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They aren’t just conformists, in many cases they’re the old church ladies telling you anything you find fun is somehow wrong. You can’t enjoy foreign food, clothing, or music. You can’t like your own either, you can’t like traditionally masculine things, or traditional things in general. It’s just a narrow rather boring and uninteresting slice of things that democrats think are okay to like unironically.
There's also just a lot of hypocrisy. I can't know for sure but I suspect things would be better if the same people wagging their finger didn't support their favored groups being assholes all the time in the exact ways they attack. The system might have at least been stable without that.
It's less a church lady enforcing the rules with an iron fist on everyone and more that teacher who clearly has a favorite and is doing such a bad job hiding it that they've emboldened their worst instincts.
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Democrats don't want people to enjoy foreign food? Any time I go to DC all I get is swamped with claims that the locals (all Dems) know the best Ethiopian place in the world (of course all these places inevitably suck because they pick them based on it being a unique choice rather than good).
No no.
There is something I think that is adjacent to what you are talking about which is cultural appropriation, which is frowned upon. But that is basically me, a white guy, starting an Ethiopian food restaurant that is actually good and making profits from it. That is what would be frowned upon.
Calling them old church ladies is pretty unkind to old church ladies. My grandma is an old church lady. She frowns upon premarital sex and excessive drinking. I have found no real evidence that either of those activities are good in the long term. A progressive scold, from my perspective, is a sort of double negative. They frown upon scorning bad things, but rarely have strong opinions on what is actually good. An example is that they might be fit themselves, but are not open to criticizing fat people for being fat. Or they don't steal from retail establishments, but think criminal prosecution of retail theft is wrong.
I said “church lady” in the sense of the 1990s Dana Carvey sketch. The idea being basically “you can’t enjoy things normal people like, because Satan.” And that’s kind of the read I get on a lot of Woke is exactly that — everything normal people like or believe in is flawed, wrong, sinful, and “good people” don’t do those things.
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