As people get older they finally realize BS like trickle down economics do not actually work.
Right, but I am talking about the willingness to look beyond the sound bites. Tons of people on both sides are too lazy to look beyond them, but IMO only one side deliberately avoids doing so. How often do you see liberals posting up memes that have been debunked on Snopes compared to conservatives? You'd think that the 50th time I posted up a Snopes link debunking some shit my mother posted on Facebook she would think to at least try checking Snopes before posting the next one. Nope. And the responses to the Snopes links I provide? "Well, it doesn't matter because..."
He who sleeps on the road loses either his hat or his head. A saying
Perhaps you see what you want to see and don't see what you are motivated not to see. For example, I think Bernie explained his plan perfectly and in all the detains one could need, that he couldn't do anything without the support of the people in revolution. His plan as I say it was to describe the reality we live in and to state the only way to change it was from the ground up, that only a revolution could change anything. I see him seeing his job as calling the people to do that. As an intellectual with a great grasp of minutia and little facility to gestalt the big picture, I can understand why you would think some sort of detailed plan was needed. But the only thing in my big picture analysis that can save us is insistent voter demand. We will awaken or stay asleep. You advocate, in my opinion, for narcolepsy. You seek some sort of order in a world that requires a black swan event.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
He who sleeps on the road loses either his hat or his head. A saying
The misconception is usually due to seeing more conservative old people and more liberal young people. This observation is only correct when those terms are used in a relative sense. The same liberal youth of today, even without changing their views on specific issues, are the conservative of tomorrow because the times are a changing and the youth of tomorrow are even more liberal.
Well, you are not likely to see many on the right posting memes considering their demo lol.
I will grant you that currently those on the Right are far more entrenched, but the Left is trying to catch up. I just spent a weekend in a college town talking to nothing but kids just out of school in their early 20's and holy crap. The complete disconnect from logic is going to hurt very bad for the Left pretty soon. Hell, look at how unpopular Hillary is with the young. The main reason Trump is doing so well is because so many young hate Hillary.
Yes the line is constantly moving to the left.
However remember that the parties also flip/flop back and forth so it could change again at some point. In the Civil War the southern whites were the democrats and for many years the democratic party was very conservative. Values slowly drifted over time until 1964 when the Democrats adopted Civil Rights as their cause. That was the final straw for the conservative rural whites and they stomped over to the GOP which then became the more conservative party. Jesse Helms and the republican party even invented the "Southern Strategy" to woo these conservatives away. In essence the two parties flipped sides.
Strom Thurmond, one of the most racist hateful SOBs to serve in our lifetime started out as a democrat. In the course of his career he switched from Dem to Republican in 1964 because the line had moved and now the dems were too liberal for him.
George Wallace was a racist Democratic Senator who famously fought the Federal Govt over segregation. After the 60s he was tainted goods and someone even tried to kill him in 1972. The line had moved.
The millennials today seem to be dragging the line further left as we speak. Us older democrats will eventually say these kids are too radical and we'll be the new conservatives and the millennials will be the new liberals. Our kids will be the most liberal conservatives ever created. Seems like a normal progression until it flips again.
he likely never said that
I always liked this quote.
eskimo explained all that long ago in these threads. The point is that it didn't matter. He was the only one pushing for a revolution and that is what change will require. Politicians who win elections in the current system will never change it without the threat of losing their jobs. The revolution that we need is that threat to be made loud and clear. But look at what we have to chose from, Clinton or Trump. So you can have Slowmo or Retrogrademo. Wonderful. No Black Swan event there, I should think.He explained his plan, but did not come up with a way to pay for all the things he wanted. The ideas he came up with were nice, but could not be done with the plan he put forward.
Why bother with science when you have all the answers as gifts of opinion. This is a mental defect that conservatives specialize in.I think it depends more on your lifes experiences as opposed to just simple age.
Jon Stewart is getting up there but he's still a hardcore liberal.
Ben Stein was a conservative even at a young age.
I think it depends more on your lifes experiences as opposed to just simple age.
Jon Stewart is getting up there but he's still a hardcore liberal.
Ben Stein was a conservative even at a young age.
There's a quote that's falsely attributed to Winston Churchill that really comes from Paul Addison, a historian and professor at Edinburgh University
"'If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.'
From what I've seen, the years are not absolute, but the sentiment is pretty close. The longer you live the more likely you are to run into something, usually it's being a victim of a crime, that makes you more law and order and that equates to conservative. When you're young it's natural to *want* the world to be a Coke commercial where everyone holds hands and sings. As you age you accept that it's not that way, never is going to be that way and only an idiot would believe that it's possible for any force on Earth to make it that way. So your perception changes from "let's be friends" to "those people who are not my friends better leave me the fuck alone".
There's also a financial component to things. When a person is younger and has little his idea of financial equity is "lets all share" while a person who has accomplished more and earned more views financial equity as "I earned this, it's mine". And that too, usually comes with age. It's not an empty stereotype, the older you are and the more successful you are the more likely you are to believe in lower taxes, law and order, protection of what you have, etc. And the younger and less successful you are the more likely you are to believe in tax and spend and redistribution of wealth from the haves to the have nots.
There's a quote that's falsely attributed to Winston Churchill that really comes from Paul Addison, a historian and professor at Edinburgh University
"'If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.'
From what I've seen, the years are not absolute, but the sentiment is pretty close. The longer you live the more likely you are to run into something, usually it's being a victim of a crime, that makes you more law and order and that equates to conservative. When you're young it's natural to *want* the world to be a Coke commercial where everyone holds hands and sings. As you age you accept that it's not that way, never is going to be that way and only an idiot would believe that it's possible for any force on Earth to make it that way. So your perception changes from "let's be friends" to "those people who are not my friends better leave me the fuck alone".
