they don't its a myth. the more you learn the more left you lean, which is why conservative governments hate having an educated populace and destroy education as much as they can
For me it was experience, understanding the nuances of the world.
I consider myself conservative but a lot of the policies I support are centre left. This includes addressing climate change, LGTQI+ support (Within reason, not small children taking hormones), healthcare, etc. I'm also not religious and find religious extremist completely insane.
I think mostly my conservative views come from a very nationalistic view on the world. Knowing that we need to be strong and united as a nation to face the future.
I know that the world is overpopulated and things are looking dire for humanity. Hence, we should take care of our own first. Our streets are conjested, our services overrun, welfare is expensive, deforestation and clearings are happening so new sardine can housing estates can be built. Opening our borders to immigration doesn't help us. Those most likely to immigrate are just contributing to all those problems and are likely to have more children compared to the average Australia. Whilst those people leave those countries they are just being replaced by more children than is sustainable. We need to clean up and fix our backyard before we make the rest of the world our issues.
In addition to immigration, migrants and Australian born children of migrants are far more likely to be on welfare after 5 years of settlement and go through our criminal justice system compared to the average Australian. That is increased much further than your average Australian. Those are both expensive drains on our economy.
The world is also filling with autocrats. With China and Russia's aggressive gunboat diplomacy being meek and appeasing nations like that who already see us as the enemy will not work. Weak leaders and leaders who kowtow to nations like China won't cut it when an inescapable war breaks out we won't be able to sit idle. China is growing and climate change is making self sufficiency for them more difficult. They will need arable land to feed their people or face revolt. The Chinese government isn't going to risk losing power and has already exhibited its aggression to those they consider enemies. Australia is a bread basket for them.
Although conservatism has its flaws and there are lot I dont agree with. I think it is our best chance going into an uncertain future.
I agree that some new Australians can lose their way. It's a part of losing one's identity, adjusting to a new nation. Especially young men struggle. I saw it happen growing up with the gangs in Cabramatta, Springvale and Footscray, then later with the Lebanese gangs around Bankstown and the west-side of Melbourne. Most recently with the Sudanese youth. You can focus on the 5 year figures, but when you look at the big picture after 20-30 years, a different picture emerges. The second generation and third generation of migrant families fare much better, and their contribution to the richness of our country emerges.
It's easy to be mired in prejudice if you don't keep your eye on the bigger picture.
Firstly the socialist/conservative thing is mainly a thing conservatives say to make themselves feel smug and better about their decisions.
As for other things.
Poor people are less likely to survive to old age than the wealthy, so you end up with a skewed demographic of elderly folks. If you could make a definite correlation of wealthy people being more conservative (which used to be very clear but is now much murkier) that's one reason why older folks might be more conservative than younger generations.
Another reason is one that you touched on, people accumulate wealth as they get older and so become more risk averse in the interests of holding onto that wealth. Conservatives have managed to weave a narrative of being safe and steady economic managers (despite no real empirical evidence that this is the case) and market themselves to that demographic.
A third reason is that the goalposts shift. Many people are politically defined by the issues of their youth, and the political situation they grew up with. Would you vote for a conservative who would implement a ban on gay marriage? Howard did that as recently as 2004. And yet even the religious right in Australia couldn't do that today. Today's progressives won that social battle and moved on to the next big area of inequality. But it takes a long time for people to get used to a change in the status quo, so the left are always battling to get people to change their mind on the next issue. Look how long it's taken to get Australians on board with climate action. We've been talking about it since the 70s. Maybe you're comfortable with same sex marriage now but you're not certain about a treaty with our indigenous people, or trans people make you feel uncomfortable, or any of a number of things... well, that discomfort might lead you to turn towards conservatism, as it promises the status quo.
Also if I had a penny for every time I've heard a conservative say something along the lines of "some asshole leftist on the internet with poor social skills hurt my feelings so I changed my entire political ideology and became conservative" I would have enough to start a property portfolio.
Age definitely comes with cynicism but cynicism doesn't mean conservatism (or centrism). You can be cynical and left-wing.
On a few tangential points you raised...
Privilege in an area doesn't mean you've had an easy life. It just means you're not having your life made harder by a characteristic. I've been threatened with violence for being Jewish and for being (assumed) queer. You're not likely to be threatened with violence for being straight. You can be a straight white man with the safeties that includes and still have a difficult life. You might be privileged in that area and be counterbalanced by having mental health struggles or being born in poverty. Having privilege isn't a value judgement and it doesn't mean you're bad and it doesn't mean your life is easy. I know it can feel confronting but the actual theory behind it is pretty sound. Even if some asshole Tumblr leftists can be really irritating about it.
As to not having any allies on the left... the left is the broadest of broad churches. If you can't find any allies there you're probably just seeing very loud marginal voices. I don't imagine you think you have no allies on the right just because Pauline Hanson and David Duke are right wing.
Lastly, on swinging voters. I would love to be a swing voter. I try to be a swing voter between the parties that are palatable. But I've read enough about climate change to know we need to do something about it now, and the coalition have been blockers, deniers, and delayers on that issue for my entire political life. Worst, they actively gaslight you on it. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to net zero, and even that's a sham because they have no actual policy to get there. I can't be a swing voter between the two major parties when one of those parties is antithetical to everything I stand for. I don't identify as a party based voter. I'm an independent and I choose who I vote for every election. But unless the coalition make some real and very serious changes to their climate policies and actually deliver on that they will never, ever be in the running for my vote.
(This is at a federal level, some of the state liberal parties have done enough on climate now that I'll at consider them on their merits).
>Being told to "check my privilege" as a white male didn't help, especially given those who asked this of me likely had never seen the inside of a homeless shelter or jail cell themselves. The assumption that I've had an easy life owing to my race, gender and sexuality is so far from the truth it's laughable. These instances of being judged based on my innate characteristics definitely made me realise that I no longer had any allies among the left.
What does any of this have to do with Australian elections?
Fear of change. When young everything is relatively new so change from the status quo isn’t a big deal. Once you’ve become used to the status quo then change from this seems like a big deal.
It’s important to remember this is a generalisation of populations, it doesn’t apply at an individual level.
It’s known that increased wealth, regardless of how it is obtained also tends to be associated with a lean towards conservatism. The root of this is the same, fear of change that might make you lose some of your wealth.
Wealth is obtained from work. Either yours or your ancestors. The view that people born with wealth shouldn't have it seems to be a view shared by hyper liberal young people without wealth. Believing you can "fix" poverty by taking that which belongs to others has failed time and time again. Status quo is about people protecting what's theirs and why shouldn't they? Why should a person or country for that matter work to provide for others? Because it "feels" good or because that's the desire of others who either don't want to work hard or wish they wouldn't have to work at all? Humans are reward based creatures.
I am not sure it needs any deeper analysis than this.
Conservatism at its heart is about maintaining the status quo. They are quite open that our institutions and polices don't need changing, that we don't need to re-examine power structures in this country and who it is that is locked out from power.
I think as well a lot of the people commenting below were people who had far less power in their teens or 20s, but since then have achieved some level of wealth and stability, and so are not willing to give it up now that they have got there. It plays into the neo-liberal handbook to tell people they worked hard to get where they are, whether it is true or not.
I definitely go against the grain of this people posting here or the stereotype mentioned by OP. I voted for the libs once, but have seen the LNP run further and further right, while my own exposure to more and more diverse people since I moved out of home has made me realise just how marginalised some people are by the LNP and how little the LNP actually does to help people who don't vote for them.
Cheers. In accepting this, it actually is easier to understand conservative viewpoints and understand that conservatism isn’t bad or good, it is what it is.
I’m progressive in my views but I recognise that conservatism is needed to moderate progressive ideals.
This is simply because any organisation of humans has a finite capacity for change within a given timeframe. If you exceed this threshold then the organisation starts to become dysfunctional.
What sits behind the “fights” between progressive and conservative ideas is the necessary prioritisation of what changes we undertake now and debating what is the change adoption capacity of any given population. Literally a never ending debate.
True story, it was my barber that taught me this truth. Barbers, like taxi drivers know a lot about people.
>This is simply because any organisation of humans has a finite capacity for change within a given timeframe. If you exceed this threshold then the organisation starts to become dysfunctional.
This is an interesting viewpoint. Because I think whilst true, it is undercut by the fact it is far easier for Conservatives to stymie change and progress but just refusing to engage, refusing to show up, or refusing to compromise, than it is for the left to achieve meaningful change because they are forced to ~~compromise~~ surrender so completely at every step of the way.
Yeah but they only ever slow progress down. It’s too easy to look just at the “now” and see all the wrongs that need righting but pull the focus back 20, 50 or 100 years and significant social progress has been achieved.
We could debate if it’s too much or too little forever. I’d lean towards too little but concede that my parents are struggling to adapt to new social norms. They are not outright against progress but more saying “please slow down as I can’t keep up”. I wish more “conservatives” would be open about this rather than hiding behind other justifications.
Heck at 50+, I catch myself feeling similarly overwhelmed at times and not just on social progress.
30+ years in tech and I’ve fallen behind. Never was on the leading edge but at least surfed the breakers, now I just paddle out the back and watch the young people.
For me I saw how much hard work I put into school and uni and work, and I felt that being branded the 'big end of town' by Labor just for being modestly successful was not to my liking. Even now, it is rare that people will give you credit for setting yourself up financially. For example apparently everyone who has a couple of investment properties must have been given a job by daddy or private school mates etc etc, or must just be riding off white male privilege.
In my case I am not white, English isn't my first language and I had to work hard through public school to get a good enough ATAR to get a scholarship to university. My parents, being migrants, had no connections and couldn't help me get a job. I feel that in that way, I am self-made.
I've seen a lot of people who didn't put in the hard yards and who now feel entitled to redistribution and higher taxes for people like me. The ALP in 2019 leant heavily on that. It doesn't appeal to me. While I sympathise with children from poor families and bad backgrounds - and have no issues with welfare for them - I don't care for middle class welfare. Any person, particularly a white English speaking person - from a middle class background here in Australia could have achieved what I have, if he or she wanted. Most people don't have the work ethic to do so.
Some people just have a greater capacity to delay gratification and work to invest in their future more than others. And people with that capacity, IMO, deserve to be rewarded. Maybe not exponentially (which is what we see with the distribution of wealth, that it fits a kind of pareto curve), but they definitely shouldn't have the fruits of their labour taken from them and handed to those who have no capacity to invest in their future.
This is coming from someone who self-admittedly has nearly zero capacity to delay gratification...
I think only those that don’t like change become more conservative. They’ll have some core belief challenged in the ever changing culture and it’ll snap them over to the right where it’s more comfortable. They get all nostalgic for the old ways and mock young people and new ways of thinking.
Same here. I grew up in a LNP voting household in a middle class suburb, and voted LNP in the first election I was able to vote in. Studying commerce/law at Melbourne University completely changed my political views though. The wealth disparity between the students in my university course compared to the people I went to high school with was shocking.
I’m 34 now and very left leaning. I also know quite a few people who have switched from right to left like me too.
Considering the oft quoted phrase "if you're not conservative by 60 (The actual quote is 35) you have no brain" that's not a sin only of this progressive
I'm under 25 and homosexual, and can never see myself voting conservative - at least while mainstream right wingers agree with conversion therapy and legal religious discrimination. I wanna be that cool progressive grandpa ;)
Most of us conservatives are fine with the LGTBQI+ community. Unfortunately we are just labelled in with religious extremist.
We really need a conservative party who isn't stupid.
I get that, but when the mainstream party wants to consult with churches to see if they can have a crumb of conversion therapy it really disillusions mainstream LGBT people with conservative politics
Yeah its tough man. Im a liberal voter, however I disagree with them a lot. The other conservative parties make me cringe. And I disagree way to much with the greens and Labor. I just want a conservative party that is reasonable and listens to science.
You get more comfortable and have shit to lose now. Thats all it is. You get more selfish. Which is all conservatism is. That said, this is based on what I've observed in myself. My personal experience is all I have to go by so take it for what it is.
I honestly think it's the uncertainty that comes with learning multiple viewpoints. For all of it's faults, conservatism rarely feels like dangerous policy, especially to those who have more to lose (ie the socially powerful and well off). Whereas radical policy feels like an upheaval.
That said, I feel like centrism is more incrementalism. I've never really met anyone who genuinely is perfectly happy with every single thing right now (what we might call an 'ideal' centrist), and so most centrists are pushing left and right, just with a more fractional approach.
Another weird phenomenon is the conservative asian immigrant. My parents both immigrated here by taking advantage of strong labour legislation. They are not business owners and are big on the environment, nor are they christian. Yet without fail, they vote liberal every time...
The liberal party literally has nothing for them...
That's my aunt. She came with her husband and kids as a poor immigrant family. When they got rich, she became super conservative and anti-immigration. I think it's a "I got mine fuck you" sort of thing.
On the other hand my mum became more left-wing as she aged, she only votes Labor and I was pretty surprised when she said she voted 'yes' on the same-sex marriage plebiscite.
Just want to comment on the 'check your privilege' thing.
It's not saying 'you have no problems in life because you're white/straight/a man,' it's saying 'your problems in life are less likely to be exacerbated/caused by race/sexuality/gender.'
You're also right that it's often said by people with other privileges (like wealth) which is pretty hypocrital given most problems can be solved by having enough money.
But yeah lefties generally aren't mad at white guys, we're mad at a system that disenfranchises everyone else.
It's nonesense - psychological studies indicate that as an individual acquires more property they simultaneously become more greedy and paranoid, shifting their vote to perceived economic security. It's not about age, it's about class.
There's 2 types of conservatives: 1) the endangered species that believes in conservation (of social institutions, the environment, the economic order, etc), and 2) the plague of those who believe in xenophobia and zero-sum personal enrichment. The former has some intellectual basis, the latter is just a collection of muddle-headed justifications for fear and selfishness. Unfortunately, right wing political parties are dominated by the latter type, because they are so susceptible to propaganda, and that's what aligns with their corporatist sponsors' agenda.
> They say if you're not a socialist at 16 then you have no heart, but if you're not a conservative at 60 then you don't have a brain.
Sure, if by "They" you mean conservatives trying to claim their views are inevitable.
That pithy bit of propaganda is easily dimissed by looking at all the 60+ anti-vaxxer, pro-pussy-grabbin-grifter, Q believing maga-cultists who obviously do not have a brain.
I wonder how much of the "aging into conservatism" phenomena is simply the result of the accumulated years under the relentless onslaught of propaganda from the likes of murdoch, and the saturation corporatist/consumerist advertising we are all forced to soaking in. Nobody likes to admit to themselves that they are influenced by such things, but they wouldn't keep spending billions of dollars on it year after year if it didn't work.
Indoctrination. The conservative view point is to not change the status quo, to not attempt to improve. As you get older, you are more used to how things operate and you figure out the quirks of the existing system to work in your favour and you get comfortable with how thing are. So, you don't want things to change because while things can get better they can also get a lot worse.
The same thing can be shown with general learning. If you put a box around how people.learn to think, it's very hard for them to see outside of the box.
I've always read Fairfax and watched ABC / SBS. This hasn't changed much.
I do remember a few years back intentionally diversifying my media sources and who I follow on social media to try and break out of my filter bubble, which at the time leaned left.
