Millennials are the first generation to move left as they age
Millennials are the first generation to move left as they age
Millennials are bucking trends, becoming an increasingly progressive voting bloc and rewriting the long-held rules of politics, writes Isabella Higgins.
Oh man, I wonder if it has anything to do with the US government completely failing to ever provide any of the following for millenials:
Basically, we're the first generation of Americans to not have a functional government of any kind that has done anything to improve the quality of our lives. All we have gotten from the decades of our tax dollars going into our bullshit corporate capitalist system is the literal worst Covid response on the plant, multiple bank bailouts, the worst education, the most costly Healthcare, and now for the salaries of actual fascists.
Fuck any American too stupid and selfish to move left enough to save America. Hope owning the libs was worth getting our Democracy inverted, our Supreme Court destroyed, our justice system shredded, all to get a president that shits himself, insults everyone, and diddles kids.
It's that or voting left, and somehow we have that. It would be embarrassing if it already wasn't so fucking cruel. Millenials aren't moving left, they're getting pushed to the point of just not caring for a country that clearly doesn't care for them and literally never has.
I think the older and richer folks do not understand that power is a mutual exchange.
They don't, and historically never have. So it's about to get Mario Kart 64 versus mode in the States with the amount of Luigi-ing that is likely going to happen soon.
It’s because Gen X (my generation) turned out to be so grotesque.
Despite the very real, observable harm that the Internet has done to the world, this is one thing that I think is good about it. Millennials and late gen x grew up with the Internet and the full availability of history and current events. Did everyone use it for that? Fuck no. But some of their friends did. And they talked about it.
For the first time, most people in a young generation were exposed to the very real horrors of the world and why they happened. The answer is always, "one group wanted power over another" for various reasons. But that desire, wanting power over others, is a very right wing idea. So the effect is a shying away from the thing that has been burning us for literally ever.
We didn't start the fire
That's a funny way of saying the center has moved further right faster than our cranky asses have. Jkjk
I dunno. Plenty of us genx have done the same. I'm really glad to see more move that way, cause seriously, fuck the right.
Probably because they've yet to see a right-wing government complete a 4 year term without a calamity occurring.
I'm 100% serious.
What generation has seen that, though?
I asked an AI:
when was thr last time a Republican president completed a 4 year term without a catastrophic event happening
Calvin Coolidge (1923–1929)
Calvin Coolidge, a Republican, completed a full four-year term from August 1923 to March 1929 after succeeding Warren G. Harding, followed by winning election in 1924 for a nearly full second term.[1][2] His presidency occurred during the Roaring Twenties, marked by economic prosperity rather than immediate catastrophe, though the Great Mississippi Flood in 1927 prompted limited federal response.[3][4] Scandals from the prior administration lingered but did not erupt into a defining crisis under Coolidge, who distanced himself effectively.[5]
No Republican president since Coolidge has completed a full four-year term without a major event widely viewed as catastrophic. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961) managed two terms amid Cold War tensions like the U-2 incident, Suez Crisis, and civil rights struggles, but these defined his era as turbulent.[6][7] William Howard Taft (1909–1913) finished one term but alienated progressives, leading to party splits without a singular disaster.[8]
Earlier examples like Chester A. Arthur (1881–1885) involved party defeats and reform pushes post-assassination, not uneventful stability.[9] Defining "catastrophic" as economic collapse, war, scandal, or disaster, Coolidge stands as the last with relative calm before the 1929 crash under Hoover.[10][3]
Citations: [1] List of presidents of the United States - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States [2] Presidency of Calvin Coolidge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Calvin_Coolidge [3] Calvin Coolidge: Impact and Legacy - Miller Center https://millercenter.org/president/coolidge/impact-and-legacy [4] In 1927, Calvin Coolidge refused to provide aid during the Great Mississippi Flood, despite six governors requesting it. He also refused to visit the disaster zone. https://www.reddit.com/r/Presidents/comments/1m5q805/in_1927_calvin_coolidge_refused_to_provide_aid/ [5] The Last Time a President Got a Pass on a Scandal- ... https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/06/calvin-coolidge-scandals-donald-trump-226576 [6] Dwight D. Eisenhower - Key Events - Miller Center https://millercenter.org/president/dwight-d-eisenhower/key-events [7] Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Dwight_D._Eisenhower [8] William Howard Taft | Biography, Accomplishments, Presidency ... https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Howard-Taft [9] Presidency of Chester A... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Chester_A._Arthur [10] Major Crises During Every US Presidency | Stacker https://stacker.com/stories/politics/major-crises-during-every-us-presidency [11] What Happened the Last Time Republicans Had a Majority ... https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/1928-congress-last-time-republicans-had-a-majority-this-huge-112913 [12] Presidents Who Didn't Win a Second Term https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0812/5-presidents-who-couldnt-secure-a-second-term.aspx [13] Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Lyndon_B._Johnson [14] 50 Worst Decisions In American Politics' Last 50 Years ... https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-lists/worst-decisions-american-politics-1974-2024-1234940313/ [15] Every single republican president since Theodore ... https://www.reddit.com/r/AskConservatives/comments/16uufz4/every_single_republican_president_since_theodore/ [16] Life-changing disasters have shaped our modern presidents https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/3848362-life-changing-disasters-have-shaped-our-modern-presidents/ [17] Remember last time a republican president had their 2nd term? https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1lq8kqn/remember_last_time_a_republican_president_had/ [18] Main Events of the Eisenhower Presidency, 1953-61 http://www.kansasheritage.org/abilene/ikeeven.html [19] William Taft - Key Events - Miller Center https://millercenter.org/president/william-taft/key-events [20] Chester A. Arthur: Impact and Legacy | Miller Center https://millercenter.org/president/arthur/impact-and-legacy [21] Calvin Coolidge - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Coolidge [22] Timeline of the William McKinley presidency - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_William_McKinley_presidency [23] List of Republican Presidents https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/list-of-republican-presidents.html [24] Benjamin Harrison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Harrison [25] William McKinley Event Timeline https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/william-mckinley-event-timeline [26] List of presidents of the United States https://www.britannica.com/topic/Presidents-of-the-United-States-1846696 [27] A String of 6 Forgettable U.S. Presidents https://www.dummies.com/article/academics-the-arts/history/american/a-string-of-6-forgettable-u-s-presidents-151452/
I agree 100%. They're incompetent and dumb as hell.
I was repeatedly told that when I got older I would "understand" why policy makers made the terrible decisions they did, and that it was immature to believe they were cartoonishly evil.
Instead, I learnt that the reality was even worse than cartoonishly evil.
A lot of things suddenly get explained when one becomes aware of the traits associated with Psychopathy and Sociopathy and how around 5% of humans are high in the spectrum for one or the other.
In my own experience, certain kinds of behaviors are incredibly hard to believe in (deep down, emotionally, even if intellectually one does) when a person has an average or above average level of empathy: when you have a normal level of empathy it's pretty hard to put yourself in the shoes of and naturally accept that some people are casually and without any feeling of guilt the kind of person who, for example, couldn't care less if their personal-upside-maximizing actions hurt even little children or puppies as long as they didn't get reprisals from others for doing it.
Instead, I learnt that the reality was even worse than cartoonishly evil.
Yeah, it's saying something when you figure that IRL villains are very often worse than the mustache-twirling villains featured in comic books.
The banality of evil.
In Australia.
In America the effect really depends on the subgroup you're looking for. Educated vs uneducated, wealthy vs poor, rural vs urban. Overall Millennials haven't gotten more conservative as they age, but aren't continuing to move left. The entire cohort has always been many points left of the others, absolutely from the constant crises. I'm not sure of any recent research on the cohort moving further in recent times, but I'd love to see it if anyone has it.
The other worry here is, Millennials might also be the last generation to do this, as we're losing in many thought spheres where young people get their information, including first political impressions of the world around them. Conservative think tanks absolutely saw what was happening with Millennials and vowed to win back the next generation.
People listen to Andrew taint and go "I like the cut of his jib!"
Sadly they've intertwined it with the already fragile state of masculinity so now it's not uncommon for teen influencers to also be neo-nazis. We weren't listening to boys and this happened. The boys are not OK.