There's also a financial component to things. When a person is younger and has little his idea of financial equity is "lets all share" while a person who has accomplished more and earned more views financial equity as "I earned this, it's mine". And that too, usually comes with age. It's not an empty stereotype, the older you are and the more successful you are the more likely you are to believe in lower taxes, law and order, protection of what you have, etc. And the younger and less successful you are the more likely you are to believe in tax and spend and redistribution of wealth from the haves to the have nots.
eskimo explained all that long ago in these threads. The point is that it didn't matter. He was the only one pushing for a revolution and that is what change will require. Politicians who win elections in the current system will never change it without the threat of losing their jobs. The revolution that we need is that threat to be made loud and clear. But look at what we have to chose from, Clinton or Trump. So you can have Slowmo or Retrogrademo. Wonderful. No Black Swan event there, I should think.
Expecting them to die off, in my opinion, is as hopeful as the possibility of a revolution.Americans are too wealthy to revolt much anyway. Realistically not a lot is going to get done until at least a generation of old conservatives die off.
The thing about those higher power books that bothers me is not so much the books themselves but the certainty of so many who read them that they know exactly what those books intend. I mean, where's the advantage in worshiping a God whose meaning and wishes may be beyond your personal ken. The ego is looking for self importance, not humility. Humility isn't ego.It seems to me that what ever is right ought to be what is. Ergo, I've no idea how I align with a party... probably bits and pieces of each of them. I think as we age we become more self concerned and whatever ideology suits that position is what we adopt. Unless we invoke some higher power concept in which case nothing is right if it is at odds with some higher power book.
The thing about those higher power books that bothers me is not so much the books themselves but the certainty of so many who read them that they know exactly what those books intend. I mean, where's the advantage in worshiping a God whose meaning and wishes may be beyond your personal ken. The ego is looking for self importance, not humility. Humility isn't ego.
Right, but I am talking about the willingness to look beyond the sound bites. Tons of people on both sides are too lazy to look beyond them, but IMO only one side deliberately avoids doing so. How often do you see liberals posting up memes that have been debunked on Snopes compared to conservatives? You'd think that the 50th time I posted up a Snopes link debunking some shit my mother posted on Facebook she would think to at least try checking Snopes before posting the next one. Nope. And the responses to the Snopes links I provide? "Well, it doesn't matter because..." or "Yeah, but this other unrelated thing..."
Your contention that liberals lack objectivity in equal numbers to conservatives is directly contradicted by modern neuroscience research, data that I have linked in this forum ad nauseam. Your facile dismissal of that fact here, dogmatically and dictatorially stated, is, I believe, just more proof of how true that is because I don't believe you could have possibly not been exposed to that data. Doubtless you have been exposed to the notion of a person with his fingers in his ears singing LA LA LA LA LA as loud as they can. Such an imaginary person was described that way for a reason because all around us there are conservative brains that manifest this in reality. Liberals have psychological features that distinguish them from conservatives. One is capacity in greater numbers that conservatives to muster to prevent emotion from clouding rational assessments, the other side of this same coin, but also and unfortunately, to find minds that can't do what they can to be terrifying. I mean, how would you feel about yourself if you actually knew your world view was actually a fabrication. What with Thanksgiving right around the corner, one might almost imagine that the modern American conservative is really just a sleepwalking member of a Zombie Nation and its inspiration.Your wrong both sides are guilty of that in about equal measure. I can find just as many bone heads on either side of the issue that are impossible to get to look at things objectively. Conservatives= The left is about Tax and spend take my guns and let all the illegals vote. Liberals= The right is against the poor man, wants to cut taxes for the rich, and put prayer back into public schools. Fact is In the grand scheme of things The vast majority of Liberals and Conservatives agree about far more than they disagree about. It is the manipulators (professional politicians) and the fringe groups however that make the most noise and thus control the debate. Fire them all is what needs to happen. Vote out all incumbents and send a message that their BS won't be tolerated any longer. It will never happen though because as a people we seem to have lost the ability to objectively question our leaders and hold them accountable.
Why bother with science when you have all the answers as gifts of opinion. This is a mental defect that conservatives specialize in.
This is a great example of the distortion required to maintain the world view that both sides are the same. It's true, liberals generally do not have a problem with raising taxes if the money is needed for something that benefits everyone. Conservatives twist this into "tax and spend" with the implication that liberals just want to raise taxes and then we can figure out later how to spend the extra money. The desire expressed by many Democrats to implement stricter gun control measures is twisted into "they want to take my guns." And no liberal I have ever heard of wants illegals to vote, but we do want to make sure there are no impediments to voting for legitimate citizens.Your wrong both sides are guilty of that in about equal measure. I can find just as many bone heads on either side of the issue that are impossible to get to look at things objectively. Conservatives= The left is about Tax and spend take my guns and let all the illegals vote. Liberals= The right is against the poor man, wants to cut taxes for the rich, and put prayer back into public schools. Fact is In the grand scheme of things The vast majority of Liberals and Conservatives agree about far more than they disagree about. It is the manipulators (professional politicians) and the fringe groups however that make the most noise and thus control the debate. Fire them all is what needs to happen. Vote out all incumbents and send a message that their BS won't be tolerated any longer. It will never happen though because as a people we seem to have lost the ability to objectively question our leaders and hold them accountable.
Conservative thinking is a form of ego sickness in my opinion.