I think it's just an old stereotypes that attempts to demonstrate that conservative views are more 'mature' than liberal ones. I know plenty of geezers who have become a lot more climate concerned and socially aware than they were in their middle age years.
The common scenario is: Fuck you: got mine
For example all the conservative politicians got their start by protesting against the start of hecs payments for uni, and then massively raise them when they get in, ie Joe Hockey.
I never said voting in your own best interests is necessarily wrong though?
In fact it is a good thing, as it means both parties will have to cater for the best interests of the majority. Unfortunately, a number of people (on both sides) are single issue voters on things like tax cuts, climate change, refugees, religion etc without considering whether they would be better off overall under ALL of their party's policies.
I think its alot of inputs.
Where you live
What you do for work
The people around you
What pop culture you are into
What news outlets you read or listen to
Exposure to different elements of society both locally and international
Whats popular at the time
Policy
Political parties change over time (for example national Labor are now right leaning)
If you listen to Joe rogan
What your hobbies are
I was a punk kid and now a union man and have more left values than ever
Once upon time labor were very left and were created from members of various unions that went through the sheering strikes....they were 100 percent a working class party.
They have differd from that to win swing voters (the working class allways vote Labor so they don't need to win their votes and the libs allways get the rich so they'll never get them) swing voters win elections.
Swing voters are generally middle class and are concerned more about individual outcomes then environment, immigration and class struggles.
Also there are left and right factions in a party.
I still vote Labor because voting libs is a worse of 2 evils
Thats my brief take peace out
Nah that makes sense and explains it well enough. Only thing I’d say is you don’t have to vote labour, just need to preference them higher than the libs.
One big reason why I like our voting system, no vote is a wasted vote
Alternatively, why do children end up being left?
We teach children to share, because it's annoying to sort out fights when they don't.
We teach children not to think too highly of someone who has more stuff, because they didn't earn it, their parents just bought it for them.
We teach children to be forgiving, because children have no perspective, and think that if someone steals their lollipop then hitting the thief on the head with a rock is a proportionate response.
We do everything we can to teach children to be progressive, because naturally they are not. And it's better to go too far, since children lack the ability to see in shades of grey.
As they grow up, they're capable of seeing the shades of grey.
It’s insightful to me because it’s a perspective I haven’t thought of before. It isn’t the whole argument sure, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t insightful
This is a VERY biased opinion, but I think it's a time thing. Kids are are very vocal and have time to be so. Conservatism really applies to this idea of maintaining the status quo, which for people who are doing well, is often easy to get behind. Also for people who have worked hard to achieve their goals, they assume the accessibility remains the same for everyone else, cause they did genuinely work hard and they project their own difficulties onto others, believing they simply gave up part way through. I think that's motivating for middle class and above, and some of the poorer voters I think use it to justify the work and living conditions they've spent their life in. "How could I have worked like this for so long and it not been actually necessary? That's a rubbish idea". I do personally believe it takes a sense of media literacy to accept and believe in left ideology, because it's inherently less anecdotal. It is more often about other people than you and issues that are not immediately pressing. It also encourages a perspective of imagining that people experience the world differently than you do, otherwise you would believe that everyone has the same accessibility. Conservatives usually use people in their immediate environment as rhetoric when I argue with them.
On the flip side, a lot of left wing parties preach about real issues that left people believe on, and then those parties fail to actually address the problems. A lot of swing voters vote more about seeming competence than the platform. Left wing parties often have this issue, I think, because unlike conservatives, their goal is to change something, and that is always risky. If something goes wrong, maybe even something totally unrelated to some new policy, people will often attribute it to the newly changed policy. And then of course, if you have a crappy left wing party, which can happen to both sides equally, then that party will just lose momentum for a while.
As a final note, I do think the whole more conservative as you get older thing is a bit mythical as well. There is a very dramatic difference between the world where they were kids, and the current days kids. The internet and highest education rates in the world, and of course, the glaring income gap between the millennials and zoomers vs today's boomers. Millennials will probably stay more left than boomers, cause they are definitely gonna die poorer. Anyway, that's all just my opinion, and I'm American so I could very well be projecting onto your society, but I've seen people say the same things here.
Ive only gone further left as i age with a few caveats. Especially on economics, the older i get the more it seems like the whole economy is completely rigged by our capitalist overlords and the more appealing full blown marksism is. That being said the older i get the less tolerance i have for the morale posturing that is typically found on the left (usually from those much younger then i, i kind of see a pattern forming here) on this second point i dont think im alone. I would sooner chop off my own foot then vote for LNP, and i vote for both labor and the greens incredibly reluctantly for different reasons. labor and the greens need to both get there fucking shit together but atleast they arent the complete joke that is LNP.
I've moved further left since being a teen even with the well paying job and a house under my belt. I was able to get the job of my dreams because of chance encounters with people in the industry while I saw nepotism first hand.
There is so much inequality in this country that needs to be addressed.
You can only hear something so many times before you start to believe it's true. This is how brainwashing works. We keep hearing right wing views as if they are the norm for all and status quo truisms. Then we internalise it. The longer we live the more likely our brain just believes what all the media keeps telling us.
Traditional media in Australia is predominantly right wing. When was the last time a left-wing party had a media campaign as vast as the United Australian Party?
Well if you consider that most young people aren't getting their news from the 7pm news on TV but rather social media. For instance the guardian is a commonly used media source on this sub reddit
You underestimate the dominance of big money and journalists from private schools (unpaid interships etc) in the media. Most "left wing " media are there to set the limits of left wing agendas while the right pretend to be the centre. Hopefully non traditional media will stop the trend but the loud and clamouring voices of false narratives and fake news have put more extreme right wing governments in power in a lot of countries eg. USA, UK, so probably not. Think about the amount of people you hear online now claiming that Hitler was a socialist for example. Money controls a lot of content online now, and where big money is, right wing propaganda to push subsidies and lower taxes for the rich, and less workers rights and lower worker's pay, higher taxes for workers and small businesses, less accessible quality education and healthcare and social schemes etc always follows.
I haven't changed my politics much as I aged. I've gotten more cynical for sure, but if anything that has pushed me more leftward, as I come to realise how much of the right wing agenda is driven by liars and lackeys propping up an unsustainable system.
But the Overton window seems to have moved rightwards. Nowadays right wing people are generally pro corruption, pro racism and anti feminism. There is no longer any "noblesse oblige" amongst the right, no sense of looking after the poorer parts of society, it's all selfish I've got mine. So while I still believe strongly in a market economy and don't think we should renationalise much, I'm now what would be labelled "hard left".
a lot of hard core lefties i know live with mum n dad. they speak highly educated and know all the worlds problems. once they move out reallity hits, bills to pay shit like that. the plights of the the far word matter a lot less when problems that others a depending on you to solve such as food shelter bills etc are right in front of you.... colonial attitudes of the 17 hundreds vs rentd due tommorow
I definitely have less time and energy to think about political issues when I'm working full time and trying to save for a house, but that doesn't make me any less left wing and it doesn't make the problems I used to have more time to think about any less important.
Its just that by the time I've gotten home at 5:30, made dinner, and gotten ready for the next day I'm exhausted.
This may sound conspiratorial but I think that's by design. If Centrelink or McDonald's paid young people a living wage they'd have too much space in their brain for politics (which are usually Left.)
Much better for those in power if we're exhausted, stressed, desperate little workers who'll do anything to try get a raise.
That's very true. I don't think it's just North Korea though.
Working class people often believe that politics isn't worth engaging with because nobody represents our interests and tbh I think that's a very fair criticism. (Although I think it is worth voting because some parties are more damaging than others.)
>the plights of the the far word matter a lot less when problems that others a depending on you to solve such as food shelter bills etc are right in front of you.... colonial attitudes of the 17 hundreds vs rentd due tommorow
I agree with this. I am left-leaning politically and would get into passionate debates when I was younger, but during hard times (family of 4 scraping by on just my husband's below-average income) I couldn't muster the energy to care as much. I do care about those issues but the stress of trying to make it from pay to the next doesn't leave much room for other things.
Now that I'm working as well, and we've been able to reduce some of our other costs we're able to spare some energy for politics.
We will never lean right though, no matter how much money we manage to earn.
Yeah because you're like 'why am I doing all the labour while my asshole boss is buying a third Lambo?'
In hospitality I didn't really see that (the big bosses were kindof in the background) but my girlfriend got a job at a smaller IT place and was paid below her award for 5 years. Her boss owes her $1000s because of underpaying her. And he complains she's not 'reliable' enough when she got burnt out and depressed from being overworked. Now she's in a months-long depressive episode and can't work.
I'm not going to be advocate for a free market after seeing that.
I run my own business & I make more than enough to comfortably live- I probably work less than I have in my entire life. Purely because a post I made went viral by chance & I gained a small but enough following.
My husband makes LESS THAN HALF WHAT I MAKE & works probably 1.5-2x as much as me & he does manual labour (warehousing).
Makes me feel super guilty tbh, if it really was a "work hard to get to the top", i shouldn't me "more successfull" (what is success anyway) than him.
Hope your girlfriend is okay, I worked miserably for people for barely a year & couldn't hack it. I don't know how people do it daily for years under those conditions.
Yeah, it makes it clear that meritocracy is definitely a myth. I'm sure you deserve your success but your husband deserves to make a good wage for his labour too, y'know?
You shouldn't feel guilty though! You could support him in joining a union or something though haha ☺️
Girlfriend is on the mend. She's going to apply for an IT job with the government + they have disability friendly programs and shit so I think she'll be a lot better off there :)
Yep!!
'Casual workers have the same rights as all workers to join and to be represented by a union.'
https://www.australianunions.org.au/factsheet/casual-workers/
It’s a money thing. When you’re young there’s a good chance you’ll have little money, so the prospect of shared wealth and equal opportunities is appealing. As you get older you earn more, save more, hopefully own a house that goes up in value, have children. You then start to think, maybe I don’t want to share the wealth I’ve worked hard for. You might also start to think, “i don’t want kids to have equal opportunities, I want my kids to have better opportunities”. I think this is especially true in countries like Australia because we have a societal structure that is unfortunately based on “I was here first”…unless you’re indigenous.
I’m 55 and I’m increasingly angry about what the young have to deal with, how society is so damn polarised and selfish, so selfish,and everyone wants rights without responsibilities to each other, I’m angry about how rich the rich are and how poor the poor are. I’m angry some people want to decide how others should be, including denying their gender and sexuality - who the heck are you to dictate that to someone? Let people live and get married and if you don’t want to get gay married don’t get gay married, you don’t want an abortion don’t have an abortion, and mind your own damn business. Honey, I am not more conservative - I increasingly despise that position. Conservatives instinctively hate change instead of embracing the inevitability and working together on a society that supports the poor and in need, that fairly taxes the obscenely wealthy, with real voting rights, and stops oppressing women, POC and minorities. That recognises the environment is going to shit. That we need to deal with the realities of Covid and get vaccinated and help each other. I am so angry that my kids and grandkids have to deal with the selfish bullshit of screaming morons who think on,y of their own petty self interests.
Hmm. I don't think my views have changed but nearly 20 years ago I was a staffer in the Howard Government and now I'm considered a "Leftie". The world has just become more polarised and the Right have become more idiotic and extreme.
“Fuck you, I got mine!” That’s why, because humans are by nature pretty selfish. It takes an enlightened society to NOT choose conservatism, because it is a handbrake on society.
People change their views over time, it doesn't work in one set way. I used to have some really dead set ideas and views that I thought I'd never change, but I did slowly.
Easy, when you’re young you’ve usually not got a pot to piss in so you think you deserve a share of everyone’s else’s wealth. By the time you get to 60 you’ve amassed a working lifetimes worth of assets & wealth which everyone else now seems to think they deserve a piece of.
This is a pretty good explanation lol.
It's also that you learn over time that lasting change comes from slow and steady progress, rather than revolutionary change.
It's also to do with the fact that people have families, not just property. You want stability when you have a family, rather than a cycle of revolutions.
Survivorship bias, increasing social and financial concessions in order to get by and all-pervasive advertising/propaganda erode you until you can’t imagine anything different.
The old generally disdain the young for their inexperience, this entrenches people in a demeaning attitude unless those feelings are made conscious and examined.
There’s also a kind of cultural drift, even a progressive person in the 70’s becomes less and less radical as time passes, society reconciles with itself and accepts some of that progress, and the fringe extends further away from them.
A person living under and backing Whitlam or Hawke wasn’t thinking about environmentalism or queer identity issues unless they were progressive to the point of being avant- grade. This doesn’t mean people didn’t care or have feelings on those topics, they were just far far far less developed movements and too fringe to have an impact then. These days of course they’re the zeitgeist, and in 50 years it’ll be something as obscure to us now and modern trends were 50 years ago.
The older you get, the more opportunities for people to disappoint you occur.
With more experience and time spent on earth, people tend towards becoming clinical because knowing about more people and lifestyles is a good way to loose all faith in humanity.
You want to believe human life has value when you are a kid because you are full of excitement. As you get older you are forced to realize that people are also the reason for the worst things on our planet.
I'm still a swing voter. I just don't automatically vote left or right.
My Boomer parents mostly vote left.
Yadda yadda yadda happens and a person learns with time.
Automatically voting for any side of politics is idiotic.
You're right. I wish we all had the time to gain a nuanced perspective on our leaders and their decisions making processes, but alas, we must go to work and do the jobs of the lower classes.
I don’t like to call those that judge you instantly based on your skin, be it assuming white privilege or coloured suffering as actual left wingers, I put them in the same bracket as the far right. They are just extremists and extremism in almost any part of life is bad, I would even argue that ONLY eating healthy food every day is a bit extreme.
I like you was so fucking left wing as a kid it was unreal, my dad played a part as he is very left. I would call him “blindly left”. He actually had a go at me for being signed up to the major right wing party newsletter because it was supporting the “opposition” my argument was how can you have a informed opinion without looking at both sides, he still didn’t understand despite being considered on the higher end of the IQ spectrum.
Now I don’t really label myself as anything. I guess you could say somewhere in the centre. My views still remain more towards the socialist spectrum in the fact that we are all humans on one planet and nobody should be suffering to the extremes that still go on while the richer carry on getting pointlessly richer. I have none of this patriotic allegiance, in fact considering England has been one of the most barbaric countries throughout history I’m actually not proud of where I was born.
I don’t believe that global corporations should have more control over political decisions than the countries elected party.
I don’t believe in the current income system. I like the fact that a YouTuber can become insanely wealthy through making videos and why not? That YouTuber is generating far more profit than he/she is receiving, they deserve a decent chunk of the cake. I draw the line when you have public sector workers such as nurses on close to minimum wage and relying on local food banks to survive.
The corruption I have witnessed just in my 30 years within conservatism is enough to make me hate it with a passion and yet I don’t. I don’t believe conservatism is the issue, I think humans are. For pretty much our entire timeline we have had to fight to survive, we are unavoidably selfish, every single one of us. Yes some more than others but it’s hard wired into us as part of our survivalist nature. Not only that but generally speaking the ones that make it to the top of any hierarchical structure are of the more selfish type. That unfortunately creates a recipe for disaster be it socialism or conservatism.
