I’m pretty old. Not very old, but old enough to be a legal adult. And I’m possibly the most liberal person in my family. I’ve been this way for years.
Liberal, or left?
A bit of both. I also don’t like capitalism.
Don’t really see how you can be both tbh
you’re left or you’re not, you’re a plain liberal
Not communism, but Putin.
This is the Maga flag. This is the “new conservative party”
What are you talking about?
Trump is a Putin puppet.
The Russian flag may as well be the MAGA flag
The flag in the screenshot is of the USSR, ie the Communists, not the Russian Federation. You do know that, right?
Eventually, it will overflow and you will become fascist
I’ve only gone further Left.
I know that conflating Liberals and Conservatives is practically lemmys official pass time, but I have to point out they are not the same.
Liberals and conservatives are more similar than liberals and progressives.
No, I have a lot of experience in liberal organizations and they are not, despite the memes, closer to conservatism than progressivism. It honestly makes me feel like most people on lemmy have never really worked with liberal groups.
The major differences between a liberal and a social democrat or progressive comes down largely to deciding when a market has failed and when to use government intervention, both Liberals and progressives are fine with intervention, only the threshold changea. We want the same things, mostly, but disagree on how to get them.
Conservatives, philosophical Conservatives anyway, won’t typically even consider such a thing, and often do not even want the same things as Liberals or progressives.
This both sides same stuff just hurts progressive causes, because it sours mushy people with little to no real philosophy on voting for liberal parties. Those people flip flop back to Conservatives when they get angry and we lose the progress we’ve made, as is about to happen in Canada.
rofl! The difference vetween a progressive and liberal is NOT just when they decide to intervene in corporations…
American liberals want to means test EVERYTHING that could concievably go to a poor person. A progressive realizes the red tape is fucking stupid and expensive in its own right. Remember the COVID funds? Sucked up by megacorporations more than small businesses like it was supposed to be for? Notice how American liberals didn’t go after those corporations or really care that the money instantly dried up for smaller fries?
Yea, American liberals are ABSOLUTELY closer to American conservatives in practicality. It doesn’t matter how many polite words they use if the end result is FUNCTIONALLY THE SAME. No, conservatives wouldn’t have given any money to poor people, but as already said, liberals didn’t care that corporations with lawyers that could push all the red tape got the money, not small businessesthat actually neededrhe help.
They BOTH serve to drain the government of public funds. You’ve just fallen for the pleasantries they put on the same negative slant of actions. No, liberals are not fascists themselves, but they’re always, always dumb enough to make things suck enough that fascists sound nice to fools.
I think the fact that you’ve spent a lot of time in liberal organizations is why you think that way about where it falls on the continuum between progressivism and conservatism.
Interesting that you characterize my statement as "both sides"ing. I would say the thrust of my statement is not “both sides” but “one side”. America does not have a progressive party, only conservative and conservative-lite. Given the choice, of course I’ll choose the latter, not least because the former is so far off the deep end it may never recover as a party. That does not mean I think that both parties are the same.
Visually:
--------Progressivism ------------------------ Center ------ Liberalism --------------------------- Conservatism.
The major differences between a liberal and a social democrat or progressive comes down largely to deciding when a market has failed and when to use government intervention,
Okay sounds like you’re just describing different labels for liberalism.
Compare these people to a communist who thinks we should literally nationalize and worker-self-manage the relevant sectors of economy and you’ll see what people are trying to tell you about how liberals and conservatives are basically the same.
No, I have a lot of experience in liberal organizations and they are not, despite the memes, closer to conservatism than progressivism.
Perhaps if you redefine progressivism.
The major differences between a liberal and a social democrat or progressive comes down largely to deciding when a market has failed and when to use government intervention, both Liberals and progressives are fine with intervention, only the threshold changea. We want the same things, mostly, but disagree on how to get them.
Yep, you redefined it.
Conservatives, philosophical Conservatives anyway, won’t typically even consider such a thing, and often do not even want the same things as Liberals or progressives.
Conservatives often do, and the distance between genuine progressivism and liberalism is shorter than liberalism and conservativism.
This both sides same stuff just hurts progressive causes, because it sours mushy people with little to no real philosophy on voting for liberal parties. Those people flip flop back to Conservatives when they get angry and we lose the progress we’ve made, as is about to happen in Canada.
Electoralism will not save you.
