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roronoa79
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09 Sep 2022, 11:37 pm

Goodness we went off the rails here pretty fast, huh? (Edit: we went slightly back on the rails as I typed this. Pardon the length)

Getting back to the original topic:
Most of what this article says makes sense to me. We tend to equate More Old = More Conservative, but there are other factors at play. Gen Xers came of age when American nationalism was on the upswing. They were caught up in the triumphalism of the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a mainstream capitalist consensus. They were the generation who saw their parents vote enthusiastically for Reagan. They grew up in that "Morning in America". The Democrats were in the electoral wilderness after Carter's defeat in 1980, and Clinton won in '92 largely by marketing himself as a hard centrist concerned with the economg above all else. The 90's and early 00's were arguably when the GOP and Democrats were most similar in their platforms (in recent history, at least). Politics just seemed like voting for one rich bastard or another who didn't really care about you. Both parties were very similar in economic policy, and the stark contrast in social policy was nothing like it is today. South Park, a show very representative of the Gen X mindset, famously described this as choosing between a "douche and a turd sandwich". Republicans were the slimy, sabre-rattling Newt Gingrich, while Dems were the sanctimonious, condescending Al Gore. Why get so hung up on politics when Both Sides (tm) are interchangeable elitists? Even as the mainstream parties have diverged, many Gen Xers have retained this mindset of Both Sides, where anyone who devoted themselves to political causes is viewed with cynicism: self-interested virtue signalers or naive idealists. Centrism and political disengagement became badges of honor. This distaste for political activism dovetailed nicely with conservative sentiments. Political apathy tends to lead to hostility to political change.

The political normal for those who grew up at this time was Republicans like Reagan and Gingrich, and Dems like Clinton and Gore. I'm sure Obama must have seemed like a radical leftist compared to the Big Tent, emphatic capitalist Clinton. The Clinton era also saw many Gen Xers join the rising American militia movement. These conservative armed groups grew out of incidents like the sieges at Wako, Texas and Ruby Ridge. They saw a federal government under a Democratic president taking violent action of dubious (at best) legality, and for many of them their trust in mainstream politicians--but democrats especially--never recovered. Liberals and leftists we're viewed as disingenuous authoritarians who were willing to use executive fiat and Alphabet Organizations to undermine democracy and the free market.

This was also the generation of MTV, South Park, and Top Gun. When people talk about the 90's, they (in my personal experience) reminiscence about their favorite brands, shows, and music, rather than social or political events. Consumer culture was at its height, worker organization was at its nadir. Grunge and alternative rock grew as reactions against the commercialism and macho mentality of 80's hair metal, yet much of Gen X adopted this anti-establishment mindset without an underlying political ideology. This resulted in a disconnect between many Gen X rock fans and the liberal, often leftist artists they liked. For example, in the article, GOP politician Paul Ryan says his favorite band is Rage Against The Machine--an explicitly communist, anti-capitalist, anti-racist rap metal group. The grunge band Nirvana even remarked on this phenomenon in their song "In Bloom":
"He's the one who likes
All our pretty songs, and he
Likes to sing along, and he
Likes to shoot his gun, but he
Knows not what it means."

A lot of Gen X's conservatism probably stems from the creeping success of the social left and the re-emergence into the mainstream of socialist ideals. I imagine many of them see the success of Bernie Sanders and the disenchantment with capitalism in the younger generation and they worry they are seeing undone the triumphant end of the Cold War that was so formative for them. They were disinterested in identity politics in 2000 and they recoil at their prominence now. Whatever happened to "It's the economy, stupid"?

C'mon guys, there is plenty to discuss here without devolving into insults. I disagree with conservative Gen Xer's, but I still think we should try to understand them and why they are as they are.


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10 Sep 2022, 12:23 am

Back on topic: Tonight it struck me that there may be an explanation for Gen-x behaviour linked to their neurological health and well being. At first I figured it might be a high rate of concussions or other traumatic brain injuries caused by car accidents, workplace accidents, or sports without proper modern helmets. But there weren't any google results to support any of those hypothesis at all. There were some that said they're a very stressed out generation and suffer from mental health problems - that could explain some things.. but as wide spread as problems seem to be it still doesn't really explain it all away so easily.

Them I came across this article and it all started to make a whole lot more sense.. environmental poisoning from known toxins that were much more commonly used throughout their lives & brain development than my generation and younger. Check it out here for yourself: https://www.tallahassee.com/story/life/ ... 006339001/

It actually explains a lot, really. I now have a much greater understanding of why they are the way they are.


