It's fun to slag on teenage boys but IMO they're not so much ideologically right-wing as they are desperate for the approval and mentorship of older dudes a lot of the time, and we are letting them down on that score (either by trying to indoctrinate them or not interacting with them at all).
People who believe themselves to be driven by consistent ideology wrongly believe 1) that others are driven by consistent ideology and 2) that they themselves are driven by consistent ideology.
Ideology is for morons, having a malleable personal philosophy and universal empathy is the way to go. I eventually realized the reason I thrived while some of my peers failed is because I had very good (non-ideological) male role models. It makes me lucky, not better.
Yup, people want easy answers, even better if you can reduce everything to a binary good/bad. Punish the sinners. I think a lot of this drives from people filling the hole left where church would have fit in the past (especially in the US). Community & comprehensible structure.
Yeah, I’ve said before, I completely understand why people have drifted from religion and mistrust religious institutions but it also feels undeniable that it has left a gaping hole in our culture.