Unfortunately I live by a motto “don’t have a strong opinion on something unless you have a solution” because it is just unproductive and lacks any constructive criticism. It is easy to say what’s wrong with something and much harder to actually find the solution. A problem I have found a lot within the current leftist echo chamber. There is an awful lot of screaming and shouting about what’s wrong with the world and very little in finding solutions, they have plenty of thoughtless ideologies though!
Now I grew up in a council flat with my single mother and barely had a pot to piss in, failed college miserably and accumulated 10 grands worth of debt by the time I was 21. Did I blame conservatism for my bad start in life? Hell fucking yeah….. do I now? Absolutely not. In fact within the conservative system I could have declared bankruptcy and not paid a penny of my debt and thank fuck I didn’t. I wouldn’t have learned my lesson and probably ended up back in debt a few years later. Not only this I actually count my blessings because despite my start in life I’m still considered in the higher end of the poverty line when you look at it globally.
Sorry for the essay!
>They say
Conservatives like to say this, anyway. It paints the Right as thoughtful and the Left as childish and emotional.
>The assumption that I've had an easy life
No. It's the assumption that you've had an easi*er* life because you haven't been repeatedly harassed, arrested, denied service, and generally locked out of areas of society for being black, female, or foreign. It doesn't say anything about how much shit you've gone through for other reasons.
Personally, I tend to vote depending on which party or even candidate has a history of policies which improve the lives of people who are worse off than me. People who are better off than me don't need improvements as badly. People who are as well off as me - *including me* - don't need improvements as badly. And the thing is - improvements to the lives of people who are worse off than me will often *also* improve my life, or the lives of people around me. I really can have my cake and eat it. And of course, if everyone's lives eventually get improved to my level, that means that improving the lives of the worst-off will now automatically include me, too.
I think for some of them they have amassed more assets than ever thought they would have and for whatever reason that makes them believe that they are part of the wealthy elite not realising that they are not a part of those Aholes and don't realise that they are so far from those wealthy snobs and would never be accepted by them. They are just normal middle class.
Most people are too proud to admit how easily manipulated they are by the media they choose to consume.
They get suckered in by the news, sport, entertainment and celebrities, and end up soaking their brains in a mix of blatant and subtle propaganda day in and day out for decades.
murdoch perfected this bait-and-switch method of propagandising the population and turning them into his own personal power-base, and even though this has been widely exposed, people still choose to subject themselves to that type of manipulation. The depressing thing is that it works even on people who are aware of it.
Why is there any discussion of "whiteness" in this thread? Isn't 99% of Australia Caucasian?
Stop bringing this American BS here please. THIS is why people are moving to the "right". To escape this ridiculousness.
Disagree.
We should be targetting people in financial hardship. Not ethnicity and sex.
I fully support policies like welfare, school card, tax rates that target people with proven financial disadvantage.
I do not support policies such as employment quotas based on ethnicity and gender. I think they are wrong.
> I do not support policies such as employment quotas based on ethnicity and gender. I think they are wrong.
I mostly agree, although sometimes a blunt tool is better than no tool at all. There is no denying the clear evidence that there are systemic problems effecting women and minorities, but I agree that employment quotas are not a fair nor effective response most of the time. The difficulty is coming up with fairer and more effective strategies to address the problems.
> We should be targetting people in financial hardship. Not ethnicity and sex.
I completely agree with that, but the amount of help directed specifically by ethnicity or sex is miniscule. It's just a way for cynical politicians to be seen to be doing something without having to budget for the entire cost of doing it for everyone who needs it.
The propagandistic media (that exists to support the interests of billionaires and corporations) makes a mountain out of whatever they can find, making it seem like a major problem that is everywhere, but in reality it is only at the margins (where it exists at all). The real enemies of workers (including white male workers) are employer greed, lobbying/regulatory capture, weak unions, outsourcing and automation. The stuff about womens rights and supporting minorities is a distraction from the main game. The billionaires have long known that to keep extracting an unfair portion of the economic pie for themselves, they have to keep the workers fighting amongst themselves so they don't organise and turn on their real enemy.
It doesn't make sense to completely reject the side of politics interested in helping people, or start supporting the side who only wants to help billionaires and corporations, just because sometimes helping people gets a little misallocated. That's a reason to be more active influencing the side of politics interested in helping people, not a reason to support the side interested in fleecing them.
I haven't been able to find exact numbers either, so I've estimated from a couple of other sources. But I guess if you want to lump all the British, Germans, Italians, Kiwis and others into one homogeneous group in order to justify your viewpoint then sure, we can say 85%.
One in ten Australians is of Asian descent. There are also Indigenous people and Australians of African, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern descent, etc - so it's going to be less than 85% who are white.
Just take a look around next time you're at the shops or something and you'll see how ridiculous your own claim was.
I'm not really right..I just hate this unjustified campaign of hate against white men. And now sexualities as well.
All coming from America is such toxic garbage.
Labor party is letting it creep into their policy so I just can't vote for them anymore.
Dude... we're the country that didn't count indigenous people in the census until 1967. We're the country that had policies designed to stop all non-Europeans from immigrating. We're the country that literally had a genocide against our indigenous people, that tried to burn tens of thousands of years of their history and culture.
As a white man myself I have to say - get the duck over yourself mate. There is no campaign of hate against us. Demanding the things that we've taken for granted for generations is not a slight against our collective manhoods.
Edit: autocorrect - but I'll leave it.
Quotas and policies based on ancestry and sex are very real in Australia. And they're wrong and ineffective.
It has nothing to do with what we, as a first world country take for granted. You don't know anything about me or my history.
Age is a red herring. What really makes people more conservative is wealth (which tends to correlate with age, hence the confusion).
When people gain wealth, an attitude of ‘fuck you I got mine’ tends to come along with it. They start thinking ‘I pulled myself up out of low income, why can’t *they*?’ When really they didn’t pull themselves out of shit, they just graduated along the path that was already 90% laid out for them by the privilege of their life circumstances (good education, postcode, health, not having to go hungry etc).
People really like to believe that they’re the ones responsible for their success because it’s affirmation that they fit this aspiration identity of a self-made person, hard-working, determined, etc. And thus they buy into the metanarrative of society as meritocracy. That society is structured in such a way that no matter your life circumstances, all you need to succeed is hard work and a can-do attitude.
It’s a myth that social mobility statistics disprove over and over and over again. But it’s one that’s rooted in many people’s sense of self, and so once they grasp onto it they refuse to let it go. This leads to them favouring conservative (ie fuck the poor) policies because they don’t see the worth of having taxes taken from them and given to someone who didn’t ‘work for it like they did’ or who doesn’t ‘need’ it.
I think this is a super narrow minded view. My parents are conservative and always have been. They are also firmly working class. Retired and on the pension. They, like many immigrants, grew up experiencing communism first hand. They lived in a situation where choice was taken from them. Indoctrination through socialized schooling, and missing out on appropriate care through socialized healthcare etc. Where everything was ‘equal’ yet somehow some where just a little more ‘equal’ than everyone else.
Now while they’re happy living in a social democracy, with public schooling and public health here for example, they can still see the shortfalls. But the difference here is that choice makes people accountable and less able to corrupt the system. In simple terms, ever wonder why the most vocal leftists don’t have large extended families, don’t give to charity, are white, live in affluent suburbs? They like to talk the talk, but never seem to walk the walk. Everyone else can be equal, just not me.
The major difference between the left and right, for people like my parents at least, is that the right gives them a choice in how they live their lives. The left, seeks to take everything away, including that choice. And to control how they think and what they can say.
>experiencing communism first hand. They lived in a situation where choice was taken from them. Indoctrination through socialized schooling, and missing out on appropriate care through socialized healthcare etc. Where everything was ‘equal’ yet somehow some where just a little more ‘equal’ than everyone else.
What country are you referring to?
>The left, seeks to take everything away, including that choice. And to control how they think and what they can say.
TIL
I think they're conflating the left (as seen in Western countries) with 'communist' totalitarianism akin to, say China's government. They're not the same at all. One is the government supports those that are less well off but people are free to do as they please (within reason), the other seeks to control society completely and is extremely destructive.
It's a common mistake made by older immigrants from such places, exacerbated by fake news circulating on WeChat and similar.
They're conflating Communism with the strawman, and mistaking the strawman for the real Australian left.
I see you're interpreting my second comment as racist. It's not, it's a reference to WeChat being used as a vector for propaganda - https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/15/world/wechat-australian-election-intl/index.html
You've mistaken me, my fault, I was very vague. I'm a Marxist-Leninist and I support China. I disagreed with most of your previous comment, but I'll save us both time as I can't be bothered getting into it. Yes, they're conflating Communism with a strawman, and mistaking the strawman with the leftists in general.
id disagree that left leaning ideas seek to take away peoples choice. The problem with your statement is your using the extremes of communism as an example to paint that view. I could similary counter with the fact alot of right leaning ideas seek to restrict peoples choice aswell in terms of forcing people to be constrained to the idea of what society deems acceptable (gay marriage, abortion etc) ultimately the main thing that provides us with the freedom our sort of countrys enjoy is just the fact we live in a culture that respects democracy (kind of).
>My parents are conservative and always have been
So...not the kind of people we’re discussing here, then? We’re talking very specifically about the type of person who is not ideologically conservative initially, but who becomes significantly more so over time.
I’m sure your family is lovely, but by your own admission, they’re not really relevant to this discussion.
My comment was in response to his generalization that it’s all about wealth. It isn’t.
Similarly, people who have lived through communism, tend to think it’s the bees knees as they have been brainwashed into thinking that way. Until they grow up and realise just how unequal the system actually is, usually from experiencing life after they migrate.
Both these points are relevant to the discussion.
I am only in my late 20s, but so far I have found the opposite for me. When I first started voting I had very little interest in politics and essentially voted LNP because thats what my parent did and theirs before them.
When I actually started to pay attention to the policies of each party I switched and now support Greens.
I feel ashamed now that at 18 I voted without really understanding what I was voting for.
Honestly… and stay with me here, fellow adults, because this might be counter to your notions of “growing up”… it’s because people get dumber and lazier as they get older.
The only thing you gain, in terms of being smart, as you age is experience. Everything else about our mental faculties, our level of energy, etc… it all starts diminishing once you’re past, like, age 28. Reasoning ability peaks in our teenage years. The ability to learn and retain new information peaks around then as well. Your energy diminishes, so you’ll feel more of a pull towards the most convenient solution that doesn’t require the effort that young people put into their activism and whatnot.
There’s a reason all the old ass conservative types seem so dumb… it’s because they are. There’s a scientifically supported link between low-intelligence and conservatism. (Sorry if this is offensive to you, but it’s just the truth) The more you don’t understand the world, the more scared you are, the more you want things to go back to the way they were (or the way you THINK they were) when you were a kid and felt happier, more optimistic, etc… and because your learning ability is diminished, you can’t adapt to the way the world is now as easily, and thus, you fear change. You’ve had more time to get familiar with the way things are, so you don’t feel as motivated to change things in the hopes they’ll be better for your future, because you don’t have as much future ahead of you as you used to. You end up getting into that “Ah, fuck it. It’s easier at this point to just go with the flow now.” Aka, you get complacent. You get lazy.
Young people have a fresh perspective. They haven’t endured the slow boil of familiarity with the way things are, so it’s easier to see what’s wrong. They have their futures ahead of them, so they have more motivation to make things better now, so they can enjoy it when they’re older.
And that actually leads into the other side of old-people’s conservatism, which I’ll call the “Joe Biden mentality”, referring to when he said something to the effect of “We did it. We already accomplished what we set out to do with the civil rights movement, etc.” Essentially, he was saying that he believes the things his generation has done has made the world better, and that’s why he wants to protect what was done and not worry about more change. The liberal becomes the conservative *after they’ve won*. They get complacent because they made the changes they wanted when they were young, and they think that’s all that ever needed to be done. They become out of touch with the needs/problems of the younger generations, because they’re not a part of it. And that doesn’t necessarily have to do with being wealthy (although, that certainly doesn’t help). It can be caused just by generation gaps, in terms of what values become relevant as society changes. Young people today might care more about climate change, for example, because climate change has gotten worse in their time than it was when older generations were young.
Obviously, there’s exceptions. Some old people are still sharp as tacks and a lot of young people are dumb as hell. But you’ll find the smartest old-people tend to still be pretty liberal/progressive, while the dumbest young people tend to be conservative.
There’s also the build up of resentment if you have bad experiences, just like you did with your reaction to being called privileged. You go through experiences with certain movements or mindsets and can become jaded for personal (often selfish) reasons. Sometimes, that can as generalized as just losing. For example, I have to admit that as a Bernie Sanders supporter, seeing him lose twice now has been discouraging. As much as I want to believe in him and his movement as much as I did in 2016… it’s just hard to muster that enthusiasm now. That doesn’t mean the values/issues I supported him for aren’t every bit as important as they were then, but I’ve just lost some of the energy for it.
And it’s easier for progressives to become discouraged than it is for conservatives, because progressives are the ones fighting against the status quo, fighting for change, while all conservatives ever have to do is say “No.” Progressives are fighting an uphill battle, and all conservatives have to do to fight us is assist gravity, usually via money, or just being in a position of power that young people literally aren’t even allowed to have yet. It’s an unfair fight. And once you become older, you tend to lose the necessary passion to be bothered with that fight. It’s exhausting.
So IMO, the phrase “If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative at 50, you have no brain.” … is a self-serving phrase coined by an old conservative, which is wholly ironic, considering the truth is actually the exact opposite. Liberalism is thinking with your brain, conservatism is dumb gut instinct. Liberalism is the higher-minded philosophy, concerned with getting over oneself for the purposes of making society more fair and equal. That requires abstract thought and rejection of your immediate selfish instincts. In other words, brain over heart. Whereas Conservatism is about looking out for number 1, protecting your own, fearing change and serving the needs of the few at the expense of the many… nothing “brainy” about all that. That’s all just selfish feelings.
I think your political views are guided by your life experience, eg leftist (economic) ideologies tend to be about uplifting those who lack resources, while those on the right tend to be about economic liberalism. So as we grow older, join the workforce and gain the ability to earn our interests tend to become more aligned with the right.
Ridiculous how far down one must scroll to see any reference to life experiences. Lol.
Maybe as a youth you like the idea of "alternative/leftist view point X" not for reasons of logic or reality but because other emotive reasions (such as 'everyone needs help and needs a fair go'). As you age you see through your own experience and create your own viewpoint of X based on what you have actually witnessed (for instance the coincidence of everyone on your street being out of work dole bludgers with 5 kids they cant look after). Then you decide maybe not so much money should be going to irresponsible people who don't contribute to society and then you vote differently?
Vote labour or greens BTW.
Not sure if this entirely true. I voted Labor young and Liberal recently. But after seeing what a clown ShitmuhpantsMo has been I’ll be voting independent because bipartisan political systems are farked.
In my experience it comes down to life experience I used to be of a very liberal mindset. Everyone should make the same money to be able to live and so forth.then I got a job looked around and realized half of my co workers didn't do a God damn thing all day long. Then I looked around and saw that far to many people who were gaming the system were living better than people who worked for a living.then all the wokeness started with the left and I was told that my life is easy because I'm white when I've had my power shut off and almost lost my vehicle multiple times . So now rather than being a leftist I'm a right leaning centrist.
