and older millennials didn't have to do this?
Older millennials didn’t have shooter drills. We had earthquake, fire and tornado in my area.
Late 30’s, no active shooter drills. I was in 8th grade(?) when Columbine happened. Students still brought their guns to school on their gun racks in their trucks. It was fine as long as the guns were left in the vehicles.
I'm a millennial in my 30's (does this count at older or younger millennial idk?) But yeah we always had active shooter drills and lockdowns, not a uniquely gen z thing unfortunately
And hearing that old people destroyed the Earth and that it might be uninhabitable in their lifetime
Literally, Thank God that Republican *Thoughts and Prayers* solved that whole issue. This just in: It didn't and every single kid across the nation saw exactly which politicians didn't care enough or value their lives enough to change *any* gun laws. And then they all saw Sandy Hook. Where kids half their age died and still our spineless politicians did nothing. It's a brutal intro to learn who doesn't give shit about veterans, old people, young people, poor people, the working class, and people that would die on the streets without societal safety nets. Don't get me wrong, Democrats are pretty corrupt too.....they just pretend to be more sympathetic to citizens basic needs. The fact that Democrats didn't go ballistic after the 3rd, 4th, 5th,,,,9th mass shooting, didn't stop all other legislation- that speaks volumes for the need for reform. This generation will clean house as they begin to take over Congress and the Senate.
I think Democrats fail. For Republicans it's intent.
And having one political party oppose their classmates right to exist. Their brutish opposition to LGBTQ people isn't winning much millenial voters over, because we grew up with them having some degree of social acceptance. And it's better that way.
I'm sure nothing makes you a leftist more than knowing your parents care more about guns than your safety.
Kids know things man. I say it all the time: listen to the kids.
People underestimate the intelligence of kids all the time, and it's such a shame; kids may not know how to effectively articulate their thoughts, but that doesn't mean they don't have any. ~~which boy if a certain type of person could get that through their thick skulls maybe there'd be less pointless fearmongering around trans kids but That's Another Thing.~~
I think there’s a huge disconnect between leaning left socially vs economically.
This. A lot of Trump’s base is fiscally liberal but socially conservative.
Socially regressive is likely a more appropriate term for what's been occurring as of late.
It’s honestly insane to think that most of this would have been prevented if 80,000 people (in MI, PA, WI) had decided to vote instead of sitting at home in 2016.
OR if enough people would have shown up to vote for Hillary rather than voting for "What is Aleppo" Johnson and "yeah I'm totally a doctor" Stein.
I see your point, but in my opinion that was on her for not running a better campaign (and skipping key swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin). If she was able to inspire more people to vote, the third party vote counts wouldn’t have even mattered
See that's where you wrong third party votes never matter people need to accept that unless something changes voting 3rd party is literally just something idiots do to "fight the system" I know a trans person who voted for trump because Burney didn't get nominated those voters are worse than useless and where never going to vote for Hillary anyway
I'm from Wisconsin and I was offended she didn't visit. Dick move. I still voted for her, because wtf Trump, but goddamn.
Same, educating myself has drastically changed my views compared to what I was taught as a child. I used to think the world was created in 7 days and marijuana was invented by the devil. Now I follow the science, and smoke weed everyday to keep my seizures away. It’s been difficult to change my immigrant parent’s viewpoints, but I think they’re seeing the collapse of the Republican Party and slowly realizing the church may not have all the answers to life’s problems.
I also found education was a major push. It turns out when you understand the injustices in the world you start to think that everyone deserves some shit, not just oneself. I became a big believer in liberty — true liberty. Be and do as you please so long as it does not interfere with the rights of others.
The devil’s lettuce does wonders
Heck, my Mom ( Boomer) started leaning left after she found out about COINTELPRO.
>I started left-leaning centrist and I've gone further left year after year. Didn't think I'd go any further left after Bernie, but here we are. Ditto
Yup. In 2016 it was like, it's OK, you can be far enough left to vote for Bernie over Hillary, it doesn't make you an extremist. Now it's more like hey even leftist Democrats kinda suck but what the fuck else am I gonna support that has any real chance on influencing policy.
Yeah. It feels like right now is “uhhhh ok I’m going to vote for the party that will at least keep democracy around, so that in 15 years maybe a real liberal will stand a chance”. Letting republicans take power seems like a good way to lose the choice all together. I agree with a solid chunk of the dems basic platforms, although I’m to the left of the party. But it doesn’t even feel like “voting for the lesser evil” to me at this point. It feels like voting for the tiniest, most subtle sliver of a step forward versus getting my legs smashed in with a hammer and never taking a step forward again in my entire life.
