There are plenty of things which divide us in life. Some are pretty minor: Christian/Muslim, Black/White, Man/MRA, Woman/Feminist, for example, while others are some heavy shit: beer/whiskey and Man U supporter/any other team spring immediately to mind. Yet the greatest division we face, and the one conservatives find the most daunting uphill battle, is the face off between the old and the young.
It's not because they have youthful energy on their side, either. Experience trumps enthusiasm any day of the week. Just ask a mechanic or drill sergeant. It's not because there are more of them than there are of us - that won't happen for a few years yet. It's not even that the Kool-aid has been particularly attractive these past few years.
It's a simple yet fundamental change - the young have no idea what privacy is. None at all. Remember the stupid shit we got up to at their age? Good job we remember it, isn't it, because written or photographic evidence of it will never see the light of day (assuming we keep up the payments to Chad - everyone has a Chad in their life, don't they?). Between Bookface and Twitter, Tinder and Twerker every single thing the younger generation does is recorded. For good. Even their porn stash, the rite of passage of every male, is recorded for posterity. Take a good hard look at anyone under the age of 25 and realize that, apart from the miniscule percentage who will become CEO's, super-villains or President, not one of them will ever have the sheer joys of plausible deniability to get them out of their youthful stupidity.
The immediate effects are bad enough and can be summed up in two common phrases:
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - heard that one a few times, invariably from the younger ones as the point goes sailing over their heads like a comet.
The point is not that we wish to hide things necessarily, apart from that time with the two hookers, a case of scotch and the racehorse, but that we shouldn't HAVE to hide things. No one should be looking in the first place. Our lives may be an open book, some strange people are happy that way, but it shouldn't be the default setting.
"Pics or it didn't happen." - in an age when your fridge takes pictures of you every time you open the door, to shame you for breaking your diet, photographs are the ubiquitous evidence that an event occurred. Just hit up any gig and watch as the performers bask in the light of a thousand tiny screens recording the event while the paying customers look at their phones and not the stage.
It's cheap cynicism at work, and opens them to massive manipulation. If there are no pics, it didn't happen. If there are pics, well it must have happened, right?
But the long term effect, ah, that's the big enchilada. People hate admitting they were wrong with the same passion they hate telemarketers. charge a politician with something in their past and watch them squirm. Not Hillary, of course, she has been a lying, grasping, vindictive bitch her whole life, but any of them with a shed of soul. If it is on the record somewhere, they must answer to it and for it. It's the rule, for Republicans at least. But what if everything is "on record?" You have the stark choice then - admit you were a dumb little shit when you were young, or stick to your statements of record come hell or high water. Most people will choose option two ....
and the young are overwhelmingly left leaning.
Nice thought for a Sunday, isn't it.