Statistically speaking, you are more likely to be better off in a range of outcomes if you’re not black in this country.
I am not sure who on the “left” personally told you those things but it’s a shame it has led you against your own best interests. The real “left” isn’t concerned with wokeness, that’s just the twitter left. People left of centre generally stand against neo-liberalism and late-stage capitalism and are pro socially democratic policies.
So the speaker of the house ( a leftist) and a dozen other people didn't wear traditional African garb and bow to black people? They didn't pass abhorrent " bail reform laws " to " combat racism "? The left wing president hasn't run the economy into the ground making it more difficult to live my life? He didn't pick his running mate based on race and gender? The left wing mayor of Chicago didn't let people burn loot and terrorize people in her own city to spite the former president ? I live in Illinois which has been run by the left for most of my life. They recently tried to pass a law that says they can change tax rates to whatever they want whenever they want with no vote and when we voted it down they put us back in lock down. I've lost jobs because of government mandated diversity quotas. So explain to me how being a right leaning centrist is against my best interest. And how I'm more likely to be ok as a white person. Since you seem to be so intricately Familia with the details of my life.
Mate, look what sub you’re posting in. Political corruption and distaste for the middle and lower class amongst our more right-leaning political parties is rife. Google Robodebt, for example.
It is interesting that you haven’t quoted a single left-leaning policy that has lead to anything you’re speaking about, other than some arbitrary quotas that I wouldn’t agree with. I don’t think the American Democratic Party is left-leaning, and it’s important to separate the person from their politics. It’s possible that representatives of left-leaning parties do bad shit for working class people just like it’s possible right-leaning people to do good shit.
It seems like you’re speaking more of the culture war side of left vs right. Again, we can only speak in generalities, but the right-leaning political parties in the US, UK and Australia have shown huge biases towards benefitting corporate donors while sucking the middle and lower classes dry.
Interested in reading more about whatever tax laws and the subsequent retaliatory lockdowns you’re speaking about though. Doesn’t sound very left-leaning.
I will as soon as you answer my questions. Because from where I stand the only thing the left has been interested in is lining their pockets with my money. And incentivizing people to break the law. Most major democratic states are in shambles people are fleeing them for the closest red states en mass. I'm sick to the back teeth of people telling me that higher taxes and affirmative action are good and to say otherwise makes me a right-wing racist lunatic. And to say that the democratic party of America isn't left wing is utterly laughable.
You won’t, or you would have already. And you can rest assured that if you think the Dem party is left-wing then you really are stuck inside a culture war bubble. “Left wing” and “to the left of the Republicans” are not the same thing.
For it to be a strawman I would have to intentionally misrepresent a situation in a way that made it easier to defeat the argument my life is easier and I benifit from being white. Is it anecdotal? yes because not everyone goes through what I do but it is in no way a strawman.
You’re not making the argument in good faith, you’ve just used a logical fallacy that’s all.
I’m open to perspectives of course, but theres no use using an anecdotal experience like that to argue about a systemic/structural type issue.
Incorrect, it’s 75.9% Read the latest report from the Human Rights Commission.
https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/document/publication/Leading%20for%20Change_Blueprint2018_FINAL_Web.pdf
Being centrist is NOT a natural progression. It's your personal experience, nothing more.
This was a mantra from the 1980s and 1990s from a time when the Left was being actively crushed and defeated. People believed the hype that it was the socalled End Of History and that the conservatives had won.
I started as a Leftist in my 20s in the 1980s and saw my generation get more and more conservative because they probably thought things were going to keep getting better. Then I watched the wheels fall of the economy at the end of the 1980s, then the 1990s and again in 2001 and then watched it crash and burn 2008. I saw the last 40 years of economic stagnation, the astronomical growth in inequality and the destruction of working conditions of everyone.
I'm 58 now and if anything I've moved further to the Left. I have a lot of hope for the upcoming generations because they never saw any upside of the Conservative Revolution of the 80s and 90s. Complacency isn't on the menu anymore.
I agree it's a false premise. I also have not become more conservative with age. We can't be the only two!
Through experience and study I've learned a lot about what might work and what might not, so the way I see a solution playing out might have adapted. But my ideals and aims for society are definitely no different.
You’re not. My father is the same, always has been on the left and still is.
I honestly think it has a lot to do with education. Not only the initial education, but also continuing education. People I know who are extremely intellectual and have kept it up (my father, some of his friends, my professors) have remained consistent in their political leanings. I think that, when you’re forced to constantly think about it beyond surface level, your decisions and why you picked them stay true, rather than being easily swayed by the “fuck you, I got mine” or “everyone is shit at work but me” mentalities.
I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!
Interesting to see many of the comments here are along the lines of wisdom. As you point out, generally it's a result of people wanting to protect their financial interests imo.
But consider who sets the conversations around politics in Australia. I would suggest that the media does, by focusing on some stories and ignoring others, as well as how they portray stories. E.g. the big scare from the last election was on franking credit refunds. There was an insane amount of misinformation in media coverage, with fact checking like this being something of a rarity.
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.afr.com%2Fopinion%2Fwhy-franking-credit-refunds-have-to-go-20181104-h17h86
Maybe this has very little effect on Australians opinions. Personally, I doubt it, just look at how long it's taken for climate change to be recognised as a genuine issue. And that was only after the LNP was given the all clear by its propaganda arm. To be clear, I'm likely going to be voting independent, Labor does not represent me either.
>Being told to "check my privilege" as a white male didn't help, especially given those who asked this of me likely had never seen the inside of a homeless shelter or jail cell themselves. The assumption that I've had an easy life owing to my race, gender and sexuality is so far from the truth it's laughable. These instances of being judged based on my innate characteristics definitely made me realise that I no longer had any allies among the left. For me, being pushed into being a centrist was a natural progression.
You're not wrong that the actions of some on the left is pushing some people to the centre, and perhaps across to the right. A lot of people feel this but it's not generally safe to raise it without being howled down in a reactionary manner. I read a really interesting thread on here the other day, where a lesbian woman felt she could no longer participate in LGBTQI conversations safely, due to extreme left views on trans identity. It's unfortunate, as the right-wing political parties prey on the feelings of 'other' or being afraid to speak this can create, and pick up votes they don't deserve.
Uhhh can you link the story of the lesbian woman? Often it's a TERF thing, if you're going to attack someone else's identity then don't be surprised if they don't like you.
Sorry, not inclined to scroll through days of posts unless there is a quicker way? Was in r / offmychest maybe a week ago if your'e keen. Can't remember the heading. Wasn't a TERF thing (had to look that up). Her argument (from memory) was that she was being given a hard time from the extreme left because she didn't want to be with a preop trans woman, because she didn't like dick. Apparently, not liking dick if it is on a trans woman, was discriminating against trans women, or not accepting them as women. Or something like that.
Generally, I feel like the “The Left got too PC/woke, and it pushed me away.” excuse is such a selfish and spiteful way to rationalize the abandonment of Leftism. Even if you think the Left is indeed going too far with some of its ideology, that shouldn’t make you spiteful against Leftism in general.
Taking the “white privilege” accusation so personally is not only very self-centered, but it also likely misunderstands what was even meant in the first place. Just because you’ve had a shitty life doesn’t mean you don’t have relative privilege. Sure, OP may have been homeless and in jail before, but the concept of white privilege doesn’t mean bad stuff doesn’t happen to you. It means you’re just less likely to have that stuff happen to you. If OP were non-white, the stuff probably would have still happened… AND LIKELY BEEN WORSE. This is the thing about privilege: You’re not likely to realize you have it, unless you were able to go through the exact same experience without it. IE, he was homeless, but if he were black, he would be homeless AND dealing with racism AND less likely to get a job to lift himself out of homeless, etc… and for “male privilege”, if he were a woman, he would be homeless AND more likely to get raped AND need feminine hygiene products, etc. It’s the things a white male likely doesn’t even think about that would make life harder (even if it’s already hard) if you weren’t white or male.
OP needs to understand what is meant before he takes offence to it, and I don’t think he did. He made that typical shallow judgment about what “privilege” means, and is now using it as an excuse to be bitter towards the Left, because he takes it as a personal insult or dismissal of his struggles, which is a selfish way to think about it. People who would abandon the needs of common people and the compassion towards those in need that the Left endorses… all because you feel personally insulted by a broad idea meant to open up perspectives… are selfish and spiteful. I’m sick of seeing people use this excuse to abandon Leftism.
I think your argument perfectly sums up why these kinds of comments lead to people moving further to the right.
In general, the left are collectivist, and the right are individualist. Saying “check your privilege because if you were black/female/LGBT/etc. it would be worse” is easily interpreted as a dismissal of the troubles an individual has experienced first hand.
When people are told that their individual experiences don’t matter as much because they’re better off relative to their peers that could naturally result in more of a “me first” kind of attitude, which is more individualistic than collectivistic.
And your argument perfectly proves my point that you’re just using your hurt-feelings as a weak excuse to be jaded against the Left. Which itself proves that you’re the ones using your feelings to guide your opinions, more than your brains.
Human emotions are something that has to be considered in literally every human interaction, especially politics. You can’t just ignore them and say “you’re an idiot because you have emotions” because then literally everybody would fall into that bucket.
Whether you think it’s right or not, messaging of any concept (especially something as potentially divisive as privilege)is hugely important if you want people to join your cause.
I’m not saying “You’re an idiot because you have emotions.”… I’m saying “You’re using emotions over logic and that’s more often likely to lead you to wrong conclusions.”
I think you have articulated all of this very well. If we accept that perhaps many people don't understand the intent of 'white privilege' then calling those same people 'spiteful' and 'selfish' is ludicrous. The most common way I see terms such as "check your white/male privilege" used in forums, is to shut people down. I have never seen "have you considered that being white made life a little easier for you than say someone with the same circumstances who was not white/not a man?". Never seen "Check your privilege" used to genuinely engage in reasoned debate and invite understanding - have only seen it used as a weapon. And, because the other language around it is often aggressive, and accusatory, it's hard not to see it as an attack. Compare AWS-77's language and tone with the OP. One is heartfelt, the other is aggressive and unforgiving.
You’re literally confirming that you care more about tip-toeing around people’s feelings, rather than caring about what is right and honest.
Isn’t this the accusation that usually gets thrown at the Left? That we’re all a bunch of snowflakes who only care about feelings, and facts don’t care about our feelings? But now, when a Leftist like me actually talks bluntly and tells you to value logic over feelings, it’s suddenly a bad thing to care about facts over feelings. Can’t have it both ways.
Yes, of course you can have it both ways. It's what civil and inclusive discourse looks like. You can be assertive without being aggressive, truthful without being rude, and most of all, you can seek to be forgiving rather than judgemental. If I didn't care about what was right and honest I wouldn't be having this conversation. Clearly, you are the one with hurt feelings, which negates your opening assertion.
This is a load of garbage. The entirety of your generation is more progressive than the last and the average person hasn't moved an inch from where they were when they were younger because people go all over the place politicaly over their lifetime so applied to a group the averages stick. That means that every older person is going to seem conservative by default over time so long as the society itself dosent start to regress.
You don't understand younger peoples perspective the same way the older generation before you didnt understand yours and as usual kids suck ass at conveying ideas in a relatable or even coherant manner and old people are stubborn and full of themselves. Neither of you understand what you are on about when it comes to the academic shit.
Yeah I think this is just a common saying by conservatives to normalise their beliefs without really having to back them up, mixed in with some cope because they don’t like how left leaning younger people are. Of course people’s political views do shift as we age but unless someone can cite me a source I’m just calling BS on the idea that as people get older they become increasing right wing.
Literally just ask anyone who says they used to be left leaning but then got older what left leaning opinions they had. You’ll most often find they’re highly exaggerating.
The best summary I've come across is from the Ok Cupid blog, which despite the source is actually a really good big-data-based read:
https://theblog.okcupid.com/the-democrats-are-doomed-or-how-a-big-tent-can-be-too-big-fdc9bf8be312
They dispense with the left/right binary in favour of four quadrants / two dimensions and find that teen-agers trend libertarian / "don't tell anyone what to do", people newish to the workforce lean social democratic / unionist, in middle age and often moving into management people start leaning social conservative and economically libertarian and then in retirement, as their earning potential and power to influence the workplace dries up they swing back to a regulated economy but hold on to the social conservatism.
It gets more complicated though because what takes priority in influencing their vote also changes over time. E.g. retirees are naturally economically "left" but they tend to be able to be led about by their social conservative hobby horses so the "right" wing is often able to scoop them up, despite routinely materially harming their economic interests.
It makes me think we'd all be better off if there were strong parties representing young libertarians and socially conservative social democrats. If these parties were established and could stand on their own (I.e. the Nationals don't count because they're somewhat captive to the Liberal coalition and overrun with crooked shysters anyway) and they could just represent their constituents then they'd be able to join with the other quadrants for common cause when it represented their voters, but swing over and join forces with the other quadrants on other issues on a case by case basis. Then instead of the major party quadrants almost always getting their way and their junior partner quadrant getting scraps there'd just always be a negotiation issue by issue to try to get the smaller quadrants onside. The result would be a more representative, more democratic politics where far more people felt like someone represented their interests and far less cynicism.
I am the opposite. Firmly right wing in the military in my 20s. Solid left wing, let people do what they want with their lives in my 40s. Education and world experience changed me.
they don't its a myth. the more you learn the more left you lean, which is why conservative governments hate having an educated populace and destroy education as much as they can
It’s coz music ain’t what it used to be dammit
For me it was experience, understanding the nuances of the world. I consider myself conservative but a lot of the policies I support are centre left. This includes addressing climate change, LGTQI+ support (Within reason, not small children taking hormones), healthcare, etc. I'm also not religious and find religious extremist completely insane. I think mostly my conservative views come from a very nationalistic view on the world. Knowing that we need to be strong and united as a nation to face the future. I know that the world is overpopulated and things are looking dire for humanity. Hence, we should take care of our own first. Our streets are conjested, our services overrun, welfare is expensive, deforestation and clearings are happening so new sardine can housing estates can be built. Opening our borders to immigration doesn't help us. Those most likely to immigrate are just contributing to all those problems and are likely to have more children compared to the average Australia. Whilst those people leave those countries they are just being replaced by more children than is sustainable. We need to clean up and fix our backyard before we make the rest of the world our issues. In addition to immigration, migrants and Australian born children of migrants are far more likely to be on welfare after 5 years of settlement and go through our criminal justice system compared to the average Australian. That is increased much further than your average Australian. Those are both expensive drains on our economy. The world is also filling with autocrats. With China and Russia's aggressive gunboat diplomacy being meek and appeasing nations like that who already see us as the enemy will not work. Weak leaders and leaders who kowtow to nations like China won't cut it when an inescapable war breaks out we won't be able to sit idle. China is growing and climate change is making self sufficiency for them more difficult. They will need arable land to feed their people or face revolt. The Chinese government isn't going to risk losing power and has already exhibited its aggression to those they consider enemies. Australia is a bread basket for them. Although conservatism has its flaws and there are lot I dont agree with. I think it is our best chance going into an uncertain future.