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roronoa79
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10 Sep 2022, 6:11 pm

I think social and cultural factors are more salient here than mental health issues brought on by chemical exposure.


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Δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν.
Those with power do what their power permits, and the weak can only acquiesce.

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10 Sep 2022, 6:23 pm

roronoa79 wrote:
I think social and cultural factors are more salient here than mental health issues brought on by chemical exposure.


Ever living generation is a member of the same society and culture, though.

The data above differentiates gen x from others as having suffered from much higher amounts of lead poisoning - a very plausible explanation for their behaviour.


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roronoa79
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11 Sep 2022, 2:05 pm

goldfish21 wrote:
roronoa79 wrote:
I think social and cultural factors are more salient here than mental health issues brought on by chemical exposure.


Ever living generation is a member of the same society and culture, though.

The data above differentiates gen x from others as having suffered from much higher amounts of lead poisoning - a very plausible explanation for their behaviour.

Every living generation is a member of a constantly changing society and culture. The historical circumstances of Gen X are not the same of my generation. Those who came of age in the 80s are going to have different perspectives than those who came of age in the 00's--for better and for worse. Understanding how these things pushed them to the right is important for those of us on the left who want to stem the conservative tide.

Also, by your logic, shouldn't Boomers be more conservative than Gen X? Awful lot of lead and radium paint floating around when Boomers were growing up. Not to mention the same noxious automobile emissions and even dirtier industry in general.


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Δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν.
Those with power do what their power permits, and the weak can only acquiesce.

- Thucydides


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11 Sep 2022, 2:24 pm

This is a pretty good example of one of the things that drives me craziest about the left at large, this absolute certainty about their views, to the point that they'd rather believe that an entire generation is suffering from some kind of chemical psychosis than entertain the thought that perhaps good people of sound mind came to different conclusions than they did.


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roronoa79
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11 Sep 2022, 3:55 pm

Dox47 wrote:
This is a pretty good example of one of the things that drives me craziest about the left at large, this absolute certainty about their views, to the point that they'd rather believe that an entire generation is suffering from some kind of chemical psychosis than entertain the thought that perhaps good people of sound mind came to different conclusions than they did.

I don't think this is exclusive to the left at all, but it remains irritating. I am a leftist, but there is a chance for a discussion here that is getting stymied by insults.


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Δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν.
Those with power do what their power permits, and the weak can only acquiesce.

- Thucydides


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11 Sep 2022, 4:43 pm

roronoa79 wrote:
I don't think this is exclusive to the left at all, but it remains irritating. I am a leftist, but there is a chance for a discussion here that is getting stymied by insults.


True, but I hold the left to a higher standard on this as they don't have the religious excuse that moral majority conservative types do, plus they're always holding themselves out as better than those people, which opens the door in my opinion.

It's actually a subject of some interest to me, as when I was younger the religious right had much more social power than they do now (remember when it was them trying to cancel Harry Potter for glorifying witchcraft rather than the left trying to cancel the author for ideological heresy?), and it was fashionable to be a certain type of pugnacious atheist resisting their moralizing demands, where as now the religious right is much weaker and the very people who were super into resisting them have fashioned their very own "moral majority" to impose their values on everyone, the mirror imagery is striking.


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11 Sep 2022, 5:27 pm

Dox47 wrote:
It's actually a subject of some interest to me, as when I was younger the religious right had much more social power than they do now (remember when it was them trying to cancel Harry Potter for glorifying witchcraft rather than the left trying to cancel the author for ideological heresy?), and it was fashionable to be a certain type of pugnacious atheist resisting their moralizing demands, where as now the religious right is much weaker and the very people who were super into resisting them have fashioned their very own "moral majority" to impose their values on everyone, the mirror imagery is striking.


Until you wrote this, I hadn't really given much thought to the fact it really did flip. It's evangelism on the left, same as it was on the right. This to-the-core moral belief that they have to save people from something horrible. It fascinated me back when I started to see evangelical atheism rise, and while I never saw them vocalize why they were so strident, I used to pry until I got answers. And it is exactly the same, just with the perceived danger to one's soul coming from the opposite side. The thing is, neither view is entirely right or wrong in my eyes, they both have some valid points, but the meaningful pieces can get drowned out fast by the negative effects that are inevitable with any form of strident evangelism.


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11 Sep 2022, 6:49 pm

DW_a_mom wrote:
Until you wrote this, I hadn't really given much thought to the fact it really did flip. It's evangelism on the left, same as it was on the right. This to-the-core moral belief that they have to save people from something horrible.


