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When you openly and blatantly state your intent to convert people's children to an ideologically driven belief system backed by the power of the state, then no conversation is possible. Arguably it never started.
"We don't have to convince YOU of anything, we'll just teach your kids to hate your beliefs and we may convince a few of them to undergo invasive surgery to alter their very personal identity, against YOUR wishes."
Explain to me how there's any room for negotiation when such a position has been moved to the forefront of one side's platform?
Thats the default though. 60 years ago kids were being indoctrinated into an ideological system with the backing of the state, whether their parents liked it or not. And 40 years ago, and 20 years ago.
Arguably the issue with America right now is not that kids are being indoctrinated but that they are not all being indoctrinated the same way. Thats how you get a cohesive polity. Too many states, too many systems. Call it a civic religion, a shared mythos or whatever. The point is what you are complaining about is not new, every kid is getting indoctrinated into something.
The fight is over what. But the sholip on not having kids indoctrinated at all sailed a long time ago. But
60 years ago, our society was much more homogeneous than it is now. The social systems in contention now weren't set up to create that homogeneity, they were set up because the homogeneity allowed the public at large to see value in systems and structures that achieved common, (that is to say homogeneous) goals.
Now we are heterogenous, and the systems and structures become a weapon to fight over, in the endlessly spiraling series of escalations. You're describing it as though that fight was the norm previously, only it really, really wasn't. There would be no public school system if the population that established it had suffered the level of values-conflict we currently endure. Likely there would have been no nation either.
I think you're wrong. This homogeneity is a historical illusion. 60 years ago you had the civil rights era. Was that because everyone thought and was treated the same?
60 years before that it was womens suffrage you were divided over. With differing feelings and laws in different states.
60 years before that you're fighting over whether men who can't own land can vote. Plus you know the whole civil war.
The difference i would argue in each of these cases is that one side won convincingly each time. And that then trickled down to all states. You had some forced homogeneity for a time before the next division erupted. But only because there was victory. There were always weapons to fight over. You just don't see them because the battles were so convincingly won. And that changed landscape is the water you swim in.
Women not being able to vote being a niche idea in the US is because a cultural battle was fought and won over it. Thats why 98% of people don't question it.
If the right wins the trans "war" in 60 years people will look back and say how the right side won and how quickly everyone fell into line. They get broad strokes. And someone then will say thats because 2023 is more homogeneous in views than 2083. Not realising that battleground is why homogeneity emerged.
That's not going to happen. If the trans side loses the whole thing is getting memory holed. Best case scenario we'll be talking about it like we do about lobotomies as "bad thing crazy doctors were doing", not as something intimately connected to the progressive movement. Worst case scenario the whole thing is getting pinned on the right ("in Iran the government was forcing gay people to transition, and even in the west we had a movement trying to promote transition for gender non-conforming people") the same way eugenics is nowadays, and the only people knowing this is ass backwards will be a bunch of internet contrarians.
Might be naive, but I don't think things like that can get memory-holed.
The fucking President met with Dylan Mulvaney, on HD video, visible from the little clairvoyant in everyone's pocket. It's over.
There used to be leftist groups in the UK and elsewhere in Western Europe advocating the decriminalization and normalization of pedophilia / man-boy-love. After they failed to replicate the success of the Civil Rights Movement as they wanted, they faded away and their entire existence was memory-holed. The same happened to the wing of radical feminists advocating for lesbian separationism. The fact that gay rights groups didn't promote the legalization of gay marriage as their main goal until the early 2000s is also memory-holed. So yes, it can actually be done.
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To use an example that makes my side look bad, as somebody pro-trans.
How many people do you think knew about Donald Rumsfeld happily shaking hands with Saddam only about 15-20 years before treating him like the most dangerous man in the world? Probably not a lot. Or I'll put it more accurately if you put that picture in front of somebody who was pro-Iraq War, would their opinion have changed? Probably not.
90% of people don't put much thought into politics, 9% put only a little, another 0.9% put a lot, and the last 0.1% are weirdos like us.
If it turns out the gender-critical/anti-trans side is completely right, nobody is going to get punished, there will be no massive shift in societal or political views. We'll just move on to the next fight, and you'll move on to the next fight, trying to block us.
Wait, you're neocon? Or did you mean it was going to be an example where his side looks as bad as the pro-trans side? What makes you think the anti-gender side is not already overwhelmingly against the Iraq war, and would want to put the neocons on trial?
