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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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I think a lot of book-smart millennials were socialized into a culture that pattern-matches anything Republican/Fox News/"homophobic" as morally bad and scientifically wrong. The big battle they witnessed was that of gay rights, where the people who not on board with gay rights in the early 2000s were, in the eyes of the culture, proven to be morally in the wrong. So the instinct is that the LGBQT/NPR team is the good guys, and the trad Christian conservatives the anti-science bad guys. This generation was also raised in a culture (epitomized Jon Stewart) where you didn't carefully examine both sides of the debate, one side was good, and the other side only deserves mocking and derision.

I agree. I sometimes wonder what Jon Stewart from this era would say about what's become, and if he still would think he's so innocent because "the show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls". Back then, the Right really did seem to be the people who didn't carefully examine both sides of the debate, and the Left were the side that did. Now both sides seem to not carefully examine anything.

Back then, the Right really did seem to be the people who didn't carefully examine both sides of the debate

Maybe the strawman of the Right that was allowed to be shown on TV. From the Right wing community I was in at the time, it was more "not this shit again" since it was seen as just the latest manifestation of age old, fundamental disagreements about humanity and human nature. "Okay but how about just a little bit of <insert horrible moral offense here>" doesn't merit much examination.