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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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The "vibe shift" is a product of the center-left having won political power while feeling that it could have won more power if it weren't for the young left going all in on "defund the police" and other woke excesses. During Trump's presidency, the dem base was totally addicted to a constant stream of outrage over whatever Trump did that day. In those conditions, it's hard to get anyone on the left to care about the excesses of wokeness because Trump did something worse in their minds every day. Now he's out of the picture, people are kind of looking back on what happened during the summer of 2020 and cringing, and the center left has an opportunity to squash some of the grifters and radicals.

This is a backlash led by center left so they're not going to repeal most of the gains of "wokeness", they're still going to be broadly pro-trans and concerned about gender and racial disparities in a way that most of this site finds objectionable. But they're going to try to push back on the stupid stuff that hurts them, like trans activists demanding everyone boycott a nostalgic video game with positive trans representation because JKR said stuff they don't like.