Democrats are the "civilized" party. We are seeing the backlash.
It is probably a stretch, but I think these three items are related:
1:
"But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before."Huck Finn's final words in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
2:
“Masculine energy is good, and obviously, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it. I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.”
Mark Zuckerberg, interviewed on Joe Rogan
3.
Lauren Sanchez, fiancé of Jeff Bezos, at the Inauguration:
Here's my quick "Easy Sunday" point: Democrats have become the party of "should." That caused a backlash. The rebellion against "should" is so strong that Americans chose a sociopathic, narcissistic, pussy-grabbing felon over a Democrat.
Democrats are the party that is earnest and conscientious about climate change. Democrats say America needs to "own" the ugly parts of our past. Democrats are the #MeToo-adjacent party. Democrats recite land acknowledgements. They announce their preferred pronouns in their emails. Democrats want to be sure that the rights and sensibilities of everyone are respected, even if -- especially if -- those people are in a group of people who have suffered prejudice, including people who have committed crimes.
Democrats are the "goody two shoes" party. Personally, I am pretty much okay with the values of Democrats. If we are going to have a free, multiethnic culture then those values need to be the norm.
But Democrats have become preachy. They err by valuing equality more than individual differences and choices. Democrats have become so open-minded and relative that they have disconnected from biology. From emotion. From tribalism. (Go Ducks!) Democrats got out ahead of the public. They wanted to be right more than they wanted to be understood and popular.
Democrats can be characterized as the good girl, sitting near the front of the class, with her hand up with the answer because she did her homework. In this era of Trump, Republicans are the restless and disruptive bad boys in the back, who think the class is boring and the girl with her hand up is a prig.
I include the image of Lauren Sanchez, with her lace bustier front and center, to make the point that women are part of the backlash. She isn't letting her sex or age constrain her earthy sexuality. There was a tiny gender skew in the 2024 election -- far less than Democrats had hoped -- because a great many women -- including those in the cool tech crowd -- voted alongside the spitball throwers in the back.
The right charismatic leader can get Democrats back in touch. It will require a new mindset for Democrats. Female energy need not be negative. It can be bold and disruptive. And popular.
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16 comments:
This is wrong. The cheap looking women are the least of it.
The bad boys you are describing are the bullies who beat up the smaller kids. Really?
I wish it weren't so, but apparently a big part of the electorate thought that Democrats are the bullies on cultural issues, and so caught up in being empathetic to immigrants here illegally that Democrats chose empathy for them over empathy for Americans born here or here legally. Does she look "cheap." Yeah maybe so. But that makes my point. She knew exactly what she was doing and she was making the statement that she did not mind one bit being disapproved of for her decision. She wouldn't be shamed by those good girls in the front row. But, but, but SHOULDN'T she be ashamed? Well, t hat is the Democratic "should " party. A great many people dislike being scolded. I hated it when it was done by the supposed Moral Majority back in the early 1980s.
The irony is that over the past 50 years, technology (e.g. factory robots, power tools for construction, mining, logging and agriculture etc...) has reduced or changed jobs that required physical "masculine" strength. When I was an electrician apprentice in 1976, I was required to carry 80 lb. pieces of 4" steel conduit up 3-4 sections of vertical scaffolding. You'd never see that today, and that's a good thing because it was very unsafe. It also means that prefabrication from automated factories has eliminated many skilled "craftsman" jobs. Most buildings are now assembled. Car mechanics are called "technicians" who use computers to diagnose problems and replace the part. The old show "Car Talk" would seem quaint and irrelevant to most people today. Wars are still fought in the field, but 40 years ago Ukraine would have been taken over in less than a week. All the troops and armament are no match for clever use of advanced smart technology. Most readers here could make the list go on.
But as technology has "democratized labor", it means that the division of labor has changed to value and reward the "good girl" student who can figure out the problem and automate it. Efficiency is the "North Star" as we say in the tech sector. In fact even the "knowledge worker" jobs are dropping as AI takes over many of those tasks.
Meanwhile, as physicality becomes increasingly irrelevant to the economy, men have sensed a loss their social standing, relevance or even attractiveness to women.
The challenge of the "shoulds" as you say Peter, is that there isn't a common moral framework anymore. The Left uses biblical concepts of love, acceptance, kindness, compassion, stewardship, but ignores or even has contempt for the very religion that brought us those values (read my previous post here on Tom Holland's book Dominion about Christianity's impact on Western Culture). The left even goes further with its secularized "religion" to normalize and force the celebration of ideas like gender fluidity, even passing laws that take away a parent's right to KNOW that their child is seeking gender-affirming care or help with gender dysphoria in school. Essentially they claim their own moral authority. For conservatives who see their identity, purpose and values tied to more traditional (Christian, Muslim and Jewish) teaching, these left-leaning agendas are seen a fundamental assault even if they are not particularly devout.
The folks on the Right I talk to, see the acceptance of a deeply flawed leader the only way to stop the erosion of their core beliefs.
