Why are Older People So Right Wing?

[thylacine]

I always notice that a lot of older people (65 and up) are very right wing and love Donald Trump like he is some kind of savior and such.  Even before Trump they always voted Republican no matter how awful the candidate.  I often wonder why that is?  Some people think it's because "they are uneducated" or something.

 

But my theory is that it's because they (older people) want to return to the "Good Old Days."  The Republicans often promise a "return to Christian values" or a "return to American values," to "make American great again," etc.  They put forth a vision of an America where women are out of the workplace and back in the home, where minorities are unseen and unheard, the suburbs are all lily white, and so on...

 

It seems to me that maybe they (older people who vote Republican no matter how awful the candidate) want to return to the past, the way they imagine it was in the 1950's, the golden age of American greatness, when things were simple, men were men and women were girls, when you could pinch a girl's bottom and everyone in the room would think it was a funny joke and the girl would have to laugh it off or she had no sense of humor, when you could smoke cigarettes everywhere and blow the smoke in everyone else's face and everyone else had to breathe it in and smile along with you, when the neighborhoods had no "colored folks," and if women had bruises it was because they were just "clumsy" and they "walked into a wall."  The days when unpleasant things were hidden and not talked about, so you could just be free to imagine everything was wonderful, even if it wasn't.

 

And so they vote for the party that cuts away at the social safety net and whispers about taking away Social Security, which they often depend on...  I don't get it.

 

I dunno...  Anyone out there have any ideas?  Why it is that older people / senior citizens usually vote for the rightest of the right wing?

[firewallflower]

Hmm. I don't know that we can generalize to actually apply any blanket reason to why all older people with right-wing political alignment have those right-wing political alignments. Your hypothesis is undoubtedly true in some cases, but there are also inevitably many, many exceptions to the rule. Some of it is probably related to education, some of it is probably related to religion, some of it is probably related to upbringing ("my parents and grandparents were Republicans, so I'm a Republican too"), some of it is probably related to entirely different factors. It is the case that the Republican party often presents themselves as the "traditional" side, which may particularly appeal to some older people.

 

It is also important to keep in mind, though, that—just as not all younger people are staunch liberals—by no means do all older people fit the stereotype of the old-fashioned right-wingers. My own grandparents, for example, are very much Democrats, as are probably the majority of the other senior citizens I know. It depends a good deal on your social circles and region, I imagine, among many other factors.

[Calligraphette_Coe]

20 minutes ago, thylacine said:

I always notice that a lot of older people (65 and up) are very right wing and love Donald Trump like he is some kind of savior and such.  Even before Trump they always voted Republican no matter how awful the candidate.  I often wonder why that is?  Some people think it's because "they are uneducated" or something.

 

But my theory is that it's because they (older people) want to return to the "Good Old Days."  The Republicans often promise a "return to Christian values" or a "return to American values," to "make American great again," etc.  They put forth a vision of an America where women are out of the workplace and back in the home, where minorities are unseen and unheard, the suburbs are all lily white, and so on...

 

It seems to me that maybe they (older people who vote Republican no matter how awful the candidate) want to return to the past, the way they imagine it was in the 1950's, the golden age of American greatness, when things were simple, men were men and women were girls, when you could pinch a girl's bottom and everyone in the room would think it was a funny joke and the girl would have to laugh it off or she had no sense of humor, when you could smoke cigarettes everywhere and blow the smoke in everyone else's face and everyone else had to breathe it in and smile along with you, when the neighborhoods had no "colored folks," and if women had bruises it was because they were just "clumsy" and they "walked into a wall."  The days when unpleasant things were hidden and not talked about, so you could just be free to imagine everything was wonderful, even if it wasn't.

 

And so they vote for the party that cuts away at the social safety net and whispers about taking away Social Security, which they often depend on...  I don't get it.

 

I dunno...  Anyone out there have any ideas?  Why it is that older people / senior citizens usually vote for the rightest of the right wing?

Someone once sent me a picture of right-wing protestors, with a senior citizen holding a sign that said "Keep your stinking government fingers off my Social Security check!" 

 

Yeah, figure the irony in THAT one!  I think they've been agitpropped to death with right wing ideology, and see everything as a government conspircy to black helicopter their lives. 

 

In 2012, I actually had to research video for a retiree of Rick Santorum grabbing the 3rd rail of American politics by having his faithful followers chanting at a rally of his: "HeyHeyHey, HoHoHo, Social Security's GOT TO GO!" His opponent in his last Senate bid used that video to crucify him at the polls-- he lost by double digits! I guess most people forgot about that when he was briefly the Republican frontrunner to oppose Obama in 2012.