Does it put some of my feelings about left wing cultural power and how it's exercised in perspective? Remember, at the height of their power the religious right never had institutional control the way the left does now, they could browbeat certain companies into submission, but they never managed to fill the boardrooms and HR departments with true believers the way the contemporary identitarian left has.


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Last edited by Dox47 on 11 Sep 2022, 11:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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11 Sep 2022, 7:08 pm

Dox47 wrote:
when I was younger the religious right had much more social power than they do now (remember when it was them trying to cancel Harry Potter for glorifying witchcraft rather than the left trying to cancel the author for ideological heresy?), and it was fashionable to be a certain type of pugnacious atheist resisting their moralizing demands, where as now the religious right is much weaker and the very people who were super into resisting them have fashioned their very own "moral majority" to impose their values on everyone, the mirror imagery is striking.

Depends where you live. The religious right wing is still very powerful in the Bible Belt, and in red states (and some purple states) more generally.

Also, the religious right wing is still a powerful part of the Republican Party -- powerful enough to have convinced Trump to appoint the kinds of Supreme Court justices who ended up overturning Roe vs. Wade. And it's powerful enough that we now have very restrictive abortion laws in a majority of states. (The so-called "pro-life" movement is very much primarily, though not exclusively, a religious right wing thing.)


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11 Sep 2022, 7:19 pm

Dox47 wrote:
DW_a_mom wrote:
Until you wrote this, I hadn't really given much thought to the fact it really did flip. It's evangelism on the left, same as it was on the right. This to-the-core moral belief that they have to save people from something horrible.


Does it put some of my feelings about left wing cultural power and how it's excised in perspective? Remember, at the height of their power the religious right never had institutional control the way the left does now, they could browbeat certain companies into submission, but they never managed to fill the boardrooms and HR departments with true believers the way the contemporary identitarian left has.


I did connect a few dots on your animosity as I was considering that post.

But I'm not sure about your observations on power imbalance; not sure I am using the most accurate words here, not spending that much time carefully choosing, but hopefully the gist will make sense. I feel like the hearts of company owners run red far more often than blue, regardless of policies they may advocate to keep employees and shareholders happy. Powerful PAC money runs very red. Not to mention the decades long planning the red has engaged in, slowly and patiently wrestling control of what matters most. The cards have been played for red to control all the real power, and I don't think most voters have really caught on yet. Hand red another round of control and that will lock in a way that will be nearly impossible to ever overcome. Will it matter if the left holds cultural power when the right holds all the legislative and judicial power? Single party control is ALWAYS bad, IMHO, no matter the color, and the right has far more political control than its actual following suggests it should. That has been carefully planned and played. So how long can the left hold the culture war ground? Or if it holds it, how much will it actually matter? I can imagine these CEOs smirking as they sign off on inclusive HR policies for PR, all the while knowing their PACs are creating non-inclusive laws that more directly limit people's lives. It's so easy to pretend to care when you know the rules are stacked your way anyway.

Well, that's pretty far off the evangelism track, isn't it? Or not. Just following the tangents where they lead me.


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11 Sep 2022, 7:28 pm

Dox47 wrote:
Does it put some of my feelings about left wing cultural power and how it's excised in perspective? Remember, at the height of their power the religious right never had institutional control the way the left does now, they could browbeat certain companies into submission, but they never managed to fill the boardrooms and HR departments with true believers the way the contemporary identitarian left has.

I question whether "boardrooms and HR departments" are truly filled with "true believers," as distinct from people using "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" both to to avoid lawsuits and to find cheaper labor, and, to those ends, also using various "woke" terminology and concepts that they learned from their DEI consultants.

Also, there certainly do exist some large religious right wing-dominated corporations, e.g. Hobby Lobby, although they tend to be family-owned private companies.

P.S.: I'm inclined to agree with DW_a_mom's post above.


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11 Sep 2022, 8:09 pm

DW_a_mom wrote:
I did connect a few dots on your animosity as I was considering that post.


Yeah, as someone who grew up in the late 90s / early 2000s, it's like a betrayal, I was right there with them railing against the religious moralizers, but even back then was wary of the dogmatic views on the left, which I got to see up close and personal at my alternative high school in Seattle.

DW_a_mom wrote:
But I'm not sure about your observations on power imbalance; not sure I am using the most accurate words here, not spending that much time carefully choosing, but hopefully the gist will make sense. I feel like the hearts of company owners run red far more often than blue, regardless of policies they may advocate to keep employees and shareholders happy.


