[techpineapple]

One question I have about politics and history, is does politics tend to follow short term events or long term trends. If politics tends to follow short term events then one might tend to assume that a swap of attitude from cancel culture on then left to cancel culture on the right would face immediate backlash, since a sense of cultural overreach and extremism was given as an explanation for Trump, that Trump was a moderating force in society.

I tend to think that long-term trends tends to be a better explanatory factor. There was this interview with this divorce lawyer that really helped shape my view on where we were as a society which basically said we’re in a place with too much post-modernism. The idea of how we imagine the world is just too flexible, there’s too much “freedom” and we’re on a trend back towards a more concrete view of the world. I tend to think this is correct, and that if there is backlash to Trump, or the public and popular notion of conservatism, we’re still, broadly speaking influenced by a group of folks who are ready for a more concrete or “conservative” popular culture. Gender roles, Right and wrong.

But I also think the trend sort of definitionally is already moving back in the other direction, it will just take ~ 10 years to play out as those in their formative years grow into a more liberal mindset(it’s probably just sort of barely impacting a few months of the psyche of the youngest pre-teens now and as that cohort ages they’ll influence the culture back in the other direction)

[techpineapple]

I do wonder though how much freedom plays into this dynamic. Are young North Koreans “liberal” as much as they’re allowed to be, or does a stranglehold on cultural influences somehow squash organic contrarianism.