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Everyone who is smart see's which way the winds are blowing and it isn't in the direction of "more liberal". The US is looking at a cultural reset back into th

Everyone who is smart see's which way the winds are blowing and it isn't in the direction of "more liberal". The US is looking at a cultural reset back into the mid to mid-late 20th century.

morkalork 2y ago
Perhaps a smidgen earlier, to the gilded age
SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
Is the 30's "mid-century"?
- voidfunc 2y ago
  I dont think we're heading for the 30's and arguably the 1910-40s were probably more progressive than the mid-century both artistically and culturally compared to their preceding years. I think a lot of people don't remember how conservative the US was between the 50s and 90s. A lot of the stuff we consider acceptable or OK today was really not tolerated at all in public. See, for example, LGBTQ acceptance, minorities and women in positions of power, welfare state etc.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    1910-40s is peak Jim Crow, though.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
malermeister 2y ago
[dead]
mywittyname 2y ago
I wouldn't call it a cultural reset. It's more of a revolution. We've never known a country where the wealthy had this much capability. Owning just one of Facebook, Amazon, Palantir, X, etc makes a person incredibly powerful, but the fact that they've all seemingly combined forces makes me think we are in for an era that makes Cyberpunk novels look like a Disney flick.
- yoyohello13 2y ago
  Seeing as many of them site dystopian sci-fi novels as their inspiration you're probably not far off.
- r00fus 2y ago
  I mean, in an Oligarchy, you need powerful oligarchs. We no longer have any semblance of being a democracy, possible haven't for a while.
- tayo42 2y ago
  In a way it's only power that we're giving them. Stop using Facebook, Twitter, stop buying teslas and shopping on Amazon and these people become slowly irrelevant when the companies do bad at earnings
alpha_squared 2y ago
This feels a little off. I think those who stand to financially benefit the most are taking advantage of the opportunity to do so while they can. Getting more specific, I don't buy the argument that we're getting more conservative. Instead, I'm inclined to think that a narrow election victory will lead to extreme measures that will create a significant backlash in the coming years. If you're in a position to exploit a system with little repercussions for four years and all it costs is a little bit of dignity and some public image, most corporate leaders would take that opportunity for the money, prestige, power, etc. I'm willing to bet sizeable amounts of money that most voters do not support rolling back employee protections, or removing the debt ceiling, or buying/bullying [insert random country], or any of the other wildly regressionist statements thrown around by un/elected folks. Conflating the complexities involved in how a person votes with a general mandate for one specific reason people vote is not a good idea. Extrapolate that to over 100 million voters as some unified stance and it starts to feel like propaganda.
- parasense 2y ago
  > Getting more specific, I don't buy the argument that we're getting more conservative. Agreed. I'm pretty sure normal folks never actually shifted left, not as much as the far-left ideology people imagined. Folks would use any plausible excuse to end the insanity progressive politics has caused. Mind you the reverse is also true of ultra conservative politics. The world is elastic in this sense, and we see corrections from time to time.
  - blsapologist42 2y ago
    The majority of people are in the center. That's kind of how distributions work.
- yodsanklai 2y ago
  > I'm willing to bet sizeable amounts of money that most voters do not support rolling back employee protections People often vote against their interests. They may not understand that alternatives are possible or even exist, and they can be brainwashed into thinking the other candidate is dangerous and so on... Also, the decline in quality of education isn't helping. So I don't know if there will be a backlash. Even worse, as a European, I'm afraid Musk's propaganda crosses the Atlantic and that we'll get the same fate and will vote to give up our social benefits.
asveikau 2y ago
I think this is actually a misread of long term trends. Not sure when it will be, but there will be backlash to the reset. It reminds me like when crime rose in 2020 and 2021. It had been falling for something like 25 years. Then it was rising briefly, because of COVID. Many people treated this as a new normal, and a reason to make lasting and dramatic political changes. Then crime fell again in 2023 and 2024, without those substantive changes. The truth is that the short term trend didn't really have to do with criminal justice policy.
gordon_freeman 2y ago
Yes. Reminds me of this conversation in Shogun: Yabushige: “How does it feel to shape the wind to your will?” Toranaga: “I don’t control the wind. I only study it.”