 

But where is he now? Yep, works for CNN as a conservative commentator. How soon they forget, eh?

[uhtred]

"Conservative" and "support Trump" are not necessarily the same, although they are often related. 

 

I'm somewhat older (50s), and much more conservative then when I was young - but I don't support Trump. 

 

I'm more conservative because I have learned that sometimes things are they way they are for good reasons - or at least because the alternatives are worse.

 

As an example, I remember when I was young the idea of just ending war.  It seemed so simple - just stop building tanks and bombs and nukes.  "what if they had a war and no one showed up".     The problem though is that people don't have wars just for fun.  Wars happen because there is a conflict - over resources, or ideas, or land or something. The conflict is there because two different groups of people don't agree. If only one shows up to the war - they win. The "peaceful" society tends to disappear. 

 

Similar for ideas like "get rid of money", or "why can't we just share everything".   There are a lot of ideas that sound good in an ideal world, but fall apart in the real world. 

 

All that said, I also support a lot of (at least formerly) liberal ideals.  I support freedom of speech under almost all conditions. I support equal rights for pretty much everyone. etc etc. 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

I am not an 'older person' per se (I'm 30) but I have some conservative-leaning beliefs, definitely.

 

However I am also not  Trump supporter (I am not a Hilary supporter either. I would have abstained from voting if I was a US citizen during that election). 

[Joe the Stoic]

Traditionally, liberalism has been about supporting newer things and taking down the older systems.  This is something that has tended to fall to newer generations with each iteration.

 

It is questionable how long this will continue, though.  I think we are coming full circle to the point where being more liberal is no longer synonymous with being more progressive.

[Sally]

I think this is stereotyping.   I'm old (not just "older") and I'm at least as liberal/progressive as I was when I was younger..  My older friends are also.   I frankly think that it takes at least 3 decades of life to gain enough experience and knowledge to really determine what your well-thought-out opinions are.  Before that, many tend to be swayed by the crowd.   But people who are less naturally curious and aren't interested in learning stuff when they're younger certainly don't become any less conservative as they get older, and I think those are the people who contribute to the stereotyping.  

[Skycaptain]

I don't think it's so much "right wing" as "don't like the way the world has changed", and add a few generalisations it makes people look right wing. The "return to Christian values" is seen by some as "don't like the fact that people support other religions", for example. Same when the crime rate in a locality changes as the racial diversity changes. Those with an agenda say that the newcomers are bringing crime in, even if this is not the case. Ergo someone merely saying that there is more crime than thirty years ago (true or otherwise) is associated with anti-migration, anti-social diversity and must be a right w(h)inger

[Sally]

And there are plenty of older people who aren't Christian, so the "return to Christian values" is also kind of a stereotype.   People of any age can have agendas; in  fact, it seems to me, looking back, that there were less agendas decades ago than now, probably because of the proliferation of publicly discussed ideological/cultural stances due to the internet.    

[Homer]

"'Today' will be the 'good old time' of tomorrow".

 

I think most of it has to do with people being hesitant towards change of the surroundings they grew up in and are familiar with, rather than actually being whatever-wing.

[timewarp]

This is a surprising question. I'm actually more surprised that so many younger people these days are right-wing (although I do have a few ideas what kind of political mistakes might have lead to this development). That used to be different.

 

As for older people, I don't think "right-wing" is an accurate description of what's happening. I believe older people tend to be more conservative and that does not necessarily mean right-wing. They might as well be old-fashioned social democrats or similar.

[what the face]

I see the divide as rural and urban/suburban rather than age.

 

There has been a migration of younger folks toward cities and suburbs leaving behind older relatives. 

Also movements of older people away from cities toward more rural places with retirement.

 

Another question to consider is why people who choose or find themselves living in rural places

are much more right wing.    Traditional, home town church going I guess, but more complex than that.

 

Another aspect of "traditional" has been spouses/wives voting (and TV radio consumption) as their husbands or mostly male preachers do.

You know, to get along and not make waves.

 

Not that many generations ago the country was much more rural/small town and much less diverse than urban areas today.

 

 

[Salmiakki]

Isn't the answer obvious though? 

[uhtred]

I think its also natural for older and younger people to have different political concerns.  

 

An 18 year old is likely to care a lot less about social security than a 60 year old. Same for healthcare policies.  The opposite is likely to be true for education funding. 

 

Poorer people are naturally going to be more supportive of policies that redistribute wealth than are wealthy people.  Younger people tend to be poorer.