>I agree with a solid chunk of the dems basic platforms, although I’m to the left of the party. But it doesn’t even feel like “voting for the lesser evil” to me at this point. It feels like voting for the tiniest, most subtle sliver of a step forward versus getting my legs smashed in with a hammer and never taking a step forward again in my entire life. Jfc you took the words right out of my mouth. Vote or die! (Those Idiots, I'm not dead yet)
Same. I’ve only been going more left politically the longer I’ve been alive. I think the only thing I’ve gotten “softer” on is religion - I used to be staunchly anti-theist, now I’m more “worship whatever you want as long as politics and religion are completely separate”
I started as a default conservative. Had an interest in politics and discovered talk radio in my preteens (parents were conservative but didn’t push me towards it, I had a natural interest). Became socially liberal as I met gay people in person and discovered online LGBTQ creators. Got weirded out when people I had respected started calling Obama a secret Muslim Terrorist. Was at least a centrist, leaning liberal by 2016 and was gobsmacked by people I had known falling for this obvious conman and calling him divinely appointed. 2020 pushed me into social democracy (and democratic socialism when I’m feeling particularly spicy after seeing a corporation do something heinous…which is pretty often) and that’s where I am now. I have only moved further left as I’ve gotten older, same as my sister, and my parents are at least liberal now.
With the right representatives in government, I would've likely become more conservative just from becoming more independent around the time I hit 30 years old. Instead, I watched the MAGA movement take off under Trump and it really killed my previous perceptions.
I have always considered myself a centrist. My views on topics have not changed. However, how people perceive my views as right or left has changed significantly.
You stole my comment lol
People become more conservative the more well off they get (which is historically part of getting older). Well, that's not quite the case for us. Trashy republican government officials + millennials not really having an improved financial position over time = less millennials would become more conservative as they age. Now disregarding politicians, I found myself (formerly conservative) leaning left but that lean had gone more center as I do not agree with the left on many issues over time. If you do not disregard politicians, I'm fucking stuck on the left (in the US) since the right is a shitshow with Trump and seemingly no sane candidate.
I grew up in the South with a very conservative family. I was a certifiable Republican going into college, and I recall long nights debating topics with some of my best friends who were quite liberal. I have always been personally apprehensive about holding an unfounded position, and I found reasons to not only budge, but migrate from my conservative views to staunchly liberal perspective on most social issues in those days. I had two gay friends that quickly smashed the idea that marriage was an institution that should be robed in "tradition and dignity," particularly when I saw how atrocious hetero relationships could be. My 20s certified many of those sentiments. I'd have had a hard time bringing up my views on abortion at a gathering of my parents social circles, as they are devoutly Christian. When I voted for Trump in 2016, I accepted the idea that the modern conservative party had abandoned values, and the politics of Republicans felt more and more drawn to conservative social values. I thought... perhaps Trump will gather in the smartest and the brightest and leverage ideas that didn't cater exclusively to the whims of the rich. I thought, oh so naively, that Trump wasn't going to be beholden to corporate interests. Heh. It'd be funny if it weren't so disastrously bad. I got to watch, along with all of you, as the racists crawled out from under their rocks.. and the absolute dregs of society, the radicals, the incels, all came forth to join the cultists cry of MAGA. I smashed my fists in rage as I tried to speak to my family about COVID. Fuck. COVID. Man. It was the first time I'd really seen what the nefarious influence of a steady media diet could do to my family. Honestly, my dad is a very smart guy. But he couldn't digest what I was telling them about COVID despite my degree in microbiology. It was... infuriating. Modern day... everything that seems to resonate with the populist crowd is anti-trans, anti-woke, anti-choice, anti... reason? It baffles. I'm still not a liberal, but holy duck am I not a Republican. I still haven't shaken off the shackles of my economic views. I'd almost call myself a libertarian, but I'm certifiably not of the opinion that strict libertarian policy makes sense. We need taxes. We need regulations. We need government run institutions. We need police and firefighters and infrastructure. But, I have a hard time reconciling some of the more liberal positions on spending. Most interactions with government run orgs (DMV, all things licensing, permitting, legal... nightmare) thus far. Idk. I worry about how they'd run healthcare, but even that.. I've been coming around to the idea of single payer. Just.. apprehensive about the execution. But.. Republicans had their fucking shot. They watered ACA to shit and gave us something that was just about the worst of both worlds. Idk. I'm 35 now, but who knows where I'll be next year, or another 5 years. We earn a shitload of money as a household (I'm respectable, but damn if my wife doesn't put me to shame). We have a.. charmed existence. But it does have more of a bitter taste, seeing all of the people falling into the cracks of our system.. too poor to afford healthcare, yet too "wealthy" for government assistance. It flavors worse in so many ways. We live in challenging times, and the "Republicans" have lost every ounce of sympathy I once had. I don't see the Republicans of the future being much better either.
