That comment seems kinda sexist, ageist and bigoted. I am Old, kinda white (mixed), male, and Christian (but doubting) and I despise Fox etc. I have quite a few buddies my age who are white and males who again, are more NPR than CTR. Note our current President, also.
You can be very liberal and be Christian, and very conservative and be Jewish or Muslim (The Taliban e.g.).
Thomas is often considered the most conservative Justice.
While no doubt a picture of a MAGA rally would be very white, and likely Christian, the distaff side is well represented among that crowd. See M.T. Greene.
For balance, I will mention that for most of the Trump administration I was living in NYC and working with lots of architects and interior designers. Many times, a client would come into our place of business and immediately start in with “Can you believe what that orange asshole did today?” or something similar. And I will admit to really enjoying those conversations.
So I’m not sure it’s all about white conservative outrage. Some, but not all. I think the outrage factor gets cranked to high when your political party is out of power.
I think that’s largely why midterms are traditionally so bad for the party holding power.
Does it really matter? It likely didn’t to them since they were willing to blame whoever was in office now - it seems more likely the person starting the conversation didn’t care & had an objective of commiserating with someone like-minded or evangelizing their dislike to someone who didn’t know the details.
If you’re curious, the Phoenix City Code has a feature allowing you to look up the history of a particular section, I was curious, so I looked it up. But I think the actual results are completely irrelevant to the people mentioned in the OP, this was not a conversation about empiricism, or even one that could be influenced by empiricism.
I have worked in a grocery/pharmacy, fast food, department store, and two bookstores. I don’t call any customer bringing up politics of any kind during a transaction. This was in the '80s; maybe things are different now.
It’s not that all the old, White, Christian men have been drinking from the Fox water-cooler, it’s that those who do drink the Fox-koolaid are overwhelmingly from that demographic.
I do know some Black conservatives/Republications/Trump supporters, but they aren’t nearly as in-your-face you’re-either-with-us-or-the-enemy as the Old White Farts.
The funny/sad thing is that you could easily spin it as “you know, our good republican government had to lock up the spraypaint to keep those people from causing trouble” and he’d probably suddenly be on your side and think that makes sense. That’s probably more in line with his normal thinking. But they’ve become so emotionally immature that anything that inconveniences them becomes an opportunity to tee off on some conspiracy-laden rant about the evil liberals, so it doesn’t actually need to make sense. If there’s something they don’t like, a liberal must be the reason, even if that thing is more likely caused by conservatives.
There’s a theory that it’s due to audio fidelity. FM is capable of it better than AM, so music was played on the former and news on the latter. The market and American culture determined that new music and its younger audiences would rotate in new listeners while alienating older. Save for an oldies station on FM, the aging listeners migrated to AM, where the rescinded fairness doctrine meant news was actually opinion on offer, and since only wealthy people can own or advertise on radio stations, the opinions were their choice.
Yes they are. Amazing you haven’t noticed.
I had maybe two or three political conversations at work from 1990 to 2020. Not per week or per month. Total over 30 years.
I’ve had more than that per month over the last two and a half years. Almost exclusively right wingers bringing up shit out of the blue. And then claiming that “the company started it” by having “woke” corporate messages about Black History Month, Asian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, International Women’s Day, whatever.
We had to discipline several employees for going on LinkedIn and responding with derision and bigotry to our corporate messages.
Most recently we had a manager go off on an internal group chat about how stupid our company policies are against age discrimination! A thirty something manager who openly declared that he wasn’t going to consider any applicant over 40, and then got “counseled” for it by HR.
We have managed to discuss the impact of high gas prices, interest rates and Union “intransigence” for twenty years without once mentioning a political party or politician. Now Biden or the democrats get brought up in every financial discussion.
These individuals are somewhat insecure and like to establish higher status by airing their grievances (it’s been suggested that this category of “conspicuous outrage” should be considered alongside Veblen’s other dimensions of conspicuous economics)
These individuals aren’t subject to being threatened, assaulted, or harassed for expressing controversial opinions. Thus they’re accustomed to speaking their minds freely with no pushback.
Because they usually encounter no pushback, these individuals believe that most people share (or should share) their opinions.
And this is what the furor over “cancel culture” is all about. A certain demographic is, for the first time, learning what it’s like to experience the same consequences as everyone else. Being treated like everyone else is an outrage to them, so it must be treated as a crisis.
The 80’s were 30-40 years ago. It would be surprising if things weren’t different.
The suggestion isn’t that this happens a lot, just that it’s usually the same guy when it does happen.
I can say that in my last 3 office jobs, there was always one white guy who would monopolize the conversation to talk about his politics, which were always conservative. Small percentage, but that one guy really pollutes the environment.
I disagree with the politics, but what was most offensive was his assumption that everybody else wanted to hear his bullshit all day long. One quickly learned that if you want him to shut up, you don’t push back, you just let him rant until he gets bored of it.
Some of these people seem like chatty extraverts who listen to talk radio all day. They think they’re being social, they don’t care what anyone else thinks, and they have no topic of conversation other than what they hear on the crazy waves.
I’m sorry, but I need to point out the obvious fallacy that it’s a pretty big leap from “annoyed about spray can policy” to “raging white supremacist”. He might simply not like Democrat’s policies because a lot of them are stupid.
And the reason “every one of them has been white, male, conservative, and over 50” is because the OP works in a manly hardware store in a city where over 70% of the population is white and 25% are over 45. IOW “confirmation bias”.
Nitpick (befitting only of the SDMB): I’d call it selection/sampling bias:
To the OP: I used to be a pretty active woodworker, but stopped participating on online woodworking forums, many of which were dominated by that same demographic who – always assuming the entire world thought just as they did – were remarkably out, loud, and proud with their Cro-Magnon beliefs
Off-topic: Alison Lurie already coined “conspicuous outrage” in 1981 in The Language of Clothes. While Veblen’s conspicuous consumer would arrive at the gala in more expensive clothes than you could afford, the conspicuous outrager would show up in frayed jeans; because you can’t afford to flout convention but he can.
Yes it does. People like the paint buyer don’t want to blame who’s in office now. They want to blame democrats. Facts matter. Not everyone will listen, but the next person that complains about Democrats locking up their paint might, when they’re told the law is almost 30 years old and was passed under a Republican.