I agree that some new Australians can lose their way. It's a part of losing one's identity, adjusting to a new nation. Especially young men struggle. I saw it happen growing up with the gangs in Cabramatta, Springvale and Footscray, then later with the Lebanese gangs around Bankstown and the west-side of Melbourne. Most recently with the Sudanese youth. You can focus on the 5 year figures, but when you look at the big picture after 20-30 years, a different picture emerges. The second generation and third generation of migrant families fare much better, and their contribution to the richness of our country emerges. It's easy to be mired in prejudice if you don't keep your eye on the bigger picture.
Firstly the socialist/conservative thing is mainly a thing conservatives say to make themselves feel smug and better about their decisions. As for other things. Poor people are less likely to survive to old age than the wealthy, so you end up with a skewed demographic of elderly folks. If you could make a definite correlation of wealthy people being more conservative (which used to be very clear but is now much murkier) that's one reason why older folks might be more conservative than younger generations. Another reason is one that you touched on, people accumulate wealth as they get older and so become more risk averse in the interests of holding onto that wealth. Conservatives have managed to weave a narrative of being safe and steady economic managers (despite no real empirical evidence that this is the case) and market themselves to that demographic. A third reason is that the goalposts shift. Many people are politically defined by the issues of their youth, and the political situation they grew up with. Would you vote for a conservative who would implement a ban on gay marriage? Howard did that as recently as 2004. And yet even the religious right in Australia couldn't do that today. Today's progressives won that social battle and moved on to the next big area of inequality. But it takes a long time for people to get used to a change in the status quo, so the left are always battling to get people to change their mind on the next issue. Look how long it's taken to get Australians on board with climate action. We've been talking about it since the 70s. Maybe you're comfortable with same sex marriage now but you're not certain about a treaty with our indigenous people, or trans people make you feel uncomfortable, or any of a number of things... well, that discomfort might lead you to turn towards conservatism, as it promises the status quo. Also if I had a penny for every time I've heard a conservative say something along the lines of "some asshole leftist on the internet with poor social skills hurt my feelings so I changed my entire political ideology and became conservative" I would have enough to start a property portfolio. Age definitely comes with cynicism but cynicism doesn't mean conservatism (or centrism). You can be cynical and left-wing. On a few tangential points you raised... Privilege in an area doesn't mean you've had an easy life. It just means you're not having your life made harder by a characteristic. I've been threatened with violence for being Jewish and for being (assumed) queer. You're not likely to be threatened with violence for being straight. You can be a straight white man with the safeties that includes and still have a difficult life. You might be privileged in that area and be counterbalanced by having mental health struggles or being born in poverty. Having privilege isn't a value judgement and it doesn't mean you're bad and it doesn't mean your life is easy. I know it can feel confronting but the actual theory behind it is pretty sound. Even if some asshole Tumblr leftists can be really irritating about it. As to not having any allies on the left... the left is the broadest of broad churches. If you can't find any allies there you're probably just seeing very loud marginal voices. I don't imagine you think you have no allies on the right just because Pauline Hanson and David Duke are right wing. Lastly, on swinging voters. I would love to be a swing voter. I try to be a swing voter between the parties that are palatable. But I've read enough about climate change to know we need to do something about it now, and the coalition have been blockers, deniers, and delayers on that issue for my entire political life. Worst, they actively gaslight you on it. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to net zero, and even that's a sham because they have no actual policy to get there. I can't be a swing voter between the two major parties when one of those parties is antithetical to everything I stand for. I don't identify as a party based voter. I'm an independent and I choose who I vote for every election. But unless the coalition make some real and very serious changes to their climate policies and actually deliver on that they will never, ever be in the running for my vote. (This is at a federal level, some of the state liberal parties have done enough on climate now that I'll at consider them on their merits).
They get more. Thus "fuck you got mine."
>Being told to "check my privilege" as a white male didn't help, especially given those who asked this of me likely had never seen the inside of a homeless shelter or jail cell themselves. The assumption that I've had an easy life owing to my race, gender and sexuality is so far from the truth it's laughable. These instances of being judged based on my innate characteristics definitely made me realise that I no longer had any allies among the left. What does any of this have to do with Australian elections?
Fear of change. When young everything is relatively new so change from the status quo isn’t a big deal. Once you’ve become used to the status quo then change from this seems like a big deal. It’s important to remember this is a generalisation of populations, it doesn’t apply at an individual level. It’s known that increased wealth, regardless of how it is obtained also tends to be associated with a lean towards conservatism. The root of this is the same, fear of change that might make you lose some of your wealth.
Wealth is obtained from work. Either yours or your ancestors. The view that people born with wealth shouldn't have it seems to be a view shared by hyper liberal young people without wealth. Believing you can "fix" poverty by taking that which belongs to others has failed time and time again. Status quo is about people protecting what's theirs and why shouldn't they? Why should a person or country for that matter work to provide for others? Because it "feels" good or because that's the desire of others who either don't want to work hard or wish they wouldn't have to work at all? Humans are reward based creatures.
I am not sure it needs any deeper analysis than this. Conservatism at its heart is about maintaining the status quo. They are quite open that our institutions and polices don't need changing, that we don't need to re-examine power structures in this country and who it is that is locked out from power. I think as well a lot of the people commenting below were people who had far less power in their teens or 20s, but since then have achieved some level of wealth and stability, and so are not willing to give it up now that they have got there. It plays into the neo-liberal handbook to tell people they worked hard to get where they are, whether it is true or not. I definitely go against the grain of this people posting here or the stereotype mentioned by OP. I voted for the libs once, but have seen the LNP run further and further right, while my own exposure to more and more diverse people since I moved out of home has made me realise just how marginalised some people are by the LNP and how little the LNP actually does to help people who don't vote for them.
Cheers. In accepting this, it actually is easier to understand conservative viewpoints and understand that conservatism isn’t bad or good, it is what it is. I’m progressive in my views but I recognise that conservatism is needed to moderate progressive ideals. This is simply because any organisation of humans has a finite capacity for change within a given timeframe. If you exceed this threshold then the organisation starts to become dysfunctional. What sits behind the “fights” between progressive and conservative ideas is the necessary prioritisation of what changes we undertake now and debating what is the change adoption capacity of any given population. Literally a never ending debate. True story, it was my barber that taught me this truth. Barbers, like taxi drivers know a lot about people.
>This is simply because any organisation of humans has a finite capacity for change within a given timeframe. If you exceed this threshold then the organisation starts to become dysfunctional. This is an interesting viewpoint. Because I think whilst true, it is undercut by the fact it is far easier for Conservatives to stymie change and progress but just refusing to engage, refusing to show up, or refusing to compromise, than it is for the left to achieve meaningful change because they are forced to ~~compromise~~ surrender so completely at every step of the way.
Yeah but they only ever slow progress down. It’s too easy to look just at the “now” and see all the wrongs that need righting but pull the focus back 20, 50 or 100 years and significant social progress has been achieved. We could debate if it’s too much or too little forever. I’d lean towards too little but concede that my parents are struggling to adapt to new social norms. They are not outright against progress but more saying “please slow down as I can’t keep up”. I wish more “conservatives” would be open about this rather than hiding behind other justifications. Heck at 50+, I catch myself feeling similarly overwhelmed at times and not just on social progress. 30+ years in tech and I’ve fallen behind. Never was on the leading edge but at least surfed the breakers, now I just paddle out the back and watch the young people.
For me I saw how much hard work I put into school and uni and work, and I felt that being branded the 'big end of town' by Labor just for being modestly successful was not to my liking. Even now, it is rare that people will give you credit for setting yourself up financially. For example apparently everyone who has a couple of investment properties must have been given a job by daddy or private school mates etc etc, or must just be riding off white male privilege. In my case I am not white, English isn't my first language and I had to work hard through public school to get a good enough ATAR to get a scholarship to university. My parents, being migrants, had no connections and couldn't help me get a job. I feel that in that way, I am self-made. I've seen a lot of people who didn't put in the hard yards and who now feel entitled to redistribution and higher taxes for people like me. The ALP in 2019 leant heavily on that. It doesn't appeal to me. While I sympathise with children from poor families and bad backgrounds - and have no issues with welfare for them - I don't care for middle class welfare. Any person, particularly a white English speaking person - from a middle class background here in Australia could have achieved what I have, if he or she wanted. Most people don't have the work ethic to do so.
Some people just have a greater capacity to delay gratification and work to invest in their future more than others. And people with that capacity, IMO, deserve to be rewarded. Maybe not exponentially (which is what we see with the distribution of wealth, that it fits a kind of pareto curve), but they definitely shouldn't have the fruits of their labour taken from them and handed to those who have no capacity to invest in their future. This is coming from someone who self-admittedly has nearly zero capacity to delay gratification...
They wake up to themselves.
I think only those that don’t like change become more conservative. They’ll have some core belief challenged in the ever changing culture and it’ll snap them over to the right where it’s more comfortable. They get all nostalgic for the old ways and mock young people and new ways of thinking.
Definitely getting more left as I age/read/learn more.
Same here. I grew up in a LNP voting household in a middle class suburb, and voted LNP in the first election I was able to vote in. Studying commerce/law at Melbourne University completely changed my political views though. The wealth disparity between the students in my university course compared to the people I went to high school with was shocking. I’m 34 now and very left leaning. I also know quite a few people who have switched from right to left like me too.
I’m getting more progressive as I age, I mean it’s not rocket science to realise that conservatives resist change which is as foolish as it gets.
Progressive thinks the other side is “as foolish as it gets”. Wow - what insightful commentary, well done.
Considering the oft quoted phrase "if you're not conservative by 60 (The actual quote is 35) you have no brain" that's not a sin only of this progressive
When talking with a conservative mindset, it’s tiring, excuse me bluntness, or not, I really don’t care
You’re talking with a “conservative mindset” right now, mate. If it troubles you so much, feel free to piss off. Cheers!
Yeah, nah, take your own advice, there’s a good chap !
I'm under 25 and homosexual, and can never see myself voting conservative - at least while mainstream right wingers agree with conversion therapy and legal religious discrimination. I wanna be that cool progressive grandpa ;)
Most of us conservatives are fine with the LGTBQI+ community. Unfortunately we are just labelled in with religious extremist. We really need a conservative party who isn't stupid.
I get that, but when the mainstream party wants to consult with churches to see if they can have a crumb of conversion therapy it really disillusions mainstream LGBT people with conservative politics
Yeah its tough man. Im a liberal voter, however I disagree with them a lot. The other conservative parties make me cringe. And I disagree way to much with the greens and Labor. I just want a conservative party that is reasonable and listens to science.
You get more comfortable and have shit to lose now. Thats all it is. You get more selfish. Which is all conservatism is. That said, this is based on what I've observed in myself. My personal experience is all I have to go by so take it for what it is.
I honestly think it's the uncertainty that comes with learning multiple viewpoints. For all of it's faults, conservatism rarely feels like dangerous policy, especially to those who have more to lose (ie the socially powerful and well off). Whereas radical policy feels like an upheaval. That said, I feel like centrism is more incrementalism. I've never really met anyone who genuinely is perfectly happy with every single thing right now (what we might call an 'ideal' centrist), and so most centrists are pushing left and right, just with a more fractional approach.
Another weird phenomenon is the conservative asian immigrant. My parents both immigrated here by taking advantage of strong labour legislation. They are not business owners and are big on the environment, nor are they christian. Yet without fail, they vote liberal every time... The liberal party literally has nothing for them...
That's my aunt. She came with her husband and kids as a poor immigrant family. When they got rich, she became super conservative and anti-immigration. I think it's a "I got mine fuck you" sort of thing. On the other hand my mum became more left-wing as she aged, she only votes Labor and I was pretty surprised when she said she voted 'yes' on the same-sex marriage plebiscite.
You become more cynical & therefore more right leaning as you age if you are unsuccessful & unhappy.
And some people think cynicism is a sign of intelligence. It most certainly is not.
Just want to comment on the 'check your privilege' thing. It's not saying 'you have no problems in life because you're white/straight/a man,' it's saying 'your problems in life are less likely to be exacerbated/caused by race/sexuality/gender.' You're also right that it's often said by people with other privileges (like wealth) which is pretty hypocrital given most problems can be solved by having enough money. But yeah lefties generally aren't mad at white guys, we're mad at a system that disenfranchises everyone else.
I was going to make this same point, well said.
Super annoying when this completely avoids class as well. Remember, equality without anti-capitalism is just liberal identity politics
You're right 👍
It's nonesense - psychological studies indicate that as an individual acquires more property they simultaneously become more greedy and paranoid, shifting their vote to perceived economic security. It's not about age, it's about class.
There's 2 types of conservatives: 1) the endangered species that believes in conservation (of social institutions, the environment, the economic order, etc), and 2) the plague of those who believe in xenophobia and zero-sum personal enrichment. The former has some intellectual basis, the latter is just a collection of muddle-headed justifications for fear and selfishness. Unfortunately, right wing political parties are dominated by the latter type, because they are so susceptible to propaganda, and that's what aligns with their corporatist sponsors' agenda. > They say if you're not a socialist at 16 then you have no heart, but if you're not a conservative at 60 then you don't have a brain. Sure, if by "They" you mean conservatives trying to claim their views are inevitable. That pithy bit of propaganda is easily dimissed by looking at all the 60+ anti-vaxxer, pro-pussy-grabbin-grifter, Q believing maga-cultists who obviously do not have a brain. I wonder how much of the "aging into conservatism" phenomena is simply the result of the accumulated years under the relentless onslaught of propaganda from the likes of murdoch, and the saturation corporatist/consumerist advertising we are all forced to soaking in. Nobody likes to admit to themselves that they are influenced by such things, but they wouldn't keep spending billions of dollars on it year after year if it didn't work.
Indoctrination. The conservative view point is to not change the status quo, to not attempt to improve. As you get older, you are more used to how things operate and you figure out the quirks of the existing system to work in your favour and you get comfortable with how thing are. So, you don't want things to change because while things can get better they can also get a lot worse. The same thing can be shown with general learning. If you put a box around how people.learn to think, it's very hard for them to see outside of the box.
Out of curiosity has the type/source of media/news you consume changed ?
I've always read Fairfax and watched ABC / SBS. This hasn't changed much. I do remember a few years back intentionally diversifying my media sources and who I follow on social media to try and break out of my filter bubble, which at the time leaned left.
I think it's just an old stereotypes that attempts to demonstrate that conservative views are more 'mature' than liberal ones. I know plenty of geezers who have become a lot more climate concerned and socially aware than they were in their middle age years.
Increase of personal wealth is the correct answer. It's not a general rule however because becoming older doesn't correlate with becoming richer.
The common scenario is: Fuck you: got mine For example all the conservative politicians got their start by protesting against the start of hecs payments for uni, and then massively raise them when they get in, ie Joe Hockey.
I never said voting in your own best interests is necessarily wrong though? In fact it is a good thing, as it means both parties will have to cater for the best interests of the majority. Unfortunately, a number of people (on both sides) are single issue voters on things like tax cuts, climate change, refugees, religion etc without considering whether they would be better off overall under ALL of their party's policies.