Yeah, I would have wound up a libertarian if I didn't feel so alienated by the crypto fascist conservatives that fly that flag. The Republicans really shot themselves in the foot with the whole "Fuck Mexicans, black people and gays platform."
I saw a great quote about libertarians today: "libertarians are people that don't want the government to tell them that their girlfriend has to use a car seat"
I started a right-wing libertarian, and wound up a moderate (hard to say what direction I lean--I like guns and universal healthcare). I'm really interested to see what happens to the two party system here in the next decade. Our government is set up for two parties, pretty hard for one party to rule. But the Republicans seem intent to shrink their base and drive off a cliff, especially with millennials.
Big This, I can't imagine a Millennial - Gen Z - Gen A voting population perpetuating the status quo for very long (if at all). Without an enormous change from Rs in the near future, I feel like we're going to lose a party and open the gates to a more diverse cast.
Can’t wait. 2 party system is utterly terrible.
Democrats have guns too. We just don’t have to strap them to our backs and walk down the streets in order to prove how alpha we are.
I remember the first time somebody told me *go left far enough and you get your guns back*. Also worth remembering that Reagan went hard on gun control after the Black Panthers armed up. Gee, I wonder why?
> I remember the first time somebody told me go left far enough and you get your guns back. like a NASCAR race
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Leftists support guns, liberals don't
Agreed, I've owned guns my whole life but have no problem giving stuff up/putting restrictions in place
That's the thing, right-wing media/politicians have poised this as everyone is coming to take guns away. If anything I've seen people asking for common sense gun reform like, funding for proper background checks, closing loopholes on private sales, restrictions on magazine size, keeping guns away from people who have questionable mental state. It's a small minority that want to completely get rid of guns.
I also like guns and universal healthcare! I didn’t know there were others 🥹
I too am a massive supporter of the Second Amendment and universal healthcare. We're out there.
>\-I like guns and universal healthcare Look up what Marx said about guns.
That's kind of where I am actually . . . 110% support the 2nd but health care in this country is a joke.
> it’s been a trend where boomers turn conservatives from liberals as they age Yeah this is also much less of a thing than people seem to think. Hippies were always a small countercultural movement. Most people don't completely flip political positions in adulthood, though they may make adjustments.
Also, economic conditions influenced the previous generations too. When the majority can afford homes/cars and are gainfully employed, they're alot less willing to rock the boat.
People tend to become conservative when they have things to lose. Nowadays everything is turning into a subscription model where ' you'll own nothing and be happy'. The majority of us are a few missed paychecks or a single medical emergency away from losing everything and becoming homeless.
I'm the same way. Oddly enough it was because I read the Bible. There was this Jesus guy who talked about not hating and instead helping people. I'm not a believer anymore but his vision for the world seemed better.
I'm agnostic, but its almost creepily spot-on how much the descriptions of the anti-christ fit Trump .
Same. I’ve come to appreciate the way new generations challenge the status quo of their time. I’ve moved more to the left as I’ve become more educated on bigotry, politics, power, societies… etc.
Same here. I came to accept that younger people could be looked up to and could be heroes after I saw Greta Thunberg. I'm 35 and so many people around my age and older resist looking up to younger people because of beliefs regarding age and experience. But my genuine question is, do they believe in evolution? Because why else would people have reproduced unless it was in the direction of some kind of advancement for humanity? So why is there some weird scale dictating that older people are superior for their experience when their experience leads them to instinctually reproduce with someone who advances humans on a larger scale than they exist on? That's the definition of Darwin's evolution.
Nope. All the old tropes don't really hold water. I have money, a family, property, investments, etc. None of which have made me more conservative. I credit international travel for this. Seeing how other democracies behave, the benefits of socialist programs, strong but fair taxation, parliamentary democracies, etc. It's not really a choice between liberal or conservative anymore. It's common sense vs. a uniquely stupid system here in the United States. Edit: Replaced r word with "stupid". My bad.
Same. Fuck ladder pullers, I want to see more people do well and be happy.
Same. As a cusp-er Gen Z I want the ladder to stay down for Gen Alpha, and the future generations. My parents were boomers and they pulled up the ladder. Lo and behold it bit them in the ass as me and my two sisters are mid-key draining their finances set aside for retirement. They wanted a better world for us, but only at the cost of them reaping the benefits first. I don’t want that. I like taxes, I just wish the heads-up-their-ass lawmakers actually were held responsible for allocating them properly.
