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I have to wonder that these sociocultural theories are still refusing to acknowledge material realities and economics. Cost of living in many nations have raise

I have to wonder that these sociocultural theories are still refusing to acknowledge material realities and economics. Cost of living in many nations have raised in ways not commensurate with salaries. Every major urban area with economic opportunities is suffering from real estate issues. That is going to close off doors and force people to crawl into windows. Online living becomes a salve. Culture war becomes a proxy for being able to engage with "real life." The post-Cold War Clinton years was the rise of political correctness. "It's the '90s!" was a popular cultural catchphrase. Rush Limbaugh and the talk radio shock jocks who are the forefathers of today's anti-woke talking heads cut their teeth on anti-PC culture warmongering. Yet, society didn't seem all that fragmented. Maybe it was because people were well-fed and not in fear of existential issues. In fact, the late '90s became suffused with entertainment searching for new threats and fears- disaster movies, hero's journeys about white-collar cubicle drones finding enlightenment and adventure. Then 9/11 happened, American society- and much of the West- became afraid, constantly looking over its shoulder. And that fear never went away. It simply shifted to different bogeymen. And what I would argue is the most corrosive thing about the War on Terror is that it polarized the divisions in American society, became an "us or them" thing, where being them meant becoming an existential threat to your fellow countryman. So now we see the same tired '00s cliches repackaged along different political fault-lines and social demographics. Woke/anti-woke debates, gender wars, etc. are simply updates of the same cultural struggles from the '90s- or from the '50s? ratcheted up with War on Terror paranoia and polarization. We are still living in the shadow of that era. We never depolarized from that era. Toss in the ubiquity of the internet and here you have the present.

btilly 11mo ago
In very real ways, the median American is richer today than throughout history. But in some ways we are clearly worse off, and going downhill. The cost of housing is one of the most important of those. Unfortunately both sides blame each other. While neither side takes action on the thing that is important - building more housing. If your population grows and your housing doesn't, the cost of housing must go up. While there is growing support for "yes in my backyard", overall we're headed the wrong way. We have not enough housing, and we are not building it as fast as demand is growing. We have thickets of regulations that make building housing very difficult. And little appetite for fixing that. Even in cases that desperately need it - such as to rebuild properties that were destroyed in California fires early this year.
aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
> Then 9/11 happened, American society- and much of the West- became afraid, constantly looking over its shoulder. This kind of fear was only what the media wanted us to have. I never felt it in my social circles. Quite the opposite: in Germany there were lots of rallies against the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and basically the narrative on which there was a consensus on was "Some terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, and a few hundreds people died. But masses of US soldiers kill hundreds thousands of people in Afghanistan and the Iraq. Thus for sure Osama bin Laden is a criminal, but George W. Bush is a war criminal and guilty of genocide, thus the much worse evil." Thus: at least in Germany I am very certain that 9/11 did not lead to paranoia and polarization, but to a unified hate against George W. Bush and US-American politics.

btilly 11mo ago

In very real ways, the median American is richer today than throughout history. But in some ways we are clearly worse off, and going downhill. The cost of housing is one of the most important of those. Unfortunately both sides blame each other. While neither side takes action on the thing that is important - building more housing. If your population grows and your housing doesn't, the cost of housing must go up. While there is growing support for "yes in my backyard", overall we're headed the wrong way. We have not enough housing, and we are not building it as fast as demand is growing. We have thickets of regulations that make building housing very difficult. And little appetite for fixing that. Even in cases that desperately need it - such as to rebuild properties that were destroyed in California fires early this year.

aleph_minus_one 11mo ago

> Then 9/11 happened, American society- and much of the West- became afraid, constantly looking over its shoulder. This kind of fear was only what the media wanted us to have. I never felt it in my social circles. Quite the opposite: in Germany there were lots of rallies against the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and basically the narrative on which there was a consensus on was "Some terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, and a few hundreds people died. But masses of US soldiers kill hundreds thousands of people in Afghanistan and the Iraq. Thus for sure Osama bin Laden is a criminal, but George W. Bush is a war criminal and guilty of genocide, thus the much worse evil." Thus: at least in Germany I am very certain that 9/11 did not lead to paranoia and polarization, but to a unified hate against George W. Bush and US-American politics.