varjag 2y ago
I know people love to describe future events in terms of past events but am afraid America is heading in a direction entirely orthogonal to its history.
- ineedaj0b 2y ago
  i read a lot of history especially US, i don't think so at all. the reawakening? prohibition? you should definitely see the Reagan admin as a parallel
  - varjag 2y ago
    There are so many striking dissimilarities with Reagan admin on all but a handful policy directions that it can't serve as a parallel.
- qgin 2y ago
  Agreed, if you could show Americans from the 1950s what’s going on today with MAGA etc, I imagine most of it would consider it very alien.
  - hindsightbias 2y ago
    Senator McCarthy/Roy Cohn and the John Birch Society might like a word. Just replace commie with liberal/progressive/marxist/socialist. Roy Cohn was Don's business mentor.
bee_rider 2y ago
Freedom of speech is a liberal concept, the application of “liberal” as a derogatory term for one side of the political spectrum was a propaganda move. Don’t give in to it. The current pivot, I think, is mostly that culture warriors have managed to describe their interest in liberal terms (freedom of speech), and social media companies are buying it (gets them out of moderation duty and lets them reduce headcount). These are ad delivery networks that want to do the bare minimum required to avoid scaring people away, they’ve discovered that the bare minimum can go lower. They don’t have any principles, so why would they do anything else? They are exploring downwards in terms of effort, eventually they’ll bounce off the floor.
- YetAnotherNick 2y ago
  Exactly, and expecting every position needs to be clubbed together as left or right wing is also a big issue. eg I am politically liberal on most of the issues, but if I mention one thing for which I am not on their camp I suddenly become far right.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    Really kinda depends on what that one thing is though don't you think.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      Yeah, we’re being abstract, but it is a sort of important detail, haha.
    - spacemadness 2y ago
      Every time I see someone mention this sort of enlightened centrism online, that everyone assumes they’re far right all of a sudden for that one unmentionable idea they had, they always just leave it at “trust me bro.”
- int_19h 2y ago
  Actual liberals aren't really a prominent political force at this point. The culture war is between conservatives and progressives, and, contrary to popular opinion, the latter is not synonymous with liberalism - indeed, on some issues (freedom of speech being a prominent one) they are in opposition.
misiti3780 2y ago
this is the correct answer.
nateglims 2y ago
In terms of a cultural moment it feels like the 80s. Millions of his voters weren’t ideological conservatives but didn’t fully disagree and like the strength Reagan projected after the turmoil of the mid 60s through the 70s. They abandoned the movement during bush senior and the Clinton years.
- blsapologist42 2y ago
  The 80s were a reaction to the "liberal" 70s. It's just the natural cycle of history, the majority of people are in the center so when culture shifts too far to one side they start pushing it back.
  - nateglims 2y ago
    There’s definitely an element of rubber banding and I think this time some of it is built up resentment about how liberals dominated big cultural institutions like TV and movies. That said I don’t think everyone who voted for trump cares about this, but the malaise of the Biden presidency was a powerful proximate factor
  - AbstractH24 2y ago
    Sounds like the increase in the amount of information people have access to and the speed of the news cycle, the speed at which the pendulum swings may just be accelerating.
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
> Everyone who is smart see's which way the winds are blowing and it isn't in the direction of "more liberal". Liberals are most fired up when conservatives like Trump are in office. Where I am, I expect to see more local elections fall to far lefties, I expect more BLM-like protests (which really could only have occurred under Trump), more activism and not less. It is a bit sad because I thought we were making some progress like electing moderates (who I really prefer and think are better for the community) rather than far lefties (who really can only get elected when someone like Trump is in charge). > The US is looking at a cultural reset back into the mid to mid-late 20th century. No, things are way too conservative now for that. We haven't had a politician as liberal as Ronald Reagan since Bill Clinton, America definitely lurched right since after the 1990s.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
danny_codes 2y ago
What period are you referring to? 1930-1980 were marked by much higher levels of taxation and wealth redistribution than we have today. 1980-Present are the neo-liberal experiment resulting in massive income inequality.
- AbstractH24 2y ago
  When is your baseline for when equality was ideal? Was the 19th century a time of utopian equality?