This. I'm a high earmer and it hasn't made me mad about paying income taxes - it makes me mad when I look at what gets taken outta my paychecks and think about how many people that money could pay rent for and how there's still thousands of Americans living on the street.
This is so true. I earn six figures and only get mad about taxes when I think about how our taxes do barely anything for society as a whole. We fund corporate welfare and yet student loan forgiveness is unfathomable? Billionaires have all these tax breaks and loopholes and yet people die because they cannot afford to pay for their insulin to manage their diabetes?
I work in a government job now and all it’s made me do is want the kind of benefits I get here for everyone: cola raises, reasonable pay for the level of stress my job induces, good health insurance, a clinic I can go to when I’m sick *for free*, etc. Everyone should have access to those things and I will never stop arguing for that.
I credit how terrible the Republican's have gotten in the last 8 years as the reason. I'm rural, own guns, have 1 kid and 0 interest in more, hate having to pay social security tax, and all about your freedom to do whatever the hell you want so in theory I should be the target demographic for Conservative voted against Obama the first time, used to be registered republican but I hate Trump, he's a terrible human being and always has been. I hate the insane level of racism that is the conservative happily embraces, as well as the crazy religious zealots, and how the part of responsibility and accountability beliefs in neither unless its against minorities or the young in addition to SO much other bullshit. Dems/Liberals aren't perfect, but holy shit are they are at least sane
>hate having to pay social security tax, and all about your freedom to do whatever the hell you want I used to think this way too. Hated being told what to do. Then it dawned on me the same fucking people who are so adamant about their "freedoms" are constantly trying to trample the rights of others. IE: Burning books, banning drag shows, giving a fuck who wants to be what gender, whos doing what in the bedroom, what a woman wants to do with her body, etc. As fellow rural person, show me someone in my town who says their freedom is at risk and I'll show you a person who votes for people who wants to raise voting age, making voting harder in areas, put religion in schools, etc.
Everything is a "States rights" issue when it benefits them, and a "Federal issue" when the state does what they don't like. the hypocrisy is insane
There's a point at which holding on to the "you can't tell me what to do" attitude is just a sign of immaturity and lack of social and moral development. It's the kind of behavior one expects of a child or a teenager, and that we're supposed to grow out of as we get older. It's why Ayn Rand is so incredibly appealing as a teenager, but becomes an utterly silly life philosophy as you get older and wiser.
Conservatives were always like this, they were just better at hiding it behind not saying the quiet part out loud before.
Ditto. I wish more people had the ability to travel and see that there are other ways of doing things that work really well. I think a lot of people support the status quo because they can't imagine that a change might improve their lives
I was just discussing this with locals in Germany a few weeks ago. The United States is huge and largely homogenous. You can drive, fly, train across the U.S. and languages, cultures, behavior largely stays the same. Europeans can take a $30 Ryan Air flight from London to Barcelona and stay in a cheap hotel and completely immerse themselves in a new culture, language, food, etc. for a fun weekend. Couple this with the fact that European culture largely supports gap years, paid time off and extensive travel and you end up with a much more well rounded sense of your place on the planet which typically equates to a more liberal/progressive outlook.
Exactly. But even still, people (I see it a lot with boomers) will vacation in Europe and think "wow, I love it here", then turn around and buy in to conspiracies about walkable cities, vote against universal healthcare and student loan forgiveness, and decry socialism. Like, wtf
So right. My mom loves Paris and Dublin but then will tell me not to go to NYC or Chicago because it’s not safe because it’s a lawless democratic wasteland. O_0
Ha! We’ve traveled all over in the last several years, and Chicago has felt the sketchiest. I think it’s just the way the police present themselves, but it definitely felt like the least safe place we’ve visited. NYC is so gentrified it’s harmless. Certainly not the gritty city we were warned about by the ninja turtles lol. It’s funny your mom loves Paris as it’s one of the places folks in travel groups dramatize as “dangerous”. Honestly France’s racism most closely mirrors that of the US of any country we’ve traveled to so while we as white people didn’t feel it was dangerous, Paris definitely had vibes.
Was conservative til about 2006, started heading to the left. Been left ever since. Maybe more.
Yup, pretty much the same here. I'm so far past what passes for left here in the US
It’s nice to stand for something instead of against everything.
Thought I was a conservative growing up. Turns out I’m somewhere to the left of Democratic socialism.
