[SLASHDOTQUOTES] Except For Millennials, Most Americans Dislike Snowden

Except For Millennials, Most Americans Dislike Snowden

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7301445&cid=49535567

Re:Doublethink (Score:5, Insightful)

by IamTheRealMike (537420) <mike@plan99.net> on Thursday April 23, 2015 @08:31AM (#49535567) Homepage

I think it's more likely to be because people under 35 are the first generation that have no memory of the cold war. People born before about 1980 lived in a world where there was a very strong, clear delineation between us vs them and that divide was seen as an existential struggle between good and evil. Merely by being born into a certain country, you too could take part in an epic ideological struggle between right and wrong. It is perhaps not surprising that people who lived most of their life in such a world instinctively support a strong, authoritarian state and react badly to a "traitor who gave our national security secrets to the Russians" or whatever garbled version of the story they received via Fox News. There's definitely a clear and strong tendency in older populations to support our side regardless of what that side actually does, and things that seem to bring back old certainties strongly appeal to them. Hence the desperate need of the establishment to make "the terrorists" to new Big Evil.

Contrast to people under the age of 35 who don't remember the cold war and have never lived in a world where there were clearly defined conflicts between us/them or good/evil. Instead there has been a series of endless wars started by us against dramatically weaker foes, based on vague and uncompelling justifications, the results of which have mostly been bedlam. Older people love this because it's an attempt to bring back the old certainties they remember. It leaves young people cold because they don't care about the old certainties, as they never had them to begin with.

Combine all this with the fact that the average software developer is 30 years old [stackoverflow.com] and the average age of Congress is 57 [slate.com] ... nearly double their age .... you have set the stage for an epic showdown between the technology industry and the political establishment. Which is exactly what's happening.