A Cultural Reboot?
Republicans exist in this world to put a brake on Democrats. They operate as status-quo-leaning people who assert traditions are guideposts for moving society forward. Republican braking action is activated when the flaws of the left cause them to move too far from the center and threaten the best interests of all the American people.
The election of Trump has now created the opportunity for a reboot of the recent cultural excess, that is, to break the momentum of the left. We can expect Trump to move cultural ideology to the center.
The left has two psychological flaws: they look at the electorate as group members rather than individuals, and they try to create equality for all of the groups they care about. The problem with group orientation is that it defines group membership by a single characteristic, like gender, race, or sexual orientation. Labeling isolates the group from the rest of the country. It compromises talented individuals within the group if accepting their group's limitations stifles their efforts to rise on their own.
Cultural Politics
We can expect several cultural initiatives implemented during the Biden years to disappear or change during the Trump administration.
1. The Transgender issue will turn into something more reasonable. That means no radical surgery before 18 and no aggressive grooming of young children. It's silly to expect pre-teens and young teenagers to understand their sexuality fully. A recent article on the subject in the Wall Street Journal was written by a physician who is gay. He asserted that 80% of gender-confused teens will resolve their sexuality without surgery, and the vast majority will turn out to be gay. You can't serve in the military, vote, get married without permission, rent a car, or drive a car (under 16) if you are under 18. How can it be reasonable to change your body before that age?
2. DEI is a program of mandated equality designed to raise the opportunity for "disadvantaged groups" to succeed by giving them a higher priority during a college or job interview process. Its fundamental flaw was assuming that those lifted could perform once they got there. If the job is low-level and requires little skill, DEI doesn't matter, but it is essential in most professional positions. Who would want their surgeon or airline pilot to be a DEI hire?
During the early years of the Biden administration, large corporations began implementing DEI initiatives. After a year or two, most of those initiatives were discarded because they negatively impacted productivity. Liberal CEOs wanted to believe such a system would work. It didn't.
3. Gender/pronouns. The pronoun controversy will die because its theory and application were ridiculous and laughable. If a person wants to use their pronouns because they are gender-confused, it's their decision. But that doesn't change the fact that there are two genders. If you transition, you move from one to the other. We will happily say goodbye to the misgendering accusation nonsense. A person might call someone by the wrong gender by mistake, but most people are willing to use the proper term if corrected. No one should expect to lose their job for misgendering someone. Life is hard, and we all have to deal with adversity. If a gender-fluid person cannot handle a misgendering incident, they need to toughen up.
Gender-specialists in academia generate this kind of irrational thinking. They create new ideas when they run out of subject matter to write papers or publish books about. Before universities came under the left's domination, ideas like this would never see the light of day because they would be debated out of existence before reaching the public. But the filter is gone now, and crazy ideas are spewed directly into the public space.
4. Woke is getting tired and ineffective. The original intent comes from "get woke," meaning pay attention to racial injustice. Indeed, that is important, as is understanding the history of bigotry in the United States. But don't use it as a call to revolution because it doesn't apply. The following facts are accurate:
There are racists in the United States.
Most Americans are not racists and evaluate people based on what's inside, not the outside. America is dominated by white people because there are more of them.
White people pursue their interests and do not work to hold down others.
There are 8 million poor blacks in the United States. There are 16 million poor whites in the United States. People are poor as a result of economic stratification and not bigotry. They cannot reach the income level to live comfortably because of their capability or situation. They need help to survive, and the government must have a role in that effort.
The Media
A second sea change is coming to America: a change in media politics. The mainstream media has been moving further left for a couple of decades. Today, except for Fox News, they operate as a progressive echo chamber. The path they have taken is a script for their destruction. Now is the time to change or die.
Recent polls have seen the mainstream media drop below Congress in favorable ratings, which is remarkable because our elected officials sit in the low 20s.
At least half the country does not use MSM as a news source, and as its bias becomes more and more radical, even mainstream Democrats are jumping ship. What remains is a small audience of the most radical viewers. The American public now gets its news elsewhere.
Now that MSM realizes they are on a cliff standing above the chasm, there have been a few statements admitting the errors they have been making. The owner of the LA Times has stated that he will be hiring conservative columnists in the future. Layoffs at MSNBC and CNN validate their audience shrinkage. It will take more than talk to fix this, including hiring conservative journalists (if they exist) and bringing in people who can look objectively at both sides.
Celebrities
The most obvious change we’ll see is using celebrities to influence an election. Kamala wasted millions of dollars on them, which ultimately didn't help her. Hollywood has become a swamp infested by hubris, pedophilia, and excess. The vast majority of its inhabitants are radical left progressives who are trying to wash away their guilt for being rich by strict adherence to the left ideology. They have no clue what life is like in the flyover states, and they get their marching orders directly from the echo chamber.
At one time, celebrities were admired as people even though they didn't exert much influence on the political landscape. Nowadays, no one admires them as people. The error of engaging celebrities in her campaign shows how out of touch Kamala's handlers were. If you parade out progressive celebrities, then it solidifies you as a solid progressive and links you to the unpopular progressive president. The idea that a well-known rich person knows what I need better than I do is ridiculous. This case is a teaching moment for the left; to get there, they must admit they're not the smartest ones in the room.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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Sex is binary and immutable; you needed to spell out that fact. Otherwise, a thoughtful piece, Michael.
"But that doesn't change the fact that there are two genders. If you transition, you move from one to the other". No, no you don't. The fact is that there are two SEXES and about 500 opinions on what "GENDER" means. I am not even going to bother with mine, because it's as good or as bad as any. However, nobody can move from being a woman to being a man or vice versa.