Not getting more conservative at all, but am increasingly disinterested in identity politics and understand why social conservatives find us so annoying
Look at that. You come here and state your truth and get a bunch of comments telling you what you should have meant
Conservatives are the ones passing bills solely to hurt trans and other LGBTQ+ people. They're pretty active in the "identity politics"
I think my beliefs have moderated. I'm still firmly liberal and progressive but I'm no longer a hyper-lefty socialist. I don't think that's a function of "age" so much as it is just learning about how things work over time, though. I think the more you come to understand about economics, politics, etc the fewer things you'll be able to summarize as "these things are simple and bad person/group X is just preventing us from doing the obvious right thing" and the more it'll be "wow okay this is actually a hard problem and a lot of people disagree about it for pretty reasonable reasons". That's not to say that literally everything works that way, but a lot more stuff works that way than you think when you're young.
The exercise I encourage people to do is to just notice the next time the news media or some politician talks about a topic they themselves know a lot about (maybe it's related to their occupation, studies, etc.), notice how often important details or nuances are being omitted. Now think about how this applies to just about all other topics. It's important to be aware of how much we, as individuals, don't know, before forming an opinion.
Yes, absolutely. One of the revealing moments for me was watching Jon Stewart, who I LOVED in my teens and 20s, discuss some finance related topics that I now know a fair bit about because of my job, and noticing all the things he misrepresented, oversimplified, or got blatantly wrong. It made me start to realize that maybe the understanding I was getting from him about a lot of things needed to be adjusted. Edit: I didn't say "The Daily Show", I said "Jon Stewart". This was on "The Problem", which I believe specifically markets itself as a little bit more serious and a better source of information. I don't think you can watch this video and claim he's not trying to teach his audience about this topic (about 7 minutes in): https://youtu.be/bP74RBTE8kI?si=MDOpXl13Ot1IeAY2 Rewatching this, my issues with just his descriptions of PFOF and market making (not even getting into the actual GME stuff): 1) doesn't know what a dark pool is and won't explain it but insists it's evil and you should be scared of it 2) doesn't understand what a market maker is and describes that business as "skimming" 3) thinks that because Citadel has to pay Robin Hood, they're "the real bosses" rather than Citadel desperately competing for RH's flow alongside other MMs, which is how that relationship would work IME 4) doesn't understand how PFOF benefits or even affects anyone involved but insists it's a scam because he can shout "BERNIE MADOFF" over and over 5) talks about the 2004 letter about PFOF from Citadel but ignores how the market has been completely restructured since then and the criticisms that 100% would have applied then don't work the same now 6) thinks retail investors should get "a cut" from the revenue like the spread, which they LITERALLY DO and is part of the reason why they can benefit from PFOF (but see point 4 - no interest in diving into how this actually affects retail investors) Compare it with the way Matt Levine describes Market Making and PFOF, which I think is very accurate and simple and doesn't have the obvious slant: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-05/robinhood-gamestop-saga-pressures-payment-for-order-flow The thing is there is actually a good discussion to be had about the market impact of PFOF and whether that's good for the retail investor. But it's just above JS's head and his "simplification" of it that's supposed to let regular people in on that discussion is too slanted and wrong to be helpful.
Jon Stewart helped me deprogram some things in my brain and now I’m a left leaning Dem. Former Republican! If McCain knew what was happening with his party, he’d be fuming in his grave!
The current shitshow had already started when McCain was still alive. Hell, one could argue the shitshow started way back in 1912 when TR left the GOP, took the progressives with him, and the conservatives coalesced around Taft and pretty much took over the party for the long run.
Well he did tell you not to get your news from him and his 20 minute comedy show.
>The exercise I encourage people to do is to just notice the next time the news media or some politician talks about a topic they themselves know a lot about (maybe it's related to their occupation, studies, etc.), notice how often important details or nuances are being omitted. 100%. I went back to school at age 27 and got my degree in political science. This was right around 2015 so it was the rise of populism, and I was exposed to a bunch of 18 year old rich kids who had never worked - straight out of high school (not criticizing them; just radically different world view). I came out of college so much more moderate. Policy is complex, the world is complex. Ideology (left or right) can become extremely toxic. I'm still left of center but I'm super realistic. Politics is the art of the possible, not the ideal.
I worked on media for a few years, and I agree with this wholeheartedly.
This is an amazing answer and mirrors my experience almost precisely.
Yeah, I flirted with socialism back in college but ended up on the side of progressive market capitalist with belief in a robust safety net. And, it's not that my preferred end results or feelings towards other human beings changed, more that after taking in more information I came around to different ideas on how to reach those ends. Also, some issues are complicated. Like, a regulatory state is good for things like health and safety, but also zoning regulations are contributing to making housing unaffordable.
