High School Boys Are Trending Conservative

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(08-03-2023, 12:22 AM)grampahol Wrote: Bingo..Something else is the fact that as teenage kids age, start raising families, having to earn a living and so on their views on how the world works tends to change as well. My views now at 64 are nothing like they were when I was still stupid enough to listen to the nonsense spewed by Reagan and Nixon. Hell, I used to listen to Alex Jones and the schmuck who used to rant all day on WLW.. I don't remember his name, but I certainly don't miss the schmuck.. I have no patience for loud mouth schmucks who like to pretend to be tough guys with their mouths..

I could not agree more, in both directions.

(08-03-2023, 12:29 AM)grampahol Wrote: And they probably have a tough time getting laid too..
Here's a clue. Want a good woman? Don't talk shit all day and pretend to know about things that only make you extraordinarily unattractive to women.. I only have 64 years experience with this..lol

You raise an interesting point.  I recently performed the marriage ceremony for a friend of mine, a guy to the left of Dill btw.  The night before the ceremony we talked about "incels" and why the fact that they exist matters.  Honestly, I think the internet was simultaneously the best and worst invention in human history, for multiple reasons.  One thing it certainly has done is winnow down the dating pool to the point that the "high value" men attract the lion's share of female attention, leaving little left for those below them.  The denial of such a strong biological urge (note I am not advocating that women "owe" any man sex or anything of the sort) is creating a generation of frustrated and angry young men.  It's certainly a new phenomena for sociologists to sink their teeth into, and who knows what the long term ramifications will be?

[hollodero]

(08-03-2023, 12:43 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: At this point I fear I've offended you with the knowledge remark.

Not at all, not at all! I might have been tired already yesterday, so I was a bit nonchalant maybe and mentioned it too often, but there's zero offense. You're just right. I actually have little knowledge and it's a more than fair observation, especially when it comes to gun issues of course. Or SCOTUS. Or many other things. My debates here usually lead to me gaining knowledge and not just about argueing my truth.

(08-03-2023, 12:43 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Even if there were multiple parties would it still not be, at the basic level a argument between conservative and liberal?  Maybe in this regard my knowledge is limited as I've lived with a binary choice my entire life.  I certainly allow for the possibility, even the probability.

It's still prevalent of course, the left vs. right battle, but it is somewhat softened. Plurality of opinions leads to more nuanced arguments, and the fact that parties don't have a monopoly on voters. They can not rely on their vote in any case, like it seems to be the case in the US. If our politicians do not care or are bad leaders, parties can lose 10% or even way more at the next elections and are not guaranteed to gain it back. It also avoids figures like Trump. For if one party goes all in on someone like that, people of a similar ideology actually have an alternative. In America, what are they gonna do, vote for the one different party they learned to hate and argue against all their life? Also the news media, they might have leanings, but they are not beholden to one party moloch like in the US, leading to news and interviews and confrontations just being better and less biased and more informative. There's less of this 24/7 brainwashing news cycle, there's no FOX, no MSNBC.

(08-03-2023, 12:43 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: And again I feel my comment has been misconstrued.  This is one of my main issues with this format of debate.  So much nuance is lost and corrections cannot be made in real time.  Although I have far more experience in foreign countries than most Americans I haven't lived, or even extensively traveled, outside of the US since '86.  At this point that's a lifetime.

Oh no I was again just earnest on my part... my armchair analysis is just based on little real life experience and hence isn't worth all that much.

(08-03-2023, 12:43 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Yeah, this, I wish, I could argue against.  Sadly, I cannot, as I've pointed out the binary nature of our political system on several occasions myself.  I honestly don't know if breaking out of this is possible under the current framework.  I certainly did back in '92, not so much now.

Did it though? It seems Perot disrupted the chances of the GOP candidate and achieved little else beyond that. Founded a party that had no chance, did not really shake the status quo. And no, imho the current framework, especially the winner takes all system, sets the two party system in stone. For one, voting third party changes nothing. Here, when I vote for the green party as an example, my vote actually is counted for the green party. And if 4% of people make the same choice (there is a hurdle so not every fringe movement gets in), they get their voice in parliament with several representatives. It makes voting less frustrating (has any vote of yours ever meant something in the end?), I can actually vote for something and not just pick a lesser evil because I'm against something, which seems to be the way your elections go. Biden is not Trump, it seems that's all he had going for him for most people, that usually would not be enough to win here.

(08-03-2023, 12:43 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I certainly hope a peaceful reconstruction is possible, as I fear the alternative would be devastating to the entire planet.  I think I'm understanding the resentment of other nations towards the US more and more.  To have so much power and to wield it in such a cavalier manner has to be disconcerting, at the very least, to residents of other nations.