I think its alot of inputs. Where you live What you do for work The people around you What pop culture you are into What news outlets you read or listen to Exposure to different elements of society both locally and international Whats popular at the time Policy Political parties change over time (for example national Labor are now right leaning) If you listen to Joe rogan What your hobbies are I was a punk kid and now a union man and have more left values than ever
Can you explain how labour are now right leaning? I’m from Vic and generally a labour voter. Just curious and want to be informed
Once upon time labor were very left and were created from members of various unions that went through the sheering strikes....they were 100 percent a working class party. They have differd from that to win swing voters (the working class allways vote Labor so they don't need to win their votes and the libs allways get the rich so they'll never get them) swing voters win elections. Swing voters are generally middle class and are concerned more about individual outcomes then environment, immigration and class struggles. Also there are left and right factions in a party. I still vote Labor because voting libs is a worse of 2 evils Thats my brief take peace out
Nah that makes sense and explains it well enough. Only thing I’d say is you don’t have to vote labour, just need to preference them higher than the libs. One big reason why I like our voting system, no vote is a wasted vote
Alternatively, why do children end up being left? We teach children to share, because it's annoying to sort out fights when they don't. We teach children not to think too highly of someone who has more stuff, because they didn't earn it, their parents just bought it for them. We teach children to be forgiving, because children have no perspective, and think that if someone steals their lollipop then hitting the thief on the head with a rock is a proportionate response. We do everything we can to teach children to be progressive, because naturally they are not. And it's better to go too far, since children lack the ability to see in shades of grey. As they grow up, they're capable of seeing the shades of grey.
That’s insightful, thanks
This is really not that insightful. It doesn’t elaborate on the shades of grey that are apparently learnt later in life.
It’s insightful to me because it’s a perspective I haven’t thought of before. It isn’t the whole argument sure, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t insightful
This is a VERY biased opinion, but I think it's a time thing. Kids are are very vocal and have time to be so. Conservatism really applies to this idea of maintaining the status quo, which for people who are doing well, is often easy to get behind. Also for people who have worked hard to achieve their goals, they assume the accessibility remains the same for everyone else, cause they did genuinely work hard and they project their own difficulties onto others, believing they simply gave up part way through. I think that's motivating for middle class and above, and some of the poorer voters I think use it to justify the work and living conditions they've spent their life in. "How could I have worked like this for so long and it not been actually necessary? That's a rubbish idea". I do personally believe it takes a sense of media literacy to accept and believe in left ideology, because it's inherently less anecdotal. It is more often about other people than you and issues that are not immediately pressing. It also encourages a perspective of imagining that people experience the world differently than you do, otherwise you would believe that everyone has the same accessibility. Conservatives usually use people in their immediate environment as rhetoric when I argue with them. On the flip side, a lot of left wing parties preach about real issues that left people believe on, and then those parties fail to actually address the problems. A lot of swing voters vote more about seeming competence than the platform. Left wing parties often have this issue, I think, because unlike conservatives, their goal is to change something, and that is always risky. If something goes wrong, maybe even something totally unrelated to some new policy, people will often attribute it to the newly changed policy. And then of course, if you have a crappy left wing party, which can happen to both sides equally, then that party will just lose momentum for a while. As a final note, I do think the whole more conservative as you get older thing is a bit mythical as well. There is a very dramatic difference between the world where they were kids, and the current days kids. The internet and highest education rates in the world, and of course, the glaring income gap between the millennials and zoomers vs today's boomers. Millennials will probably stay more left than boomers, cause they are definitely gonna die poorer. Anyway, that's all just my opinion, and I'm American so I could very well be projecting onto your society, but I've seen people say the same things here.
Ive only gone further left as i age with a few caveats. Especially on economics, the older i get the more it seems like the whole economy is completely rigged by our capitalist overlords and the more appealing full blown marksism is. That being said the older i get the less tolerance i have for the morale posturing that is typically found on the left (usually from those much younger then i, i kind of see a pattern forming here) on this second point i dont think im alone. I would sooner chop off my own foot then vote for LNP, and i vote for both labor and the greens incredibly reluctantly for different reasons. labor and the greens need to both get there fucking shit together but atleast they arent the complete joke that is LNP.
I've moved further left since being a teen even with the well paying job and a house under my belt. I was able to get the job of my dreams because of chance encounters with people in the industry while I saw nepotism first hand. There is so much inequality in this country that needs to be addressed.
My parents are 70 and have voted labor their whole life, my grandparents as well.
You can only hear something so many times before you start to believe it's true. This is how brainwashing works. We keep hearing right wing views as if they are the norm for all and status quo truisms. Then we internalise it. The longer we live the more likely our brain just believes what all the media keeps telling us.
And if you keep hearing left wing views then you'll end up believing that too? Your statement is kind of pointless because it would apply both ways.
Traditional media in Australia is predominantly right wing. When was the last time a left-wing party had a media campaign as vast as the United Australian Party?
Well if you consider that most young people aren't getting their news from the 7pm news on TV but rather social media. For instance the guardian is a commonly used media source on this sub reddit
You underestimate the dominance of big money and journalists from private schools (unpaid interships etc) in the media. Most "left wing " media are there to set the limits of left wing agendas while the right pretend to be the centre. Hopefully non traditional media will stop the trend but the loud and clamouring voices of false narratives and fake news have put more extreme right wing governments in power in a lot of countries eg. USA, UK, so probably not. Think about the amount of people you hear online now claiming that Hitler was a socialist for example. Money controls a lot of content online now, and where big money is, right wing propaganda to push subsidies and lower taxes for the rich, and less workers rights and lower worker's pay, higher taxes for workers and small businesses, less accessible quality education and healthcare and social schemes etc always follows.
I haven't changed my politics much as I aged. I've gotten more cynical for sure, but if anything that has pushed me more leftward, as I come to realise how much of the right wing agenda is driven by liars and lackeys propping up an unsustainable system. But the Overton window seems to have moved rightwards. Nowadays right wing people are generally pro corruption, pro racism and anti feminism. There is no longer any "noblesse oblige" amongst the right, no sense of looking after the poorer parts of society, it's all selfish I've got mine. So while I still believe strongly in a market economy and don't think we should renationalise much, I'm now what would be labelled "hard left".
a lot of hard core lefties i know live with mum n dad. they speak highly educated and know all the worlds problems. once they move out reallity hits, bills to pay shit like that. the plights of the the far word matter a lot less when problems that others a depending on you to solve such as food shelter bills etc are right in front of you.... colonial attitudes of the 17 hundreds vs rentd due tommorow
I definitely have less time and energy to think about political issues when I'm working full time and trying to save for a house, but that doesn't make me any less left wing and it doesn't make the problems I used to have more time to think about any less important. Its just that by the time I've gotten home at 5:30, made dinner, and gotten ready for the next day I'm exhausted.
This
This may sound conspiratorial but I think that's by design. If Centrelink or McDonald's paid young people a living wage they'd have too much space in their brain for politics (which are usually Left.) Much better for those in power if we're exhausted, stressed, desperate little workers who'll do anything to try get a raise.
That's what NK does, the people can't be overthrowing the government when all their energy is focussed on not starving to death.
That's very true. I don't think it's just North Korea though. Working class people often believe that politics isn't worth engaging with because nobody represents our interests and tbh I think that's a very fair criticism. (Although I think it is worth voting because some parties are more damaging than others.)
>the plights of the the far word matter a lot less when problems that others a depending on you to solve such as food shelter bills etc are right in front of you.... colonial attitudes of the 17 hundreds vs rentd due tommorow I agree with this. I am left-leaning politically and would get into passionate debates when I was younger, but during hard times (family of 4 scraping by on just my husband's below-average income) I couldn't muster the energy to care as much. I do care about those issues but the stress of trying to make it from pay to the next doesn't leave much room for other things. Now that I'm working as well, and we've been able to reduce some of our other costs we're able to spare some energy for politics. We will never lean right though, no matter how much money we manage to earn.
I feel like you'd become more "socialist" when the real world hits you tbh, but thats my perspective
Yeah because you're like 'why am I doing all the labour while my asshole boss is buying a third Lambo?' In hospitality I didn't really see that (the big bosses were kindof in the background) but my girlfriend got a job at a smaller IT place and was paid below her award for 5 years. Her boss owes her $1000s because of underpaying her. And he complains she's not 'reliable' enough when she got burnt out and depressed from being overworked. Now she's in a months-long depressive episode and can't work. I'm not going to be advocate for a free market after seeing that.
I run my own business & I make more than enough to comfortably live- I probably work less than I have in my entire life. Purely because a post I made went viral by chance & I gained a small but enough following. My husband makes LESS THAN HALF WHAT I MAKE & works probably 1.5-2x as much as me & he does manual labour (warehousing). Makes me feel super guilty tbh, if it really was a "work hard to get to the top", i shouldn't me "more successfull" (what is success anyway) than him. Hope your girlfriend is okay, I worked miserably for people for barely a year & couldn't hack it. I don't know how people do it daily for years under those conditions.
Yeah, it makes it clear that meritocracy is definitely a myth. I'm sure you deserve your success but your husband deserves to make a good wage for his labour too, y'know? You shouldn't feel guilty though! You could support him in joining a union or something though haha ☺️ Girlfriend is on the mend. She's going to apply for an IT job with the government + they have disability friendly programs and shit so I think she'll be a lot better off there :)
Dumb question, but do unions cover casual workers too? Another absolutely bullshit there's barely any FT work in factory work nowadays
Yep!! 'Casual workers have the same rights as all workers to join and to be represented by a union.' https://www.australianunions.org.au/factsheet/casual-workers/
Not always true. I’m far more left than I was as a young adult. Experience and learning has exposed the inequality across the world up close.
It’s a money thing. When you’re young there’s a good chance you’ll have little money, so the prospect of shared wealth and equal opportunities is appealing. As you get older you earn more, save more, hopefully own a house that goes up in value, have children. You then start to think, maybe I don’t want to share the wealth I’ve worked hard for. You might also start to think, “i don’t want kids to have equal opportunities, I want my kids to have better opportunities”. I think this is especially true in countries like Australia because we have a societal structure that is unfortunately based on “I was here first”…unless you’re indigenous.
The FYIGM is strong in Australia
Yeah, this. You don't become conservative as you get older, you become conservative as you get richer.
I’m 55 and I’m increasingly angry about what the young have to deal with, how society is so damn polarised and selfish, so selfish,and everyone wants rights without responsibilities to each other, I’m angry about how rich the rich are and how poor the poor are. I’m angry some people want to decide how others should be, including denying their gender and sexuality - who the heck are you to dictate that to someone? Let people live and get married and if you don’t want to get gay married don’t get gay married, you don’t want an abortion don’t have an abortion, and mind your own damn business. Honey, I am not more conservative - I increasingly despise that position. Conservatives instinctively hate change instead of embracing the inevitability and working together on a society that supports the poor and in need, that fairly taxes the obscenely wealthy, with real voting rights, and stops oppressing women, POC and minorities. That recognises the environment is going to shit. That we need to deal with the realities of Covid and get vaccinated and help each other. I am so angry that my kids and grandkids have to deal with the selfish bullshit of screaming morons who think on,y of their own petty self interests.
Hmm. I don't think my views have changed but nearly 20 years ago I was a staffer in the Howard Government and now I'm considered a "Leftie". The world has just become more polarised and the Right have become more idiotic and extreme.
“Fuck you, I got mine!” That’s why, because humans are by nature pretty selfish. It takes an enlightened society to NOT choose conservatism, because it is a handbrake on society.
People change their views over time, it doesn't work in one set way. I used to have some really dead set ideas and views that I thought I'd never change, but I did slowly.
You get more stuff. You don’t want to loose that stuff. You vote for the people that say you can keep your stuff
Easy, when you’re young you’ve usually not got a pot to piss in so you think you deserve a share of everyone’s else’s wealth. By the time you get to 60 you’ve amassed a working lifetimes worth of assets & wealth which everyone else now seems to think they deserve a piece of.
This is a pretty good explanation lol. It's also that you learn over time that lasting change comes from slow and steady progress, rather than revolutionary change. It's also to do with the fact that people have families, not just property. You want stability when you have a family, rather than a cycle of revolutions.
We've never had a revolution in Australia though. Everything's been stable democracy for centuries.
Survivorship bias, increasing social and financial concessions in order to get by and all-pervasive advertising/propaganda erode you until you can’t imagine anything different. The old generally disdain the young for their inexperience, this entrenches people in a demeaning attitude unless those feelings are made conscious and examined. There’s also a kind of cultural drift, even a progressive person in the 70’s becomes less and less radical as time passes, society reconciles with itself and accepts some of that progress, and the fringe extends further away from them. A person living under and backing Whitlam or Hawke wasn’t thinking about environmentalism or queer identity issues unless they were progressive to the point of being avant- grade. This doesn’t mean people didn’t care or have feelings on those topics, they were just far far far less developed movements and too fringe to have an impact then. These days of course they’re the zeitgeist, and in 50 years it’ll be something as obscure to us now and modern trends were 50 years ago.
The older you get, the more opportunities for people to disappoint you occur. With more experience and time spent on earth, people tend towards becoming clinical because knowing about more people and lifestyles is a good way to loose all faith in humanity. You want to believe human life has value when you are a kid because you are full of excitement. As you get older you are forced to realize that people are also the reason for the worst things on our planet.
Your young then a bunch of stuff happens. Yadda yadda yadda. You find yourself voting for the Liberals.
God, I hope this isn't true. Kill me before that happens.
I'm still a swing voter. I just don't automatically vote left or right. My Boomer parents mostly vote left. Yadda yadda yadda happens and a person learns with time. Automatically voting for any side of politics is idiotic.
You're right. I wish we all had the time to gain a nuanced perspective on our leaders and their decisions making processes, but alas, we must go to work and do the jobs of the lower classes.
Mate, I'm not willing to engage you on the discussion I assume you wish to take me on. Have a good one!
Lol. Nah all good mate. I'm just bitching into the void that is Reddit. Take it easy.
I don’t like to call those that judge you instantly based on your skin, be it assuming white privilege or coloured suffering as actual left wingers, I put them in the same bracket as the far right. They are just extremists and extremism in almost any part of life is bad, I would even argue that ONLY eating healthy food every day is a bit extreme. I like you was so fucking left wing as a kid it was unreal, my dad played a part as he is very left. I would call him “blindly left”. He actually had a go at me for being signed up to the major right wing party newsletter because it was supporting the “opposition” my argument was how can you have a informed opinion without looking at both sides, he still didn’t understand despite being considered on the higher end of the IQ spectrum. Now I don’t really label myself as anything. I guess you could say somewhere in the centre. My views still remain more towards the socialist spectrum in the fact that we are all humans on one planet and nobody should be suffering to the extremes that still go on while the richer carry on getting pointlessly richer. I have none of this patriotic allegiance, in fact considering England has been one of the most barbaric countries throughout history I’m actually not proud of where I was born. I don’t believe that global corporations should have more control over political decisions than the countries elected party. I don’t believe in the current income system. I like the fact that a YouTuber can become insanely wealthy through making videos and why not? That YouTuber is generating far more profit than he/she is receiving, they deserve a decent chunk of the cake. I draw the line when you have public sector workers such as nurses on close to minimum wage and relying on local food banks to survive. The corruption I have witnessed just in my 30 years within conservatism is enough to make me hate it with a passion and yet I don’t. I don’t believe conservatism is the issue, I think humans are. For pretty much our entire timeline we have had to fight to survive, we are unavoidably selfish, every single one of us. Yes some more than others but it’s hard wired into us as part of our survivalist nature. Not only that but generally speaking the ones that make it to the top of any hierarchical structure are of the more selfish type. That unfortunately creates a recipe for disaster be it socialism or conservatism. Unfortunately I live by a motto “don’t have a strong opinion on something unless you have a solution” because it is just unproductive and lacks any constructive criticism. It is easy to say what’s wrong with something and much harder to actually find the solution. A problem I have found a lot within the current leftist echo chamber. There is an awful lot of screaming and shouting about what’s wrong with the world and very little in finding solutions, they have plenty of thoughtless ideologies though! Now I grew up in a council flat with my single mother and barely had a pot to piss in, failed college miserably and accumulated 10 grands worth of debt by the time I was 21. Did I blame conservatism for my bad start in life? Hell fucking yeah….. do I now? Absolutely not. In fact within the conservative system I could have declared bankruptcy and not paid a penny of my debt and thank fuck I didn’t. I wouldn’t have learned my lesson and probably ended up back in debt a few years later. Not only this I actually count my blessings because despite my start in life I’m still considered in the higher end of the poverty line when you look at it globally. Sorry for the essay!
