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I don’t think conservatives have been in the cultural drivers seat since at least the 1970s. Liberals, up until Obama were just much more careful about showing their power level until the long March was over so they could consolidate power. Hollywood had always been liberal, and even if the movies made in 1970 would be conservative by modern standards, they were absolutely liberal by the conservative standards of the day. Soylent Green was an overpopulation/environmental piece, blaxploitation was an entire genre of film, anti war themes showed up in movies, tv shows, music, and so on. Liberal protests on college campuses have likewise been a thing since Kent State.
I think there are two catalysts for the change. First, social media vastly extended the reach of social opinion, such that private opinions could be easily disseminated online and thus weaponized. You ended up saturating the culture in political opinion, and liberals realized that there were lots of them in cultural power. And it also indexed people’s views for easy reading, thus allowing a purge of crime-thinkers from political and cultural power. The second was the retirement of the old guard who came of age in tge 1950s. They were 60 in 2010, and so a lot of these early boomers retired. They might have headed up a department at a college, ran a music label or tv/movie studio, but they’d imbibed the notion that politics shouldn’t overwhelm the purpose of the institution itself. Entertainment existed to entertain, not preach, colleges were about education. Once those old guys retired, the new leadership felt little compunction about turning the entire thing into a propaganda machine.
I disagree. The fact that American conservatives don't make very much art isn't especially material*, both because popular art still tended to defer to conservative sensibilities and, more importantly, because I am not just talking about art. Piecemeal challenges to conservative cultural hegemony didn't change the underlying fact that you had to convince conservatives to let you succeed and conservatives were still ultimately setting the baseline. ∃ liberals who have substantial breaks from conservative orthodoxy is not the same thing as liberals driving culture. It took 45 years to go from Stonewall to Obergfell, and that issue still isn't exactly settled. Hell, you had Prop 8 in California in 2008. The 80s were full of conservative backlash to the cultural turmoil of the 70s and the 90s were marked by Clinton's 'triangulation' strategy (i.e. pivoting right on a lot of issues) and a general sense that everything was fine, don't rock the boat.
*Although perhaps a better metaphor then would be that conservatives were in the back of the cultural limousine, being chauffeured around by liberals.
I think art and education are the critical components of gaining control of the culture. Culture is the water you swim in without thinking about it. So if I want to normalize an idea, I would absolutely want to push it into every bi5 of culture I can get away with. If I want to normalize gays then I slowly inject that idea in every story told and song would be written about gay life. If I wanted to normalize Buddhism, you’d see a lot of the heroes of your favorite tv series and movies and references the dharma and meditation and quotes from the sutras in your music. Eventually you’ll not notice it so much, but it will affect you.
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And what of the other 5 thousand years of human history?
I believe the Flintstones comic proposes that it was Clod the Destroyer, who punches the liberals in the beef.
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I think like everything else it goes in cycles. The modern age (basically since the 1860s has been a time of Cthulhu swimming left, but there are other periods in which Cthulhu was swimming rightward. The rightward swings tend to happen in times of cris, but they do happen.
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I am fairly sure American conservatives were not in the cultural driver seat for the other 5 thousand years of human history either.
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