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Sure, and in 2083 this will get the same treatment as the "Democrats" in the KKK
(Byrd), and the ones who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the ones who voted to expand slavery into every new state at the 1860 Democratic Convention. To wit, "Those were actually Republicans."
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In a year or two most people are going to barely remember what all that was even about. The ones that will vaguely remember something will struggle to find said video because Google / GPT5000 will suck at historical searchers relating to culture war. As years go by the few internet contrarians that will remember it fully, and have the video on hand, might elicit a reaction similar to the one you get when someone posts a from the 90's relating to the current culture war.
One of my first top level comments I made after we moved here was about this very question because I already felt the vibes shifting, and if at all possible, I would like to preserve the historical memory of this particular culture war exchange, and one of the most compelling responses was that I don't have a chance. A culture war issue has to be constantly reinforced to maintain it's position in our awareness. As an illustration, you may have heard about lobotomies, but have you heard their sequel: psychosurgery? From what I gather it was a massive culture fight spanning a decade, with choirs of Expert Trusters shouting down dissent. It even got it's own Hollywood movie. How much have you heard about it?
This might be counting my chickens before they hatch, but still, if you have any ideas for how to preserve the memory of what is happening now around this subject, please share them. This is the second most important thing after winning the issue itself.
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Which another way of saying the past will look homogenous right? It was only some crazy doctors and so on. That's my point, the past will look more homogeneous than it actually was.
In this case it will, but your other examples are wrong. All the other movements are talked about as an epic battle between good and evil, that does not leave one with an impression of homogeneity.
Also, aren't you conflating broader society with what is taught in schools?
Depending on when you pick your points it looks homogeneous would be a more accurate statement yeah. It took 60 years between the first state to grant womens sufftrage and it happening federally.
What was being taught in those first states would be that women can vote. Do you think they taught that as a good or bad thing to the generations that were in school and then became adults while that was going on in those dirst more "progressive" states?
It's very likely that it was not taught at all, or taught neutrally.
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Do you think that parents now have more or less control of the specific curriculum and lessons being presented to their children now than they did 40 or even 20 years ago?
Sure, and it is arguable how much that of that brainwashing actually 'takes' because it sure seems like most kids end up rebelling against whatever paradigm they were taught.
Do they? It seems like most kids turn out to be conformist and mediocre members of their parents’ social stratum.
Obviously there’s a teenaged/youth rebellious phase, but I’m not convinced that’s a cultural universal even in America.
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It seems less relevant whether parents have more or less control. 60 years ago there was probably more shared beliefs between the curriculum maker and parents compared to today. Thus the question of control was of less importance.
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Temporarily sure, but as this SNL Skit illustrates:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lK0Lp43a8z0
How long do they actually rebel for before they settle down?
And parents probably have more control of curriculums than they ever did. Which is probably part of the problem.
I see little evidence for that in a world where Teachers Unions can shut down school systems on a seeming whim, but maybe you have a different perspective.
Almost my point. The boomers were the generation that produced hippies, and a full on counter-culture. And then they became, well, the Boomers, the ones who elected Trump.
It's not clear that schooling will produce lasting ideological commitment 10, 15, or more years down the line, without some external force acting (i.e. the CCCP in China).
Sorry missed this. Compared to the power unions had back in the 70's, where they could shut down close to the entire economy, yes it is significantly weaker. The reaction to that power and its use is quite a bit of what led to Reagan and Thatcher (not unreasonably, honestly). Teachers unions only look powerful compared to unions in other sectors which are nigh toothless tigers nowadays.
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Back in my day you had basically no access to the curriculum is my point. No internet, etc. You got to see homework and that was about it. No smartphones recording and so on.
Parents have much more access and thus control than they ever did when I was in school. 40 plus years ago.
More access means more control? The Taliban also have access to those curricula thanks to the internet, does the Taliban have more control of Western schools than ever before?
Without knowing what is going on,you can't have any control, that combined with stronger unions in the past makes it a slam dunk. My dad was a teacher in the 60's and onwards and parents had essentially no say at all.
My point is that access does not equal control, it only increases the potential for it. It is true that without access you can't have control, but that doesn't mean that if you have access you have control, that's crazy. My free Disney plus subscription ends tonight, but just because I still have access that doesn't mean I have until midnight to revamp the platform to only show Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Rescuers Down Under on a loop.
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