And this conversation could’ve taken place, what…40 years ago? 50? The problem is, those young people can make the changes, but what happens when they get older? Do they automatically start to harden into conservatives? Or, in a lighter vein, will their present super-liberal-leftist values be considered old-fashioned and out-of-date in the future (a future where it’s legal to dance naked on one’s front lawn, for example, as long as one is wearing shoes and sunscreen in the summertime)?
That’s the thing about young 'uns - they grow up to be old 'uns.
I feel more and more like Lt. Col. Henry Blake, every day…
For me it was the opposite. I was fairly conservative libertarian-ish until I got out into the real world on my own and saw how things really are. The older I get, the more I see and experience in life, the farther left I become.
Right-wingers are really good with propaganda, and it’s very easy for impressionable young minds with no life experience to fall for it, especially when everyone around them buys into it. To want to live in those ‘good old days’ that all the older people tell you about.
Progressives kinda go the other way. It takes experience, perspective, knowledge, and wisdom to see how to move forward to a better future, and to understand how the past still affects us today and how the ‘good old days’ that you grew up hearing about had a lot of parts weren’t all that great.
My folks’ “good ol’ days” were the Great Depression and World War II. The one thing that they missed seemed to be the streetcar system (was s’posed to be very efficient & yes, they had me believing it). Friendly neighbors was another.
Dad thought Ron & Nancy shoulda been put on welfare and SocSec to see what it was like being poor in the USA. He was kinda ticked off about Vietnam, but eventually thought the vets were treated unfairly.
The one thing they were was racist, except on a personal level. And it wasn’t anything virulent; but when I got caught sneaking off to see a Black boy I liked, oh I caught HELL. “Kids are gonna be called Oreos” blah blah blah (I just wanted to fool around w/him, not MARRY him!)…
But no ranting on how “they” (anyone who wasn’t white) are taking over the country, blah blah blah.
As I’ve said in other posts, we were raised to learn and reason. Lots of books and lots of intelligent discussion. I think both Dad & Mom would’ve been suspicious of Biden, btw. I’m not sure why I think that (well, Dad was suspicious of all politicians, lol), just seems that way.
My parents are both staunch Democrats, but certainly not leftists.
My dad always claimed to be “kind of a hippie” but is very much against drugs and thinks Bernie Sanders is crazy and dangerous. He claims he’s “not racist” but absolutely is (just less blatant about it than my grandparents). He can be kind of a creep about women. He tends to laugh off people who he disagrees with… and yet he went through phases of listening to G. Gordon Liddy and later Fox News “to get the other side of the story.”
From my mom I had the “Spanish speakers are going to take over Florida” claim and a bit of the Satanic Panic; in general she is uncomfortable with having her assumptions or beliefs challenged.
I grew up thinking the Confederate flag was about underdog defiance.
So yeah, part of my move further left was just getting out on my own and realizing these things and learning better.
But I also feel like my movement left is a response to seeing a series of cruel right-wing social movements and blockheadedness, and the realization that the bulk of the Democratic Party wants to preserve the status quo even though it’s deeply unfair and unsustainable.
As the article says, I find Biden to be remarkably Carter-like.
Carter was a terrible president, but he’s been amazing as an ex-president, elder statesman, and humanitarian, and I applaud him for that. I suspect Biden will be the same, if he lives long enough. I do see the first signs of senility coming out, however much the Dems want to deny it. I do hope he sees the writing on the wall and retires mid-term to give Kamala Harris a chance to show what she can do, if anything, and to open the 2024 election to new candidates.
I don’t understand the tone change, again. The tone change from Biden at the heat of the campaign to at least talk about the problems of lunatic racists with serious money, student debt relief, etc., and be all, “we hear you,” and get to 50 Senators and have the keys and be completely unable to get any good news on the democratic representation thing.
I like how it seemed so natural for him; not at all a show. This humanity is what I like about Biden. He is not the greatest president, but after Trump, he has been comfortably not a jackass.