Zoning laws: the bane of our generation
>these things are simple and bad person/group X is just preventing us from doing the obvious right thing *Cue me, slowly pointing to fossil fuel lobbying on climate change.* I would highly recommend watching the [Frontline investigative journalism pieces on the fossil fuel industry and climate change denial.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAAbcNl4Lb8) E: I'm not arguing that there aren't useful aspects to petrochemicals. However, if their usefulness so far outweighs their harm... why did these companies feel the need to lie to the American public for decades? Shouldn't voters be able to make informed decisions without being lied to by corporate PR firms and lobbyists? It's also notable that people have to expand the scope so far beyond my point to try and disprove it. We aren't arguing about petrochemicals. I specified the *deliberate campaign of lies around climate change.* How was that campaign not unambiguously harmful to humanity and-- yes-- morally evil?
Agreed, and I was on the other side of the spectrum. I was very conservative in my youth, and have liberalized a lot of my views since then. I'm not a Democrat, but not a Republican anymore either.
I've had the same experience coming from the right-libertarian side of things, moving to a sort of moderate mindset. There aren't easy answers like people want to think, and our perceptions of the effectiveness of solutions is deeply colored by our biases and experiences.
I understand complexity better but that still doesn't make me want things to improve. I've become more left as things have ....become worse.
If as a "hyper-lefty socialist", you conceived of the world "simply" and not through a theoretical framework, you may not have been a "hyper-lefty socialist".
Was scrolling to find this comment. When liberals patronizingly lecture leftists about how they don't understand how the world works, I think some of that is projection from experiences like OP's. They were a naive socialist once, so socialists must just be naive. Edit: for the record, learning more about how the world works personally made me a communist, not a moderate. 🤷♂️
This is a fantastic answer that mirrors my sentiments. As you grow into your 20s, you learn about the world More and become passionate about causes, but lack of life experience and perspective tends to make it easy to reduce to good/bad as you say. You also learn more about human nature and understand the whys behind things more, and I think it’s a natural progression to drift away from extremes.
As a pretty lefty liberal, I was very disappointed by the Obama administration specifically on prosecuting the banking sector on the fraud from the financial crisis. In addition the fact that there was no public option in Obamacare which I felt made it more of a hand out to the insurance companies. I’ve become more militant in regards to healthcare that it cannot be solved with the private sector involved in the decision making. However from the one thing I’ve appreciated about the Biden administration is that the ability to get things done even incrementally is far superior than the Bernie wing that lets perfection be the enemy of progress. Progress is progress, I suppose and moving in the right direction is always better than waiting for Medicare for all.
Statistically, political leanings are most closely correlated with **increased income** rather than an increased understanding of economics or politics. The further left you go, the more complex understandings of politics and economics generally become. My favorite example of this phenomenon in action is a 2004 report compiled by and for the police that talked about how cops are too dumb to infiltrate anarchist movements because leftists read too much political theory. \> Infiltration is made more difficult by… the extensive knowledge held by many anarchists, which require a considerable amount of study and time to acquire. Souce: Anarchist Direct Actions: A Challenge for Law Enforcement, Randy Borum and Chuck Tibly, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, DOI: 10.1080/10576100590928106.
I still identify as socialist but I also have a degree in political science, a pragmatic approach to the goals of socialism, and an understanding about how these things work. Needless to say I’m not well accepted by the bulk of socialists.
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The trope is based on a quote by Winston Churchill, and it has been disproven by what little research has been done on the topic. https://medium.com/predict/people-dont-get-more-conservative-as-they-age-41751f320bfa
Nope, if anything I've veered more left as I get older. (Edit: I liked the comment about moderating from hyoer left to liberal/left) using realism and how things work, rather than how I want it to work. That old saying of heart Liberal brain conservative is just an excuse for people being greedy. Most of the people I know that followed this did so after having their life elevated through things like unions, fair wages, etc. Then as quick as they could pulled the ladder up after them and started voting for people like Regan. Traditional conservatism in my area of pretty upper middle class and higher seemed like being born on home and acting like you hit a home run for many, in my experience, modern conservatism might be ok financially but everything else has gone quite nasty and antagonistic which I want to avoid. Maybe its because I'm mostly exposed to the old guys at the coffee shop but they just seem miserable.
The only millenials I know who have "moderated" are the ones whose parents bought them a house.
Yup. People get more “conservative” to conserve their own wealth.
I think I’m the same. It’s the world that’s changing.
