It is mind boggling to me that in the year 2023 we’re complaining about porn, LGBT existence, and fucking book content. Isn’t this what we were laughing at 20 years ago? About book burnings and how stupid the previous generations were for fearing and banning media that challenged them?
It is mind boggling to me that in the year 2023 we’re complaining about porn, LGBT existence, and fucking book content. Isn’t this what we were laughing at 20 years ago?
It’s easy to forget because of how quickly the cultural zeitgeist shifted when it finally did, but the early 2000s was still very homophobic. Watching pretty much any comedy from that era reminds you of just how common the punchline to jokes was just, “teehee they’re gay.”
In the early 2000s it was exceptionally common to hear things referred to as “gay” if they were “bad” in some way. Chandler’s “Dad” in friends is one I look back on and shudder. I understand when boomers say things like “things were different back then, but our ability to reflect and do better is what moves our species forward. Not dig in and scream no!
Yup been watching Scrubs and while a still funny show a lot of the time, there’s still a lot of jokes that make me cringe. I’m sure it’s like that for any show in that era.
The real impact of the 9/11 attacks: There is direct line from shock and confusion to nationalistic rhetoric and “'OOORAH!”- patriotism to the rise of the Tea Party, the growing influence of the Evangelicals up to the emergence of Trumpism and Qanon.
You should watch the documentary show about the duggars and how they’re part of a huge cult that systemically indoctrinates kids, fucks them, and gets them into politics. It’s disgusting. It’s an organized push of quiverfull fundamentalist shit being pushed into law.
Dungeons and Dragons. Tabletop roleplaying game. Because it featured demons, magic, etc with elaborate books documenting it all, conservatives condemned it.
So, let’s get this straight. They’re going to take a bunch of dudes, take away their porn, not teach them sexual health, not tech them about consent, strip abortion rights, make women scared to come forward, teach them it was their fault, and do nothing about police ineptitude/corruption. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that it seems like the GOP wants a generation of rape babies. Banking on their future voting bloc?
If I had no context and read your comment I’d think you’re describing the Taliban or some other islamofascist government. The GOP has really gone off the deep end.
The GOP/Nazi party is where humanity goes to die. Good thing they are in an ever shrinking minority.
Shrinking? They increased their seats in the house last election, and now control >50%.
The Republicans party is very much elderly people, uneducated people, and religious people.
The old people are dying, religion is on a steady decline.
The thing is that Republicans show up to vote because their bubble is largely fear driven politics.
They also have gerrymandering on their side, they limit polling places, they unconstitutionally use poll taxes that disproportionately affect minorities, they make voting harder by eliminating vote by mail… In short, they cheat like fuckin crazy and rile up their base to get out and vote.
I would not agree that they’re gonna disappear by 2028, but they are waning.
Globally, far right politicians are getting more votes.
GOP will be around for decades or more.
Everything you’ve said is true. But it was all true in 70s as well. Todays young people aren’t going to remain as progressive - every generation becomes more conservative over time. Hell, baby boomers were hippies. That Karen who votes for Trump and calls the HOA when you forget to take your bins in on time - there’s a good chance she was burning her bra for equal pay when she was in college.
They won the overall popular vote for the House by 2.8% in a midterm election with a somewhat unpopular President from the opposite party plus economic turmoil. The standard assumption would be that they’d blow it out. In the 2018 midterms, Democrats won the popular vote for the House by almost 10% under somewhat similar circumstances.
This is not going to stop porn. All it will do is criminalize the actors, producers, and viewers.
I’m reminded of the drug war, where they took a relatively harmless narcotic used disproportionally by minority populations at the time (Marijuana), and used it to criminalize and imprison large swaths of the population, especially within the black community.
It’s no coincidence that most of the folks targeted by this effort are women and sex industry workers, which skew liberal by a large degree. Note I’m not just talking about prostitution or porn actors, but the entire sex industry, including toys and books.
The GOP is scared shitless of the rising power of women in modern society, and being able to criminalize and consequently attack the revenue stream of sex industry workers is a way to blunt it. There’s also an element of class warfare involved, as OnlyFans or similar sites are often the most economical way for a young woman to lift herself out of poverty if she has no other marketable skills.
Marijuana was so they could arrest hippies. Cocaine was so they could arrest black people.
Source: one of the guys responsible for the war on drugs straight up said it.
Actually, when William Hearst originally started the campaign in the 20s to take out the hemp farmers that were competing with his timber business (he bought up most of Humboldt so he could corner the paper market), he targeted Hispanics (primarily Mexicans) with Marijuana in his articles about drug crimes and how they were ruining America. Henry Ansligner bought it hook, line and sinker, and he set the tone until the 40s, when hemp was briefly made legal for the war effort. Note that Jack Herer’s The Emperor Wears No Clothes does an excellent job illustrating this historical relationship.
Once the Beats started smoking weed in 50s, hemp was criminalized again, and the prohibition was expanded to felony status as law enforcement started targeting the evolution of the Beat movement, the hippies.
The subsequent prohibition on cocaine products was targeted at black neighborhoods (as per the GOP intention during the Nixon/Reagan era), and was built upon the “successes” of the previous marijuana prohibition.
This is why I don’t think they’ll stop at porn.
Crack was for black people, cocaine was for rich people. That’s why 5g of crack got you the same sentence as 500g of cocaine
The GOP is scared shitless of the rising power of women in modern society, and being able to criminalize and consequently attack the revenue stream of sex industry workers is a way to blunt it.
I agree that this is a big part of the war on porn. These stuffy prudes are seeing soceal/cultural norms changing before their eyes and they hate it.
I also think they’re using it as an angle of attack to undermine online privacy/security in an effort to chill free speech/expression online. It’s all about control.
Wouldn’t it be nice if these clowns stopped trying to legislate away their hangups and instead sought some fucking therapy?
A mentally unwell population hyped to chase an overblown issue is easier to control. They’ll let themselves be exploited as long as the moral panic is hijacking their attention, which is why there is always a new one.
Can we stop blaming this on being “mentally unwell” and recognize these people are assholes? I was suicidal for 18 years, and I managed to never be “unwell” enought to pull the lever for a Republican or to think that policy should only be made for the interests of people like me, so clearly mental wellness isn’t the deciding factor here. Most Nazi voters weren’t mentally ill, and neither are most of these people. They’re deeply, profoundly selfish, not sick.
There wouldn’t be a massive media aparatus from TV to social media meant to manipulate and indoctrinate people into conservatives if it was just a matter of people being inherently good or bad. Hell, this is as old as organized religion, which is historically constantly intertwined with power.
It is a matter mental unwellness. It might not be the same type of mental unwellness as yours, but many people out of vulnerability, insecurity, loneliness or nihilism end up becoming prey to manipulative groups. How many times have I heard stories of people who struggle with something in their lives and end up joining a church and pretty much changing completely. Have you never seen anything like that?
Some people spent all their lives being told what to believe and have a hard time even imagining anything else. Some people who are today completely rabid fascists used to be decent and just lost themselves in a rabbit hole for one reason or another. I get that right now even trying to talk them out of it is a nigh impossible effort, but this wasn’t an inevitable fate written on their soul. It’s a result of widespread propaganda and disinformation that twisted them.
