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Notes -
I think woke liberals really do live in a bubble, and think using words like ‘inclusivity’ makes them popular. More to the point, this bubble has people that are woke, and it has a minority of old-school high-respectability social conservatives, the sort whose monacles pop out while they remark ‘by Jove, this gay pride parade is absolutely scandalous!’ and then harrumph ferociously through their moustaches, and that there’s functionally no one in between.
And the thing is, the general public is more socially conservative than wokes, but it’s less social conservative than moustache-harrumphers by an also extremely wide margin. Ireland supports abortion and gay marriage, that doesn’t mean it supports whatever the referenda were intending to actually do. Nor does it mean they support infinite brown people, or pretending a convicted sex offender in a dress is really a woman. Moderate social conservatives simply don’t have a home in the elite bubble; Ross Douthat, Donald Trump, and Ibram X Kendi have three entirely separate fan bases. I think what keeps happening is that the liberal elite figures out that the public doesn’t like Ross douthat’s prescriptions very much, and then forgets Donald Trump is not pushing the exact same thing. It’s What’s the Matter with Kansas syndrome.
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