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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 20, 2025

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And they're all still living in The Matrix. They all believe that we can go back to that perfect little period when ole Ronny was in the whitehouse and everyone was getting rich and you could come home to a steak dinner with the little lady - who, of course, had a degree from Ratcliffe and was totally smart and independent but just so happened to truly want to be a stay at home mom.

LOL, this period didn't exist. The Reagan era was also the era of latchkey kids (so called because they came home from school and let themselves in, because both parents were working). Politically, Reagan was hated by the good people of the media almost as much as Trump is.

(BTW, if you mean the former Harvard-associated women's college, it's Radcliffe. Ratcliffe is the CIA director and doesn't give degrees, at least not degrees you're allowed to talk about)

But while French is all the c-words anyone ever called him, the reaction French has is shared across wide swathes of the political spectrum. If you suggest a problem might be caused by women, or something about women, or that the solution may involve restricting women in some way or even allowing them less power over men, it's just automatically rejected. Problems where something like that is the actual solution simply cannot be solved because of this.

We're already at a point though where Boomers and GenX-ers are understandably nostalgic for the age of latchkey kids, because kids at least went outside together and were physically active instead of being phone addicts rotting their own brains in isolation.

(BTW, if you mean the former Harvard-associated women's college, it's Radcliffe. Ratcliffe is the CIA director and doesn't give degrees, at least not degrees you're allowed to talk about)

Thanks. Fixed.

LOL, this period didn't exist.

Exactly! But there is a weird BoomerCon rose-colored-glasses rembrance of the 1980s nonetheless.

I mean, compared to the 1970s, the post-1982 period was pretty damned good. Not just economically, but no major wars either. But a tradcon paradise it was not.

The eighties were the last period when tradcons believed that our ways could take over society again in the near future. We happened to be wrong, but that's why we look back on it nostalgically.

Exactly! But there is a weird BoomerCon rose-colored-glasses rembrance of the 1980s nonetheless.

Based on the boomercon rose-tinted remembrance of the 80s and the boomerlib ability to trace every modern ill to something Reagan did (military spending and mental health funding for the two most common, but for a way out of left field example, my boomer father recently complained that all these airport troubles really started with Reagan breaking the Air Traffic Controller Union), there is apparently a point in one's mid-30s-to-mid-40s where the mind decides that's where all modern good/bad things stem from. For the boomers, all modern domestic issues can be traced to Reagan (international diplomacy is still Hitler-centered). It's going to be fascinating to see where millennials end up fixated when they reach their 70s. Will it be Obama or Trump?

Either Thatcher or Blair, depending on political affiliation.

It's going to be fascinating to see where millennials end up fixated when they reach their 70s. Will it be Obama or Trump?

Maybe both will fade and the true Millennial antichrist will be Bush II; 9/11 and the GFC both happened on his watch, after all.

People really do underestimate the GFC right now. I think in a just world it will be remembered much more prominently 60 years from now than it is today. Will this happen, I don't know, but it really is staggering to me the sheer number of people who graduated in that era and just...never found a real job and have been in a nearly 20 year state (at this point) of constantly applying for jobs they are technically qualified for and being rejected, while desperately clinging to whatever low paid sales/admin/service job they can swing.

People really do underestimate the GFC right now.

In my corner of the world (government work), I think it's because it didn't impact boomers and older Xers much. They didn't get raises for a few years and their home lost value for a while, but that's about it. They weren't looking for work or getting cut due to a federal sequester (that hit the most recent hires, not the guys who'd been around forever) or going way upside-down on an ARM because of an inflated market, etc. They kept getting paid, kept their houses, and kept working their way towards platinum pensions (which got reformed during the GFC to the detriment of new hires, but not towards people already in the system).

It's been close to a decade now, but I remember some higher-ups at work talking about some applicants and they were commenting negatively on all the employment gaps many had from 2007-2014ish. It literally did not occur to them how awful the legal job market was during those years and that even good candidates might have some gaps.

"In the beginning, the Universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."

Admittedly those certainly didn't help; the Bush administration was fairly disastrous.

Will it be Obama or Trump?

Why not both? It seems boomerlibs do blame everything on Reagan, but boomercons like to blame Carter and/or "the hippies" similarly ("JFK started the closings of asylums, and the ACLU was for it"). Two screens and all that.