| > I think we're talking past each other here Distinctly possible! > not referring to political parties and policy-making, but to the cultural zeitgeist ... the range of acceptable political thought and discourse Hmm. I have never heard it used separate of policy. My understanding is it's the range of policies the public will accept and elect. If a proposed policy is outside the window then it'll be seen as extreme, or you'll not get re-elected. What usually follows are soundbites and helpful campaigns of politicians on message trying to shift public opinion first to render that policy acceptable. Sometimes this works (brexit, though I don't think they wanted to be quite that successful), often it doesn't. Put another way it's a way of gauging if "we'll get away with this". So whilst said millennial progressives may be pulling back a bit from the accepted norm of neo-liberalism with free market as answer to everything, the individual being what matters (with as little government as possible), the pendulum after 40 years swinging right remains extremely far over on the right. If it's general political discussion outside of any reference to policy then the waters get far muddier with some aspects distinctly more left than others, though often not classic political areas of interest. It probably gets harder to judge the general view too. Other than on the fringes there's little real discussion of adequate social housing, more public services, government providing safety net, society and community, failure of privatisations (except rail thanks to Corbyn) or even alternatives to austerity when after a decade it clearly isn't working. Mind that was likely a policy to hasten the reduction of government. UK policy has always been rather reluctant compared to Europe on social matters preferring to stigmatise and pretend it isn't happening. For most social policies, cannabis included, the changes seem inevitable as the younger generation of both right and left are far more accepting. Even my generation seems often more relaxed than policy. I'm actually surprised it hasn't been legalised already - it's more common than tobacco now, and I've thought it inevitable for ages. My generation can't all have reached 40 and forgotten how they spent their youth! |
Irritatingly enough, in my experience millennial progressives don't seem to care about actual valuable socialist policies but more about shutting down open debate with misguided accusations of various forms of bigotry. Policy-wise the best I've seen is calls to elect whoever the most left-signalling person is regardless of their policies or character. I'm sure that's not the majority of left-leaning 20-30 somethings but it's certainly a majority (perhaps 70%) of those I've interacted with. Not that it's a problem that's isolated on the left - the right has been getting more conspiratorial and detached from reality too. It doesn't give me a lot of hope when debate moves from open discussion of policy to shouting slurs across the aisle. It just serves to harm meaningful movement on policies that actually might make a difference in people's lives. Even Brexit rapidly devolved into "the people who hate Europe/immigrants vs the people who are afraid of change/are naive". I think until the gap is bridged, policies will continue to change (or not) without my generation taking any notice whatsoever.