Yes, yes it is. Quite disconcerting and of course still quite significant. There's a case to be made that the outcome of US elections has more influence on my small country's well-being then our own elections. And that's nothing compared to Ukraine, where arguably the fate of a whole nation and millons of people depends on whether American people are dissatisfied with Hunter Biden or are wary about transgenders in bathrooms and whatnot.

[GMDino]

All of this is putting me in mind of the "Angry White Male Voters" from the 90s.

The right said there was no such thing!  

Meanwhile Newt was doing his best to stir the pot.

Fun times.

[Dill]

(08-02-2023, 06:34 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: And never wonder why you have so little engagement outside your little circle.

Yet one person never stops engaging, like a moth returning to flame.


Sometimes I think little quips like this illustrate the differences in our

values and goals as well as our longer exchanges. 

[Goalpost]

(08-03-2023, 09:43 AM)GMDino Wrote: All of this is putting me in mind of the "Angry White Male Voters" from the 90s.

The right said there was no such thing!  

Meanwhile Newt was doing his best to stir the pot.

Fun times.

White men have dealt with quotas since the 70's.  And... affirmative action. Are you denying that reality exists.  

[GMDino]

(08-03-2023, 10:28 AM)Goalpost Wrote: White men have dealt with quotas since the 70's.  And... affirmative action. Are you denying that reality exists.  

Not at all.

I'm saying there is nothing new about this "swing" of young men to the right.

Also many conservatives felt they didn't really exist as a voting bloc

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/05/26/myth-of-the-angry-white-male/c974245d-09cf-4c83-8719-3f949d4427ac/

Quote:MYTH OF THE ANGRY WHITE MALE




By Charles Krauthammer
May 26, 1995
The Angry White Male, suitably capitalized to indicate that the menace has become a media-certified trend, stalks the land, or at least the land of the media. In the 10 years before the November election, there were 59 (Nexis) references to angry white men. There have been 1,400 since. A post-election front-page headline in USA Today was typical: "Angry White Men: Their votes turned the tide for the GOP."

By sheer numbing repetition, the legend grows. "The Republicans scraped together a majority," explains the genial Garrison Keillor, "by appealing to the sorehead vote, your brother-in-law and mine." By early April, the term receives its official presidential seal of approval when Bill Clinton confirms that "this is psychologically a difficult time for a lot of white males, the so-called angry white males."

Then comes Oklahoma City, and the legend has its poster boy: khaki-clad, hopping-mad, armed and dangerous. "Have angry white men gone too far?" asks the Wall Street Journal in a front-page headline right after the bombing. Apparently, yes. "Heart-breaking {Oklahoma} news reports" explains the Journal, "show the lengths to which the anger of the much-commented-upon angry white males can extend."


The Oklahoma bomber is now honorary class president of those conservative-leaning, Republican-voting agitated white males the media have been warning us about since November. First he gives Newt Gingrich the House. Then he blows up the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Where did this legend come from? Yes, white men shifted significantly toward Republicans in the November election. But where did the ubiquitous pejorative "angry" come from? Where is the evidence for the rage of this white male cohort? Anyone take their blood pressure in the voting booth?

USA Today's front-page "Angry White Men" story is again typical. It offered reams of polls, not one supporting the supposed "anger" of white men. Indeed, of the dozens of polls taken around Election Day, I could find only three that even raised the issue. Frank Luntz asked voters if they considered themselves "angry voters." Seven out of 10 white men did not.


The Voter News Service National Exit Poll asked respondents if they were angry "about the way the federal government works." Three out of four white males were not.

The Washington Post-ABC preelection poll asked the same question. Four out of five white males were not. Moreover, the 21 percent who were exactly matches the average percentage of Americans overall who have identified themselves as angry in the last 10 such polls stretching back to early 1992. Where is the hormonally challenged, mad-as-hell, sexist, racist mob that ran the Democrats out of Congress in 1994?

The absence of facts must not be allowed to stand in the way of a good line or an ad hominem charge. And the charge of male anger has a history that predates the 1994 election. It began its recent career as the ultimate put-down of those critical of the first ladyhood of Hillary Clinton. As she herself explained in an interview in the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 30, "People are not really often reacting to me so much as they are reacting to their own lives. . . . If somebody has a female boss for the first time, and they've never experienced that -- well, maybe they can't take out their hostility against her so they turn it on me."


Keillor puts it, again, more genially when he dubs the Republicans the "Party of Large White Men Who Feel Uneasy Around Gals." Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg echoes the theme when he writes about Republicans becoming a home "for every angry group," among them "those who resent . . . strong women."

Really? Let's look at Maryland. State Del. Ellen Sauerbrey, who last year lost the closest gubernatorial race in the country, is a Republican. She is a tough independent politician, so tough, in fact, that for nine weeks she doggedly tried to overturn what she charged was a tainted election before deigning to concede to her male opponent.

