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Originally Posted by Solace
It's not just that. Technology has fundamentally changed society in ways never before seen. The old and the young are often very different groups. This has always been true, but people live longer today than they ever have, so the clash is more prevalent. For example, when my mother was born, television was new and color wasn't even prevalent. Today, screens are bigger and higher resolution than ever, and content is far more diverse than the old antenna ever provided. There's more of an overlap in generations than we've ever seen in history.
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Good points. That raises another interesting facet: in person we naturally gravitate to people who match us in some way, and the default for a long time was age. Age is no longer a major distinguishing factor with message forums and social media. Differences still exist with age, but the barriers that kept people segregated by it are being broken down. I remember using chat rooms when I was 13 or 14, conversing with people who were in their 20's and 30's (perhaps older). It's very unlikely that would have happened offline. There's a natural progression and development of view points as a person ages, so this is another source of agitation where differing viewpoints held by different groups are being mixed together directly.
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Originally Posted by Vexx
To me, racial equality, feminism, choice of fashion, anti-corporatism, choice of who you sleep with, IS conservatism because it implies leaving other people alone and having control over your own destiny. The authoritarian patriarchal bunch (be they white, black, whatever) are the ones lashing out in anger/fear because the trends in demographics aren't on their side.
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Thumbs up!
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Originally Posted by Lost Cause
Yet there is a lot of anti-American sentiment being bandied about here, be it foreign policy, military, current government actions, and how us dumb old Americans think and act.
In reality it's just an opinion brought on by years of personal beliefs or what your elders said whike sitting around the supper table.
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I don't see much anti-American sentiment. Nobody has called America evil, nor have any sweeping judgments been made against the nation. Some people dislike what the country is doing and are offering criticism. It doesn't indicate that they're blindly parroting hatred from previous generations, or that they're not thinking for themselves.
This gets back to an issue that was discussed a few pages ago. A lot of us Americans think that we're #1 in the world in just about everything. That pride makes external criticism seem warped. If we are #1 then we are undeserving of any criticism, especially from those who don't live here; any negative sentiments must be blind hatred, jealousy, or trolling. But just as nobody is perfect, there is no perfect nation. Whether we're the closest to perfection or not is a matter of opinion, but we should certainly be able to listen to criticism and consider it honestly, without our pride getting in the way.