Maybe fiscally, but not socially; have you not noticed that the business elite has gotten ever more cosmopolitan and progressive in recent years? Who are you thinking of here, like the Walton family or something?


DW_a_mom wrote:
Powerful PAC money runs very red.


I'm not so sure, there are powerful interests on both sides, I'd be curious to see if you can find a recent breakdown of how much money is being spent and where.

DW_a_mom wrote:
Not to mention the decades long planning the red has engaged in, slowly and patiently wrestling control of what matters most. The cards have been played for red to control all the real power, and I don't think most voters have really caught on yet. Hand red another round of control and that will lock in a way that will be nearly impossible to ever overcome.


Are you talking about the Federalist Society and the courts? The thing I find funny about that is that it was done completely in the open with no attempts at secrecy, and in reaction to the courts reacting to political pressure in the FDR era and skewing to the left, but it's treated like it's some sort of grand conspiracy. This is the classic liberal move by the way, the left seizes control of an institution, in this case the courts and the law schools that feed them, then when the right builds their own parallel institution over several decades and starts to win victories, the left cries foul and claims the right is cheating. Just like how the electoral college was the "blue wall" that would protect Hilary in 2016 until it didn't and instantly became an "undemocratic relic of the past", or the filibuster was a noble tool of resisting the hated GOP until the GOP started using it, then it became a "white supremacist (?) tool of obstruction", and I'm sure if they manage to get rid of it and the GOP retakes the Senate, they'll switch it up again. It's tiresome.

DW_a_mom wrote:
Will it matter if the left holds cultural power when the right holds all the legislative and judicial power? Single party control is ALWAYS bad, IMHO, no matter the color, and the right has far more political control than its actual following suggests it should. That has been carefully planned and played. So how long can the left hold the culture war ground? Or if it holds it, how much will it actually matter?


Politics is downstream of culture, unless you're willing to use a massive amount of force to keep the citizenry in line like in authoritarian countries, you can't just rule by decree and legislative sleight of hand. Take me and my guns; if you pass some really nasty laws that I don't care to obey, will they make you and the people you send to enforce them bulletproof? We can't even successfully ban drugs or at least keep them out of prisons, in theory the most tightly controlled environments in the country, what makes you think any government in this country could truly defy the will of the people for long?

DW_a_mom wrote:
I can imagine these CEOs smirking as they sign off on inclusive HR policies for PR, all the while knowing their PACs are creating non-inclusive laws that more directly limit people's lives. It's so easy to pretend to care when you know the rules are stacked your way anyway.


Kind of like my previous paragraph, the CEOs might not be sincere, but the middle management who actually runs the companies are, and even the CEOs are dependent upon those people day to day. We've seen this over and over again, particularly in journalism, where the younger generation who runs the tech and does the scutwork has revolted against their older peers and forced them to bend the knee to the new ideology, just look at what happened at the NYT in 2020 if you want the arch example.


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Last edited by Dox47 on 11 Sep 2022, 11:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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11 Sep 2022, 10:53 pm

^^
Some interesting points, but I don't have time right now to respond to them. Do want to let you know I've read through.

As for structural threats, I can't think of the right legal term, but one item you didn't mention is that red states are trying to get leverage on a judicial concept that their legislatures - which they can gerrymander into keeping red - will have the ability to select presidential electors instead of the voters. This would allow purple states to ignore the vote and choose all red electors, basically pulling those states out of play in presidential elections. Some have already written an override into their laws. There is a chance that this Supreme Court will be willing to play along with the constitutional interpretation it takes to work this scheme.


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11 Sep 2022, 11:33 pm

DW_a_mom wrote:
As for structural threats, I can't think of the right legal term, but one item you didn't mention is that red states are trying to get leverage on a judicial concept that their legislatures - which they can gerrymander into keeping red - will have the ability to select presidential electors instead of the voters. This would allow purple states to ignore the vote and choose all red electors, basically pulling those states out of play in presidential elections. Some have already written an override into their laws. There is a chance that this Supreme Court will be willing to play along with the constitutional interpretation it takes to work this scheme.


Team blue has their own version of this, an interstate compact to throw their electoral votes to the popular vote winner regardless of how the state actually votes, it just gets a lot less coverage for reasons I'm sure you can figure out. Kind of like how their version of voter suppression works, slightly more subtle with off year elections and small voter turnout completely driven by incentivized union voters, but more effective than whatever the GOP is doing that draws so much breathless coverage.


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