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I'm not sure it was ever accurate for people who weren't already conservative.

It makes a lot more sense that, as you get older, you stop growing and learning, so as society progresses, your formerly progressive views become commonplace and eventually anachronistic.

(That's 100% what happened to my mother, who was a hippie, literally flowers in her hair, and now "just doesn't really get the whole trans thing")

And, if a person was progressive, but had some secret conservative or regressive values, those values come into sharper relief when their other views become commonplace -- and, as you get older, you're less interested in hiding your flaws and/or shameful values, so they come out more.

(That's what happened with my dad, he was in folk music groups in the 70s and then became a doctor and didn't like the idea of poor people getting some of his money (even though it was those same programs that kept his mother afloat after his father didn't come back from Korea).)

The funny part is that conservatism has been on the losing of human progress for thousands of years. Over and over and over again, the same political, social and economic patterns play out. Something disruptive happens, conservatives recoil from it, progressives embrace it, conservatives eventually get pulled along kicking and screaming, often violently.

I just don't understand how people can read even a little bit of history and not see that conservatism is doomed to lose every battle it fights until it finally destroys everything for good.