I saw a graph that Gen-X went Red this cycle, and I really do feel like it's because our boomer parents shoved Ayn Rand novels on us WAY early.
I mean, I was a full-on Randroid for most of my young adult life, until the 2004 election. Shamefully late. I should have gone hard left in 2002.
But the brain-laundry I had to do to get there was a years long process.
I first read Atlas Shrugged when I was 16 years old.
I'm an avid reader. I was reading so many grand masters of science fiction at that age.
And then Ayn fucking Rand was a rock thrown at the window of my mind.
An engine that runs on magic! A miraculous metal never conceived before! Oh, all these sci-fi notes that hooked my brain!
Those sci-fi hooks hooked me but good.
It took me a good decade to finally go......oh, she was genuinely fucked up.
There's a reason I didn't come out as queer until my father died. Because I subconsciously knew that he'd disown me, shun me, kick me out of the family.
I'm happily out now, happily myself, happily radical and leftist and queer.
But I *get* why Gen X is tilting right. The best minds of my generation have been co-opted by Objectivism.
PS: The old saw that "you get more conservative as you get older" is hot bullshit. The older I've gotten, the more I've realized that a well-educated, well-compensated community is a good thing.
We need to unionize. We need to have a general strike against our owners. That's the only thing that could possibly get things moving, get things changed.
@dawnatella To steal from my improv classes: *YES AND*
Yes, and we also need to recognize that the systems that make corporations possible are untenable. We need to rally to overthrow Citizens United, and force politicians into rejecting corporate donations. Unions are ultimately a good thing...*IF* we can tell the corporations to kick rocks.
Unions have had their issues, certainly. The jokes about Jimmy Hoffa tell that tale. But if we can get corporate money out of politics? The people win.
@dawnatella Okay so I see what you're saying, the power of the "free market" driving things.
Here's the problem: *PEOPLE.*
We've seen, in real time, what the free market has done to Twitter. A single person made a fake Eli Lilly account, causing the market share to tank to the tune of almost 20 billion.
People's actual real lives are more important than money. That's a plain fact.
@dawnatella Okay, let's break it down.
Let's say tomorrow, social media was a co-op. And everybody was happy and cool and on board with how everything went.
What's to stop another bro-tech billionaire going "THAT'S MINE NOW" and just trouncing every rule of the collective.
That's my point. Nobody should have the power to come into a space and do that, no matter how much money they have. That's the corruption of capital.
@dawnatella Girl. Again. You're missing the point. The systems in place are the problem. Representational democracy is great......but the systems in place actively work to suppress it.
You want to make an ideal world? Fight against Citizens United, and the capitalists who undermine that status quo.
@dawnatella Okay but like...Unions *ARE* how that works. I'm a union employee, have been for two decades. #IATSEstrong
So tell me again how we're supposed to organize ourselves without a union.
Bitsy
dawnatella