Anticode t1_j7jcu93 wrote
Reply to comment by GirraficPark in George W. Bush morning jog on September 11, 2001 by hungHub
It's a bit strange that a significant proportion of US politicians are - and have been - the same age, regardless of what point in time you're looking at them. It's almost like a single ~5 year window is all that's generally been allowed to hold office since the late 1980s. The same pattern is visible in congress/senate. It's like all of the big political "headliners" essentially spawned from the same graduating class.
Bush was born in 1947. Hillary? 1947. Romney? 1947.
Trump was born in 1946. Bill Clinton? 1946.
Biden, 1942. McConnel, 1042. Pelosi, 1940. Sanders? 1941.
The last four of five presidents (ie: the last 30 years) were born within ~5 years of each other - and if you ignore Biden, ~2 (!). Obama is obviously an outlier, but when we look at his political arc, he seems quite anomalous anyway; like something "unplanned" and capitalized upon.
In any case, there's a lot of data to pull from so it's easy to cherry pick names and dates. It's surely just coincidence that most of the Big Names most often thrown around in the media are born within a few years of each other.
What's not a coincidence is that the average age of US politicians is quite high. In some cases the same age group has remained in power/significance for the last ~30 years. The average age for the senate and house is 63 and 58 respectively, implying half of them are older than that.
It's obvious that American culture fetishizes age as if it were a function of wisdom, even though we often tease that same age group for being technologically/socially inept and culturally backwards. Bizarre.
Sometimes I like to imagine what the country would be like if it was being managed by people in their 40s-50s rather than 70-80s. When our bosses at work are older than 60 we start to doubt their performance and judgement, right? Somehow we don't do that for our politicians (generally speaking).
Ianjh t1_j7jdlei wrote
That McConnel bit had me cracking up. Typo or intentional?
Anticode t1_j7jdoq8 wrote
Oh shit
userid8252 t1_j7jesqf wrote
I was eating, now I have to clean my screen. Thank you
Inline_skates t1_j7jotpd wrote
I mean turtles do live a long time
Auran82 t1_j7jsztj wrote
Am I not turtley enough for the turtle club?
RonAmok t1_j7m1u2b wrote
Did NOT expect a Dana Carvey subreference today.
jtmarshiii t1_j7lfmma wrote
You hear what sounds turtles make when making love...
[deleted] t1_j7mb8q4 wrote
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BabyGotTrack t1_j7mbj9k wrote
i'm giggling like a 5th grader who's teacher just said "duty"
redditseddit4u t1_j7jdrjj wrote
Fact checked McConnell being born in 1042 and was surprised to find out it’s true
x_kwyjibo_x t1_j7jece2 wrote
Boomers vote in droves. There are a lot of them and that’s why they’ve held onto power so long. They are dwindling and the younger generations are finally outnumbering them, but I’m not sure Millennials and Gen Z have started turning out with regularity yet. When we finally see that apple cart overturned, we’ll finally see the transition in power.
Techguyeric1 t1_j7jl2gg wrote
Unfortunately Gen X will be the new boomers, and I'm a very late Gen Xer (born in 1980) there will always be elderly people who voted heavily more than younger generations.
As people get older they tend to start to vote more conservative as they feel that things are getting more out of their realm of control.
Most boomers were teenagers in the 60s and would have been the liberals of the time, yet they are mostly conservative now.
It'll happen to my generation as most are now at that age where the latch key kids see the coddling of kids as they are becoming soft.
It's a vicious cycle really and will only be stopped when younger generations start to take public office seriously, and fight for the change they want.
NotTroy t1_j7jyrln wrote
I've got good news or bad news for you, depending on how you feel about it. Gen X won't be the new Boomers, Millennials will be. Gen X is actually a lower population than Boomers or Millennials. Now that all Millennials are of age to vote and even the youngest of them are approaching their 30's, and with Boomers increasingly dying off, Millennials will progressively make up the plurality of the voting population with each election cycle (they're also a larger cohort than Gen Z).
The other half of this news is that Millennials and Gen Z are seeming to defy the conventional wisdom that people become more conservative with age. Studies are showing that Millennials and Gen Z are generally getting more progressive as they age.
Anticode t1_j7jt4hc wrote
> As people get older they tend to start to vote more conservative
This is not necessarily true (anymore?). Studies are starting to find that 1) People actually become more liberal as they age; and/or 2) Views remain relatively stable throughout life.
[1] https://www.livescience.com/2360-busting-myth-people-turn-liberal-age.html
>If people really become more liberal as they age, why does common wisdom hold the opposite to be true?
>People might find an average 60-year-old to be more conservative than an average 30-year-old, Danigelis said, but beware of extrapolating a trend. The older person, for example, might have started off even more conservative than he or she is now.
[2] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/706889
>Consistent with previous research but contrary to folk wisdom, our results indicate that political attitudes are remarkably stable over the long term. In contrast to previous research, however, we also find support for folk wisdom: on those occasions when political attitudes do shift across the life span, liberals are more likely to become conservatives than conservatives are to become liberals, suggesting that folk wisdom has some empirical basis even as it overstates the degree of change.
__
All-in-all, it's pretty hard to track these sort of things since there's a ton of factors at play. Studies that occurred near the emergence of Trump onto the sociopolitical stage may have had their self-identification (rather than their beliefs) pushed left, now given an example of what right really looks like, for instance. It's hard to say.
In any case, I suspect that it's more generational than anything - specifically as a result of socio-environmental pressures. It's a bit much to get into this late at night, but I hypothesize that "conservativism" is a behavioral (mal)adaptation in the same way ADHD is a maladaptation to the flicker-frame-flashy-light modern world.