Heh... as Marx got older, he moved from around -5,-5 on the political compass, to around -10,0.
Yeah. Maybe age alone is not the driving criteria. ;)
Maybe people just say that to make those prone to following do that.
That and the money. "No. It's mine."
We millennials were deprived of all of that.
I know anecdotes aren't data, but I'm a millennial who moved further left with age.
I started left, but am now more vehemently so.
I started as a communist and ended up an anarchist.
Quite easily explained: older generations accumulated wealth as they got older, so the central message of the right "I got mine, fuck you" (paraphrased) resonated more with them.
Newer generations only accumulate debt.
Id say, in addition to your very valid point, that this generation is the first to have this level of access to the un-skewed plight of those able enough to voice or show their situation. The Internet, social media, direct messaging around the world, is giving a very cold view of the world to an increasing number (as the older generations die out and new generations are becoming more cynical and media literate or aware) and it is highlighting how the gears of the world, too large enough to visualise on your own, actually turn and for whom they turn.
This is important to emphasise. Older generations were, generally, in more of a bubble, it wasn't easy to spread word with the same reach and authority as national mass media before the Internet.
Similar situation with other communication advances, like the telegraph, which allowed news of the world and the people around a country to learn and co-ordinate much better than before.
It was a baby boomer/greatest generation thing. The generation that served in ww2 benefitted greatly from massive programs to aid returning veterans, thus fueling both education, home ownership, and post-war consumerism. They were able to pass that onto the generation that came after, the baby boomers.
By the time the youngest baby boomers became adults the systems that allowed them and their parents to accumulate wealth began to be dismantled. Neoliberalism didnt happen in a day. It took years to fully tear the old system apart and years before the effect would be fully felt and visible. By then the older people cannot associate the 'now' with the events of several years ago, and younger people have never experienced the things that their parents did.
In short. The version of capitalism that WW2 veterans in the West lived with after the war 'worked' for them, while Communist regimes, most of which were built on exploited colonial holdings, or war torn nations that were never developed to begin with... Eastern Europe was much poorer than Western Europe even before WW2, and after WW2 they were both poor and bombed to hell and back. Vietnam was a French colony and the Vietnamese were fighting the French for liberation before they got taken over by the Japanese, who the Vietnamese also fought, before fighting the French and the Americans afterward. China was the USSR of the East... and also extremely underdeveloped.
This means seeing authoritarianism and poverty in 'Communist' regimes while seeing wealth in the US, Canada, the UK, and France after ww2 (which were built heavily on US aid and some where never bombed, like the US and Canada... and France adopted a fuckload of government intervention that fueled their growth) was something that people of that time would associate with those regimes, making it easier for them to think that the socialism there is what caused the poverty when in reality that was simply their starting position and not the end result.
The shit we are seeing now is basically disproving all of it. Russia has been 'capitalist' for 35 years now and they are still heavily underdeveloped in addition to being more authoritarian than it was under certain soviet regimes. Shit that was affordable and easy in the West, even in bad economic times, is now becoming prohibitively expensive. Food production is still extremely high and food waste is incredible... but food prices are continuing to get worse and worse.
Also for those who care to look at things from an actual historic perspective, it is becoming apparent that the reason why shit was good in the past was not due to endless economic growth but social policy and legislation.
Building more houses and apartments is pointless. There are too many apartments and too many houses. They are expensive because housing turned from making places to live to a speculative market. This is why Canadian cities are unlivable now.
Exactly. Boomers had the privilege of owning a home, building up savings, got pensions, and got to retire early. Gen x got most of those privileges, except maybe pensions... now millenials are pouring all their savings just to own a home, and social security is unlikely to exist by "retirement". And gen alpha are going be entering adult hood with 50 year mortgages? Gee, wonder why the young population is questioning the economic system.
I was just talking with my dad at Thanksgiving. He mentioned that a lot of young soldiers bought expensive cars when he just joined the army. I said that's definitely true. He said that he didn't.... he paid off his college.
So he put off buying a new car.... for 6 months. 😑
Exactly.
