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I, like the rest of the country, feel like nothing good will come of the election. However, I feel this way for a slightly different reason than your average person, and probably closer to the average Mottezian.
I actually don't really care too much who is president. Either one of them would IMO do a good enough job. I mostly care whether the president impacts my everyday life or causes nuclear war. However, though it isn't his fault directly, having Trump in charge would impact my everyday life negatively, mostly because it would fuel another 4 years of incessant leftist whining all around me, from all my friends and family, along with people starting to (erroneously, IMO) see and declare that racism and sexism is everywhere again. It'll start causing fights between me and my wife again. My workplace and all local institutions will start making statements about how they're standing up to Trump and racism. Under Biden, I have truly enjoyed some nice peace and respite from politics.
However, I find this state of affairs to be very irritating. It feels like the left, or at least the leftists in my life, are taking an infantile tactic: we better win or we'll whine and complain for 4 years. I don't respect sore losers, and moreover, I don't like the fact that there is no path forward for the right.
Scott said this back in 2016:
Scott was absolutely correct here in how it played out. But what option does this leave the non leftists with? If the Democrat wins, then the currents move left. We get leftism enshrined into law over the next 4 years, because to the victor go the spoils. If the Republican wins, then the undercurrents move left, and more and more people get radicalized towards the left.
Is there a way for the currents to move right without the undercurrents moving left? Or is Trump just uniquely bad at making that happen? I'm tempted to say that this is just the fact that Trump is a polarizing figure, but at the same time, all the leftists I know scream bloody murder whenever a Republican is in command. They were infantile under George W Bush. And though I wasn't around then, I know many people who are still salty over Reagan and act like he was the worst.
If you live most of your life surrounded by leftists and consuming leftist media, then of course leftist whining is the type of whining that is most annoying to you.
As someone with Republican relatives and in-laws, I assure you that rightist whining over the last four years has been both intolerable and often scary. I can't imagine what it's like to live in right-leaning communities at a time when most believe the election was stolen and they're living under the equivalent on an anti-pope.
4 years of Biden has not particularly enshrined leftist values into law, as far as I'm aware? Some of the massive infrastructure spending was earmarked towards renewable energy, I guess, but that's not exactly super-radicalized social justice leftism. As far as I can tell, the law has moved to the right significantly during Biden's term, because of Republicans owning the Supreme Court and most state legislatures.
Honestly, I think that the way to make things move right without backlash is to give in on the tiny culture war sticking points while persuading people on the underlying conservative norms.
Legalizing gay marriage was seen as a radical leftist movement, but the actual result was that all the gay people - and most importantly, gay artists and icons and culture warriors - stopped living as radical counter-culture outsiders challenging every pillar of the nuclear family, and switched to being respectability-politics-first normies living quiet lives in the suburbs with 2.5 adopted kids. Conservatives had to give up on oppressing gay people, but managed to bring them largely into the tent of traditional marriage and neoliberal economics and so forth.
So do it again. Say fine, trans women are women, and they should be modest and wear makeup and stay at home to raise the adopted kids. Say sure, diversity is a strength, so lets hire some black CEOs who align with our mission to crush unions, roll back regulations, and lobby for tax cuts for the rich.
Basically, assimilation. It's actually true that the basic conservative values are appealing to a lot of people, and a comfortable default for a lot more. A lot of people will happily fall back into those values without thinking about it, if you just stop doing things that look explicitly bigoted or unjust or cruel in ways that get them mad and turn them against you.
Is this how you remember the sequencing? As someone that was vigorously in favor of legalizing gay marriage, I recall the path being inverted from this, where the respectability politics had already happened and the big selling point was that our gay and lesbian friends are not degenerate weirdos, they're totally normal and just want the same thing that straight couples have. This was a pretty good selling point! It convinced me handily, and I certainly see couples that live exactly like that now. The problem is that the aftermath of that win was not declaring victory and slapping a Mission Accomplished sticker on the Pride flag, it was moving onto trans politics, leading up to the modern day "trans kids", trans "women" in women's sports, and so on. At this point, I've basically been convinced that I was wrong, the slippery slope people were completely right, and that simply winning on the one cause and then moving on with normalcy was never an option.
Can we actually draw that thread though? Are the advocates for gay marriage, exactly the same advocates as for trans rights? (which is pretty nebulous itself). Is the slope slippery or are there multiple overlapping staircases, such that gay marriage could be rolled back tomorrow and that we would have trans advocates focusing on their issues and gay marriage advocates focusing on their issues?
The Progressive alliance is basically a mish-mash of groups that were (or perceived themselves to be) marginalized and mistreated under older more conservative social conventions. The average black person is not all that on board with homosexuality (compared to white progressives) so it certainly isn't homogenous.
Is what you are seeing with trans issues the result of a somewhat successful gay campaign OR a symptom of the amount of power that the conservative stack lost, such that even the smaller groups in the progressive stack can punch above their weight, such that rolling back gay marriage in and of itself would have no impact on that debate (other than as a symptom of the regrowth of conservative power).
