But there are dozens of middle aged bastards transitioning towards a career of being a spiteful right-wing knobhead. Is this a new development or have I just not really noticed before?
I think it is a well recognised phenomenon. I remember seeing jokes at uni about how liberal law students will have fully transitioned to "hanging's too good for 'em" right-wingers by the time they make it to being a judge.
There was a guy I used to play 5-a-side with in the UK. I played in that team for more than ten years and when I joined there was much amusement as this guy's face was actually in the crowd pic in one of the papers behind a group of May Day protesters trying to smash the windows of (say) HSBC. A few years later I remember someone saying "Waz, will you be going on the May Day march this year?" and he said "Fuck no, I got money in that bank now, if they got me in a pic this year I would be on the other side protecting the windows":
This idea of increasing prosperity is also nodded to in the "secret final verse of Raise the Red Flag"
The working class can kiss my arse
I got the foreman's job at last.
You can tell old Joe I'm off the dole
He can stick his Red Flag up his 'ole!.
Even the title of this thread assumes (however jokingly) that there is a recognised path from left to right.
And for me it makes sense that many travel that way cos I think there are two separate things that can potentially push one in that direction...
Prosperity - some people grow in wealth as they get older, move through their chosen career path etc and while many don't change their politics, I'm sure there are some who reveal that their support for the underdog was conditional on their being the underdog rather than any moral conviction about fairness. I suppose that that is what the right mean by "politics of envy" the idea of people who support redistribution entirely cynically as they, having less than most, will be redistributed to rather than from.
Conservatism - some people just become set in their ways as they get older. Totally different to getting richer but can have a similar effect.