Everyone who is smart see's which way the winds are blowing and it isn't in the direction of "more liberal". The US is looking at a cultural reset back into the mid to mid-late 20th century.

morkalork 2y ago

Perhaps a smidgen earlier, to the gilded age

SketchySeaBeast 2y ago

Is the 30's "mid-century"?

voidfunc 2y ago
I dont think we're heading for the 30's and arguably the 1910-40s were probably more progressive than the mid-century both artistically and culturally compared to their preceding years. I think a lot of people don't remember how conservative the US was between the 50s and 90s. A lot of the stuff we consider acceptable or OK today was really not tolerated at all in public. See, for example, LGBTQ acceptance, minorities and women in positions of power, welfare state etc.
- int_19h 2y ago
  1910-40s is peak Jim Crow, though.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

malermeister 2y ago

[dead]

mywittyname 2y ago

I wouldn't call it a cultural reset. It's more of a revolution. We've never known a country where the wealthy had this much capability. Owning just one of Facebook, Amazon, Palantir, X, etc makes a person incredibly powerful, but the fact that they've all seemingly combined forces makes me think we are in for an era that makes Cyberpunk novels look like a Disney flick.

yoyohello13 2y ago
Seeing as many of them site dystopian sci-fi novels as their inspiration you're probably not far off.
r00fus 2y ago
I mean, in an Oligarchy, you need powerful oligarchs. We no longer have any semblance of being a democracy, possible haven't for a while.
tayo42 2y ago
In a way it's only power that we're giving them. Stop using Facebook, Twitter, stop buying teslas and shopping on Amazon and these people become slowly irrelevant when the companies do bad at earnings

alpha_squared 2y ago

This feels a little off. I think those who stand to financially benefit the most are taking advantage of the opportunity to do so while they can. Getting more specific, I don't buy the argument that we're getting more conservative. Instead, I'm inclined to think that a narrow election victory will lead to extreme measures that will create a significant backlash in the coming years. If you're in a position to exploit a system with little repercussions for four years and all it costs is a little bit of dignity and some public image, most corporate leaders would take that opportunity for the money, prestige, power, etc. I'm willing to bet sizeable amounts of money that most voters do not support rolling back employee protections, or removing the debt ceiling, or buying/bullying [insert random country], or any of the other wildly regressionist statements thrown around by un/elected folks. Conflating the complexities involved in how a person votes with a general mandate for one specific reason people vote is not a good idea. Extrapolate that to over 100 million voters as some unified stance and it starts to feel like propaganda.

parasense 2y ago
> Getting more specific, I don't buy the argument that we're getting more conservative. Agreed. I'm pretty sure normal folks never actually shifted left, not as much as the far-left ideology people imagined. Folks would use any plausible excuse to end the insanity progressive politics has caused. Mind you the reverse is also true of ultra conservative politics. The world is elastic in this sense, and we see corrections from time to time.
- blsapologist42 2y ago
  The majority of people are in the center. That's kind of how distributions work.
yodsanklai 2y ago
> I'm willing to bet sizeable amounts of money that most voters do not support rolling back employee protections People often vote against their interests. They may not understand that alternatives are possible or even exist, and they can be brainwashed into thinking the other candidate is dangerous and so on... Also, the decline in quality of education isn't helping. So I don't know if there will be a backlash. Even worse, as a European, I'm afraid Musk's propaganda crosses the Atlantic and that we'll get the same fate and will vote to give up our social benefits.

asveikau 2y ago

I think this is actually a misread of long term trends. Not sure when it will be, but there will be backlash to the reset. It reminds me like when crime rose in 2020 and 2021. It had been falling for something like 25 years. Then it was rising briefly, because of COVID. Many people treated this as a new normal, and a reason to make lasting and dramatic political changes. Then crime fell again in 2023 and 2024, without those substantive changes. The truth is that the short term trend didn't really have to do with criminal justice policy.

gordon_freeman 2y ago

Yes. Reminds me of this conversation in Shogun: Yabushige: “How does it feel to shape the wind to your will?” Toranaga: “I don’t control the wind. I only study it.”