 

 

[daveb]

The OP and title sounds like an absolute, but what it really is is just a tendency. If you look at broad demographics data older people do tend to vote more conservative/Republican (talking US because that's where I live and know the most about, as limited as that knowledge might be). So do men, people in rural locations, people who identify as Christians of certain sects/denominations, people with lower levels of education, and other groups/aspects/factors.

 

So the question really should be why do some demographic sectors tend to vote more conservatively or more liberally. There are whole books and fields of study on that.  

[fuzzipueo]

There's a difference, I think, between being right wing and conservative. Not all conservatives are right wingers, not all right wingers are older (50+) people. Right Wingers tend to be Republicans, true, but not all us conservative types are Republicans. Yes, I grew up in a Republican household and voted for Republicans over the years, but I also have become more and more socially liberal as I've gotten older. Some of this is influence from the people I've called friends who've opened my eyes to other ways of thinking, education, even to a point, getting older. Currently, I am registered as a Democrat, even if I don't completely agree with everything the Dem. party has to say either. However, I will not be associated with the current regime within the Rep. party, nor do I have any truck with so called "Christian Values" which are espoused by the Evangelicals who are anything but Christian.

 

As for going back to the so called "Golden-Era" of 1950s USA? What a crock o' $#!^ that is. Just because the dirty laundry wasn't shown in public does not mean it did not exist. Shows like 'Leave it to Beaver' and 'Father "Knows" Best', just two of many examples, were very white, very middle class, and pretty much left out a lot of reality. My mom grew up in a very rural community with very little money and a male parent of the absolute worst sort and racism, sexism, wife beating, you name it, existed. There is no such place as the "Golden-Era" except in TV land.

[Karst]

I suspect that many older people have a very rose-tinted view of the past.  Like all foreign countries, it looks better from a distance.

[thylacine]

Utred... having a war and no one shows up...?  Hey man, I like that.  In fact, I think that would be very groovy and far out.

 

Fuzzi... I know the 50's were not perfect, although many people watch old TV shows and seem to think so... I was being a bit sarcastic, anyway.

 

And no, I'm not "stereotyping" old folks... the ones I know around where I am are pretty hooked on Fox News however and spout off constantly with their crazy politics and seem to repeat all the crap they watch on Fox (I don't watch Fox but they must get their crazy ideas from somewhere).  And they still support Trump, no matter how bad he gets.

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

@thylacine, I bet if you looked around again, you'd see that there are as many young folks watching rubbish news stations...it's a matter of personality type, not age I bet. Some folk will believe anything!

[uhtred]

20 hours ago, Ardoise said:

I suspect that many older people have a very rose-tinted view of the past.  Like all foreign countries, it looks better from a distance.

Its sort of natural.  When you are old  (like me )  it easy to remember being young, strong and healthy.  That tends to make the the whole world to seem to have been better.  There is a desire to go back to those days - but really its a desire for *youth* , not for the world of your youth.

 

I think the world is a *much* better place now than it was when I grew up, but I can see all to easily how people can fall into the trap of romanticizing the past. 

[Epitaph]

Why it is that older people / senior citizens usually vote for the rightest of the right wing?

 

It's a question with a lot of answers based on a lot of factors, but the underlying one is always going to be basic human psychology. It's the time period these people came from. Seventy years ago the world was a very different place, with very different sociatal standards and upbringings that are always going to act like mental blueprints and support scaffolding for the people that came from said time period.

 

Not to mention that politics utilize and prey on basic human psychology at its core, with pack mentality leading the way and the underlying need to conform to the norm driving things. String up a cause and make it sound worthy to people, spin them some yarn that makes them feel good, and they'll throw themselves at a cause without really looking at the cause itself and what it stands for.

 

Every person alive creates mental barriers within themselves. You, me, even the smartest kid on the block. These mental barriers frame the way our mind views reality, and when something threatens our reality, the comfort zone that our brain likes to see the world through, in an overwhelming number of cases, it's more convenient for people to turn away from a potential harsh truth and keep living in their comforting reality.

 

Politics and sides is a manifestation of these things exactly. Sit down to an old timer that's "right wing," have a one to one conversation with them, start showing them some truths, and odds are, they'll turn away. Their mind goes on the defense and backpeddles. They'll start throwing out justifications and biases, whatever their mind can grasp at to defend the ideal it's been indoctrinated or conditioned into believing.

 

As humans, at some point, we're all guilty of this. It's not uniquely innate to any one group of people in particular. 