So here's a test of the Clinton-Keillor-Greenberg proposition. How did white males -- so fearful and resentful of strong women -- vote in Maryland? For Mrs. Sauerbrey, by a 2-1 landslide.


The New York Times postelection coverage cited speculation that apathy among women voters might have contributed to the huge Democratic losses of 1994. It noted a "lack of interest this year among women" compared with 1992 -- the so-called "Year of the Woman" -- when "the fracas between Clarence Thomas and Prof. Anita F. Hill energized women voters."
Women, you see, are "energized." Men are enraged. When women show electoral clout, it is The Year of the Woman. When men do, it is the Year of the Angry White Male.

In fact, the Angry White Male is a myth, an invention of political partisans who wish to rationalize and ultimately delegitimize the election of 1994. After all, neither anger, nor whiteness, nor maleness are coveted attributes these days. The invention of the Angry White Male pointedly ascribes the current Republican ascendancy to a toxic constituency, akin to the petty bourgeoisie that brought fascists to power in the Europe of the 1930s.


A rabble of dispossessed white men -- threatened by women, resentful of minorities, enthralled by talk radio -- has been stirred, and that's why the Republicans won. The myth is not just useful but comforting too. Defeat becomes tolerable, indeed virtuous, when you've convinced yourself that you lost to a lynch mob.

Yet it sounds like the same people I see at a Trump rally.

[Belsnickel]

(08-03-2023, 10:28 AM)Goalpost Wrote: White men have dealt with quotas since the 70's.  And... affirmative action. Are you denying that reality exists.  

Yes. Quotas were deemed unconstitutional in 1978.

[Dill]

(08-01-2023, 10:31 PM)Nately120 Wrote: I'm sure a lot of conservatives despise Trump, but if they critically think themselves into bed with the devil...well...I mean, I guess critical thinking is a style of thinking, it doesn't necessarily mean you'll make wise decisions. 

In all fairness, a whole lotta critical thinking went into the rise of Trump getting a stranglehold upon one of our two major parties.  Trump didn't think himself into this position, a lot of smarty pantses had to prop him up.  Look at Fox News, something I always point out is that it appeals to the working class stiff, but the narratives are being delivered by a bunch of ivy league educated eggheads who work in Manhattan and act like they've got nothing on REAL people who have GEDs and live in Whitesville Mississippi.

In a way the current GOP is fascinating in the sense that it is this bizarre and accidental alliance between the most cunning and critical of thinkers and the masses who wouldn't admit to thinking, lest it make them sound like kiddy diddlers.

tl;dr - there are ways to admit that some conservatives think critically, but still spin it as a none too flattering trait IF one were to have such an agenda.

I don't think "cunning" = "critical" here.  Or it may depend on how one defines "critical thinking."* 

Using cunning to keep power and profits is not what I'd call "critical." E.g., Tucker was "cunning" when complained that fact checking Trump in real time hurt Fox profits and the reporter doing it needed to be stopped or fired. That was problem solving for sure, but not critical thinking. 

Something's up though, if one party seems to have more people susceptible to a Big Lie like Trump's than the other one. And then stick with it as any possible rational basis in evidence disappears. As you've noted, Ivy Leaguers in Manhattan play a large role in generating Trump support among "REAL people who have GEDs etc." But they have not done that by encouraging their viewers to separate fiction from fantasy or pushing tutorials on disinformation and media literacy as we frequently see in MSM. They've worked more by generating false counter-narratives and alternative facts on a grand scope.

There is no reason to suppose critical thinking and "masses who won't admit to it" are symmetrically distributed between the major U.S. political parties at this time, even if one can find examples of each on both sides. 

It might be critical thinking to wonder if there is such maldistribution, and to inquire into its causes; definitely NOT critical thinking though, to dismiss the possibility out of hand as "unfair" or based on "biased" definition, though that might be in the interest of Fox/Tucker cunning. It would not be critical thinking to accept the inquiry and its results without also subjecting them to critical thinking, though. Cross-examination and vetting are part and parcel of critical thinking.

*For some, "critical" just means expressing dislike of someone or something--like "you have a bad haircut and your feet stink" or "Bengals uniforms are ugly." 
As I'm using the term, it refers to a type of description and logical analysis of human action which precede judgment, aimed primarily at understanding how it fits into a larger social/political, and always historical, context. It's the kind of thing Aristotle meant when he spoke of politic thought as developing human potential at its highest level. It's different from just problem solving, though some of the same skills may be involved. "Cunning" may involve a lot of problem solving. 

[Dill]

(08-03-2023, 11:12 AM)GMDino Wrote: Yet it sounds like the same people I see at a Trump rally.

