Being born into a conservative household can be a hard hurdle to clear. I grew up with the unquestioning belief that the left was straight-up evil (shocker: that was projection) but then moved around a ton and worked alongside a huge diversity of people after highschool cuz I joined the military and didn't have a choice: that exposure was a real shock, but since our brains don't like being wrong, I resisted it for a good while before finally acknowledging that I was acting like a moron and started thinking more critically about politics and what political decisions meant for my community.
Not everyone gets that healthy slap-to-their-senses. Doesn't excuse shit, but that's the 'why'.
It'd be interesting to see some actual political metrics on other service members. The military is always seen as being SOLID red, and while yes it does lean that way, the tiny bubble of the military that was my personal field of view seemed maybe a 60-40 split; and I personally went in red, and separated borderline radical blue. I know at least a handful of others who did the same... no idea if it's always been that way, or if this is a developing trend. Or if I happened to be stationed in an uncharacteristically blue slice of military. /shrug.
For men, a lot of it has to do with personal frustration and several "sources" or "influencers" pointing to communism, cultural marxism, feminism, etc, as the culprits of everything bad going on. Attacking a scapegoat you've been led to believe is "the reason" you can't get a job or a girlfriend is easy and emotionally satisfying.
Thinking, rationalizing and realizing how and why shit's fucked up, down, left and right doesn't fill you with good vibes.
To be fair if you’re anything past Boomer, at this point you should be too embarrassed to vote for any GOP candidate. When the party decided to support Trump—a guy with proven sexual assault charges, pending fraud charges, pending classified document charges, a penchant for insurrection that he happily acknowledges, and more and more video surfacing of him unable to be coherent, hopefully most everyone with any connection to reality has realized it’s time to kick him and the GOP to the curb.
i'm 24 and a proud conservative: i want to replace all highways with railways and interurban tramways, return to having small dense cities surrounded by lively rurality, dissolve large corporations and replace them with small local businesses, and bring back that thing where we went "hey the slightly insane guy who never works is living in a shack that barely qualifies as shelter, let's build him a new cottage so he has a proper place to live, because everyone has a fundamental right to housing no matter what."
A lot of our current brand of conservatism appeals to people's notion of unfairness. People taking things from them. They have been told over and over that liberals are lazy and want to take things from them.
Remember that these are young people who don't have a lot of experiences in adult life, but have experienced basic, uncomplicated unfairness. Fighting against that simple, unnuanced unfairness appeals to them.
Indoctrination, propaganda, alt-right playbook recruitment through targeting the disaffected... these aren't young people who've turned to conservatism, they've been actively targeted by right wing factions in order to bolster their position.
Edit: Oh, and also Reagan era neo-liberals are the fucking worst and when they shit on progressives and their ideas, they basically push away people who would otherwise be politically left leaning.
As progressive values become more mainstream being an edgy conservative becomes a form of counter culture.
This shows in those god awful conservative memes people make that say shit like "Im not like other girls, I dress modestly, dont drink or do drugs and the only man I get on my knees for is JEsus" type shit. or the male equivalent where they talk about how theyre the only real man left in a world where people drink soy lattes and dont beat their kids.
I am always surprised at how little credit is given to the relentless onslaught of radical fascist propaganda over airwaves, in MSM, and online...all of which do their damnedest to reach young people, teens, and even primary school kids. Very few people have any idea how powerful AM radio and Salem Media Group are. These are all the result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Because they’re either rich or idiots.
Politics of spite is a hell of a drug.
Some incel got rejected for prom and now NATO itself is on the fucking line.
a few things seem to motivate young idiots into conservative thought:
MRA their daddy their rural background edgelord BS
Wash the brain with soap every day, just like their parents & all the "cool" communities they are exposed to. The main goal in life is to protect the few individuals that already have everything from the fate of havening everything but at a bit slower rate. Its like sports, your team is best, the other needs to go to jail.
/s
Decades of "the ends justify the means" gritty antihero's, doing what "needs" to be done.
Honestly its surprising how many people have beliefs they think are evil but just they alone can bear the moral cost to support it. Its why it doesn't matter to some about Trumps crimes against democracy or rapes, they are just making "enlightened" real politic game theory decisions in there heads instead of understanding the value of ethical and honarable institutions.
At least that's part of it. An over value of "accepting a little sin" to get what they want instead of accepting the nuance and boring reality of what it actually takes to build a better world.
This is a pretty good data-driven article - "Millennials Will Not Age Into voting Like Boomers"
It mostly lumps Gen Z with them and the Silent generation with Boomers.
all that matters is that we get rid of them.
Generational tribalism makes me fucking cringe. Take your dumbass nomenclature and get to fuck.
Edit: Yeah, you're right, let's divide up as much as we can because we know how useful that is!
Well... GenZ doesn't like gaslight as well 😉
I think they might just have different ideas and things that have shaped their thinking, values, all that stuff.
Lmao, lesser evil trap
