- cross-posted to:
- mop@quokk.au
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Sorry boomer, but that ship sailed a long time ago. I can’t become conservative, because conservatism is dead. The people who call themselves “conservatives” these days are just fundamentalist liberals that want to openly hold hands with fascists.
It’s not just a US thing either, it appears to be an international problem. You have the AFD in Germany, you have Le Pen in France, Reform in the UK. Every single one of them is the same, they are not ideologically anything they just want power and they see this is the best way to get it.
There is a strong correlation between higher intelligence and liberal voting tendencies, and since it is difficult to fool more intelligent people the populists tend to go right. Also they’re much less likely to fact check you.
It’s not just a US thing either, it appears to be an international problem.
It’s a fundamentally liberal thing. It’s no different here in South Africa - here is a Head Pig in South Africa manufacturing consent for using state violence against labour organising. That’s where I live, btw - it’s a reactionary time bomb waiting to go off.
they are not ideologically anything
That’s not true. When I used the term fundamentalist liberal I meant it - that’s what they are. They are not fascists - they wouldn’t know how to be fascists if they tried. Can you really imagine the likes of Trump or Clinton violently protecting their own ill-gotten private property? Of course not - that’s what the hencherproletariat is for. They are simply liberals that are doing openly what liberals have traditionally done covertly - funding, distilling and enabling those elements of the working class that is willing and able to violently repress the rest of the working class for the benefit of these liberal elites… ie, that which we today call fascism.
it appears to be an international problem.
I’d like to pick your brain here. I happen to agree, but I’m left wondering if there’s also a unifying underlying reason. Billionaire funding and interference? Foreign interference? Did we hit some kind of global limit or tipping point on resources that make fascism and extractive capitalism more attractive? All of that? Thanks.
but I’m left wondering if there’s also a unifying underlying reason.
Yes. It’s called liberalism.
remember when conservative meant “let’s slow down change because societal upheaval bad”?
i like my little city. it’s beautiful. we just built homes for like 10,000 people in the last decade. anyone who wants to come and make a welcoming place for others (including folk not like you and folk you don’t like), come join us. i want to conserve that kind of way of life. conserve nature. i’d be okay with conservatives if that’s what it meant. but nooooooo these bastards.
It always meant “we like how things are, let’s not change anything” tbh. And “how things are” usually meant their favourite kind of people had more power than other people. Or at least it’s meant that for a few centuries.
The conservatives had my whole life to prove their worth. They have reliably failed, only getting worse with time.
Back in the 1980’s I helped republicans with local elections. Then in the aughts I was very active in the Democratic Party. By 2018 I was firmly a progressive. I did not change my political beliefs from 1980s until 2025, when after that , I did actually slide left and become a communist.
It took me a while to see clarity
Same. The older I get, the more I care about people having healthcare, housing, and basic dignity. Weird how that works.
That’s because a lot of Boomers, not all of them, but a lot smelled some success from just the time they were born and have multiple millions in retirement funds. They became more conservative to protect what they had and figured everyone else did. Even by that logic you have to have SOMETHING to conserve and I sure as shit don’t. I’m in pie debt because my piece keeps being taken and then some.
I’ve always been pretty lefty, but I’ve definitely become more “fuck capitalism” as I’ve gotten older. Can’t imagine why.
There used to be a phrase “Everyone’s a democrat until it’s their money”. There’s also the phrase “Everyone’s a republican until it impacts them”.
a lot of people in my community (okay maybe five or ten that’s a lot to me), formerly conservative people, have downgraded me from friend to acquaintance because i pointed out how “it” (whatever it was. the issues i was most outspoken about were homelessness, healthcare, immigration, and gun violence1) impacted them. and they sat and festered with it.
1views evolve. i still think that a home with a gun is infinitely more dangerous than a home without a gun, but i think that a nation threatened by fascism is better protected by an armed citizenry than an unarmed citizenry. and you really want the antifascists to be the armed citizenry. if you’re gonna be drinking poison, choose the one that tastes like cinnamon.
There used to be a phrase “Everyone’s a democrat until it’s their money”.
Strange, how the number of Democrats seems to keep climbing as the tidal wave of inflation and debt drown people.
That said… now might be a good time to Read Settlers and consider how a colonial economic model naturally predisposes reactionary politics among agents of an imperial power. Because, extracting money from the natives is how Republican policies work. The only question is whether you’re on the outbound or inbound side of the pipe.
yeah, not sure where this meme about aging and getting more conservative came from, the Churchill quote presumably?
I started about centre, a little right when i was 18, now 61 and way the fuck over on the left, want a stateless planet
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of motives, will somehow work together for the benefit of all.”—John Maynard Keynes
as to conservatives
"I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. . - John Stuart Mill
Maybe that was true in the past, but I also as an greeting older I see clear and clearer how conservatives are fucking everyone.
At this point I don’t see myself ever voting for Republican. It is not anymore about differences in government should be run it is that one side wants government to run whole other wants it accomplish and give all power to the Epstein class.
I was the most conservative I ever was in middle school. By high school I was more “anarcho-capitalist libertarian”. By college I was a social democrat, then a democratic socialist. I’m even further left now.
I don’t know a single person in my generation who’s moved right as they got older, most have moved steadily left.
Only way you’re getting conservative is if you have stuff to conserve, like a house you were able to buy, or investments to protect. Lemme just check the economic status on my generation and… yeah about that…
Definitely nothing to do with lead poisoning from childhood 👀
I was always anti-bully, on account of having been bullied at a young age.
I see any group, any camp, any political party treat other human beings like garbage, and that’s all it takes to know who the bad guys are. It doesn’t matter how you package the rest of your platform - where your party clocks in terms of humanitarian ethics and basic empathy has been a damn good yardstick for the rest.
From that vantage point, much of this kind of rhetoric and boomer-era politicking has absolutely no relevance for me. I’ve heard this one before - conservatism as a function of age - and I’m as mystified as ever that it’s the kind of thing that gets tossed around.
Funny because I’ve turned into a Democratic socialist.
That’s because Republicans used to be the “smart” party.