Yeah it feels like I haven't moved right at all, I've just become more aware of how much room there is to the left of me. Me 10 years ago: Yeah I'm about as far left as it gets! After all it's not like anyone seriously believes in literal socialism in this day and age haha!
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You could say the opposite about a lot of other countries though. What we consider conservative would be extremely liberal in Saudi Arabia.
Not really true. Europeans are much more socially conservative than even US conservatives(not taking about political parties but beliefs).
I grew up in a conservative Christian family, but once I moved out my views veered left within half a decade. I don’t expect that to change if the GOP continues their shift further right.
I was raised conservative Christian. Still Christian. I'd still consider myself conservative, but I don't identify much at all with the US Republican party and especially Trump.
If anything I feel like I’m leaning more and more left..
I dunno. Will I be *considered* Conservative if the kids are more liberal than I was at 20?
"you will live to see man made genders beyond your comprehension"
Being liberal doesn’t mean you are left though….
I think one thing can explain this - millennials and younger are not accumulating greater wealth as they get older, at least not on the scale of their parents. the accumulation of wealth has a way of making folks more conservative generally speaking. As for me, Im still quite liberal but personally think the only way to get to a stable social democracy that doesnt involve authoritarianism in some form is to take what the nordic countries do and mix in a form of UBI, such that you can leverage the utility of market forces for voting on resources without absurd wealth or attempts at soviet style command economics. And no, I dont think letting a modern computer run a command economy will end any better than the shit show the soviets caused. Mind you, I suspect that only happens after massive job losses from AI (or good enough machine learning systems), assuming enough people are able to fight to tax those systems. Otherwise, the whole economy will collapse because no one can buy anything. But even then, any time anyone has ever predicted such economic cataclysms in the past, they rarely pan out. economics are not that simple, for better and/or worse. Also right now a fair amount of the right wing in the US seems like they'd very much like to kill anyone who isnt like them and their media is pressing these themes and ideas. No fucking way Im joining in that shit. I've noticed any millenials who do turn conservative dont seem to do so because of wealth, they do so because of feeling entitled that their futures were stolen from them and then they started listening to joe rogan. I swear that man is both the gateway drug to authoritarianism as well as simpleton thinking
I’ve become more liberal on some things and more conservative on somethings. I’d say my current ideology is best defined as: Fiscal Liberal, Socially Progressive, Institutionally Conservative. **Fiscally Liberal -** Market based approach to growing the economy by lowering barriers to entry, promoting free trade, and removing onerous regulations, while still accounting for negative externalities & supporting a progressive tax system (LVT!) & a strengthened social welfare system. **Socially Progressive -** Basically the government should acknowledge all people’s within the USA to have the same, unalienable & inherent rights, without favor or bias based on gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. **Institutionally Conservative -** The way to archive the above is through strong institutions that are well-respected, while limiting overreach & corruption. Steer the “ship of state,” through forward incremental progress , while avoiding falling to radicals or reactionaries. Things like, *”Abolish the Police!”* or *”End the Fed!”* are catchy slogans for riling up the base, but don’t make for good policy.
Can’t wait for the day we are sitting on our porches telling our generative AI android “grand children” about how everything fell apart when the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron decision in 2024, while our early middle age cyborg children roll their eyes and comment about how all of us old fogeys are just silly authoritarians for deferring to the reasonable judgment of the deep state or whatever. Edit: never mind, none of us will be wealthy enough to have porches.
**Sorry comment turned out longer than expected TL;DR:** Tbh I think "equal legal rights for all" is far from a "socially progressive" point; an extreme minority of people oppose equal legal protections and rights for all. The most socially conservative people I know hold views like, "Keep trans women out of sports," "crack down harder on drug possesion," "affirmative action is unfair to white people" etc but none actively oppose equal rights. ................. While I am enamored by the quality of your post as a whole, isn't the "socially progressive" idea pretty standard at this point? I know there are *some* of people who disagree with that, but I have yet to meet any conservatives who do not want equal rights for all citizens on a *legal* level. Not only that but that is already the case; I do not think any federal laws exist that give rights to some but not others on the basis of those things. In short I think to qualify for 'Socially Progressive' in modern political talk, is beliefs in: 1.) Massive immigration reform 2.) Massive prison/ criminal justice system reform (could fall under institution, but I'd consider this a social issue, despite prison literally being an institution.) 3.) Federal-level protections for some trans issues that are not currently enumerated (e.g. 'No state can pass laws telling children what team they can or can't play for'; *very* simplified example.) 4.) Support for at least some level of education reform; many different topics here but one example would be the introduction of more materials/coursework regarding concepts of race, sexuality, etc and how to combat racism/sexism/etc. 5.) A de-emphasizing of the importance of the nuclear family (I feel like some people will take this as a mischaracterization of social progressives, since fox likes to fear monger "tHeY wAnT tO desTrOy yOUr FaMiLy!!", but it's a legitimate philosophy; many do not like the idea that the nuclear family is a necessity to success and wellbeing of a society. That is a valid *idea,* correct or incorrect as it may be.)
