Discussion
I grew up being told, 'The older you get, the more conservative you become.'
I'm discovering that the older I get, the more I want our society to be tolerant, charitable, kind, and peaceful, and to ensure that everyone has what they need to survive and thrive.
@mekkaokereke shared a different explanation.
The American electorate gets more Republican as voter age increases, but it's not because individual voters politics are changing.
It's because minority (especially Black) voters die younger than white voters and they are far far more likely to vote for Democrats and against Republicans. So the surviving pool of voters shifts Republican compared to a younger cross section.
@alienghic @cmconseils @mekkaokereke This is a US-centric view, where this can be true because the US only have two big political forces, so people are less likely to change their side than in countries with 4+ big political forces.
From what I see (Belgium, France), it’s true that poeple lean right with age, but also with time in general: full fascism is sold everywhere because it’s the easiest swallowable trap/BS in an evercomplex world.
So it’s not about people from the left dying sooner.
Yes, every country is different. But the dynamic (demographic mix shift by generation) is similar.
One of the things about Mastodon, is that people often assume that if a Black American is posting about things online, that they only know about the US. I grew up in Europe, the US, Africa, and the Middle East. My views on racism are formed by lived experience and academic study in all of these places.
The same dynamic of "younger people are Blacker, and Blacker people vote less fashy" exists in Europe as well, although in most places it's driven more by immigration than life expectancy. Brussels is the youngest city in Belgium. Three guesses why.
White people in the UK have a median age of 45, while Black people are 32. This is similar to the US split, where the most common age for white people is 58, and for Black people is 27. Tories and Reform are older and whiter.
And yes, there is a correlation between voting Labour and both having poorer health, and dying younger, even though Black people in Britain live longer than white British people. A 70 year old Black British Tory, might have gone to Eton, then Oxford, has good health, voted for Thatcher, and has always been Conservative. If he'd been extremely poor, grown up in Aylesbury, had asthma as a child and chronic respiratory illness as an adult, and worked as a bricklayer, he'd probably vote Labour, and his chances of living to 70 would be much less.
When we see that older generations are becoming more far-right, we say, "See! People get more conservative as they get older!" But when we see white Europeans in younger generations like Gen Z becoming further right than Gen X, Millennials, Boomers, etc, we don't say "People get more conservative as they get younger!"
@meduz In France and in Germany, we have a big problem with more and more very young voters of far-right politicians. I think that the times of generational questions are over. And when I see the #TESCREAL silicon valley bros behind their old puppet Trump, I freeze. Fascism is a problem of the whole society. And they try to polarize generations against one another.
@alienghic @cmconseils @mekkaokereke Even among whites, the better off financially you are, the longer you tend to live, and also the more Republican you tend to be.
@alienghic White Boomers also skewed the results by seeming to become more conservative as they got older.
They were always conservative. It's just that when they were college-age they liked sex and drugs and didn't want to be drafted. Even then, a majority of them voted for Nixon; it was just a smaller majority than older generations.
@cmconseils mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io
@cmconseils Yeah. I don't think I'm getting any more conservative as I age either.
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