Both the democratic party and the republican party are liberal parties. One of them got scratched.
Based on that link it says that conservatives are at odds with and are critical of liberalism. There is a subset of conservatism called liberal conservativism that incorporates liberal stances into the conservative position however.
Yet both liberals and conservatives (in your sense of the words) say this.
A lot of conservatives are liberals. The two terms are not mutually exclusive.
Conservatives are a subcategory of liberal. They aren’t conflated, that’s like saying thumbs and fingers get conflated.
I am more conservative in the sense that I see things with more nuance. I understand societies are very complex systems in a fragile equilibrium and that my naive solutions to the world’s problems are not feasible.
And yet, each day I’m more convinced we need to eat the rich.
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You’re bringing up a good point. People who say we’ll become more “conservative” are usually equivocating on the meaning of the word. It’s not like we’re going to wake up tomorrow and decide that global warming is a hoax, or that we should stop eating cats and dogs. Of course we’ll keep doing those things.
or that we should stop eating cats and dogs. Of course we’ll keep doing those things.
Wait, what?
The people who say you become more conservative usually mean that you will become more well off. And indeed when they earn their financial freedom, they want to protect the status quo. So they start seeing others as threats: be it young people wanting more rights, employees wanting fair salaries, immigrants coming for your hard earned money, everyone is a threat. This is the how the mind of an unempathic person works.
I’m old enough now that I’m more financially secure than I ever have been before, and I still think we should tear it all down and create a more equitable system for everyone. Perhaps I’m in the minority though for people my age.
Politicians sew division, fear, and hatred knowing that this will allow them to continue fleecing everyone who works for a living. We should never forget that it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
Edit: We need to create a whole new system to prevent people from getting that rich and to keep the power to the people
Eating the rich isn’t a coup de grace, it’s the beginning.
You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.
Most millennials retirement plan atm is die of heatstroke in 150 degree weather in a 8 person shared apartment in Alaska.
That and the lead poisoning.
Or you’ll get more communist when you have people to protect, like children or friends who start getting sick now that they’re not young anymore
I became a socialist because I was an “essential employee” during the height of the pandemic. I was treated like shit by my company, the customers, and the government while singing me praise. I watched my grandpa get good cancer treatment with the VA (shocker, I know, but it happens) while my sister and grandma had to fight insurance for cancer treatment.
We can’t make a perfect world, but we can make a better one. And it starts with a socialist economy.
I became much more progressive after living in a “blue state” for much of my adult life. It’s hard to miss that the most successful economies in the us are also the ones who pay most attention to quality of life. We can look at the contrast in our neighboring states, and see the advantages brought by near universal healthcare, investments in an excellent education system, care about the environment, higher minimum wage, support for unions, and so much more
If you’re referring to Nordic Social Democracies, they fund their safety nets via Imperialism, they can’t exist without impoverishing and exploiting the Global South. It’s the epitome of the Labor Aristocracy.
No, sorry,I was being us-centric - it seemed like that’s where the thread was.
As one very specific example, when COViD funding for school lunches ended, some us states decided to no longer provide free school lunches. Massachusetts passed a “millionaire tax” and funded free school lunches out of that
As a slightly older example, Massachusetts passed effectively universal healthcare coverage, signed into law by governor Mitt Romney, and later served as the model for the Affordable Care Act
Looking at school system ratings by us state, I see what looks like a strong correlation between excellent schools and a stronger economy.
It’s the same issue as the Nordics, the US is a de-industrialized nation that makes the bulk of its profits off of Imperialism.
I have a house and a pretty sizable retirement account.
I will GLADLY take a lower home value, higher taxes on my retirement, higher taxes in general, so long as the ultra wealthy are also taxed accordingly.
Luckyyyyyy!
You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.
In aggragate, that’s the more reliable way to make a population more conservative, but remember that a reasonable portion of fascists in a society that is going in that direction are going to be people who either lost that or never had it and, in either case, blame some minority for that fact. (The majority are still people like you describe, though, the petite bourgeois, etc., who feel insecure in their holdings)
I agree if you mean neoliberal-conservative
I assume they meant conservative, not fascist.
Statement unclear whether increased conservatism is the natural result of property/capital or if property/capital are merely requisite.
In the mid 20th-century, people reliably got more petty bourgeois as they got older.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379422000452
Yep, correlation, not causation. Getting older doesn’t cause it.
