No, [MENTION=2693]Smurf[/MENTION], you're not.
I spent yesterday taking absolute pelters at the university from my younger colleagues, for suggesting that a) voting right wing doesn't automatically make you a heartless racist, b) that it's a bit rich for their generation to whine on social media about the result in general when 38% of them turned out, and furthermore that it's usually a useless echo chamber in terms of actual political efficacy.
Among the answers were (and I'm quoting directly from a group thread):
To point a) "Fuck women, the poor, people of colour, fuck everyone, let's all just vote right wing"; "People can be angry and vote left wing, there's nothing about anger that makes someone right wing. It's being a sexist, racist, xenophobic, classist fuck who doesn't want change"; "I'm saying, what is the right offering them other than bigotry?"; "They're voting on social issues to the end of oppressing other people." (When asked if they were really suggesting that 17 MILLION people have been haplessly "seduced" by racist rhetoric): "Does that surprise you in the slightest? Have you heard of Nazi Germany?"
This one I particularly enjoyed: "A lot of people are a) not foreigners and not living in areas where they have the opportunity to be around a lot of them, and hence much more likely to be influenced by information from the Sun and the Daily Mail and b) suffering from economic oppression that they want a solution to. And that means the likes of Nigel Farage is going to be tapping into something in them that he isn't in me. Not because I'm gifted or special or above the masses, just because I'm not vulnerable in that particular way." That one was a classic from start to finish.
To point b) "Is it rich to voice your dissatisfaction on social media? You're saying that young people are naive, apathetic, and whiney?"; "Well, as I'm sure you're well aware Ian, I think discussing politics online, including protesting decisions and policies and ideologies, is perfectly valid and actually quite important"; "Honestly, I think the biggest problem is generational - there's just a generation of people who don't want change and don't want to get with the programme. Our generation is overwhelmingly more left wing"; "I'm sure people saw civil rights advocates as naive and gay activists as naive. All we can do in those positions is roll our eyes and wait for the bigots to start dying out and being outnumbered. Which is what does, and what will happen."
At which point I started getting tired. So when asked again "Are you saying xenophobia isn't a significant factor for working class people becoming right wing?", I replied that "I'm saying I think it's being blown way out of proportion, yes. Because the left would rather characterise it as such than look at its own failings", to which the reply was (and this is another beezer) "Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but then I guess you don't experience xenophobia so that might limit your perspective somewhat". By now I'm facepalming furiously, given my interlocutor is a white English lass from Cambridge.
Also, Bernie Sanders would have won by a landslide if he'd had more of a head start.
Kenny, you and me both know you're not a racist. You just see the world in a way that admits of a) other realities than your own, b) the fallibility of your own judgment, and c) that sometimes in life you have to make decisions that you don't feel unassailably right in making.
In other words, you're not a racist - you're a grown-up.
(And simply by saying this, in today's creeping reality, I open myself up to the charge of oppressing the young.)
(I am a grumpy old fogey though.)
(having never met one in my life 
)
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