After all, neither anger, nor whiteness, nor maleness are coveted attributes these days. The invention of the Angry White Male pointedly ascribes the current Republican ascendancy to a toxic constituency, akin to the petty bourgeoisie that brought fascists to power in the Europe of the 1930s.

That was written long before the Tea Party and Trump's insurrection, and two years before the launch of Fox News.

But the groundwork was being laid for the Tea Party and Trumpism back then, and Krauthammer played a role. 

Per the bolded above, I think it is false to say conservatives, even back then, felt angry white men really didn't exist as a voting block.

The ones in media, at least, knew their target audience from the get go. 

 

[GMDino]

Lots of people listen to Rogan.  I'd gather most are men.  

And he does things like this:

Joe Rogan believes Kari Lake experienced “real fraud” in her election and thinks “there’s coordinated efforts to make sure certain people get elected.” pic.twitter.com/nhApzibB7d

— PatriotTakes ?? (@patriottakes) August 3, 2023

 

Which some people say is him being "open minded" but he never pushes back or ask questions about it...he just agrees or asks questions to further the conspiracy when he agrees with it.  

Some demographic breakdowns.

https://www.mediamonitors.com/audience-demographic-variations-specific-to-genre/

Quote:THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE: Joe Rogan’s listeners are largely representative of the majority of podcast listenership, but his popularity blows away the competition.

According to our survey respondent demos, Joe’s listenership is 71% male and evenly split between high school and post-secondary graduates. Fifty seven percent of his audience reports earning over $50k per year, with 19% making over $100k. The average age of his listeners was 24. The most likely additional podcast responses from his listeners were “Serial,” “The Daily,” “This American Life,” and “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von.” Joe Rogan’s listeners varied only slightly from the survey average on number of podcasts listened to and exclusivity, but he received nearly 3x the number of responses compared to the next most-responded podcasts, “Phil in the Blanks” and “Crime Junkie.”

https://unherd.com/thepost/who-is-joe-rogans-audience/

Quote:How do the avid fans — presumably the core of Rogan’s audience — compare to the seven in ten Americans who don’t describe themselves as fans? 


The first thing that stands out is that they’re heavily male — 72% of the avid fans are men compared to just 42% of the non-fans. They’re also young. 46% of the avid fans are aged between 18 and 34, and a further 23% between 35 and 44. The equivalent figures for the non-fans are 26% and 14%. 


As for race, the majority of avid fans are white (64%), but that’s a slightly lower proportion than among the non-fans (67%). Furthermore 25% of the avid fans are Hispanic (the figure for the non-fans is 15%) . 

The study’s author, Eli Yokley, has also tweeted out some charts on political preference. Though Joe Rogan rejects Right and Left labels for himself, his audience leans Right — with 46% of this avid fans identifying as Republicans (and just 23% as Democrats).
So from a Democratic perspective, are Rogan’s listeners a lost cause — a younger version of the Fox News audience? Looking down the replies to Yokley’s tweet, that appears to be a common reaction.

https://zipdo.co/statistics/joe-rogan-podcast/

Quote:Joe Rogan’s podcast audience consists primarily of men (81.9%) with the majority falling between the ages of 20-34.

Diving into the intriguing world of Joe Rogan’s podcast demographics, one can’t help but notice the distinct sway toward a male audience, as a striking 81.9% of his listeners identify as such. Furthermore, a significant chunk of these loyal fans fall within the age group of 20-34 years old.

Pretty fair breakdown of Joe Rogan himself:

https://medium.com/blog-faiaz/why-is-the-joe-rogan-experience-so-popular-among-men-42677de464fb


And then, again, even HE admits that's he's just throwing stuff against the wall and doesn't understand/care about most of it when it comes tot he bigger picture.  So if anyone is getting deep meaning from him they are probably not big on deep thinking anyway.



Rogan hits the right tone with young men to be very popular right now.

It's "Coast to Coast AM" for people who watch UFC and use HGH.

[Dill]

(08-04-2023, 11:50 AM)GMDino Wrote: Which some people say is him being "open minded" but he never pushes back or ask questions about it...he just agrees or asks questions to further the conspiracy when he agrees with it.  

Yow Dino! I'm with Rogan on this one. There ARE coordinated efforts to make sure some people get elected.

I just heard about a plot to bring slates of fake electors to Mike Pence on 1/6 2021, just as he was certifying
election results, so that he could post pone the election or throw it to the House. 

Plus there was an insurrection at the same time with people breaking into the White House.  I have seen pictures and video.

Not everyone agrees this was an attempt to change the outcome of a valid election, 

but it does mean reasonable people can agree with Rogan that there are people trying to defraud American voters.