[what the face]

11 hours ago, E said:

basic human psychology

 

11 hours ago, E said:

people to turn away from a potential harsh truth and keep living in their comforting reality.

 

I would agree human psychology includes avoiding pain and seeking pleasure.  But that doesn't a explain the older mind choosing

the suffering of others over the suffering of one's kind or self, which is the basis of most right wing thinking and policy.

(unless other's suffering is the basis of their pleasure  -  that'd be some S/M sh*t.  Another different psychology?)

 

As suggested the mind closes for many on the selfish/tribe-centered/egocentric side.

 

I would disagree on your last point E,  "as humans . . . . we're all guilty of this".   Maybe not basic human but

I have known and encountered many elders who have found/kept an open mind and heart, and shown a

compassion psychology, caring for others as/more than self, often where it had not been before.

[Epitaph]

5 hours ago, what the face said:

 

I would agree human psychology includes avoiding pain and seeking pleasure.  But that doesn't a explain the older mind choosing

the suffering of others over the suffering of one's kind or self, which is the basis of most right wing thinking and policy.

(unless other's suffering is the basis of their pleasure  -  that'd be some S/M sh*t.  Another different psychology?)

 

As suggested the mind closes for many on the selfish/tribe-centered/egocentric side.

 

I would disagree on your last point E,  "as humans . . . . we're all guilty of this".   Maybe not basic human but

I have known and encountered many elders who have found/kept an open mind and heart, and shown a

compassion psychology, caring for others as/more than self, often where it had not been before.

 

Hmm, we're all guilty of it quite easily. Whether we're nice or not has no bearing on the way our mind quietly reacts when confronted with certain subjects that stand the chance to shake the foundation of our perceived reality. 

 

You come up to me and say that apples are blue, and this is the real colour they've been all along. Regardless of how nice I am as a person, without even thinking or realizing it, my head goes on the defense because all along it's associated apples with red. The only thing that alters the outcome is respective level of intelligence and emotional stability. If I were more emotionally centered I'd backpeddle instantly with an emotional response. If I were inquisitive, I'd approach it with skepticism, and even still, might be reluctant to accept that apples were in fact blue even if you showed me the facts.

 

"But that doesn't a explain the older mind choosing the suffering of others over the suffering of one's kind or self"

 

It does. Pack mentality. You grow up in a household and a country that places emphasis on the constancy of government and the moral beacon of pride lying in a governmental party from a young age and you're going to have yourself an older person one day who's almost guaranteed to keep coming back to vote for the government, and vote for the party that ma and pa did when they were kids.

 

 

[what the face]

5 hours ago, E said:

the way our mind quietly reacts when confronted with certain subjects that stand the chance to shake the foundation of our perceived reality

You've never had your mind blown by a novel concept, paradigm shift or universal thought?  

Art?  Music?     a sunset?

 

Your premise supposes some petrification of thinking early on, "blueprints and scaffolding", a rather outdated understanding of the human mind/brain, 

disregarding more recent work on brain development and neuroplasticity showing that changes can and do regularly happen well beyond youth into

old age given the right conditions.

 

As for "pack mentality", people change their pack, their family, work and living locations, their entire selves sometimes,  more now than maybe ever in history.

 

There is no "almost guaranteed" for any of what you claim,

in my humble opinion>

 

 

[Epitaph]

1 minute ago, what the face said:

You've never had your mind blown by a novel concept, paradigm shift or universal thought?  

Art?  Music?     a sunset?

 

Your premise supposes some petrification of thinking early on, "blueprints and scaffolding", a rather outdated understanding of the human mind/brain, 

disregarding more recent work on brain development and neuroplasticity showing that changes can and do regularly happen well beyond youth into

old age given the right conditions.

 

As for "pack mentality", people change their pack, their family, work and living locations, their entire selves sometimes,  more now than maybe ever in history.

 

There is no "almost guaranteed" for any of what you claim,

in my humble opinion>

 

 

 

Only if it wasn't on the defense about something, yes. I can recount events in my past where I made wrong judgement calls when confronted with the evidence neccessary to put together the picture on something but I didn't, as it was so sound to my belief that the respective path I was going was the correct one. People's minds can accept things, yes, but only when they're ready to. If they aren't open to accepting something coming their way, they'll never secede the defensive stance their head exists in.

 

"given the right conditions."

