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Is the cultural revolution over?
If politics is downstream of culture, we are told we have to work to change the culture before we can win politically. Are we too late?
Ed West in an article titled “The West’s Cultural Revolution is Over” on the British site unherd.com says we are indeed too late. He begins with an anecdote of a soccer star in England who wrote in defense of the English players who took the BLM knee. I know nothing of the player, but West uses him as a surprise candidate for BLM actions, stating that he exhibits all the presumed conservative virtues in his life. Then he gets down to the more general point:
The past 50 years or so have seen a cultural revolution in western society comparable in scope to the Reformation. Most of us have known only that period of transition, when morality and norms were up for debate, but perhaps it is now over. Perhaps we have returned to the sort of world we lived in when England last reached a final, in 1966 – a world of strictly enforced social mores.
He then points out that in 1968 protestors were fringe, and virtually all the public institutions (higher ed excepted) were very conservative in outlook. Even the people in favor of the major changes the protestors were seeking tended to disapprove of the unseemly way they went about it. In 1968 I myself was sympathetic to some major goals of the protest movement, but I would not join in because I thought they way they were going about it was wrong.
Ed notes how the society has changed by 2020:
In 2020, almost all the major institutions in the US, aside from the actual President, were loudly vocal along with corporations, charities and NGOs in their support for the BLM protests. Parts of the media were sympathetic to the point of actively playing down some of the violence, the phrase “mostly peaceful protests” becoming an example of American journalism’s Pravda-like bias.
The protesters themselves tended to come from America’s upper-middle-class, displaying a feverous zeal that felt alarming. And there was no debate to be had about race and policing, opponents simply had to educate themselves.
He makes a note about the cultural changes over time using comedy as the example:
… from the mid-Sixties onwards, television regularly made fun of the habits and beliefs of the powers-that-be, with Monty Python — the most prominent product of the satire boom — pointing fun at the people who ran the country. Their 1979 film Life of Brian even mocked the beliefs of that old establishment. Two of the Pythons debated an Anglican bishop and Catholic writer Malcolm Muggeridge, but no one serious tried to stop the film.
Life of Brian couldn’t be made 20 years earlier, and neither could it be made now; its satire of Jesus, a prophet of Islam, would risk upsetting Muslim sensibilities, which it’s fair to say people have become slightly wary of doing. At the very least it would need to cut out the scene pointing fun at a man who, absurdly to the filmmakers and audiences, identifies as a woman; absurd in 1979, as it had been in 1879 and 1779 and in every year before that, but a sacred idea in 2021. …
This is not some dark new age of cancel culture, however, it’s just a return to normality. Those who grew up in the late 20th century were living in a highly unusual time, one that could never be sustained, a sexual and cultural revolution that began in 1963 or 1968. But it has ended and, as all revolutionaries must do after storming the Bastille, they have built Bastilles of their own. The new order has brought in numerous methods used by the old order to exert control — not just censorship, but word taboo and rituals which everyone is forced to go along with, or at least not openly criticise. …
The Nineties and Noughties were a time of outstanding comedy partly because so much of public morality was up for grabs, and in transition; it was a period in between two quite rigid societies.
So his basic point is that we have left behind the era where the culture was changeable. If you buy his premise (and I mostly do) it means that we are not going to easily change the culture now that it has solidified. Perhaps it isn’t as solid as he sees it but I think it is headed that way quickly. If you’re going to change the culture, you’d best be getting on with it now. One closing quote:
Perhaps the most powerful, and obviously quasi-religious, symbol of the new order is taking the knee. Indeed, intelligent people have even argued that taking the knee before games or displaying the rainbow flag at stadiums are not “political” acts, when critics have pedantically pointed out that they clearly are; because when you doubt your politics so little it barely registers as politics anymore. And to believers, something like racism or homophobia is non-negotiable; there is no moral relativism allowed.
Published in Culture
It is not over. It is only going to get worse. Sadly our side lost. Now we will be hunted down by any government, corporate, civil, public means necessary and laws will not stop it from happening and will be bent to cancel us.
It depends, I suppose, on what he means by “over.” There are, and will continue to be, significant pockets of resistance, as well as places where one can go to find a preferable culture. While that may not be the same as controlling the culture as a whole, it’s something. There’s much to be gained by finding and creating mini-cultures within the country if one is dissatisfied with where we are overall.
You think that will be allowed? In todays age of the internet? When SSM came in they went to the hills of Kentucky to route out people that were resisting the decree. You think things are going to be different for any of the other stuff in their racist woke agenda? Maybe Alaska can pull it off but I doubt the lower 48 has a chance. Part of the joy of being woke is shoving your perversions down others throat and making them eat it. Nothing is better than twisting the oppositions children into gay or transsexuals’ love toys. They even sing songs about it.
I believe…or at least hope…that the visible portions that you see solidifying are of a Potemkin culture. There is a deeper, more structural culture that has been shifted and shaped by the last dozen or so years that is also beginning to solidify. But, then again, I am the optimistic sort of pessimist.
I think greater Idaho has a chance.
Maybe, but they seem to be getting Calif*rnicated. At least I hear that about Boise.
