politics

I should have said and been more clear. I mean it's good that we have a bicameral legislature with an upper and lower chamber. Bicameralism is good because it acts as a check and balance to the problem of a unicameral legislature being more susceptible to corruption as well as more existential threats, such as being dissolved by a president or taken over by the military.

Having a second chamber allows one to act as a revising body to the other, creates a back and forth that ultimately results in better legislation. Further, in America, I subscribe to the idea that the Senate--with its longer terms, smaller size, and equal distribution among the states--acts a cooling saucer to the more directly elected House, which comes in with hot ideas and mandates that have a two-year shelf life. The House is supposed to be more nimble and responsive. The Senate is less nimble but with more power vested in each seat. I'd be fine with expanding the sizes of both chambers, but they would need a new office building. I think unicameralism or even bicameralism in which both chambers have equal power would cause more problems than it solves.

I get that everyone hates the Senate but seems to love their Senator, and that certain senior senators end up locking up a seat until they are senile dinosaurs that die in office. My magic wand idea is that if there is a government shutdown or failure to fill a cabinet or Supreme Court vacancy, it should trigger a snap recall election of the senior senator's seat. They can run in it, but so can anyone else. I like the idea of six year terms, as a matter of consistency, for that cooling saucer factor, but if they can't do their jobs they should face the voters promptly. I also like the idea that the upper chamber has overlapping terms so as to operate continuously, instead of, as in our lower chamber, having all the members up for reelection every two years.

How dare you question slave-holders from the 1700's?!

My only complaint is that "liberal" in the US is absolutely not the antithesis of conservative.

Unfortunate that this graph starts in 1972, when the oldest baby boomers were already 27. If you compare that first section of the boomers’ line to the corresponding section of the millennials’ line, boomers were to the left of millennials around the same age.

Now, I find it hard to imagine that millennials will have the “Reagan moment” that boomers had in 1980, but this data shouldn’t convince anyone that millennials are some shining ray of hope for the future. Today’s non-voting, politically apathetic millennials could easily be swayed to the right by the time they’re the age of today’s boomers. I see this sentiment repeated a lot lately, but it’s pure foolishness to think that conservatives will die with boomers.

That's an interesting hypothesis. I think of it more in terms of human development over the lifespan rather than an artifact of survival bias. In my opinion, the relationship between age and conservatism is mainly because of three reasons:

1. As you get older, you tend to accumulate more wealth, responsibility, children, etc. so you have more to lose than when you are younger, which means that you tend to value the system that protects what you have.

2. As you get older, you get weaker and slower and lose the physical confidence and recklessness of youth. That feels vulnerable, so you tend to worry more about things like violent crime and disorder. You start to value stability and order more.

3. When people are young, they tend to be more prone to simplistic and radical thinking, simply due to lack of life experience. This is both a strength and weakness. It makes youth passionate and energetic, but also more prone to believing that there are simple solutions to complex problems. I say that recognizing that nowadays most Trump supporters are older and are very much embracing Trump's simplistic solutions, but I think we all recognize that something very radical is happening on the right wing.

I note also that these are general trends across the lifespan, not deterministic or true for every individual.