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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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I believe the likelihood is quite high. In my opinion, the second election of Trump is a cultural-because-of-generational backlash by "the Boomers" and "Gen X" against changes in the culture brought about by "the Millennials", who I believe have a radical split from previous generations inspired by changing perceptions of childhood emotional neglect. I suspect in the next decade in the "after that", then "then what" will be that American culture will take a hard and final turn against social conservatism. I like to say the wheel of progress is dismally slow, but it is inspirationally grinding.

I form this opinion off of my own anecdotal experiences in observing the microcosm of my family. My socially conservative members grow less and less able to relate to my non-socially conservative members and, as a result, the beliefs "dry out", so to say. I've observed that although the socially conservative do have more children, the families tend to splinter and fall into poverty and miss the window to be relevant to the culture, so the ecosystem of beliefs is constrained to niche branches of the family.

In my opinion, the second election of Trump is a cultural-because-of-generational backlash by "the Boomers" and "Gen X" against changes in the culture brought about by "the Millennials", who I believe have a radical split from previous generations inspired by changing perceptions of childhood emotional neglect.

Among under-30s, Harris and Trump were within a few percentage points overall, white men voted for Trump, white women split down the middle, black and Latino men voted for Trump in record numbers, and the biggest issue for young voters was the economy and jobs. While I agree that Millennials are more progressive than Boomers and Gen X, it seems abundantly clear that the zoomers are not as reliably Democratic as Millennials (though certainly more progressive than Gen X). In fact, the only age group where there wasn't a swing to Trump was older voters, i.e. the Boomers.

This was a referrendum on Biden's governance and the state of the economy, with cultural issues, even abortion, playing a much more minor role in people's voting decisions. We don't need to delve into anecdotal experiences of particular families; we have data on how various groups of people said they voted in the election and the reasons they said were most important to them.

I will, however, note that Millennials and Zoomers -- the purported beneficiaries of the changing perceptions of childhood emotional neglect -- have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses, and research suggests they cope much worse than older generations when faced with major crises like the pandemic. What younger generations perceive as "childhood emotional neglect" may well have been a more natural and healthy way to raise independent, strong children who can stand on their own to face the challenges of life, though I would argue that the last generation to raise their children in the best possible way was the Silent Generation, not Gen X.

I am a zoomer, and this accords with my own experience of friends and peers, going far beyond any sort of change in diagnostic standards or treatment-seeking that could otherwise explain the change. You've talked in the past about your experiences with mental health challenges, and I relate to this -- but I would note gently that such longstanding struggles with mental illness might suggest a genetic component (as it does for me), which perhaps makes your biological family less representative of the emotional and social stability of the average person at various points on the political spectrum.

Or, in other words: it's the economy, stupid.