I really like this part of the article,
It’s fascinating to me how quickly the left abandoned their ‘core’ philosophy.
Texahoma too.
Susan, it sounds like you are Black Pilled. For those that don’t know the extended terminology from The Matrix is:
Blue Pill — you accept what the Corporate Media (CNN, NYT, WaPo,…) tells you as the complete and honest truth.
Red Pill — you are skeptical of Corporate Media and government officials. The official narrative is a lie.
Black Pill — you see the corruption and believe there is no path back to freedom and liberty. Serfdom is inevitable.
White Pill — you see the corruption and believe that a revival will eventually restore freedom and liberty. It may be a hard path.
Clown Pill — you see the corruption and laugh at the hypocrisy the ridiculousness of cultural extremes like drag queen story hour and pronoun battles.
If you can’t go White Pill, try to go Clown Pill.
Sometimes I think we need to resurrect the “Free to Be Me” movement. I can be whomever I want to be, I can think whatever I want to think, and as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone, I can do whatever I want.
That was what captivated everyone’s imagination in the sixties and seventies, and I think it would again.
It was the motivation behind the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
I was surprised just now to Chuck Schumer’s name on it as sponsor. :-) But that fact lends some support to my notion that it would be popular and give people moral protection and encourage them to think for themselves against the onslaught of propaganda they are deluged with every day.
I think a Free to Be Me movement or #freetobeme movement would catch on and protect us all.
Its properly/also known as the honk pill. As in honkler the clown world meme.
Not sure what level pill I am on. Somewhere beyond black.
As seems to be common with Democrats on many issues, I expect Schumer was for it, before he was against it.
We already have that today… on steroids.
The difference between then and now is that today You, too, must believe Their delusions or be forced to.
And it doesn’t matter if it hurts someone else. It may even be a good thing, if it hurts someone who is racist or sexist or whatever, and THEY get to decide what “racist” or “sexist” is…
But that’s the point of the movement. They are trying to force everyone to think the way they do. That’s gotta stop.
Love that line!
Thanks for quoting that. I left it out because I thought I was approaching or exceeding the limit for pull quotes. I’m glad it’s in the thread now.
The author, Ed West, needs to spend time over on Joe Rogan’s podcasts, where many progressive Lefty males absolutely hate Biden and Kamala.
The media and the “liberal” parties have created a false construct that the only way to have equity of opportunity for all, fairness of a decent lifestyle for gays, and an end to pointless endless wars for profit is to turn society on its head.
This attitude works well for some older people, especially much older women, who hold on to the antiquated views that anyone who is a redneck would also be a vigilante attempting to lynch the first black man they encountered if a white woman was raped in their community. It also seems to work well for younger people in college. But once a person is out in the work world and realizes their chances of getting the next promotion are nil if there are hispanics, African Americans, Eskimos or newly arrive Laotians in the workplace, attitudes change and change fast.
As far as the more radical LBGT ideas – many of these ideas are bogus. About a year ago, I ran into a woman with whom I had been good friends til she and others realized I liked Trump. After catching up on our lives, I asked her to point me to a site about the new need to expand categories representing subsets of gay people. (This friend is a gay woman.)
After being clued in, I went off to explore that website and others linking to it. I expected to be shocked by some new strange sexual practices that bordered on the violent or insane. But what I found instead was a mishmash of bizarre and although offbeat mainly b-o-r-i-n-g “sexual predilections.”
So imagine you are gay but your love life consists of looking for someone whose idea of sex is to take off their belt and run the tip of their belt – wait for it – against the tip of their partner’s belt. Period. This would be considered a harmless fetish twenty years ago, but now it qualifies as being a subset of a special subset of gay life.
And since it is a special subset, it gets its own alphabetical letter.
Now think up 200 more such strange fixations and we are arriving at a phase of gay subsets so lifeless in their inane relationship to sex that it could spell the end of all things gay. (Of course, what do I know – there could be some new recreational drug out there that makes mutual belt tip stroking the most exciting activity imaginable.)
Gotta love the joker.
I have truly never heard of this. Am I out of touch?
Re wokeness, is the country basically just going through the equivalent of the Great Awakening? It looks like that from a distance, but? Every society has a (probably several) ‘go to’ response to issues where private and public morality intersect – perhaps a revival is America’s default.
I think what CarloJoy means is that whatever one’s sexual preferences there are more important things in life. So what do you think of the new rainbow flag and the inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities in the the LGBTQ2A (probably more after that) group.
If 2A stood for 2nd Amendment it might not be so bad.
There are gay couples in San Francisco investing in Texas who are currently buying guns who the Republican party needs to be courting respectfully. So much is going so crazy in so many blue cities that there is an opportunity for sensible conservatives to expand their base.
I got that, thank you. I was just wondering if the current
workwoke thing conforms to American patterns of social response, such as (for example) The Great Awakening.It doesn’t bother me. If they feel excluded I’m generally happy to include them.
[Edited.]
I want to include everybody. But I am worried that modern-day inclusion is an Animal Farm slogan. Some people are included, but some are are more included than others.
If everyone is included, there’s already a word for that: People.
Nothing’s stopping you.