Gen Z, those born between 1995 and 2010, many of whom are 18-24 right now and of voting age are, according to this NYT article Young Voters Keep Moving Left on Social Issues, Even Republicans more inline with the Millennials on social change, climate change, well just change than they are with their parents, even if they identify as Republicans. Only 30% evidently agree that Trump is doing a good job, and they don’t want his wall on the southern border. From the Times:
“Each succeeding generation of Americans tends to be more progressive than those that came before,… a trend that potentially poses a long-term threat to the Republican Party’s power.”
More than half of young Republicans think racial and ethnic diversity is good thing, while only 30% of baby boomer Repubs might agree with that statement. Most Repubs (mostly old white Xians) arent so happy with such diversity, but to young Repubs that’s their normal:
They also have no problem with same-sex marriage and transgender folks. Again, its their normal and such things arent evil or bad or ultimately wrong. Like most Catholics who have no problem with birth control, we’re seeing Gen Z kids not buying all of the viewpoints of the Conservative Xian faiths.
Gen Z is comprised of 68 million Americans, bigger than the Millennials (with whom they tend to agree as noted above), and is a tad smaller than the Baby Boomers (old fucks, like me). They make up 22 percent of the population, and as I said most are of voting age already which highlights some additional bad news for Repubs and Xian denominations from the article:
“Contrary to conventional wisdom, Americans’ political and social views do not tend to drift to the right as they age…”
So since getting older doesn’t necessarily make one more conservative, the Republican agenda will not be any more appealing as the Millennials and Gen Z kids age. It looks like older folks in every generation are more conservative because they started out that way and remain so, but don’t appear to get any more conservative down the road. So Boomers and the Silent Generation of 70-90 year olds, are way more to the right than the Millennieals and Gen Zer’s and they arent getting any new recruits from those cohorts as they age either.
Pew Research has an excellent article on highlighting such differences in comparing Millennials to their Grandparents. A key factor in explaining the attitude differences is education, with just 9% of Silent Generation women possessing a bachelors degree versus 36% of Millennial women. The numbers have also increased from 15% to 29% for men in those 2 cohorts, respectively. Interestingly however, there’s now more women than men in college and with Bachelors degrees among the Millenials, when it used to be more men than women getting a college degree in the Silent Generation. That’s quite a flip and it is reflected in other figures as well:
There are more women than men enrolled in Medical School for the first time ever (2017) and PhD’s awarded to women in Psychology went from 30% in 1970 to over 70% by 2010.
Information Kills Religion (and other old, bad ideas), I always say (and PROUDLY display daily on my bumper!) and education is the key to more, better, newer, correct information being disseminated.
Speaking of killing religion and religious tinged ideas common in our culture, this AP Poll reported by Yahoo News, finds that the current generation is less concerned with a politicians religion than ever before.Only 25% of Americans think it very important a politician has strong religious beliefs, and close to half of Americans don’t think it is very important at all. One pollster expressed their viewpoint thusly:
“I’d much rather have a guy run the government and not spend all our money, instead of sounding off on what’s going on in the church or on things like abortion…Who is Catholic, Jewish, Southern Baptist — I could care less, as long as they’re going to carry the torch of freedom.”
A shifting sentiment among those old and young who yet maintain religion has an important role to play in politics is that religious-based addressing of poverty is more important than being concerned about same-sex marriage, abortion, or other LGBTI and social issues. It seems many of the not-quite-as-conservative and especially younger Xians are interested in being more like Jesus in helping the poor, than enforcing Old Testament attitudes toward sexuality in today’s society.
I’ve blogged on the ultimately futile attempts of Conservatives to maintain the status quo more than few decades or so a dozen times before (at least, I didn’t go back and count them). When I first read the words “Liberals always win” I was taken aback like “WHAT?”. No way. Cuz it seemed like we are always fighting the religious conservatives at every step. And we are. But we win, eventually, most of the time. So, after that first post linked above, and researching the idea for those dozen or more posts on conservatism’s continued losses year after year, I realized how true that statement was and still is. And maybe liberalism, progress is accelerating. It seems hard to swallow with rise of Trumpism and his conservative, racist, angry old white guy backlash dominating the US political cycle right now, but the next generation doesnt think like old white guys, even the Gen Z’ers who identify as Republicans. Its a beautiful thing.
Same-sex marriage a done deal, marijuana legalization moving ahead nationwide, LGBTI issues at the forefront when they were hidden away for generations and impossible to even discuss in public, Medicare for all and other more social democratic ideas being openly debated now, and then all this data on the Gen Z’ers progressive views…like wow. Even in Trump times, “The times they are a-changing”
Later posts will get into some of the possible causes for what appears to be an acceleration of liberal success. In the meantime, the kids are allright cuz they know too much to buy old, ignorant perspectives…They know better.
Information kills conservatism it seems.
Its allgood.
end religion now
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