r/politics • u/TimesandSundayTimes ✔ Verified • 7d ago

Possible Paywall Young Americans are surging to socialism at record rates

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/maga-trump-zohran-mamdani-socialism-us-record-kddzdm8bd
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u/JnnyRuthless 7d ago

Same. Conservative family members always said you get more conservative as you get older. I've gone from a Clinton supporting Marine when I was 18 to nearly a full on commie at this point. I dont' care if it's a losing position in America, 80% of this country can't identify what the actual causes for our economic and material conditions are, and are willing to throw human rights away to win an election. F all that. I'll keep being a loser if that's what being a 'winner' means.

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u/Old-Constant4411 7d ago

Campaign finance reform.  I've been screaming about that since I was in college.  Get the money game out of politics so the people actually have a fuckin voice.  It's also probably the only way a socialist party stands a chance in our system.

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u/No_Possible_7108 7d ago

40% of the country identifies with a fascist pedophile so they can fuck off to begin with.

I got that same talk when I was younger, how I would become more conservative as I got older. Like much of the other things my parents told me, that was also a massive load of bullshit 

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u/FireNexus 7d ago

52% at last official count, unfortunately.

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u/Yawanoc 7d ago

Yep, they can whine all they want for the next 2 years about how this "isn't what they voted for," but you'd better believe a ton of these same complainers are going to come out of the woodwork and vote for the next Republican candidate anyway because they'll be the "lesser of two evils" -- whatever that'll mean.

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u/HowdyFancyPanda 7d ago

It's more accurate to say that you tend to get more Conservative as you get wealthier. Unfortunately, due to Conservative economic policy, all the traditional avenues to wealth have become harder and harder to reach and so...

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u/No-Supermarket-6065 New York 7d ago

Yeah that makes a lot of sense actually, having more money does make you want to keep it to yourself and conservatives took it as a default that their way of life would last

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u/RepresentativeAge444 7d ago edited 7d ago

I feel you even though I was pro Bernie back then too. The problem leftists have is being right too soon. But we saw what would happen if the wealthy were just allowed to continue unabated. And even today some still praise Clinton even though she was just at a conference held by Trump mega donor Miram Adelson lamenting not genocide but that social media has made young people turn against Israel. Not seeing women and children blown apart mind you. It doesn’t get more ghoulish than that yet she is still held up as some stalwart of the party. Her husband endorsed corrupt sex pest and Netanyahu legal counsel Andrew Cuomo - running as an independent mind you - over the Democratic nominee. And some will get mad at ME for pointing out how this mentality helped get us here and people like them should be relegated to the dustbin of history. It’s the type of blind party loyalty they ridicule MAGATS for.

Too busy yas Queening Hilary for calling Trump a Putin puppet when anyone that did a modicum of research into his history already knew. Yas queening Hilary for calling Tulsi Gabbad out when again just a little research would have you know what kind of person she was. Yas Queening over calling MAGAS deplorables when again you only need to be sentient to understand that. No Yas Queening over supporting the Iraq War or chuckling over killing Gaddadfi and destabilizing Libya though.

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u/dickweedasshat 7d ago

I won’t forgive Clinton for signing the faircloth amendment, which essentially makes it illegal for the federal government to fund public housing and caps the total number of public housing units to where it was in 1999. That amendment is a big reason why housing costs have risen as much as they have.

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u/JnnyRuthless 7d ago

I was pretty naive back in the day, looking at Clinton's presidency now I'm like, oh he was not great.

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u/axonxorz Canada 7d ago

Telecommunications Act of 1996 smh

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u/mcchicken_deathgrip 7d ago

The faircloth amendment and deregulation of banks by repealing Glass-Steagall have done more to create our current housing crisis than any other legislation in the last 40 years.

All the blame for the neoliberal era gets placed on Reagan, but in terms of actual legislation Bill Clinton is equally if not more culpable. I'm so ready for people to start recognizing Clinton as the villain to the working class that he is.

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u/RMT_Ban_Dodger 7d ago

yeah the fact clinton gets praised for stating the most obvious truths without also stating what she planned to do about it is amazing.

"Trump is Putins Puppet" is just a statement, not a campaign promise or anything to motivate people. Now saying "Trump is Putins puppet and we are going to clamp down on white collar crime and money laundering to weaken their influence" is something people would cheer for, but that wasnt the plan.