The honeymoon of technology companies that want to own your mind and automate everything, with the hard right political leadership (for now) will be an interesting marriage to watch.
Democrats indeed come off as preachy, in the party base anyway. America veers between center left and center right. It’s all in the shadings. Do today’s Democrats say America must “own” the ugly parts of its past (yes, after whitewashing them through the Sixties), or is it more that America must fixate upon and wallow in them, in ways not required of other nations? Do they err by valuing “equality” over individual prerogatives, or by equating fairness with Marx-inspired, group-based identicality? Are they more the studious “good girl”, or the power-loving tattletale or hall monitor? Finally, do the artificial lips and breasts of Lauren Sanchez bespeak “woman” just like Admiral Rachel Levine and the odds-on Best Actress Oscar winner, who switched from “Carlos” to “Karla” a few years ago?
Is “normie” properly a pejorative, either way perhaps the other side of the same coin from “woke”?
It's good to be the king.
The Democratic Party still has some residual allegiance this nation’s founding principles. Republicans and a plurality of voters perceive that as weakness.
Elon Musk, the embodiment of rich and powerful, personifies what now occupies the space that once was the heart of the Republican Party. Now that he’s gone full Nazi, he and the party he bought have become like a parody of those old James Bond villains. MAGA über alles.
Some say that to win more elections, Democrats need to be more like them. On the contrary, real strength is doing the right thing. Now more than ever we need to keep up the struggle to make equal rights and justice for all a reality. And let’s not forget our dear Mother Earth, which Republicans seem hellbent on making uninhabitable. Sooner or later, hopefully before it’s too late, people are going to realize how much they depend on her.
I think that blaming the culture wars for the last election results is wrong. Regardless that spanky won both the popular and electoral college votes, the margin was small with 1/3 of the population not voting at all. I suspect many of the non-votes were protest against Biden’s support of the genocide in Gaza. Thus I blame Bibi, and the Jewish fascists who are currently in power in Israel. It’s true that right wing fascism is rising around the world, but this last time there were also other factors at play.
When I was teaching at the very woke Portland Community College, being continually asked for my pronouns the last few years I was there (2018–2022) was so annoying.
My initial impulse was often to say, “My pronouns are ‘fuck you.’” But that was just internal; I would never actually say something like that.
For a while, I just refused to answer, but that was awkward. I eventually settled on saying, “I don’t feel like making a public declaration about my gender identity. Just use my name.” That worked really well. Fuses were probably blowing out in the minds of the wokeistas around me, but they were never quick or clever enough to come up with an effective response.
I think Peter is totally correct that woke nagging from the left has become incredibly toxic to the brand of the Democratic Party. I hope they figure it out soon and conduct a purge, so that normie voters like me can return to supporting them.
And then, of course, we have the incredibly brave “Anonymous” speaking “truth to power“ by blaming everything on the Jews, who (as all right-thinking people understand) are the ultimate source of all evil in the world.
People's resistance to human slavery being abolished caused a civil war. The idea that not everyone identifies as male or female appears to be scary enough for people to vote for a pussy-grabbing felon. Just as the ending of slavery should have been handled differently, the introduction of gender identity has not been handled well, which is unfortunate. However, the idea that Democrats are being "preachy" and that's why people don't get it is shooting the messenger, in my opinion. We are dealing with people whose minds have been flooded with hate and disinformation. They are not going to listen to anything they don't want to hear, no matter how it is communicated.
And MT, no one is blaming the Jewish people for what is happening in Gaza. People blame Netanyahu, the extreme members of his cabinet and their enablers. The enablers include every government (including ours) who has not stopped the genocide.
I follow the political debates in Israel closely. The disagreements in Israel are about how much to emphasize the return of the hostages vs fighting the war. Hardly anyone in Israel opposes what left-wing antisemites are referring to as a “genocide“ in Gaza.
Israel’s pre-October 7 strategy was to deter threats; their post-October 7 strategy is to remove threats. And this includes threats that are hiding behind their own civilian human shields.
After what happened on October 7, I do not blame Israel one bit for adopting this strategy, and I put all the blame for the harm to those human shields on the terrorist cowards of Hamas, who chose to hide behind and beneath them.
If you think that “no one is blaming the Jewish people,” you should read about what Jewish college students are going through on many elite college campuses.
Jennifer: It's sad but true that some people conflate anti-Israeli policy with antisemitism, whether deliberately or not. They tend to be the sort of folks who like to imagine that wokeistas give a rip about what pronoun they call themselves. Just call them s/he/it.
Some wags attribute Trump's victory to "wokeness," the "elites," the price of eggs or some such nonsense. Trump won because a plurality of voters like the fact that he's a trash-talking liar, sexual predator, convicted felon and traitor.
Peace in the Middle East will come when everyone is dead. Not before. My grandchildren will see it and theirs will, too. It's never ending, so don't fret about it. Just read it with interest and don't take sides. It's hopeless.
Some people are cowards who refer to specific people as “some people“ so that they can fling insults without accountability.
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