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What did the Reds do in the 1980’s? Is this the war on drugs or banning some swearing? I guess we had LATAM commie death squads but that seemed like both sides were down.
Moral Majority. I'd go so far as to say a lot of the anti-conservative/anti-religious reaction today by the progressives is due to generational trauma inflicted by overzealous authoritarianism by the moral majority. Notice how most of it is not economic leftism but cultural leftism, the moral majority was authoritarian cultural rightism.
The moral majority also made a lot of people from Boomers to Millennials, incapable of even conceiving of the left as authoritarian. Gen Z having never experienced it seems a lot more comfortable pushing back against woke excess.
I wonder if its incapability or if has just created such a psychological scar that they perpetually view themselves as the underdog. A lot of ink has been spilled on the weird prog belief, that even as they control much of the establishment, they still genuinely see themselves as the underdog fighting the system. Part of that is undoubtedly the revolutionary marxism, but I wonder how much of it is scarring from the moral majority?
Yeah I predict Gen Z having experienced a decade+ of Leftwing Authoritarianism will swing rightward in the cultural direction while also being leftwing/populist in the economic direction as a direct consequence of their upbringing.
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I guess I agree with the policies they want. But do you actually think they are the same as what we saw 2014-2024? Sure they did politics. And I could see how someone would find them annoying. But SPLC would basically ban you from the internet, maybe take away your job. Annoying family value rallies just doesn’t seem like the same thing.
I mean the internet didn't exist in the 70s and 80s. Considering the Moral Majority engaged in cancel culture at a similar levels as the Woke/SJW, I imagine, if it did exist the Moral Majority would have wasted no time in cancelling you on the internet. The Moral Majority did try to take away your job...
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The Right passed actual laws in the 70s and 80s that banned gay people from teaching in public schools, or even someone advocating gay rights in public outside of school contexts. And there were the FCC crackdowns on indecent content, e.g. Howard Stern, the Helms Amendment.
There was also quite the panic around video games, movies, music, and board games, though that was admittedly bipartisan. I remember one teacher I had freaking out because I was reading one of those choose your own adventure books, which she associated with Dungeons and Dragons for some reason.
Did you ever feel like your fellow Americans hated you? Maybe I’m being histrionic but I guess 2016-2024 I just need knew fellow Americans were capable of doing things they did to me then. Like evil. The America I grew up with was united. Muslims hit us and we would all go kill them together. But 2016-2024 we were enemies with each other. It’s like losing my innocent. A civil war I never saw coming. And it honestly feels like we almost lost and America was over.
I'm not american, but welcome to how atheists (and gays, and so on) felt under the moral-majority-style religious right. It was the same kind of split were the moderate religious right was publicly saying not believing was fine, but they were actively politically allying (and thus empowering) a more rabid wing that would regularly go after people who do something that goes against their beliefs. Like, it's fine to be an atheist, as long as you don't do anything that might offend random christian activists.
To be fair, the woke actually still feels worse to me since it has more internal institutional backing inside academia, but there definitely is some symmetry here.
Your argument would be stronger if you focused on gays instead of atheists. I have no recollection of atheists facing any discrimination. I can 100% understand they thought the moral majority people were annoying but there are not any big everyday life frictions.
Gay potentially. But they did successfully lobby to keep gay bath houses open, during the AIDS pandemic. So they were not lacking political power.
I am also moral majority. Don’t be gay. It’s bad for you. Just find a nice wife.
You don't need to save me or anyone else, we don't want you to. Just live your own life. Other people being gay does not affect you.
I can imagine to an actual gay person hearing comments like that feels a lot like your fellow Americans hating you.
This argument is a good one right up until people start blaming me for the negative consequences of your personal choices.
It seems to me that Liberalism is going away and is unlikely to return for the forseeable future.
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To be fair to my argument. They actually did believe creating a moral society was good for the gays. I still believe that 1980’s culture was better for the gays than 2020.
In one area it seems most certain to me is with respect to children. Would Sam Altman be happier in the closet sneaking off for gay sex twice a month but with a loving wife raising his children or with the motherless child from a surrogate. To me it’s fairly obvious the former is better for him.
And obviously the children are effected.
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Yeah, you're really not helping my impression here. Progressives literally say 100% the same. It's fine to be a conservative religious, as long as you're like one of the good ones in their tv shows who lives a conservative lifestyle and is spiritual in some undefined way, but who doesn't actually espouse any conservative values nor seems to have strong specific religious convictions, either. And certainly doesn't "spread hate" about trans people, or "threatens reproductive rights" or whatever.
It's true in a sense, you can mostly live life just fine as a religious conservative as long as you don't trigger random progressive activists.
I think at this point we can all agree if you lose a culture war - you mostly can not just go live your life. Not in 2020.
I do think it’s an interesting question whether you a gay could just live their life in 1980. Probably not in pro sports. Elite investment banker you were probably mostly fine.
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I was more late 90s and 2000s, and the closest I got to feeling hated was around the Iraq War, when I was vocally anti-war in a time when everyone supported it, in what we would now call a red state (back then, the blue-vs-red framing barely existed).
I would say I feel more hated now than I did then; my politics are the same, but my visible identities create negative reactions (and my invisible ones--like being bi--I don't advertise).
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