They used the thread to sew new stripes on the rainbow flag. Maybe if they were evicted from the rainbow I'd have an easier time not thinking one led to the other.
Well thats the nature of a coalition. It still doesn't mean that gay marriage led to trans rights. Like if evangelical Christians and neo-liberal free marketeers are in the same Republican coalition it doesn't mean that financial deregulation leads to an abortion ban.
You have to actually be able to draw the line directly. I think thete are fractures bmbetween the LGB and the T that are being somewhat hidden by the fact of perceived right wing antipathy towards both.
I'll point out in the UK, a Conservative government explicitly legalized gay marriage and there is some significant anti trans (from their pov) headwinds. Some of that could be attributed to loss of support as parts of the coalition get what they want explicitly codified in law by a right wing government, rather than getting it through the Supreme Court (and therefore being more tenuous).
If thats the case legalizing gay marriage might be the opposite of a slippery slope. Depending on how and by whom it is done.
Perhaps to the right of Labor or the LibDems (are they still a thing) A right wing government would probably not have passed gay marriage.
Many free-market Republicans talk openly about a compromise position on abortion, typically accepting upto viability.
I've seen the TERF distance themselves from the T, the LGB still seem to invite them to all their events and platforms.
If your coalitions purpose was bank robbery and another member of the coalition shoots and kills a guard, your still up for felony murder even if your part of the coalition only wanted the money.
I understand your claim that gay marriage didn't lead to trans. People will judge you by the company you keep.
The company you keep is an entirely different claim than a causal one though. And i'm not sure from the point of political coalition how useful it even is. It is when you look at things personally of course.
I understand that the average neo-liberal Republican is probably not too worried about abortion, but because of the way their coalition is built the evangelical Christian wing is.
But if i oppose banning abortion, pragmatically my best option might be to peel that coalition apart. Not force it closer together. Horse trading is the life blood of politics. Maybe you aren't exactly in favor of gay marriage, but if it guts the support of a coalition opposing you, then if you think its going to happen anyway you might as well get the credit.
The next Labour government with a reasonable majority was going to legalize gay marriage. Just a matter of time. This way, the Conservatives get to claim that forever. Now if you really hate the idea of gay marriage maybe that isn't worth it. But pragmatically taking credit for something that was going to happen anyway can be one way to defang your enemies.
Politically in the US, if Republicans could pass a gay marriage bill in exchange for robbing momentum (through a whole bunch of activists no longer worrying about it), for further change and in exchange for getting say 8 years of dominance it doesn't matter about the company those activists kept until then. Exploit the weakness in the coalition.
Of course if you don't think that will work, or it will lose you more than you gain then don't do it, but don't let thinking about coalitions like individuals cloud your judgement. Political coalitions aren't friends, they are alliances of convenience and those can be changed. Japan once sided with Nazi Germany, now it is a close US ally. White rust belt Americans used to skew Democrat. By your lights should their change not be accepted because of the company they used to keep?
They're adjacent with some overlap, and the line of responsibility / credit is clear to many if not you. Having had some success the LGB brought the T inside the tent. If the LGB were still fighting for marriage state by state would T be in the tent? The pedos still want to be in the tent too but that's still too far for many of the LGBT. If I lend you my pirate crew and pirate ship to commit piracy that makes me the pirate king. You're going to tell the pirate king he's not causing piracy? Did Fagin not cause pickpocketing? You're view of 'causal' seems conveniently narrow. How proximate must the antecedent be for you to accept 'cause'?
Reasonable mainstream conservatives should view abortion as an issue best handeled by the state legislatures not the federal government, we're a republic. The issue is emotional for many, they're frequently blind to less emotive arguments. The MSM presentation doesn't help. Baby murdering sluts vs. Liberated Women is a framing that only serves to divide and cedes ground to the crazies.
This only works until actual conservative voters have somewhere else to go. You can see this in the rise of conservative populism. I'm not sure the UK conservatives owning gay marriage is the win for them they think it is. CINO isn't as good as RINO. Uniparty is the descriptor I prefer. Who was defanged? The perception by many is the fangs just moved on to T. Do the activists ever go home after their win? There are always some new downtrodden to elevate. Were people sure at the time that gay marriage would lead to trans, probably not, trans was even smaller then. I recall suggestions that bestiality, pedos or polygamy would be next. Furries, T and polyamory would be near enough for many. The machine built for gay marriage is now in use by T.
Not they way it's frequently done, but there's nothing to preclude it. You'd just need a smaller tent. If you can't live your principles, what's the point in 'winning'.
Rapid demographic change and the destruction of your industry can cause people to understand the nature of the tent they're in.
Repentant sinners are welcome. They can be excellent members as they've seen it from the other side. Nobody knows alcoholics like an ex-drunk. Reformed degenerates are best to keep the active degenerates out.
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