That makes no sense, but logic was never a part of this. I can, maybe, see it as hunkering down and trying to protect what they have while the world burns? I don’t know. I feel pretty damned hopeless just now.
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No need to feel hopeless. A) Gen X is a smaller generation, and B) there are indications that Gen Z is moving left.
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I do think you’re right. I think it comes, in part, out of the anti-establishment and highly cynical culture of the era we grew up in… Lots of lefty of our generation tended towards a very anti-establishment mindset, and not trusting any of our institutions at all. But lots of right wing gen xers sought to imitate Reagan and the new right movement… I think lots of the anti-establishment types got cyncial enough to embrace sort of excellerationism because they don’t see our society working for them and others.
This probably needs to be a book of some kind…
Another reason why gen X is so cynical about the world - we grew up with a major rise in divorce rates (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, given it came out of greater freedoms for women), so many were latchkey kids, and so lots of us felt kind of neglected… and everyone always forgets about us (unless we’re doing something bad - being punks or apparently supporting Trump). Plus many of us grew up during the Nixon/Reagan era and everything that came out of that… it certainly undermined our collective sense of trust in our government.
Yeah, this really does need to be a book!
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May the muse of inspiration rest lightly upon your shoulder, oh historian of note!
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As a Gen X person, I think that any right movement might also be because we never really had someone to rally around. It’s a wholly unremarkable generation. We had the massive boomer population restricting what we could do more and more - thus driving rebellion - and Gen Y coming after us with all the benefits of tech we built but less understanding of it. I can certainly understand why some feel they need to be selfish. It’s stupid, but I can see the logic leaps.
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Yeah, except the conservative ones, who rallied around Reagan, I guess.
I don’t know if that’s fair… there were some punks doing some great political stuff, but we were a small cohort, and punk didn’t catch on as well as the 60s counterculture, which had mainstream acceptance to a degree with regards to the music and support from the music industry. Punk/post-punk bucked that system, and was relatively demonized in the media as a major social problem by way of contrast.
Yeah, there is a logic there.
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It’s interesting to me how many parallels there are between Gen X and the Silent Generation. We were both preceded by, and followed by, generational cohorts that were bigger and made more noise (well, I don’t know if the generation preceding the Silent Generation was smaller). We’re both known for kind of being overlooked. That’s the whole reason the Silent Generation got that name. That generation had one President, Biden. Gen X hasn’t yet produced a President. And it’s entirely possible we won’t. We could jump straight from the Boomers to a Millenial.
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Gen X: Fine by me. [happily goes back to being ignored]
Also:
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Australia has had two Gen X Prime Ministers now; Morrison and Albanese.
It’s been a mixed bag. One vaguely competent Prime Minister, and Scott Morrison.
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To be fair, Scotty was stretched a bit thin, being five different secret ministers as well.
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When I was still on Facebook, I saw quite a bit of that among my old cohort, not just in the run up to 11/2016, but the Tea Party before that. I didn’t look at its details, but this poll could be correct… …about the previous decade.
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He’s clearly considering a Prez run.
He’s telling the LGBTQ community he loves them - but not moving on policies to protect us under Trump right now.
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Show don’t tell Josh.
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Here is some more analysis on this study that address some of my concerns…
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On the other hand:
Compulsives, in other words, exhibit deficits in cognitive-behavioral integration. “It’s like they’re thinking, ‘Yeah, sure, Action A is good, Action B is bad… instead of a 50-50 split, I’ll do 60-40,’” said Dit Bressel. “They really should be going cold turkey and doing 100-0. An implication of the trajectory analysis we did is that no amount of action belief updating would get them to behave optimally. We need a way to improve how those beliefs translate to perceptions of what’s optimal.”
This study is not encouraging, like, at all.
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The dual nature of them complaining about voting by mail and also being reliant upon it is just one of the many hypocrisies that power the GOP.
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Robert Reich gives a brief lesson about fighting against oligarchs - weakening their control of pols/our government, protesting, and political reform:
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I thought he was taking his ball and going to Florida?
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