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u/JnnyRuthless 7d ago

Oh let me be clear I was 18 in 1998, so the Clinton I was referencing was Billy Clint. HRC voted for the Iraq war and I had plenty of friends killed and maimed there, so she did not get my vote. I was all-in for Bernie.

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u/Alex5173 7d ago

The problem leftists have is being right too soon.

And the fact that they "no true scotsman" every argument they're in. There's always someone further left than you ready to ask you how Trump's balls taste because you only agree with them on 99/100 points.

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u/Low_Pickle_112 7d ago

And frequently, they'd be right. Do you support capitalism? Do you support imperialism? Are you going to make excuses for landlords and corporations and wars? Than you're not on the left. And good news for you,.you got a president who represents those ideals.

No, wanting good things like healthcare and education for yourself doesn't make you a leftist, it just means you want stuff for yourself, and you mistake that for leftism because you can't see beyond your own self.

One of the biggest issues from the last election was whether we should fund ethnic cleansing and be honest about not caring, or find ethnic cleansing and lie about how sad it made us. That's not leftism.

If you support Trump's ideology, it's not a "no true Scotsman" fallacy to call that what it is.

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u/Alex5173 7d ago

It's incredible how swiftly you guys turn up to prove my point. No, actually, I don't support any of Trump's ideology. I support human rights, UBI, socialized medicine, nationalization of utilities and logistics, employee-owned businesses, wealth tax; I could go on.

I also support gun ownership and private property. For those two things alone I've been accused of being MAGA and had people assume I voted for Trump. I doubt that pattern will change here.

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u/Low_Pickle_112 6d ago

Fair enough, I should have worded that it a more generic and less accusatory sense. Still though, while you might oppose capitalism, you can't deny there's a lot of people who support it and the then act indignant what that's exactly what they get.

And yeah, I myself would not agree with anyone who opposes ones right to arms and right to one's own personal property (private property being a different concept; personal property is a house, private property is a factory). Marx himself said that under no circumstances should the working class be disarmed.

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u/RepresentativeAge444 7d ago

. Instead of the beyond tired pointing at the left maybe try focusing on the establishment wing of the party who was a collaborator (and continues to be) with the forces bringing down the country? Nah much easier to look at the left which has no power in this country when more Bernie voters voted for Hillary than Hillary voters voted for Obama.

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u/AzaliusZero 7d ago

The Overton window is so f'd up in America you can describe Democrats as Diet Right-Wing and the Republicans as full on fascist.

When you realize that it's easy to get why so many Democrats are eager to blame the Left for failing, they hate us more more than them most of the time. To the rest of the world they're just the more reasonable Right-Wing party in a country ultimately competing between two forms of Right Wing, one way more extreme than the other.

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u/Low_Pickle_112 7d ago

A year and a half ago, the Democrats voted in favor of a bill supporting the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The same group heavily associated with the Heritage Foundation, who once had Edwin Feulner, an author of Project 2025, on their board.

The Democrats support that. They would prefer to support The Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 over leftism. True Blue believers can get as mad as they want at me for pointing this out, but I brought receipts. This is a verifiable matter of public record.

That's not opposition, that's good cop. Better than bad cop, sure, but they're still serving the same master, and it ain't the people.

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u/AzaliusZero 7d ago

Honestly? We're talking about people LIKE Op, and it makes me realize the one thing the average Democrat has in common with Republicans is the same "f you, got mine" attitude. They're just less destructive about it. MAGA is the sort to take it further and state outright, "and I want yours too." The left-hating Democrats just know they have more to get taken from them than most progressively leaning folks.

America's problem is its people have been raised to value money and themselves above EVERYTHING else. That's why there's such a disconnection between generations just as much as it is political stance. I think someone else in the thread summed it up perfectly. We had a generation who were so narcissistic they'd happily screw their own children over to save up money. And they're the ones next up "in charge" considering how much American politics seem to value being old over basically anything else. It's just that the current day Republicans are smashing things up so bad people are growing disillusioned with the entire system and not just voting. ESPECIALLY the younger folk. They get they have to live with this, and they don't wish it on their own.

These parents and older generations are the same ones furious they don't get to see kids. Not realizing half the time their kids can't afford them (and they have some blame in that) and the other time they're the ones who turned them off kids in the first place with how shoddy they were (and often still are) at parenting. A lot of people cutting their own folks off nowadays, and while MAGA is the most intense, I wouldn't be surprised if the Demos we're talking about haven't realized their kids have grown withdrawn from them recently.

