CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misstated that this poll had a likely voter screen. Democrats have a 57%-40% lead among men ages 18-30 who say they’re the most determined to vote.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misstated that this poll had a likely voter screen. Democrats have a 57%-40% lead among men ages 18-30 who say they’re the most determined to vote.
As I turn into an old man, it’s almost overwhelming the realization of just how fucking dumb the average young man is.
Cambridge Analytica, gamer gate, and others have steered the younger generation to the right. It was a designed psyop to make Republicans relevant again, and it worked. The younger (white) males are still in my experience pretty fucking stupid and ignorant. I hope they’ve opened their minds a bit, but there were (and still are) very powerful voices trying to take advantage of their insecurities and turn them into fascists. It’s hard to hold them fully accountable for that reason but God damn is it hard to try to get through to these people.
To be old and wise, one must first be young and foolish.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Let’s be honest though, when were were young, we were pretty stupid too. I mean I used to have some level of respect for Libertarians back in the day.
“Stupid” yes, but never “vote Republican” stupid.
Eh, 9/11 did a number on me, and were I of age in 2004, I would have likely voted for Bush because I was young, dumb, and ignorant. By 2008 (the first election I was 18 for) I could see the Republicans for what they were, and made it a point to vote otherwise. How anyone grows beyond a certain age and thinks these guys have the answers to fucking anything is beyond me though.
Oh 100%, I think that’s the overwhelming part for me. These fucking idiots keep showing me my past self.
I used to be a libertarian back in the day; partly because I didn’t understand socialism, or libertarianism for that matter. But I think mostly because my prefrontal cortex hadn’t fully developed yet so my capacity for empathy was limited.
I was pretty fucking stupid.
Hey at least we lived and learned, grew past the whole teenaged edgelord phase of things. More than I can say for some of those Gen-Xer’s I grew up with.
Right on, and we keep living and learning by remaining humble about how fucking dumb we still are.
As we age, the ego takes a step back and it becomes easier to accept our shortcomings. The more I learn the more I realize I don’t know sort of thing.
My self-realization came down to: Sometimes I’m just an asshole despite my best efforts.
Libertarianism makes sense in a culture where you feel markets will keep themselves honest.
Reality , of course, is disappointing and I was a stupid young man for believing that.
I think the unspoken and fatal prerequisite for libertarianism is that it requires a truly equal society that doesn’t have white supremacy baked into it.
It doesn’t cause that kind of society, it needs it to be preexisting, and so in the context of modern America it would just serve to bolster the existing inequalities.
Or just be an anarchist. It rejects these current systems but without the white supremacy bullshit.
Brilliant.
I have been going down a David Graeber rabbit hole for the past few months, and I am certainly on that trajectory. It’s funny, I’ve heard anecdotally that there is a surprisingly direct pipeline from disillusioned evangelical christian to anarchist, and it makes sense. The principles of anarchy resonate with the most basic lessons we are taught and which Christianity has sort of claimed for itself as how to be godly.
Anarchy has an amazingly bad branding challenge though, especially in America. I thought socialism had a bad brand, and then I started learning what anarchy actually is. Yikes.
I would say I am totally aligned intellectually with the principles of anarchy as I understand them today, and yet I still reflexively equate the very word with “disorder” and “chaos”. I have to be very intentional to turn my intellectual agreement into an actual warm fuzzy vibe when I hear or read the word. The connotations are set deep. I don’t think I’m unique or even in the minority in that regard, and I’m certain that’s no accident. Right now my sense of things is that socialism is the most practical path to anarchy, but even reading back the words I just wrote, I think at least half of america would think I was describing some sort of leftist terror plot.
On the bright side, I do think that the open corruption and incompetence of our world leaders has begun to undercut the baked in idea that rulers create order. Hopefully the more we as a society see the man behind the proverbial curtain and parse the real fact that Nobody Knows What They Are Doing, the necessity of mutual aid begins to become more clear.
I agree with a lot of the libertarian beliefs, but the people who actually call themselves that are absolutely insane.
Believing in freedom, equality and liberty for all is great until you meet someone that wants to remove all rules and regulations.
It’s the gateway to the sovereign citizen phenomenon.
It advocates for equality while destroying the institutions that could create equality.
I get why it appeals to young white men - they don’t need the federal government because it was built to work for them, and so it all looks like waste.
That’s because most libertarians are just ashamed conservatives/gop/magats
I fall into a social libertarian political spectrum more than anything else. I believe most people do when they are ok with private companies, socialism for citizens and regulations for said private companies.
Same, and same.
always has been
Eh. At least they’re (presumably) learning their lesson instead of sticking their heads in the sand. It sucks that they put Cheeto McPedo into power, but hopefully this leads to evwryone waking up and putting a stop to MAGA
It wasn’t them. Millenial men voted more for trump than gen Z, and X more than millenials. Looking at the raw data, you’d come away assuming the race was more about gender than age, compared to past elections.