Even greedy millennials who are very low on the whole "wanting for others to be well, not just myself" kind of feeling and personal principles are themselves experiencing how it is to be born under the boot and realizing one is destined to be under it until the day one dies, and that feels bad, it feels unfair, it makes you want to "fuck this shit up".
It's not that millennials are inherently better or worse than other age groups, it's that they're far more likely than older generations to be familiar with being relentlessly victimize by present day society, through no fault of their own and merely due to something they were born with (specifically the "when they were born").
Basically far more of them know how it feels to be born poor in a society that gives you almost zero chances to climb up from that no matter how capable you are and how hard you work, than previous generations.
You know which countries had Communist revolutions? The kind with lots and lots of poor people with zero chance of improving their lot, such as Czarist Russia.
Maybe because concervativism went from stay at home mom's to ethnic cleansing and genocide.
No shit. We are living in a worse time of inequality than the gilded age.
Saw our boomer and genX parents ride the rise, told it'd be ours too, only to witness everything taken away, revealing only the lies remaining; the false promises that daddy corporation would take care of us all.
On a personal note, saw my parents throw away their entire 2 million, cost me a million in effort through blackmail, slavery, torture and fraud, and then inverted my efforts, so it's like they managed to throw away 4 million, and then I'm there with the government doing waves of culls of the disabled poor by cutting them off to starve, denying them even the pittance (~ I've heard said, disabled people's costs of living are 4-10 times higher, and, so, why is the top rate of disability support income less than half what they say is the living wage?)... yeah, the inequality keeps going down all the way. Not just comparing the billionaires and trillionaires to the working class and upper precariat. ... All while knowing the technology exists to emancipate everybody to lush abundance... Buuuut, is suppressed, because, ' gotta keep those rents and regressive tax extortion and usury flowing, eh?
Sucks being dependent on your abuser.
... Will not be televised.
Millennials are the first generation to move left as they age
I told you boomers I was gonna do that, when I was 17, already coming out of my corporate-fanboi phase of my teens. "Afukinatoadaso"
Glad there are millennials who came after me doing so too. Unsurprising, given what we went through. Well done capitalism, selling out our futures.
Now I just hope more remembered it's freedom too, and not just jumping boat from Big Baron into the arms of Big Brother (or Big Bully, or Big Bank, or Big Blight, or Big Bot).
Like ol Mikey Bakunin said: "We are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality." -- Mikhail Bakunin https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin
[Edit... it's only early to mid 40s for the first Millennials so far... We'll see if that sticks. As the saying goes, "60's the new 40".]
Are millennials also the first generation to have lower standards of living than their parents? I think housing costs is the biggest part of that.
Costs in general. I just stand there in the grocers thinking "shit, they should nationalize the food chain"
It's hard to think of powerful businesses I interact with from day-to-day that government shouldn't either completely nationalize or expropriate their property and split up.
Yadda yadda yadda...
Political leanings are always influenced by wealth
If you are wealthy and have a chance of becoming even more wealthy ... being a conservative is great because it ensures you keep your wealth and probably gain more
If you are not wealthy ... you have to support socialism because it's your only chance of having a life or even gaining any bit of wealth or control of your life.
That's why people traditionally moved right as they aged. However, millennials are bucking the trend is the point.
It is also posited that as you age, you're more likely to have family and think about their immediate needs rather than society at large.
However, it can be just greed. The problem for conservatives is that they have tipped the balance so much that the divide is much greater and inequality greater, so they need to convince people to vote against their interests. The bottom 90% are far better off under more social measures.
Pretty sure the majority of the US conservative base is not wealthy. Only the top 0.1% has benefited financially from recent changes.
I think it has a lot more to do with someone's own experiences with government. I've lived in areas with corrupt local governments and incredibly well run governments. I can absolutely understand those who live their whole lives under corrupt local governments, the ones they actually interact with on a regular basis, thinking every other one is just as bad and wanting it as limited as possible.
Then of course there's the more hate oriented agendas, but calling those merely conservative feels like we're being too kind to them.
I'm curious about the generation that came of age during the Depression, but I don't think we have polling data that far back.
The generation that came of age in the depression voted for FDR 4 times and gave him supermanorites in Congress.
