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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17621 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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Two Israeli embassy staff were shot dead late yesterday night as they were walking just outside the Capitol Jewish Museum. The Capitol Police have identified the suspect as one Elias Rodriguez of Chicago. Reportedly, Rodriguez shouted “Free Palestine” as he executed the couple, who were engaged to be married.

I have been meaning to write a “Civil War vibe-check” top-level post. My intuition was that the danger of such a nightmare scenario was receding, having peaked twice, with the mass-shooting at the Congressional baseball team practice game, and the George Floyd Riot/January Sixth Riot forming a stockbroker’s double blow-off top before a consistent decline in risk.

Recently multiple events have made me question this. The Zizian cult killings, the suicide bombing in Palm Springs over the weekend, and now this, make me feel like something is perhaps coming. Maybe not a full Syrian Civil War, but at least another Days of Rage similar to the period in the 1970s after the great wave broke and began to recede. I would appreciate hearing anyone’s thoughts.

Maybe not a full Syrian Civil War, but at least another Days of Rage similar to the period in the 1970s after the great wave broke and began to recede. I would appreciate hearing anyone’s thoughts.

I find myself quoting Noah Smith a lot recently. He's written about the main thesis in the book Days of Rage that the wave of terrorism of the 1970s was due to evaporative cooling. After the huge social changes in the 1960s, the more moderate activists got on with their normal lives, leaving only the most radical remaining, who in turn radicalised eachother.

Now that the Great Awokening is in decline, the normies are quietly removing the pronouns from their email signatures and taking down their Pride flags, while the crazier fringe are shooting Israeli diplomats and bombing IVF clinics.

the more moderate activists got on with their normal lives, leaving only the most radical remaining, who in turn radicalised eachother.

That probably also explains much of the political unrest that took place in the young Weimar Republic between 1919 and 1923 or so.

Now that the Great Awokening is in decline, the normies are quietly removing the pronouns from their email signatures and taking down their Pride flags

It's probably more accurate to say that it was successfully completed. The youths that were indoctrinated and acculturated during the awokening are irreversibly woke at this point. Those who stopped virtue-signalling are the older ones who haven't received such indoctrination.

It's always hard to say who is irreversibly committed to an ideology and who isn't. Many religious people were atheists when younger. Many atheists were hardcore religious when younger. And it's easy to, for example, find conservatives who were hardcore communists earlier in life. David Horowitz is a famous example.

The youths that were indoctrinated and acculturated during the awokening are irreversibly woke at this point.

Didn't Gen Z overwhelmingly vote for Trump?

Nope: Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 51% supported Harris while 47% supported Trump. Gen Z men did go 55% for Trump though. Women went 58% for Harris. That is closer than it was in 2020 however but still not a majority for Trump in Gen Z, let alone overwhelming.

Though I don't think that would suggest they are indoctrinated into wokeness either to be fair. A basically 50/50 split wouldn't support that (or at least that things like the economy can override whatever woke feelings there are).

IIRC that is a significantly higher percentage of the youth vote than most Republicans get, which is probably why @FtttG thought that.

42% of gen z women voted Trump...? o_O

I think all those Kamala ads hammering that “your vote is private! Your abusive MAGA husband will never find out!” may have backfired by reminding women that they could be militantly anti-Trump on social media and around their friends, but still pull the lever for him in the voting booth.

There's one of those on a bollard at the local McDonald's and I always wonder about the thought process behind it.

I also thought everyone knew we have secret ballots but maybe with the increase in mail-in voting they forgot.

Vastly more henpecked husbands secretly voted trump than vice versa.

Yup and 45% of women overall, up from 42% in 2020 and 41% in 2016. The differences are often over-estimated I think. It's only a few percent across the board.

That feels similar to the difference between pro-life and pro-choice women, which I feel is likewise over-estimated, and very probably for similar reasons.

I wouldn't be surprised if it depends a lot on how you define those terms. If we use maximalist definitions i.e. no abortion even in cases of rape/danger to the mothers life, or abortion being legal up to birth, the number of women who support either position is probably both similar and quite low, with most people's views falling somewhere between the two.

The youths that were indoctrinated and acculturated during the awokening are irreversibly woke at this point. Those who stopped virtue-signalling are the older ones who haven't received such indoctrination.

I'm not so sure. I've heard more than one young woman who came of age at the height of it all use the phrase 'man in a dress' (as opposed to 'transwoman') which was previously only used by stubborn conservatives like me.

I can't find it now, but I read a survey showing that typical woke attitudes (innate white racial guilt, the belief that sexism is all-encompassing etc) were never actually popular with the majority, they were only popular with a very loud minority that was allowed to police the overton window. Now that has broken down, it feels like people are more willing to say what they always thought now, and that includes young people.

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