Me too. I'm conserving far more resources now than when I was younger. Heck, when I was a kid, I never recycled; then I became more and more of a recycler, and now I'm big into "reuse is better than recycling!" I fix when I can, rather than tossing and buying new. I'm waaay more conservative than when I was a kid.
And, like you, I'm ready to go out and kill Nazis, just like my granddad's did.
Left as a kid, then drifted to center. On track to that point. But then, slow burn left from 40 years old through early 50s, and then a hard sprint left. Conservatives when I was young seemed like bitter dried up out of touch assholes most of the time, and as I've become older I've discovered they are also bigoted racist misogynist assholes who will suck off any leader who promises to hurt the right people for them.
I don't think I could possibly live long enough to want to associate myself with those fuckers.
Similar path, but with a more classical libertarian bent (not the bullshit republican that lives weed and is fixated age of consent stuff thankfully). Hard left turn after being disengaged third party about 10 years ago.
I had a bit of a libertarian phase. It really did just take a moment to really think about the ideas and realize how silly they ultimately are. It does not help that even at their best their outcomes favor the wealthy.
At least they had an incentive to vote the cons in back in the day, because (I think) the fiscal policy was working for the boomers as they continues to gain wealth throughout their lives. So if they just wanted to fuck over the have-nots, there was at least a reason they could give.
But how can they expect the younger generations to vote for pieces of shit when none of it even gives us more money? They want to be the elites while forgetting that the "bread" that accompanies the "and circuses" is pretty crucial in suppressing the masses. Hungry people start wheeling out the guillotines pretty sharpish if it looks like they'll be staying hungry.
I'm a former Trump supporter. I will never support Republicans or MAGA ever again after all they've done. So I've aged but I've become more progressive and open minded, not more conservative.
It was Trump's mishandling of the pandemic that got me started questing things, the rise of the anti-vax among his supporters and the violence that happened after the election. Then over the four years I started to change my mind about more and more things and repeatably realized I was wrong.
I think the prevailing idea at the time was that you would become more conservative as you accumulated wealth and property, and while I can't confirm or deny that I would be more conservative if I were as wealthy as my parents were when they were my age, I can attest that the accumulation of wealth and property on which this notion is predicated has not happened for myself and my peers.
Is it any wonder, when told that we will own nothing and be happy by people who have never worked a day in their lives, that we want to burn it all down and piss on the ashes of those who oppress us?
People don't become conservative as they age, they become conservative as they accumulate wealth which in the past has typically correlated with age. Once they have wealth they want to protect it.
Nowadays people don't accumulate wealth as easily so it takes longer before they develop more conservative views if at all.
It's an "I got mine, screw everyone else" tendency.
I believe it comes from misunderstood studies that find out that people tend to become more conservative as they age, but the studies aren't about the political meaning of conservative, but about our behavior of tending to avoid risks and seek stability as we age.
I had a co-worker tell me that if I was a Republican before I was 30 I was heartless and if I was a Democrat after 30 I was brainless. I was 20-something at the time.
I identified as moderate, or progressive conservative, and at least intended to vote that way. in my 30s (Not American but adjacent, we haven't had an election since I entered my 30s and im 32.)
but then I just kept seeing the self identifying conservatives, basically being a hair away from goose-stepping. r/conservative is fucking terrifying, its a good thing im banned from reddit.
(Turns out Im probably a NeoLib / NeoCon, Not down with the super progressive stuff but still tolerant of it. Just wanting people to chill the fuck out with their rhetoric. but apparentley, My kind is dead now, so . Maybe its time for Yee-haw fuck the law?)
not particularly, voting issues are far too complex to neatly align everyone into a broader tent without some kind of gross overlap issue. but I'd at least like to know what general direction Im supposed to be sitting.