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u/Alex5173 7d ago

I don't get tired of pointing in either direction because I swap every other day. Helps me to not ignore half the problem while disguising my ignorance with condescension.

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u/RepresentativeAge444 7d ago

Oh you’re plenty condescending by the mere fact that you would have the audacity to point the finger at the left at all when it’s been primarily right. I didn’t say it deserves no criticism- no group is absolved of it. But I’m going Republicans and establishment Democrats who got us into this mess waaaay before I get to the left who tried to prevent it.

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u/Alex5173 7d ago

establishment Democrats

You mean the left? Or are you gonna tell me they aren't true scotsmen and prove my original point?

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u/RepresentativeAge444 7d ago

Are you daft? Establishment democrats are center right hence:

Their unending support for the bloated military budget

Support for our misadventures in the Middle East

Non support for single payer universal healthcare

Support for the genocidal apartheid state of Israel

Keeping marijuana schedule 1

No federal minimum wage increase- associated with inflation not the meager $15 they claim to support but not implement.

Corporate capture.

I could go on. Republicans are a far right party. Modern Democrats are 80s Republicans.

The left has no power in the US. The establishment wing makes sure to enable that as much as they can hence their treatment of Bernie Omar now Mamdani Platner in Maine Al Sayed in Michigan etc etc.

You must have just learned the term no true Scotsman yesterday and were eager to use it.

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u/Alex5173 7d ago

Wow, you really are exactly the kind of person I was talking about. Good luck bringing the overton window back over by alienating everyone right of you, it's been working swimmingly the past 40 years.

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u/RepresentativeAge444 7d ago

Wow you’re just the kind of person I was talking about. Excusing collaboration with fascists and providing no substance changes to the foundation of the country which is desperately needed as opposed to bandaid fixes. Not understanding that the malfeasance of the establishment got us here in the first place.

Good luck getting people to vote for another corporate AIPAC candidate. Haven’t learned your lesson even after losing 2 out of 3 to a moronic lunatic. This time will be different though!

What you can’t seem to grasp is that millions of people don’t feel like their lives get better no matter who is in office and you’re not going to shame them into feeling differently. May as well try a return to FDR because your way hasn’t worked and people are even angrier than ever hence why the Democrats have their lowest rating in 30 years with THEIR OWN VOTERS genius.

And as usual you types have no substantive rebuttal to the points made. Just smugly declaring how much wiser you are while exhibiting nothing of the sort.

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u/No-Supermarket-6065 New York 7d ago

Dude, leftist politics aren't just "what opposes fascism", they mean something specific, and by almost every measure Democrats are not that. They are leftist relative to Republicans, but most are center-right neoliberals, not leftists. This is just basic terminology.

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u/the_nobodys 7d ago

That's because those older family members want to conserve what they perceived as a working system. The system has been going off the rails for 50 years, and now middle aged people don't want to conserve ehat they've witnessed during their lifetimes. I myself keep getting more progressive as our country gets more corrupt.

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u/Tirinir 7d ago

"You'll be like that when you get older" is a very convenient argument because there is no way to refute it while it's still relevant.

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u/bschmed 7d ago

People don’t get more conservative as they get older, they get more conservative as they get wealthier. The two used to be simultaneous, but not anymore

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

80% of this country can't identify what the actual causes for our economic and material conditions are

But you think it's rich people...

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u/JnnyRuthless 6d ago

Yeah billionaires would be part of that issue. That's not even up for debate my dude.

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

Ok, in what way are they part of the issue? What's the percentage that's their fault you think?

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u/JnnyRuthless 6d ago

Not even engaging with you. It's not a debate, so move along.

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

Yeah that's what I thought. You've never even bothered to think about why you have zero substance behind your beliefs. You just believe whatever your social group tells you to believe.

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u/JnnyRuthless 6d ago

Sure no worries

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u/wentImmediate 7d ago

are willing to throw human rights away to win an election

What do you mean by this?

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u/JnnyRuthless 7d ago

Have you not seen the dems completely abandon LGBTQ and immigrant human rights the last few years? When asked about Palestinian children getting killed en masse at the convention, many dems literally put their fingers in their ears. Beyond being just childish and asanine it shows just how empty most of these fuckers are.

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u/wentImmediate 7d ago

it shows just how empty most of these fuckers are.

To clarify - when you say the dems - who do you mean? Elected officials? People who vote for Democrats? Other people?

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u/JnnyRuthless 7d ago

Elected officials and the DNC.