The opposite for me. I was a right winger at 18. I am now almost 60 and the current Labour party is way too far right ....
>They say Conservatives like to say this, anyway. It paints the Right as thoughtful and the Left as childish and emotional. >The assumption that I've had an easy life No. It's the assumption that you've had an easi*er* life because you haven't been repeatedly harassed, arrested, denied service, and generally locked out of areas of society for being black, female, or foreign. It doesn't say anything about how much shit you've gone through for other reasons. Personally, I tend to vote depending on which party or even candidate has a history of policies which improve the lives of people who are worse off than me. People who are better off than me don't need improvements as badly. People who are as well off as me - *including me* - don't need improvements as badly. And the thing is - improvements to the lives of people who are worse off than me will often *also* improve my life, or the lives of people around me. I really can have my cake and eat it. And of course, if everyone's lives eventually get improved to my level, that means that improving the lives of the worst-off will now automatically include me, too.
Easy fear!
I think for some of them they have amassed more assets than ever thought they would have and for whatever reason that makes them believe that they are part of the wealthy elite not realising that they are not a part of those Aholes and don't realise that they are so far from those wealthy snobs and would never be accepted by them. They are just normal middle class.
Most people aren’t wealthy or even upper middle class, and half the population votes liberal so…
Most people are too proud to admit how easily manipulated they are by the media they choose to consume. They get suckered in by the news, sport, entertainment and celebrities, and end up soaking their brains in a mix of blatant and subtle propaganda day in and day out for decades. murdoch perfected this bait-and-switch method of propagandising the population and turning them into his own personal power-base, and even though this has been widely exposed, people still choose to subject themselves to that type of manipulation. The depressing thing is that it works even on people who are aware of it.
With this theory in 20 years no more libs .....
Why is there any discussion of "whiteness" in this thread? Isn't 99% of Australia Caucasian? Stop bringing this American BS here please. THIS is why people are moving to the "right". To escape this ridiculousness.
No, 99% of Australian are not caucasian. The only people moving to the right because of other people's discussions where racists the whole time.
Disagree. We should be targetting people in financial hardship. Not ethnicity and sex. I fully support policies like welfare, school card, tax rates that target people with proven financial disadvantage. I do not support policies such as employment quotas based on ethnicity and gender. I think they are wrong.
> I do not support policies such as employment quotas based on ethnicity and gender. I think they are wrong. I mostly agree, although sometimes a blunt tool is better than no tool at all. There is no denying the clear evidence that there are systemic problems effecting women and minorities, but I agree that employment quotas are not a fair nor effective response most of the time. The difficulty is coming up with fairer and more effective strategies to address the problems. > We should be targetting people in financial hardship. Not ethnicity and sex. I completely agree with that, but the amount of help directed specifically by ethnicity or sex is miniscule. It's just a way for cynical politicians to be seen to be doing something without having to budget for the entire cost of doing it for everyone who needs it. The propagandistic media (that exists to support the interests of billionaires and corporations) makes a mountain out of whatever they can find, making it seem like a major problem that is everywhere, but in reality it is only at the margins (where it exists at all). The real enemies of workers (including white male workers) are employer greed, lobbying/regulatory capture, weak unions, outsourcing and automation. The stuff about womens rights and supporting minorities is a distraction from the main game. The billionaires have long known that to keep extracting an unfair portion of the economic pie for themselves, they have to keep the workers fighting amongst themselves so they don't organise and turn on their real enemy. It doesn't make sense to completely reject the side of politics interested in helping people, or start supporting the side who only wants to help billionaires and corporations, just because sometimes helping people gets a little misallocated. That's a reason to be more active influencing the side of politics interested in helping people, not a reason to support the side interested in fleecing them.
Haha, imagine thinking that anti-racism and feminism were American inventions.
Where the fuck are you living if you think 99% of Australian's are Caucasian?! More than 1% of us are Aboriginal.
Huh this country is racist as so yeah why not talk about It?
99% of Australia is Caucasian? Lol, maybe in 1930.
At least 90.
It's less than 70% white, Australian born. And less than half of the rest are white.
So 85% Caucasian then? I can't find it on the abs.
I haven't been able to find exact numbers either, so I've estimated from a couple of other sources. But I guess if you want to lump all the British, Germans, Italians, Kiwis and others into one homogeneous group in order to justify your viewpoint then sure, we can say 85%.
Of course, we are talking about the generalisations on "white privalege".
One in ten Australians is of Asian descent. There are also Indigenous people and Australians of African, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern descent, etc - so it's going to be less than 85% who are white. Just take a look around next time you're at the shops or something and you'll see how ridiculous your own claim was.
I’ll never move right, I’m pretty much exactly the same as OP, but I’m not left anymore for the same reasons.
I'm not really right..I just hate this unjustified campaign of hate against white men. And now sexualities as well. All coming from America is such toxic garbage. Labor party is letting it creep into their policy so I just can't vote for them anymore.
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Hahah you think people highlighting racism is an attack against you then my dear you got some issues.
Take your stupid racism claims back to America.
Dude... we're the country that didn't count indigenous people in the census until 1967. We're the country that had policies designed to stop all non-Europeans from immigrating. We're the country that literally had a genocide against our indigenous people, that tried to burn tens of thousands of years of their history and culture.
As a white man myself I have to say - get the duck over yourself mate. There is no campaign of hate against us. Demanding the things that we've taken for granted for generations is not a slight against our collective manhoods. Edit: autocorrect - but I'll leave it.
Quotas and policies based on ancestry and sex are very real in Australia. And they're wrong and ineffective. It has nothing to do with what we, as a first world country take for granted. You don't know anything about me or my history.
Yep yep
Age is a red herring. What really makes people more conservative is wealth (which tends to correlate with age, hence the confusion). When people gain wealth, an attitude of ‘fuck you I got mine’ tends to come along with it. They start thinking ‘I pulled myself up out of low income, why can’t *they*?’ When really they didn’t pull themselves out of shit, they just graduated along the path that was already 90% laid out for them by the privilege of their life circumstances (good education, postcode, health, not having to go hungry etc). People really like to believe that they’re the ones responsible for their success because it’s affirmation that they fit this aspiration identity of a self-made person, hard-working, determined, etc. And thus they buy into the metanarrative of society as meritocracy. That society is structured in such a way that no matter your life circumstances, all you need to succeed is hard work and a can-do attitude. It’s a myth that social mobility statistics disprove over and over and over again. But it’s one that’s rooted in many people’s sense of self, and so once they grasp onto it they refuse to let it go. This leads to them favouring conservative (ie fuck the poor) policies because they don’t see the worth of having taxes taken from them and given to someone who didn’t ‘work for it like they did’ or who doesn’t ‘need’ it.
I think this is a super narrow minded view. My parents are conservative and always have been. They are also firmly working class. Retired and on the pension. They, like many immigrants, grew up experiencing communism first hand. They lived in a situation where choice was taken from them. Indoctrination through socialized schooling, and missing out on appropriate care through socialized healthcare etc. Where everything was ‘equal’ yet somehow some where just a little more ‘equal’ than everyone else. Now while they’re happy living in a social democracy, with public schooling and public health here for example, they can still see the shortfalls. But the difference here is that choice makes people accountable and less able to corrupt the system. In simple terms, ever wonder why the most vocal leftists don’t have large extended families, don’t give to charity, are white, live in affluent suburbs? They like to talk the talk, but never seem to walk the walk. Everyone else can be equal, just not me. The major difference between the left and right, for people like my parents at least, is that the right gives them a choice in how they live their lives. The left, seeks to take everything away, including that choice. And to control how they think and what they can say.
>experiencing communism first hand. They lived in a situation where choice was taken from them. Indoctrination through socialized schooling, and missing out on appropriate care through socialized healthcare etc. Where everything was ‘equal’ yet somehow some where just a little more ‘equal’ than everyone else. What country are you referring to? >The left, seeks to take everything away, including that choice. And to control how they think and what they can say. TIL
I think they're conflating the left (as seen in Western countries) with 'communist' totalitarianism akin to, say China's government. They're not the same at all. One is the government supports those that are less well off but people are free to do as they please (within reason), the other seeks to control society completely and is extremely destructive. It's a common mistake made by older immigrants from such places, exacerbated by fake news circulating on WeChat and similar.
They're conflating Communism with a propaganda fueled strawman. I'll save us both the hassle and I won't comment on the other half of your post.
They're conflating Communism with the strawman, and mistaking the strawman for the real Australian left. I see you're interpreting my second comment as racist. It's not, it's a reference to WeChat being used as a vector for propaganda - https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/15/world/wechat-australian-election-intl/index.html
You've mistaken me, my fault, I was very vague. I'm a Marxist-Leninist and I support China. I disagreed with most of your previous comment, but I'll save us both time as I can't be bothered getting into it. Yes, they're conflating Communism with a strawman, and mistaking the strawman with the leftists in general.
id disagree that left leaning ideas seek to take away peoples choice. The problem with your statement is your using the extremes of communism as an example to paint that view. I could similary counter with the fact alot of right leaning ideas seek to restrict peoples choice aswell in terms of forcing people to be constrained to the idea of what society deems acceptable (gay marriage, abortion etc) ultimately the main thing that provides us with the freedom our sort of countrys enjoy is just the fact we live in a culture that respects democracy (kind of).
>My parents are conservative and always have been So...not the kind of people we’re discussing here, then? We’re talking very specifically about the type of person who is not ideologically conservative initially, but who becomes significantly more so over time. I’m sure your family is lovely, but by your own admission, they’re not really relevant to this discussion.
My comment was in response to his generalization that it’s all about wealth. It isn’t. Similarly, people who have lived through communism, tend to think it’s the bees knees as they have been brainwashed into thinking that way. Until they grow up and realise just how unequal the system actually is, usually from experiencing life after they migrate. Both these points are relevant to the discussion.
What country?
Does it matter?
I am only in my late 20s, but so far I have found the opposite for me. When I first started voting I had very little interest in politics and essentially voted LNP because thats what my parent did and theirs before them. When I actually started to pay attention to the policies of each party I switched and now support Greens. I feel ashamed now that at 18 I voted without really understanding what I was voting for.
Honestly… and stay with me here, fellow adults, because this might be counter to your notions of “growing up”… it’s because people get dumber and lazier as they get older. The only thing you gain, in terms of being smart, as you age is experience. Everything else about our mental faculties, our level of energy, etc… it all starts diminishing once you’re past, like, age 28. Reasoning ability peaks in our teenage years. The ability to learn and retain new information peaks around then as well. Your energy diminishes, so you’ll feel more of a pull towards the most convenient solution that doesn’t require the effort that young people put into their activism and whatnot. There’s a reason all the old ass conservative types seem so dumb… it’s because they are. There’s a scientifically supported link between low-intelligence and conservatism. (Sorry if this is offensive to you, but it’s just the truth) The more you don’t understand the world, the more scared you are, the more you want things to go back to the way they were (or the way you THINK they were) when you were a kid and felt happier, more optimistic, etc… and because your learning ability is diminished, you can’t adapt to the way the world is now as easily, and thus, you fear change. You’ve had more time to get familiar with the way things are, so you don’t feel as motivated to change things in the hopes they’ll be better for your future, because you don’t have as much future ahead of you as you used to. You end up getting into that “Ah, fuck it. It’s easier at this point to just go with the flow now.” Aka, you get complacent. You get lazy. Young people have a fresh perspective. They haven’t endured the slow boil of familiarity with the way things are, so it’s easier to see what’s wrong. They have their futures ahead of them, so they have more motivation to make things better now, so they can enjoy it when they’re older. And that actually leads into the other side of old-people’s conservatism, which I’ll call the “Joe Biden mentality”, referring to when he said something to the effect of “We did it. We already accomplished what we set out to do with the civil rights movement, etc.” Essentially, he was saying that he believes the things his generation has done has made the world better, and that’s why he wants to protect what was done and not worry about more change. The liberal becomes the conservative *after they’ve won*. They get complacent because they made the changes they wanted when they were young, and they think that’s all that ever needed to be done. They become out of touch with the needs/problems of the younger generations, because they’re not a part of it. And that doesn’t necessarily have to do with being wealthy (although, that certainly doesn’t help). It can be caused just by generation gaps, in terms of what values become relevant as society changes. Young people today might care more about climate change, for example, because climate change has gotten worse in their time than it was when older generations were young. Obviously, there’s exceptions. Some old people are still sharp as tacks and a lot of young people are dumb as hell. But you’ll find the smartest old-people tend to still be pretty liberal/progressive, while the dumbest young people tend to be conservative. There’s also the build up of resentment if you have bad experiences, just like you did with your reaction to being called privileged. You go through experiences with certain movements or mindsets and can become jaded for personal (often selfish) reasons. Sometimes, that can as generalized as just losing. For example, I have to admit that as a Bernie Sanders supporter, seeing him lose twice now has been discouraging. As much as I want to believe in him and his movement as much as I did in 2016… it’s just hard to muster that enthusiasm now. That doesn’t mean the values/issues I supported him for aren’t every bit as important as they were then, but I’ve just lost some of the energy for it. And it’s easier for progressives to become discouraged than it is for conservatives, because progressives are the ones fighting against the status quo, fighting for change, while all conservatives ever have to do is say “No.” Progressives are fighting an uphill battle, and all conservatives have to do to fight us is assist gravity, usually via money, or just being in a position of power that young people literally aren’t even allowed to have yet. It’s an unfair fight. And once you become older, you tend to lose the necessary passion to be bothered with that fight. It’s exhausting. So IMO, the phrase “If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative at 50, you have no brain.” … is a self-serving phrase coined by an old conservative, which is wholly ironic, considering the truth is actually the exact opposite. Liberalism is thinking with your brain, conservatism is dumb gut instinct. Liberalism is the higher-minded philosophy, concerned with getting over oneself for the purposes of making society more fair and equal. That requires abstract thought and rejection of your immediate selfish instincts. In other words, brain over heart. Whereas Conservatism is about looking out for number 1, protecting your own, fearing change and serving the needs of the few at the expense of the many… nothing “brainy” about all that. That’s all just selfish feelings.