They rewrote the American social contract.
They were left of the generation before and the generation after.
From what I've seen, research and habits wisez those that grew up in the depression tended to be thrifty for life, always planning meals and avoiding waste. It was a hard habit to break after being hungry I'm sure. I haven't seen anything about their political leaning. I think community and helping people rated highly in values. Both sides of American politics would claim that as their values.
Right wing parties feed on fear: the fear of losing what you have.
Millenials have had no chance to build anything to lose. They're not self contained fiefdoms jealously guarding Whats Mine Is Mine, they rely heavily on social groups and community.
Get on my property!
"First generation to be worth a damn"
No matter how good or bad your situation is, turning right is like gouging your own eyes out. It makes the situation worse for literally everyone. Even the hyper rich would be better off under a more left paradigm.
Let's go! One last Millennials are ruinning...
Fascism!
I’m millenial. I’m as left as they come. Fuck the right so hard
And Ezra Klein out here saying Dems need to move right....
Because everything is fucking my shit up and family is worth less than nothing. Older generations got some personal benefit from fasch policy as they aged.
Me, I just see it proven evil and stupid literally every single day. Hard work just gets you more debt. Ownership is fake unless youre already wealthy. The law doesn't protect me. The government is not my friend. The people in charge dont know what they're fucking doing unless there's a child in the room-and in that case I'd rather not know, but keep finding the fuck out. We know we don't get to retire.
It's a material interest thing. And at this point a lot of us aren't dumb enough to betray our comrades for the scraps our grandparents go6 by age 30.
I’m doing pretty well, personally. I’m in my late 30s, I own a condo that I bought myself - not inherited, and I have a good job with job security. I’m not saying this to brag but I am saying this to say that anecdotally, I have never understood the notion that as you get older, the more conservative/Republican one becomes. And just to heep en the anecdotes, the above is pretty much everyone I work with and everyone I know professionally.
Maybe all these so called lefties that came out of the sexual revolution/hippie/peace and love-era and turned conservative…just weren’t particularly good people to begin with. Maybe being a hippie and smoking weed and being sexually adventurous in your younger years, was just that. Fun. The political ideology was just ‘fashion’ that enabled the lifestyle. But then they got bored or it became more fun to be wealthy when mom and dad handed them the keys to the house and got them the cushy corporate job - but they were always shit bags, even when they were young, so called “liberals”.
I don’t know. I didn’t live through what Boomers and Gen-X modern conservatives, formally liberals, lived through. I just have a hard time believing anyone in 2025, that lines up ideologically with modern day Republicans, can possibly be a good person. It would need thorough explanation to convince me that they formally had an ideology that lined up with mine. I can’t even begin to comprehend a justified rationale for becoming conservative. It seems like horseshit to me.
Yeah but I'd rather find why they sucked than pat myself on the back and congratulate myself for being a good person.
Maybe all these so called lefties that came out of the sexual revolution/hippie/peace and love-era and turned conservative…just weren’t particularly good people to begin with.
This is what the past year has taught me about my ex-hippie father. It was always just an aesthetic for him. Major bummer.
This. I was born middle class to a family who was first generation to go to Uni. Left Uni with $1,000 in the bank (no debt), and ended up a millionaire in my 30s due to hard work and a lot of luck.
I'm pretty damn progressive. Fuck the Republican/Democratic party. We need UBI for free food and housing. And a wealth tax.
umm? gen x here. lefterer every day.
Me too…but we’re outliers.
SO many people who I thought were cool turned out to be morons…an alarming amount of them were radicalized in the pandemic. Even many of the people I know that think they’re devout leftists seem to feel they need to have one or more “edgy” views that cause them to caucus with radical centrists or right wingers. Like…my bi hippie friend started voting conservative because Palestine…my own lefty brother started voting conservative because of guns. Just found out a very poor ex girlfriend voted conservative because of right wing views on addiction. Then you have all the insane tankies…if you explained horshoe theory to them their heads might explode from the cognitive dissonance.
The author probably forgot about Gen X like almost everybody else.
I doubt it.