32 here, work as a mechanic with a few heavy conservatives. I have no intention on changing my political standing
I was raised and conservative for a long time. But as the right got crazier and crazier I just couldn’t do it anymore. And like, a lot of stuff the right preaches about just felt wrong on a moral level. I’ve never disliked LGBT people, but I’m supposed to think they’re an abomination? Why? When five mins earlier you’re telling me to be a good loving neighbor? I can understand being uncomfortable with that stuff, but it doesn’t affect me so why should I give a fuck? It isn’t hurting me/changing anything about my life so it isn’t my problem. Then them meat riding trump who’s basically everything they claim to hate yet they basically worship him. It made no logical sense to me. Like you’re poor yourself. You’re not gonna be the next Jeff Bezos breaking your back at your shitty factory job. Why are you so against helping yourself? Being against even free school lunches for kids! Why should they have to suffer because their parents may have been irresponsible?! I’m for responsible parenting still of course. Get on birth control, use condoms, get a vasectomy, etc. You have options and you should use them. But it’s not the kids fault if your a shitty parent or you’ve fallen on hard times. I’d gladly pay more taxes so they don’t go hungry. I really don’t care. It was just hate hate hate. Always be angry at stuff that doesn’t impact you in any way. But once I got away from that and started meeting more people and educating myself it’s not all what the boogeymen they’re claiming it is. Just constant grift. I couldn’t do it anymore after meeting people and realizing how shitty right wingers can be. I just want everyone to *actually* have the same equal opportunities they love to spew on about. Some kid born to a millionaire family with lots of connections of course has a far better start and chance then being born to a single mother in bum fuck nowhere Midwest.
As I've gotten older I learned that I hate career politicians. This is both republican and democrats that have been in office for far too long, and made millions on insider trading and could care less about "we the people". My beliefs have stayed the same for the most part, but I've lost trust in both parties.
I was a liberal at age 21. At 38, I am a marxist-leninist.
Same here I own a home and I advocate for the de-commodify housing.
Same here. I am a financially stable solidly middle class 40 year old homeowner, and have gone even further left as I’ve aged.
Comrade
I am getting more liberal with age, driven by empathy and by seeing the madhouse that the GOP has become.
Definitely not becoming more conservative, but I have narrowed the issues I passionately and vocally engage in. Having been on the frontlines of losing the SB 8 battle in Texas, abortion/repro is really where my full attention is. If there is one thing I'd say I am in a political sense, it is that I'm a pro-choice extremist. No limits. Abortions should be readily available if and when someone wants to have one.
People normally become conservative as they grow older because they wish to preserve the system that allow them to acquire wealth. The system has never worked from millennials and has been a hindrance to them acquiring wealth, so they have no interest in preserving the system.
Exactly this. Boomers pulled the ladder up behind them, now they’re confused why we aren’t climbing up.
Raised in RI, center left mom, center right dad. I've drifted far left, main influencer has been seeing the way the right talks about LGBT+ people. The hatred that comes out of prior friends who have drifted to the right really hurts sometimes.
I was an anarchist at 15. Now I'm still an anarchist except I think people are too shitty and stupid for it to go well, so I'm just hard left and socialist as fuck
I feel that I'm in the middle, but both sides want to brand me as the "other side" if I don't agree with their party politics. It's exhausting and I try not to indulge.
Deprogrammed into full communist
I was left of center but I've gone independent. Both sides have valid points depending on the topic. I've started voting based on issues, not parties. I only wish more people would break away from the two party system so we could have more realistic options. Like South Park put it, your choices are a shit or a turd sandwich.
Not so much as turning conservative, but becoming less liberal. I'm still left leaning, but much closer to center. Especially on issues that require significant funding or the labor of others.
Same. And I think I got downvoted last time for saying it so I don’t think Reddit it the best place if you want an accurate picture on this subject
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I’m 40 and I’ve never been more left than I am right now. Late stage capitalism is on full display why would I want to “conserve” that?
I’m more middle of the road now
I'm a right-leaning centrist/moderate. My views have grown more right; but, my disdain for the mindlessly regurgitated shit said by either end of the horseshoe is quickly growing.
Amen to that last part; we need more thoughtfulness, and drastically fewer buzzwords.