 

And that's the hook. I'd bet a lot of people's minds don't exist in the right conditions. And if I were really interested in betting, I'd bet a lot of the older folk's minds wouldn't exist in the neccessary given conditions to exhibit that level of flexibility. I'm aware of the framework and scaffolding that shapes a person early on, but it's not the sole reason for why people act as they do. It's past experiences, respective levels of intelligence and emotional stability, and many other factors. Not a petrification, no, but fortification. As you know, some fortifications can be hard to breach, or otherwise nearly impossible. Everybody's noggin builds fortifications somewhere.

 

As for packs, I can't dispute that. But what I'm arguing somewhat is pack mentality itself and the failing of many people to acknowledge or understand that when pack mentality kicks in, there's an automatic mental bias formed in the thoughts of the individual, who is then therefore more likely to defend what constitutes as the pack by reflex, rather than perhaps stopping and seeing if the pack is wrong.

 

"almost guaranteed"

 

If that wasn't the case OP wouldn't be asking the question then. There's always room for outliers in things. A rule of thumb when taking into account anything is the rule of exceptions. There's always an exception. But it's an exception because it isn't the norm. It's the isolated instance. Out of all the elderly folk I've met in my life, many of them can very much so be highly close minded. And that's not even talking politics. Only a stark handful I've ever met had the capacity to stop and dismantle themselves and their own thoughts before coming to judgement on something without being pulled blindly on strings.

 

Whenever you involve politics, it automatically becomes pack mentality because that's what politics is at it's core. So of course, logically then, it's pretty fair to assume that a large number of people are going to fall prey to bias then, no? They have the potential to shift gears, change packs, all of that, but will they? Na.

[gisiebob]

an aspect that hasn't been touched on here, is how information is distributed, which is constantly changing. a long time ago there was only a handful of sources of information, and they were probably in general more trustworthy. nowadays you can just stumble over 30 people raving about furbies as if there was something important about them.

 

the tools needed for curating modern information are complex, expensive to employ, and are continuously on the edge of being ineffective. we've all been victims to the continuous erosion of what truth is, but those who didn't grow up in a world of antagonistic and oversaturated information are hit the hardest, especially when their old tools for truth finding are specifically attacked.

 

I hope we can find ways to combat or mitigate the desires to deceive before my own tools because old and rusty and I become too tired to hone new ones.

[what the face]

49 minutes ago, E said:

fall prey to bias then, no?

NO

 

Your replies illustrate your mindset here quite well,  as I suppose mine illustrate my own.

 

I believe you overestimate "defense" and "fortification" and the "failing of many people"

and underestimate openness to acceptance and the right conditions.

 

If you might let down your own bias,  you might come to see more oldsters as I do/have.

Experience and wisdom in various forms coupled to the end of life often (not outlying)

bring profound insight and personal growth,

in my witnessed experience.

 

[Epitaph]

2 hours ago, what the face said:

NO

 

Your replies illustrate your mindset here quite well,  as I suppose mine illustrate my own.

 

I believe you overestimate "defense" and "fortification" and the "failing of many people"

and underestimate openness to acceptance and the right conditions.

 

If you might let down your own bias,  you might come to see more oldsters as I do/have.

Experience and wisdom in various forms coupled to the end of life often (not outlying)

bring profound insight and personal growth,

in my witnessed experience.

 

 There's no actual right yes or no answer to my statement because a factor to both mine and your locales is difference in people. Where I live, old gits vastly outumber the insightful ones. So, yes. But only by locale. Rather than trying to pick a side I acknowledge that there's two. There's always two. Decent and not decent. I so happen to live an an area where not decent is more prevalent.

[Sally]

On 1/4/2019 at 1:16 PM, Ardoise said:

I suspect that many older people have a very rose-tinted view of the past.  Like all foreign countries, it looks better from a distance.

Ha.  Here's a few things that I, as an old person, remember of the  past:

 

o  Blacks were prevented from voting in the  South, from living in certain neighborhoods, and from marrying white people, and their children were beaten up and called names by whites.

o  Jews were prevented from practicing as doctors in most hospitals, from being admitted to some universities, from living in certain neighborhoods, and their children were beaten and called names by Christians.

o  Homosexuals were beaten up by the police and jailed, and could not rent or buy housing or be hired for jobs if they were suspected of being homosexual.

o  Women were prevented from buying real estate, from holding many jobs, and from having their own credit accounts.

 

The old people who think the past was rosy are, frankly, stupid.   

 

 

[what the face]

5 hours ago, E said:

5 hours ago, E said:

I acknowledge that there's two

actual right yes or no answer

On this we would agree.

 

I've come to look for that edge between the two,  yes and no.

From the edge (sometimes) you can see both sides.

Yes?