Two Degrees of Steve, and Why Dinosaurs Vote Repugnicant

My friend Steve chides his conservative friend, another Steve: "who is evidently claiming that wisdom and common sense (he seems to be implying that they’re the same thing) and likelihood of voting Republican all increase together with age."

Well, this is some deeply muddled - and from the conservative POV, highly self-serving - thinking.

Two degree Steve cites this rather interesting post at OKTrends - which has some good points, but is pretty badly flawed.

If you're going to read further in this post, I suggest you first read the links to one degree Steve, two degree Steve, and the source, in that order (same links as above.)  Because this is my reply to one degree Steve, and stands better on a foundation of context.  (Typos corrected, slight editing for clarity)

I'm shocked – shocked I tell you – to see a conservative cherry-picking information to confirm his pre-conceived notions. While some people gain wisdom with age, the majority of people simply don’t spend enough time thinking about anything more important than March Madness to develop even the most rudimentary level of sagacity. 

More typically, what happens with age is ossification. The OKtrends article has a lot of good and insightful stuff in it. But it also suggests that people in their 40′s will wander for a time back into the Democratic fold before reaching final fossil status as born again Rethugs. Only anecdotal, but I have never seen even a single individual go through that kind of double-back transformation.

Further, the economic “permissiveness” scale is incorrectly constructed. I’m not even sure there is a single scalar economic concept that could give you a meaningful dimension. How do you accommodate regulation, intervention, transfer payments, tax policy, corporate bailouts, etc. into a scalable entity?

While I recognize that Rethugs are more cohesive in their views than Dems, I contend that is because ossification, and its associated simplistic black-white world view is the common characteristic, irrespective of age. Dems are more diverse because the absence of ossification can manifest itself in an infinite variety of ways, and they populate the gray areas.

The idea that anyone over age 50 in the lower right quadrant would vote Democratic is actually laughable. The authoritarians are in almost 100% overlap with the religious right. Their neighbors in that quadrant are teabaggers. I think the conceptual flaw is in the graph that indicates economic beliefs trumping social beliefs as one ages. It is social beliefs that ossify more (think racism, anti-gay prejudice) with age. 

The other more fundamental flaw is in imagining that peoples’ belief systems are the result of some – indeed, any – rational thought process. I contend that not one person in 10 – or 100, or maybe 1000 – has political beliefs that are derived from thinking hard about policy, the underlying principles, and the results. Most people don’t think any deeper than a sound bite with a simple message. Again, this is an area where the Rethugs excel – not limited by truth, logic, or anything else. 

People vote their comfort zone, and as one ages, that typically becomes more conservative and entrenched. Wisdom and common sense are, at best, orthogonal to these developments.

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