My intuition is that this stems from a trust vs distrust of experts, which was already a major political articulation point in 2020 America, depressingly. It's

My intuition is that this stems from a trust vs distrust of experts, which was already a major political articulation point in 2020 America, depressingly. It's a twisted sort of fascinating to see just how far these political limbs reach these days. I heard someone the other day call Whole Foods/Central Market the "liberal/progressive grocery stores". Whatever that means. But anecdotally, the correlation is real. If I had to guess, it's something like "spending more on less-basal pleasures is a left-leaning thing because you're constructing artificial 'intellectual' layers on top of fundamental human enjoyment something something intelligencia". Anyway. It's all very stupid and distressing, but as it becomes more pervasive I think it's getting more and more important for us to step back and start trying to understand it.