There’s a much better correlation between wealth and conservatism than age. Almost like those who begin to benefit from the system of oppression are incentivesed to keep it going.
On some social positions, I’ve grown more conservative.
On fiscal issues? Son, at this point I’m only slightly to the left of “Feed the 1% to the homeless and convert their left-over mansions into low income apartments.”
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Transphobia is sadly common these days, wouldn’t be surprised.
really If anything i have become more communist as i have aged, when the daydreams of becoming a millionaire or whatever fade away all thats left is the reality of life as the 99% and it kinda sucks, also the older i grow the more i learn about history about the world just about everything and the more i realize how fucked up capitalism is and how much i was lied to thru out my life. Putting that aside tho, people generally do become more reactionary as they age for the simple fact that what was revolutionary in our youth becomes standard and then reactionary while many people dont change their views much.
I was politically ambivalent as a young voter.
Now, I’m pretty much convinced the rich people (and the parties that represent them) are just out there to screw everyone else over. And every single year just adds more evidence to the pile.
I don’t think there is any conceivable scenario in which anyone can convince me that free market will magically fix all problems. It’s nonsense.
Yep, hence why Communism is necessary.
Seize the means of production
How many millions died under Stalin, Mao, Che?
You’re right. Maybe we shouldn’t have a state people suffer and die under.
How many millions died under Kissinger, Truman, McCarthy?
don’t know, tell me with sources, please
Well, for one example: Kissinger approved Operation Menu, which is estimated to have a death toll of at least 100.000 civilians, and this is just ONE operation. Operation Condor, an anti leftist repression campaign in the Americas, has an estimated count of 80.000 killed and 400.000 political prisoners. These are just specific cases: the “knife wounds” amongst the “amputated limbs” for an analogy.
They’re just past the end of the pier, those big things that aren’t seals.
How many do you think? Legitimately, what’s your understanding of history? Where are you getting your numbers?
Makes me think of the old Samuel Clemmens quote
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak;
whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
~ Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
It’s so easy to pretend the mob that turned on French nobility in the 1800s or the Qing Dynasts and Russian Tsars in the 1900s or the Arabs who lashed out at European occupation in the 2000s were simply seized by mania or some animal impulse.
It’s so easy to pretend they had no grievance, they suffered no generational atrocities, they had no motivation for their violent uprising, save the insidious Mind Virus of Leftist Agitation.
It’s romantic to see the aristocracy and the colonial governments of these nations as martyrs of a golden era. They were cruelly deposed by savages for the crime of living the gentile and sophisticated life. They were the Eloi, dragged into the dirt by vicious Morlocks who envied their perfect beauty.
But it’s all bullshit.
The aristocracy were monsters. They maintained their grips on the people through generation after generation of terror, torture, and enforced ignorance. They were cult leaders and warlords who claimed turf through centuries of conquest, inquisition, and cultural indoctrination.
When these archaic institutions failed, we like to blame the revolutionary leaders who happened to climb atop the ruins of their bloody legacy. But they were simply at the right moment in history to witness a corrupt edifice crumble under the weight of millions of their own dissatisfied subjects.
Millions Nazis, yeah
Stalin alone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
Conversely, his totalitarian government has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repressions, ethnic cleansing, executions, and famines which caused the deaths of millions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin
This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[8] around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[9][10] some 390,000[11] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[12] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[13] According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were “purposive” while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility.[2] The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million[14] persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes, though not always, included with the victims of the Stalin era.[2][15]
Yeah I think they misunderstood what was happening cause they were getting wealthier as they got older.
Honestly, you just become more protective of your stuff and things you consider yours as you get older.
There are plenty of nerds that are super conservative about their fandoms and what is allowed to happen with them and same for all kinds of niches but the idea we would get more conservative with money really assumed we would accumulate more of it and assets. But what people do have is their apps and thoughts and those… Those people will be just as conservative as the boomers are about their money as they get older.
Honestly, you just become more protective of your stuff and things you consider yours as you get older.
Isn’t that plainly false? When I was in college, and just after that, I had almost no money, so I was incredibly protective of my stuff and things I considered mine. Later my income went up, so I didn’t need to worry about it as much. Surely many other people have had similar experiences.
I have become aggressively more anti-capitalist as I’ve grown older. At 56, with a nice professional career mostly behind me, I am vigorously ANTIFA EAT THE RICH ACAB.
Well some people never learn I guess.
