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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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Like peace and plenty went away in my father's lifetime when he lived through the political murders of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, Harvey Milk, Sharon Tate, etc.

Oh wait, no, the boomers who saw that in their youth lived through an unprecedented era of peace and plenty in human history.

I dunno, the 21st Century so far has me suspecting that the Cold War ending how it did may have just been a lucky fluke we didn't appreciate. The 80's was filled with economic hardships paired with plenty of fears of the end of the world vis-a-vis WWIII. Imagine if the Soviet Union didn't collapse when it did.

No, not like your father's time, because your father's time was fundamentally unlike our current situation in a number of crucial ways, foremost among them the steep decline in trust and social cohesion, and the steep increase in polarization and tribalism. Our present system almost certainly cannot survive the kinds of hits society took through the 60s and 70s. We are at much, much higher risk of self-sustaining fratricide than they were.

Literal antifa gets frightened off from potential targets all the time- who do you think is going to be carrying out this tit-for-tat violence?