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Jul 11, 2021Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery

rather odd mix: an unsually calm acknowledgement of evolutionary origins of gender relations; and more common head-in-the-sand/laissez-faire "I can't think of a solution to modern gender problems, but the sexual revolution was good," makes me imagine a holocaust-denying zionist. Surely insight into primate psychology should give clues about a (more) optimal ordering of human society?

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Intriguing comment.

Generally speaking, I think we can acknowledge that the sexual revolution was an atom bomb in the structure of society with vast unforeseen implications, while also acknowledging that you're never going to be able to get that cat back in the bag. There's no going back to a prior save point and choosing "no sexual revolution." The choice is made and the ramifications, both good and bad, are done.

If the choice is "sexual revolution" or "no sexual revolution" then we're stuck with option A whether we like it or not. This is similar in some ways to the gun debate. If the choice is "guns" or "no guns" that choice has already been made too. The USA has and will forever have more guns than people in it, so even if I was a staunch anti-gun person (which I'm not) I'd still be forced to admit that the USA has to move forward into a future with guns in it.

I think with guns and with sex, there are both ways to move forward that are better than what we've got now.

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Certainly it's easier to point at the cats than to herd them back into their bags, but a lot could happen in a short time, re both sex and guns - look at the lightspeed mutation of wokeness, and the slightly-sub-lightspeed-but-still-pretty-quick change in demographics.

Guns is less fraught than sex, so I'll toss out my patented, very original idea: in 5 years, it will be normal to conflate long-gun owners with white supremacist terrorist oppressors. I was going to write a pithy thing about how it'll soon be in newspapers, but then I googled it https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/guns-are-white-supremacys-deadliest-weapon-we-must-disarm-hate/2021/01/31/f1786786-6249-11eb-9430-e7c77b5b0297_story.html

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The anti-gun crowd has attempted to make that association for years because that earns them clicks, but it's in the process of blowing up in their face, particularly with the emergence of media covering black gun ownership in the wake of 2020. Guns basically "won" in 2020, it's just that a lot of the blue tribe didn't notice.

I think the rubber band is going to snap back on the woke this year as well, as antiwokeness coalesces at the same time that the woke overplayed their hand. Folks were happy to let it ride when it was confined to college, but now that the elementary school is the battle ground, the antiwoke are motivated, learning, and displacing wokes in their school boards.

One thing I push a lot around here is that the emergent ideology of wokeness is largely an organic development to the overall condition of the USA promulgated by social media. MAGA is the same thing. If it wasn't woke/MAGA it would be something else, because the substrate we've created with our social interactions is fuel for *something* to jump into that gap, and if it wasn't woke/MAGA it would be something else.

https://hwfo.substack.com/p/spot-the-true-believer

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