varjag 2y ago

I know people love to describe future events in terms of past events but am afraid America is heading in a direction entirely orthogonal to its history.

ineedaj0b 2y ago
i read a lot of history especially US, i don't think so at all. the reawakening? prohibition? you should definitely see the Reagan admin as a parallel
- varjag 2y ago
  There are so many striking dissimilarities with Reagan admin on all but a handful policy directions that it can't serve as a parallel.
qgin 2y ago
Agreed, if you could show Americans from the 1950s what’s going on today with MAGA etc, I imagine most of it would consider it very alien.
- hindsightbias 2y ago
  Senator McCarthy/Roy Cohn and the John Birch Society might like a word. Just replace commie with liberal/progressive/marxist/socialist. Roy Cohn was Don's business mentor.

bee_rider 2y ago

Freedom of speech is a liberal concept, the application of “liberal” as a derogatory term for one side of the political spectrum was a propaganda move. Don’t give in to it. The current pivot, I think, is mostly that culture warriors have managed to describe their interest in liberal terms (freedom of speech), and social media companies are buying it (gets them out of moderation duty and lets them reduce headcount). These are ad delivery networks that want to do the bare minimum required to avoid scaring people away, they’ve discovered that the bare minimum can go lower. They don’t have any principles, so why would they do anything else? They are exploring downwards in terms of effort, eventually they’ll bounce off the floor.

YetAnotherNick 2y ago
Exactly, and expecting every position needs to be clubbed together as left or right wing is also a big issue. eg I am politically liberal on most of the issues, but if I mention one thing for which I am not on their camp I suddenly become far right.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  Really kinda depends on what that one thing is though don't you think.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Yeah, we’re being abstract, but it is a sort of important detail, haha.
  - spacemadness 2y ago
    Every time I see someone mention this sort of enlightened centrism online, that everyone assumes they’re far right all of a sudden for that one unmentionable idea they had, they always just leave it at “trust me bro.”
int_19h 2y ago
Actual liberals aren't really a prominent political force at this point. The culture war is between conservatives and progressives, and, contrary to popular opinion, the latter is not synonymous with liberalism - indeed, on some issues (freedom of speech being a prominent one) they are in opposition.

misiti3780 2y ago

this is the correct answer.

nateglims 2y ago

In terms of a cultural moment it feels like the 80s. Millions of his voters weren’t ideological conservatives but didn’t fully disagree and like the strength Reagan projected after the turmoil of the mid 60s through the 70s. They abandoned the movement during bush senior and the Clinton years.

blsapologist42 2y ago
The 80s were a reaction to the "liberal" 70s. It's just the natural cycle of history, the majority of people are in the center so when culture shifts too far to one side they start pushing it back.
- nateglims 2y ago
  There’s definitely an element of rubber banding and I think this time some of it is built up resentment about how liberals dominated big cultural institutions like TV and movies. That said I don’t think everyone who voted for trump cares about this, but the malaise of the Biden presidency was a powerful proximate factor
- AbstractH24 2y ago
  Sounds like the increase in the amount of information people have access to and the speed of the news cycle, the speed at which the pendulum swings may just be accelerating.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago

> Everyone who is smart see's which way the winds are blowing and it isn't in the direction of "more liberal". Liberals are most fired up when conservatives like Trump are in office. Where I am, I expect to see more local elections fall to far lefties, I expect more BLM-like protests (which really could only have occurred under Trump), more activism and not less. It is a bit sad because I thought we were making some progress like electing moderates (who I really prefer and think are better for the community) rather than far lefties (who really can only get elected when someone like Trump is in charge). > The US is looking at a cultural reset back into the mid to mid-late 20th century. No, things are way too conservative now for that. We haven't had a politician as liberal as Ronald Reagan since Bill Clinton, America definitely lurched right since after the 1990s.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

danny_codes 2y ago

What period are you referring to? 1930-1980 were marked by much higher levels of taxation and wealth redistribution than we have today. 1980-Present are the neo-liberal experiment resulting in massive income inequality.

AbstractH24 2y ago
When is your baseline for when equality was ideal? Was the 19th century a time of utopian equality?