Gen X Features Musk, Bezos and Joe Rogan. Can’t think of any significant leftists ATM (I could if I took more time and didn’t have confirmation bias for the purposes of this response, lol). AOC & Mandahmi…Millenials.
Note: I’m Gen X.
Who?
Badum tish!
Though I think at this point most of us are comfortable being stealth mode.
Atari Gen here . Born in 1980. I'm in rural Tennessee. Started out super right... As I've gotten older I've moved further and further left.
My political views these days are summed up by this..
I want my gay married neighbors and their adopted trans kids to be able to defend their land and their legal pot plants with full auto imported ak47s. And of course if something happens.. they can go to the hospital and use their universal health care.
It goes a little further than that.. it that's a good start.
I know a few people in rural US who made the jump from a super right US Libertarian position in late-teens/early adulthood all the way over to Marxist positions. I'm not certain, but I suspect that the US Libertarian and Republican mindsets are often normalised there so people are raised with them by default, but a lot of the underlying ideas that validate the US Libertarian position, like individualism and "freedom", work better as abstract ideas and tend to break down upon inspection. Most of the additional freedoms of the US don't matter when people don't have the money, health and other resources to make use of them. It just allows the rich and powerful to trample the rest.
And your contemporaries?
Get out of here old man, the left is ours!
We were cool before it was cool.
Maybe as a group ? but I am cis white Gen X and started out as middling conservative in my eary 20s, now green environmentalist and anarcho-socalist at 58.
How anyone can age, look around at the enviormental devestation, including climate change enhanced catastrophes that are going to get much much worse along with vast inequality and think this is good lets keep doing this, is bemusing beyond my ability to understand.
We're in the post-truth era. People have been taught that scientific consensus is equal in weight to their feelings on an issue. Climate change can be dismissed as fake news even though there is abundant evidence, it's a disturbing thought so it can just be thrown out.
Greed
The first? Are we sure about that? Generations circa 19th and earlier 20th century haven't moved left as they aged? Sus.
"First post-World War 2 American generation" maybe.
While each successive generation is generally more progressive than the last, within a generation people normally become more conservative as they accumulate wealth, which is something that used to happen as one aged
It me. I have always considered my self “left” in the American sense, but high school me would have scoffed at my adult self adopting the socialist label.
This. I was a... "centrist" until I got a job. Now I hate capitalism as a system. Full stop.
It me.
Leftists NOT_RICK, who does 509642577 leftisims a day, is an outlier and should not have been included in the study.
I’ve yet to personally meet a GenX republican.
Gen X I've only gotten more liberal as I've aged
Less uptight, more open-minded in general.
Same
My silent generation grandparents, my asshole step grandfather excluded, did the same m
Really? Because they are the generation most likely to vote republican
Maybe so, but I haven’t met any.
I have an in-law that fits the bill, "closet MAGA" you could even say. But I'm in the South US, so skewed right is common here
Spending several decades of my life hearing right-wing politicians and voters tell me that my "lifestyle choice" is bad, that I'm a degenerate who is ruining the country, that I don't deserve equal rights, that I deserve to be executed, and so so many other repulsive things like that definitely pushed me towards the other direction, politically.
Truthfully though, even if I weren't a part of the LGBT+ population, all the other ridiculous stuff would have been more than enough on its own to turn me off to right-wing politics.
Realistically, I think it's the authoritarian core of it mixed with the anti-intellectual principles that I always found off-putting. Although I never would have guessed we'd end up where we are in the USA back when I was a kid, this all honestly makes sense.
I remember a health care video interviewing someone that got cancer. They said "we did everything right and we're bankrupt." Everything right meaning getting a degree, good job, etc and they got fucked.
This, exactly. Boomer hippies were all about "sex, drugs, and rock and roll." And as they got older, they watched their friends OD or burn out or just get tired of it and settle down, and when they sold out they actually got a decent price for it. And so they say, "ah, progressivism might sound fun when you're young, but you'll grow out of it, like we did."