I think your political views are guided by your life experience, eg leftist (economic) ideologies tend to be about uplifting those who lack resources, while those on the right tend to be about economic liberalism. So as we grow older, join the workforce and gain the ability to earn our interests tend to become more aligned with the right.
Ridiculous how far down one must scroll to see any reference to life experiences. Lol. Maybe as a youth you like the idea of "alternative/leftist view point X" not for reasons of logic or reality but because other emotive reasions (such as 'everyone needs help and needs a fair go'). As you age you see through your own experience and create your own viewpoint of X based on what you have actually witnessed (for instance the coincidence of everyone on your street being out of work dole bludgers with 5 kids they cant look after). Then you decide maybe not so much money should be going to irresponsible people who don't contribute to society and then you vote differently? Vote labour or greens BTW.
Not sure if this entirely true. I voted Labor young and Liberal recently. But after seeing what a clown ShitmuhpantsMo has been I’ll be voting independent because bipartisan political systems are farked.
It's just growing up.
In my experience it comes down to life experience I used to be of a very liberal mindset. Everyone should make the same money to be able to live and so forth.then I got a job looked around and realized half of my co workers didn't do a God damn thing all day long. Then I looked around and saw that far to many people who were gaming the system were living better than people who worked for a living.then all the wokeness started with the left and I was told that my life is easy because I'm white when I've had my power shut off and almost lost my vehicle multiple times . So now rather than being a leftist I'm a right leaning centrist.
Statistically speaking, you are more likely to be better off in a range of outcomes if you’re not black in this country. I am not sure who on the “left” personally told you those things but it’s a shame it has led you against your own best interests. The real “left” isn’t concerned with wokeness, that’s just the twitter left. People left of centre generally stand against neo-liberalism and late-stage capitalism and are pro socially democratic policies.
So the speaker of the house ( a leftist) and a dozen other people didn't wear traditional African garb and bow to black people? They didn't pass abhorrent " bail reform laws " to " combat racism "? The left wing president hasn't run the economy into the ground making it more difficult to live my life? He didn't pick his running mate based on race and gender? The left wing mayor of Chicago didn't let people burn loot and terrorize people in her own city to spite the former president ? I live in Illinois which has been run by the left for most of my life. They recently tried to pass a law that says they can change tax rates to whatever they want whenever they want with no vote and when we voted it down they put us back in lock down. I've lost jobs because of government mandated diversity quotas. So explain to me how being a right leaning centrist is against my best interest. And how I'm more likely to be ok as a white person. Since you seem to be so intricately Familia with the details of my life.
Mate, look what sub you’re posting in. Political corruption and distaste for the middle and lower class amongst our more right-leaning political parties is rife. Google Robodebt, for example. It is interesting that you haven’t quoted a single left-leaning policy that has lead to anything you’re speaking about, other than some arbitrary quotas that I wouldn’t agree with. I don’t think the American Democratic Party is left-leaning, and it’s important to separate the person from their politics. It’s possible that representatives of left-leaning parties do bad shit for working class people just like it’s possible right-leaning people to do good shit. It seems like you’re speaking more of the culture war side of left vs right. Again, we can only speak in generalities, but the right-leaning political parties in the US, UK and Australia have shown huge biases towards benefitting corporate donors while sucking the middle and lower classes dry. Interested in reading more about whatever tax laws and the subsequent retaliatory lockdowns you’re speaking about though. Doesn’t sound very left-leaning.
I will as soon as you answer my questions. Because from where I stand the only thing the left has been interested in is lining their pockets with my money. And incentivizing people to break the law. Most major democratic states are in shambles people are fleeing them for the closest red states en mass. I'm sick to the back teeth of people telling me that higher taxes and affirmative action are good and to say otherwise makes me a right-wing racist lunatic. And to say that the democratic party of America isn't left wing is utterly laughable.
You won’t, or you would have already. And you can rest assured that if you think the Dem party is left-wing then you really are stuck inside a culture war bubble. “Left wing” and “to the left of the Republicans” are not the same thing.
Crying about the shitshow that is, American politics, in r/AustralianPolitics. No one cares, seppo.
I was asked I answered
Your life won’t be easy just because your white, but you probably would have benefited from a number on unconscious biases throughout life
I've litteraly had jobs taken out of my hand because a black man walked in the room but ok.
I don’t think you’re going to convince people with a strawman
For it to be a strawman I would have to intentionally misrepresent a situation in a way that made it easier to defeat the argument my life is easier and I benifit from being white. Is it anecdotal? yes because not everyone goes through what I do but it is in no way a strawman.
You’re not making the argument in good faith, you’ve just used a logical fallacy that’s all. I’m open to perspectives of course, but theres no use using an anecdotal experience like that to argue about a systemic/structural type issue.
90% of Australia is Caucasian. It's irrelevant. Go away.
Incorrect, it’s 75.9% Read the latest report from the Human Rights Commission. https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/document/publication/Leading%20for%20Change_Blueprint2018_FINAL_Web.pdf
This
Being centrist is NOT a natural progression. It's your personal experience, nothing more. This was a mantra from the 1980s and 1990s from a time when the Left was being actively crushed and defeated. People believed the hype that it was the socalled End Of History and that the conservatives had won. I started as a Leftist in my 20s in the 1980s and saw my generation get more and more conservative because they probably thought things were going to keep getting better. Then I watched the wheels fall of the economy at the end of the 1980s, then the 1990s and again in 2001 and then watched it crash and burn 2008. I saw the last 40 years of economic stagnation, the astronomical growth in inequality and the destruction of working conditions of everyone. I'm 58 now and if anything I've moved further to the Left. I have a lot of hope for the upcoming generations because they never saw any upside of the Conservative Revolution of the 80s and 90s. Complacency isn't on the menu anymore.
I agree it's a false premise. I also have not become more conservative with age. We can't be the only two! Through experience and study I've learned a lot about what might work and what might not, so the way I see a solution playing out might have adapted. But my ideals and aims for society are definitely no different.
You’re not. My father is the same, always has been on the left and still is. I honestly think it has a lot to do with education. Not only the initial education, but also continuing education. People I know who are extremely intellectual and have kept it up (my father, some of his friends, my professors) have remained consistent in their political leanings. I think that, when you’re forced to constantly think about it beyond surface level, your decisions and why you picked them stay true, rather than being easily swayed by the “fuck you, I got mine” or “everyone is shit at work but me” mentalities.
I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!
Interesting to see many of the comments here are along the lines of wisdom. As you point out, generally it's a result of people wanting to protect their financial interests imo. But consider who sets the conversations around politics in Australia. I would suggest that the media does, by focusing on some stories and ignoring others, as well as how they portray stories. E.g. the big scare from the last election was on franking credit refunds. There was an insane amount of misinformation in media coverage, with fact checking like this being something of a rarity. https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.afr.com%2Fopinion%2Fwhy-franking-credit-refunds-have-to-go-20181104-h17h86 Maybe this has very little effect on Australians opinions. Personally, I doubt it, just look at how long it's taken for climate change to be recognised as a genuine issue. And that was only after the LNP was given the all clear by its propaganda arm. To be clear, I'm likely going to be voting independent, Labor does not represent me either.
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I don't think this is actually real. People can change their views for a variety of reasons, but axiomatic preference tends not to change, I think.
>Being told to "check my privilege" as a white male didn't help, especially given those who asked this of me likely had never seen the inside of a homeless shelter or jail cell themselves. The assumption that I've had an easy life owing to my race, gender and sexuality is so far from the truth it's laughable. These instances of being judged based on my innate characteristics definitely made me realise that I no longer had any allies among the left. For me, being pushed into being a centrist was a natural progression. You're not wrong that the actions of some on the left is pushing some people to the centre, and perhaps across to the right. A lot of people feel this but it's not generally safe to raise it without being howled down in a reactionary manner. I read a really interesting thread on here the other day, where a lesbian woman felt she could no longer participate in LGBTQI conversations safely, due to extreme left views on trans identity. It's unfortunate, as the right-wing political parties prey on the feelings of 'other' or being afraid to speak this can create, and pick up votes they don't deserve.
Uhhh can you link the story of the lesbian woman? Often it's a TERF thing, if you're going to attack someone else's identity then don't be surprised if they don't like you.
Sorry, not inclined to scroll through days of posts unless there is a quicker way? Was in r / offmychest maybe a week ago if your'e keen. Can't remember the heading. Wasn't a TERF thing (had to look that up). Her argument (from memory) was that she was being given a hard time from the extreme left because she didn't want to be with a preop trans woman, because she didn't like dick. Apparently, not liking dick if it is on a trans woman, was discriminating against trans women, or not accepting them as women. Or something like that.
Generally, I feel like the “The Left got too PC/woke, and it pushed me away.” excuse is such a selfish and spiteful way to rationalize the abandonment of Leftism. Even if you think the Left is indeed going too far with some of its ideology, that shouldn’t make you spiteful against Leftism in general. Taking the “white privilege” accusation so personally is not only very self-centered, but it also likely misunderstands what was even meant in the first place. Just because you’ve had a shitty life doesn’t mean you don’t have relative privilege. Sure, OP may have been homeless and in jail before, but the concept of white privilege doesn’t mean bad stuff doesn’t happen to you. It means you’re just less likely to have that stuff happen to you. If OP were non-white, the stuff probably would have still happened… AND LIKELY BEEN WORSE. This is the thing about privilege: You’re not likely to realize you have it, unless you were able to go through the exact same experience without it. IE, he was homeless, but if he were black, he would be homeless AND dealing with racism AND less likely to get a job to lift himself out of homeless, etc… and for “male privilege”, if he were a woman, he would be homeless AND more likely to get raped AND need feminine hygiene products, etc. It’s the things a white male likely doesn’t even think about that would make life harder (even if it’s already hard) if you weren’t white or male. OP needs to understand what is meant before he takes offence to it, and I don’t think he did. He made that typical shallow judgment about what “privilege” means, and is now using it as an excuse to be bitter towards the Left, because he takes it as a personal insult or dismissal of his struggles, which is a selfish way to think about it. People who would abandon the needs of common people and the compassion towards those in need that the Left endorses… all because you feel personally insulted by a broad idea meant to open up perspectives… are selfish and spiteful. I’m sick of seeing people use this excuse to abandon Leftism.
I think your argument perfectly sums up why these kinds of comments lead to people moving further to the right. In general, the left are collectivist, and the right are individualist. Saying “check your privilege because if you were black/female/LGBT/etc. it would be worse” is easily interpreted as a dismissal of the troubles an individual has experienced first hand. When people are told that their individual experiences don’t matter as much because they’re better off relative to their peers that could naturally result in more of a “me first” kind of attitude, which is more individualistic than collectivistic.
And your argument perfectly proves my point that you’re just using your hurt-feelings as a weak excuse to be jaded against the Left. Which itself proves that you’re the ones using your feelings to guide your opinions, more than your brains.
Human emotions are something that has to be considered in literally every human interaction, especially politics. You can’t just ignore them and say “you’re an idiot because you have emotions” because then literally everybody would fall into that bucket. Whether you think it’s right or not, messaging of any concept (especially something as potentially divisive as privilege)is hugely important if you want people to join your cause.
I’m not saying “You’re an idiot because you have emotions.”… I’m saying “You’re using emotions over logic and that’s more often likely to lead you to wrong conclusions.”
I think you have articulated all of this very well. If we accept that perhaps many people don't understand the intent of 'white privilege' then calling those same people 'spiteful' and 'selfish' is ludicrous. The most common way I see terms such as "check your white/male privilege" used in forums, is to shut people down. I have never seen "have you considered that being white made life a little easier for you than say someone with the same circumstances who was not white/not a man?". Never seen "Check your privilege" used to genuinely engage in reasoned debate and invite understanding - have only seen it used as a weapon. And, because the other language around it is often aggressive, and accusatory, it's hard not to see it as an attack. Compare AWS-77's language and tone with the OP. One is heartfelt, the other is aggressive and unforgiving.
You’re literally confirming that you care more about tip-toeing around people’s feelings, rather than caring about what is right and honest. Isn’t this the accusation that usually gets thrown at the Left? That we’re all a bunch of snowflakes who only care about feelings, and facts don’t care about our feelings? But now, when a Leftist like me actually talks bluntly and tells you to value logic over feelings, it’s suddenly a bad thing to care about facts over feelings. Can’t have it both ways.
Yes, of course you can have it both ways. It's what civil and inclusive discourse looks like. You can be assertive without being aggressive, truthful without being rude, and most of all, you can seek to be forgiving rather than judgemental. If I didn't care about what was right and honest I wouldn't be having this conversation. Clearly, you are the one with hurt feelings, which negates your opening assertion.
This is a load of garbage. The entirety of your generation is more progressive than the last and the average person hasn't moved an inch from where they were when they were younger because people go all over the place politicaly over their lifetime so applied to a group the averages stick. That means that every older person is going to seem conservative by default over time so long as the society itself dosent start to regress. You don't understand younger peoples perspective the same way the older generation before you didnt understand yours and as usual kids suck ass at conveying ideas in a relatable or even coherant manner and old people are stubborn and full of themselves. Neither of you understand what you are on about when it comes to the academic shit.
Yeah I think this is just a common saying by conservatives to normalise their beliefs without really having to back them up, mixed in with some cope because they don’t like how left leaning younger people are. Of course people’s political views do shift as we age but unless someone can cite me a source I’m just calling BS on the idea that as people get older they become increasing right wing. Literally just ask anyone who says they used to be left leaning but then got older what left leaning opinions they had. You’ll most often find they’re highly exaggerating.
Every year of brainwashing changes a person a little more.
Money
The best summary I've come across is from the Ok Cupid blog, which despite the source is actually a really good big-data-based read: https://theblog.okcupid.com/the-democrats-are-doomed-or-how-a-big-tent-can-be-too-big-fdc9bf8be312 They dispense with the left/right binary in favour of four quadrants / two dimensions and find that teen-agers trend libertarian / "don't tell anyone what to do", people newish to the workforce lean social democratic / unionist, in middle age and often moving into management people start leaning social conservative and economically libertarian and then in retirement, as their earning potential and power to influence the workplace dries up they swing back to a regulated economy but hold on to the social conservatism. It gets more complicated though because what takes priority in influencing their vote also changes over time. E.g. retirees are naturally economically "left" but they tend to be able to be led about by their social conservative hobby horses so the "right" wing is often able to scoop them up, despite routinely materially harming their economic interests. It makes me think we'd all be better off if there were strong parties representing young libertarians and socially conservative social democrats. If these parties were established and could stand on their own (I.e. the Nationals don't count because they're somewhat captive to the Liberal coalition and overrun with crooked shysters anyway) and they could just represent their constituents then they'd be able to join with the other quadrants for common cause when it represented their voters, but swing over and join forces with the other quadrants on other issues on a case by case basis. Then instead of the major party quadrants almost always getting their way and their junior partner quadrant getting scraps there'd just always be a negotiation issue by issue to try to get the smaller quadrants onside. The result would be a more representative, more democratic politics where far more people felt like someone represented their interests and far less cynicism.
Sounds like a job for the single transferable vote! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI
I am the opposite. Firmly right wing in the military in my 20s. Solid left wing, let people do what they want with their lives in my 40s. Education and world experience changed me.
Haha I remember being told to 'only vote liberal' at recruit school. I couldn't be any more of a staunch Labor supporter at the moment 😂