In the case of conservative behaviors, the symptoms emerge primarily in the amygdala, the part of the brain that controls for anger/disgust. If ADHD emerges to better handle the fast paced technological world (and subsequently results in failures to focus on more traditionally "slow" activities), then conservativism emerges in response to fear/chaos which subsequently results in failures to empathize with outgroups. You can think of it like a survival mechanism that switches on in response to war/conflict historically (and still responds to the illusion of danger).
Studies find that liberals and conservatives can be detected by brain scans alone and that's the part that's more heavily active in conservatives. It's why their responses to the world are so often based in fear or aggression (often both simultaneously).
_
Re: Brain scans, etc. -- https://news.osu.edu/brain-scans-remarkably-good-at-predicting-political-ideology/
http://www.psypost.org/2017/09/inducing-anger-increases-economic-conservatism-study-finds-49580
thatc0braguy t1_j7lrcp9 wrote
Conservatism comes from money & ownership, generally. Money is the biggest indicator of where you will fall politically. (Celebrities being the outlier since their income comes from us giving them sales)
Because successive generations have less to conserve, they themselves are less conservative in general. As long as the economy continues to drive inequality, this will not reverse.
There's also the issue of medical complications where liberals are more likely to die earlier due to the stresses of poverty vs conservatives who can stay on top of their health through regular checkups. For example, republicans celebrated AIDS wiping out large demographics who were very anti-conservative.
Anticode t1_j7mg4x1 wrote
I think you've got the arrangement of the dynamic backwards. Red states are some of the poorest in the union. I suspect that the reason why so much of the wealthy elite are conservative is a combination of...
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The republican party is practically specifically geared towards policies that benefit the rich, obfuscated by social policies that revolve around things the voters are angry about.
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Those least concerned with equity, empathy, and fairness are those most likely to pursue extreme wealth - and to acquire it (via variously unethical means).
I also think that having wealth also inspires people towards paranoia and fear, as they've now compartmentalized themselves from the masses and/or recognize the disparity (subconsciously or otherwise).
Like another commenter pointed out, democrats raised more money than republicans during that period of time (if you ignore the big-big contributions).
That being said, I deeply agree with you that democrats are the 'default party' and that there is no liberal party.
(Which is why I like to say that republicans/democrats are the offensive and defense lines of the elite respectively.)
thatc0braguy t1_j7mk57s wrote
I wouldn't disagree with anything you've said.
I can't say for sure, but the "why" of the poorest states voting majority for the rich man's party is because those states don't see themselves as poor Laborers, they consider themselves "future millionaires" and vote accordingly.
Chewybunny t1_j7m02q3 wrote
To an extent - more money from the top 300 richest zip codes in 2013–14 went to Democrats than Republicans, by a significant but not overwhelming margin, if you set aside those contributions over $1 million made by wealthy individuals to their own campaigns.
This could be because the big four metro areas of in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. have the highest concentration of the 300 richest zip codes. The top 5% of the people living in those zip codes contribute to Democrats twice as much as they do to Republicans.
thatc0braguy t1_j7m199b wrote
Democrats are more the "default party" not necessarily liberal.
If anything I would consider the US has two conservative parties and zero labor parties.
TracyMorganFreeman t1_j7m0lnh wrote
I'd bet people becoming more liberal than age stems from a) a more polarized electorate and b) what it means to be liberal being expanded.
sassergaf t1_j7jnblj wrote
Interestingly most boomers I know are liberals and environmentalists.
Altruistic-Text3481 t1_j7kll8f wrote
IT’s church that turns people conservative, just as God intended. Jesus was a liberal and so God had him killed.
Source: Fox News
Techguyeric1 t1_j7n43xr wrote
Ok that made me laugh hard, good job
Altruistic-Text3481 t1_j7n5n7q wrote
Any time!
[deleted] t1_j7knjt3 wrote
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TomasKS t1_j7jsf4r wrote
>McConnel, 1042
Found the lich!
Techguyeric1 t1_j7jkqih wrote
To be fair ol'Moscow Mitch looks horrible for someone supposedly born in 1942, but he looks amazing for someone born in 1042, and it explains so much
Mokatines t1_j7k76lh wrote
>It's obvious that American culture fetishizes age as if it were a function of wisdom, even though we often tease that same age group for being technologically/socially inept and culturally backwards. Bizarre.
Nah ... the respective parties push who they want to push, so the American people are usually given the choice of two geriatrics. God forbid they vote 3rd party. Which they wont because the main party candidates will point to Ross Periot.
RareCodeMonkey t1_j7kcvkm wrote
>When our bosses at work are older than 60 we start to doubt their performance and judgement, right?
That judgement is called age discrimination. I am for more age diversity in USA presidents, thou.
zaphodp3 t1_j7jnlg5 wrote
Were all these older politicians better when they were younger though? Seems like plenty of younger ones are idiots too.
microphohn t1_j7l57vn wrote
Boomer conspiracy.
fuelvolts t1_j7l8jvh wrote
> The average age for the senate and house is 63 and 58 respectively, implying half of them are older than that.
That's median, not mean. Average doesn't mean that "half" of them are older. Although, you did mention imply, which I guess is technically true. Which is the best kind of true.
asdaaaaaaaa t1_j7k5l42 wrote
> It's almost like a single ~5 year window is all that's generally been allowed to hold office since the late 1980s.
It's almost like politics heavily operate as an isolated group of individuals who all work to keep the status quo for each other and keep others out. Good luck getting someone who's doesn't fit one of two molds even halfway to getting elected.
Feynnehrun t1_j7n560k wrote
McConnel is old as shit!
Ccaves0127 t1_j7ndv7f wrote
Fetishizing age as wisdom, I would argue, is actually wayyyy more common in almost every other culture
ghengilhar t1_j7lf9ts wrote
McConnel thinks the Norman conquest is a little too progressive.
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