Reply #121: Parties always change when generations do

[Recursion]

People my age (born on the bicentennial) grew up seeing statist solutions everywhere collapsing from their own weight, from the USSR to Cabrini Green. The War on Poverty just didn't work, and we grew up with the fallout from it -- I don't think it's surprising that we're more skeptical of the concept of "public welfare" than the generation for which it worked is, and I think it's hiding your head in the sand if you convince yourself that the entire cause of that is right-wing messaging.

Meanwhile, when we started out trying to make it on our own, unions too often were a hindrance to getting hired rather than a help ("nice work if you can get it", etc.) Because we came of age in a time with fewer jobs to begin with, there was a lot more resentment of the (almost all older) people who had them, all the more so when two-tier contracts started to appear ("sorry, kid" -- but it was better than nothing).

I just had a gut feeling then that America no longer held the promise that it once did and likely never would again.

Both the right and the left of your generation are firmly convinced of that, and fortunately I think a lot of us younger folks simply don't buy it.