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It's hard to tell how exactly it happened. One of my pet ideas is we haven't really been creating history after World War II, so you're left with half-remembered culture war anecdotes. Maybe someone autistic enough will dig out an article excerpt for you. And even if history was still being written, it would have been written by the victors.
In any case my best guess as to how it happened was a combination of entryism, and conservatives being quokkas (or in my darker moments, that their establiahment is knowingly playing on the same team as progressives, but has to put on a show or their base would rebel). It stands to reason that the side using entryism would pull up the ladder behind them.
And regarding the discussion on how to take them back... Man, when someone has literally done just that, outlining essentially Ghandi tactics, maybe combined with building parallel institutions, you claimed it's calling for a civil war.
Seems like basic thrive/survive dynamics.
Conservatives are in favor when times are tough.
Liberals rule the day when the summer days are long, and people forget the cold dark winter.
The post WWII period has been 75 years of unprecedented peace, prosperity, population increase, and technological improvement. Is it any wonder that liberals are ascendant? Personally, I think too much of the seed corn is being spent, but I'm not confident in this assertion. Every foolhardy excess in the last 75 years has worked out. The current regulatory and fiscal environment seems doomed to collapse, but maybe AI will bail us out this time.
I believe mostly the same thing - except I think the seed corn isn't being spent but rather has already been eaten, and I'm much more confident. That said I view the seed corn in this case mostly as a combination of fossil fuel energy reserves and social capital.
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I'm skeptical of mundane demand-driven explanations, when I see how much effort goes into preventing non-Liberal viewpoints from ever being seen. Your explanation would make sense if you could clearly see non-leftwing communities participating on the exact same rules ase the leftwing ones, but just failing to get much attention, rather than routinely getting banned.
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