tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post2699464962091363747..comments2024-03-15T00:12:57.489-07:00Comments on Covenant Zone: Conforming To Rebelliontruepeershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-61732542309981232212013-09-01T23:43:50.548-07:002013-09-01T23:43:50.548-07:00This is awesome!This is awesome!Ramonitahttp://thesteammop.info/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-66606424822524395012008-12-19T07:49:00.000-08:002008-12-19T07:49:00.000-08:00na, you raise some good points, and it makes me re...na, you raise some good points, and it makes me realize I didn't do as thorough a job as I could have of explaining how I arrived at my conclusion. <BR/><BR/>I'll be the first to admit my observations are based on only dozens of anecdotal examples, rather than through an examination of a far larger sample. So there's plenty of room for the scenario(s) that you describe to stand as a reasonable explanation for the political views held by today's youth. <BR/><BR/>However, it doesn't change the answers that I get to the questions I ask of the young peopler I interact with.<BR/><BR/>It is very common to hear them say that "every single person they know", all feel the same way as they do. More than one has admitted that I am the first "conservative" (whatever that word means nowadays) that they have ever met. They hear **about** them, but they never actually hear what they think, from the horse's mouth, so to speak. ("You don't act like you're a conservative", one young lady told me once; "you're such a nice guy"..!) A surprising number of them say that their parents share their belief in Bush's "regime" knocking down the WTC themselves on 9-11, that Bush and Cheney are somehow making a personal fortune from the Iraq War, that they are trying to install a Christian theocratic dictatorship... this is what they get at home, whenever the subject of world events comes up in discussion. <BR/><BR/>In trying to keep my post simple and to the point, I confess I skipped over the few-enough-to-count-on-one-hand number who mentioned that their parents did in fact vote for Bush. They tell me that their parents still hated him, but simply viewed him as the lesser of evils. So even in the families where there was marginal sympathy for the Republican party, there was still family antipathy towards the standard-bearer of that party. And the children followed their parents' lead.<BR/><BR/>For what it's worth, here's another observation I learned from my anecdotal polling, one that I couldn't find a way to shoehorn into my post: young people from divorced families were the ones who were the most left-leaning and conspiracy theory-minded. The more miserable the home life, the more anti-conservative the worldview. <BR/><BR/>Finally, I don't think I qualify as a Bush admirer. I disagree with most of his policies, by degree when not in entirety. My strongest critique of him, as a leader and manager, is that he has a whopping blind spot when it comes to judging people; I think he is a terrible judge of character, and that this weakness has led to most of the policy failures of his administration.<BR/><BR/>I don't see him as the evil caricature that his worst critics tend to paint him to be. God only knows the daily dose of horrors he must see come across his desk, from intelligence briefings; it's wearying to just read the news, as a civilian... I can't imagine what he must see, about terrorist chemical warfare schemes, Russian and Chinese military maneuverings, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and all the other nightmares lying in our potential future. This must have an effect on one's faith in humanity, if a man is human himself. When he makes decisions that come across as short-sighted choices, I think it's because he has reason to believe we may only have a short window of normalcy remaining to us anyway...Charles Henryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18168475254263681673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-7385378917731495922008-12-19T01:18:00.000-08:002008-12-19T01:18:00.000-08:00I won't speak for Charles, but I don't think he wo...I won't speak for Charles, but I don't think he would question that a lot of people think Bush did a lousy job.<BR/><BR/>But what I would ask, na, is can you point to any one idea or policy of Obama's that is significantly new, i.e. that is not just a rehash of traditional liberal positions going back to various decades, perhaps all the way to the 1930s or even further?<BR/><BR/>I think the problem Charles is trying to get at has to do with the fact that we have today rather impoverished resources for revealing the reality of our present society and its conflicts. This is true of all people but it perhaps particularly effects those who fall for cultish forms of politics that are intent on providing a model of reality that presumes to have the answers but that really is a mask for those who can't deal with the existential uncertainty that comes from knowing we don't have a very good account of our reality and its meaning. Lacking a healthy debate about the nature of our reality, falling back on traditional left-liberal ideas, reworking postmodern victimary gestures, it would be hard for any young person to formulate a meaningful rebellion unless he were one of the few who is interested in renewing the Judeo-Christian orthodoxy that today's liberalism wishes to bury.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-2654691830260924992008-12-18T23:00:00.000-08:002008-12-18T23:00:00.000-08:00You’re missing a few major points. You interpret t...You’re missing a few major points. You interpret the massive youth swing toward Obama as an act of conformity. This is odd. It was the parents of young people that elected Bush. Twice. Youth went big-time against the ruling party in the last election. Conformity? If their parents were Democrats, these authority figures likely voted for Hilary in the primaries. The youth went big-time for Obama. Conformity? In other words, the political narrative of youth conformity is only compelling if we choose to ignore actual political behaviour. <BR/><BR/>The youth swing toward Democratic identification could be due to the hypothesized immaturity modern adults and an increasingly conformist trend. A far simpler answer is that it is due to the governance of their country as they reached an age of political consciousness. Today’s young people entered political consciousness during the Bush era. Youth lean Democratic because most people think Bush has done a shitty job. If people thought Bush was doing an awesome job things would be different. Just look at partisan identification among the cohort that entered politics during the Reagan era. They still tend to lean Republican. People thought Reagan was doing a decent job. Positive partisan brand recognition sticks. Performance matters. <BR/><BR/>Once you open yourself up to the possibility that people think Bush did a shitty job (you don’t have to believe it) then recent political behaviour will make a lot more sense.<BR/><BR/>naAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com