Millennial progressivism is a different thing entirely. Here in the US (the article is about Australia, but the trends are similar), our progressive movement focused on healthcare. Some journos even commented on how it was strange that all these young, healthy people were rallying around that. It's because we understand that we're all walking on a tightrope over a fucking abyss and all it takes is one thing going wrong and everything will go to shit and you'll be left begging for scraps on the sidewalk, because there is no safety net, because society doesn't take care of anybody. It's a sort of mentality that hasn't really been seen since people lived through the Depression. And we're hardly going to get less concerned with healthcare as we get older.
I don't see my friends burning out on sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I see my friends burning out on working back-to-back 60's at Amazon. I get older, and I see more and more people working hard, doing everything right, and still getting screwed over by capitalism, in one way or another. And what do you even get for selling out these days? They stiffed the fucking guy who turned in Luigi.
PSA: Stop calling it a safety net.
It's a system. You're supposed to pay into the system, and then the system is supposed to work for you. You're supposed to use it. A safety net you're never supposed to use. I think conservatives like to call it that to paint the idea that you're not supposed to use it, if you use it that means you failed, and that it shouldn't be the primary system.
In Australia?
Definitely true for me. Wish I could say the same of my siblings and their partners :(
I'm just following my grandparents' lead
Same, my grandmother never voted for a conservative in her life. I miss her, but I’m sure that if she had lived to see this day, it would have just made her golden years more stressful than they already were. I at least have the knowledge that even if my parents disagree with me, she would’ve supported the things I stand for.
I've been swinging all over my entire life. First quite far right due to being on 4chan. Then overcorrected to the far left when Trump got elected because of podcasts and Reddit, and now I've been settling somewhere right of centre, though my views are such a mixed bag that I wouldn't really even attempt to place myself anywhere on the political spectrum. I'm not exactly one of those people who, when you know their view on one or two issues, you can reliably guess their view on multiple other completely unrelated ones as well.
It's however been interesting to see how much my personal views have been shaped by the people I hang with online. I see it in other people as well: one of my best friends still hangs on 4chan and he's just as right-wing and racist as you would imagine. Ironically though, hanging here on Lemmy doesn't exactly pull me more towards the left but rather the opposite - I feel like being pushed away.
I hope you're able to learn how to think critically for yourself
It’s however been interesting to see how much my personal views have been shaped by the people I hang with
one of my best friends still hangs on 4chan and he’s just as right-wing and racist as you would imagine.
You acknowledge that the company you keep influences your views, and you continue to keep company with a racist?
I used to have views like that too - then I changed. I'm not really worried about changing back. That kind of racism is completely incompatible with the way I see the world and other people.
I think that having opposing views just makes our conversations more interesting. He's far more capable of politely debating than the vast majority of people I engage with online.
As long as you’re thinking, you’re doing better than the vast majority
one of my best friends still hangs on 4chan and he's just as right-wing and racist as you would imagine.
...you should get better friends. I completely cut off my best friend of 15 years for this exact sort of behavior.
Our parents took every advantage and then shut the door behind them. How could we trust the system they put in place to keep themselves wealthy at the expense of everybody else? The only choice is a new paradigm that eschews unchecked capitalism and bolsters workers rights.
Where does the millennial generation stand comparatively in higher education percentages?
I hypothesize a correlation.
And given the direction Gen Z is going, we're the only generation to do this.
Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, shows similar voting patterns to millennials, with lower support for the Coalition and higher support for Labor and the Greens.
Generational politics are bullshit.
Makes sense that generations would be shaped by historical events, like revolutions, genocides, famine, pandemics, and ecological catastrophes.
I’m pretty sure the greatest generation moved left. Remember FDR? My grandfather was die hard FDR
They're the voting block that put Reagan in power too...
I suppose some did but there were a lot of die hard FDR democratic socialists post Great Depression and ww2. My parents and grandparents hated Reagan and i remember getting in arguments at school about it with other kids. There was a good amount of polarization in the 80s. I guess my family has always been a lot farther left than most. To me it just seems like the common sense choice.
Is this a trend outside Australia as well?
Oregon Trail Generation, here.
Me in high school / college: "There are people with conservative views and there are people with liberal views, and while I see myself as a Democrat, I don't think we have all the answers, and surely the path into the future is to find people of all political persuasions and find positive compromise amongst them all to move forward."
Me now: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles..."