Freedom of speech is a liberal concept, the application of “liberal” as a derogatory term for one side of the political spectrum was a propaganda move. Don’t give in to it.
The current pivot, I think, is mostly that culture warriors have managed to describe their interest in liberal terms (freedom of speech), and social media companies are buying it (gets them out of moderation duty and lets them reduce headcount).
These are ad delivery networks that want to do the bare minimum required to avoid scaring people away, they’ve discovered that the bare minimum can go lower. They don’t have any principles, so why would they do anything else? They are exploring downwards in terms of effort, eventually they’ll bounce off the floor.
Actual liberals aren't really a prominent political force at this point. The culture war is between conservatives and progressives, and, contrary to popular opinion, the latter is not synonymous with liberalism - indeed, on some issues (freedom of speech being a prominent one) they are in opposition.
I think most people in the US are, on some practical level, actual liberals. We can’t see it in the way a fish doesn’t see water. But I think mostly people think of themselves as accepting of others (while not wanting their own freedom of association impinged on). I think a lot of political disagreement shows up where liberal principles collide, like two people’s freedom of expression bumping into each other. Then it becomes a wrestling match for each side to get their position seen as the liberal one.
If people on the US were really liberal (in the original "capitalism of the free" sense), racism wouldn't even be an issue. People wouldn't care so much about race, and your genetics would be more as a "fun fact" rather than some central piece of your identity.
Also, they wouldn't care about atheists so much. Liberals may not be atheists themselves but they would be very detached from religion and "who whorships who". People wouldn't take religion so seriously.
The US is more like a bunch of conservatives trying to be liberal until their own beliefs trump liberal theory.
Which is why we say that we hope you get everything you voted for. Because it will back fire on you first. It always has, and it always will, not our fault you can't learn from your mistakes.
As opposed to say the former who are on a book banning spree and openly threatening the media for simply making fun of their dear leader? This idea that those shouting loudest about “free speech” actually give a shit about it is really one of the most nakedly disingenuous things I’ve seen in a long time.
I think it's a false dichotomy: both sides pretend to care about free speech and other "classic liberal" values, and both sides' actions usually aren't aligned with this at all.
The side that has the largest gap between stated goals and actual policies then proceeds to lose the election.
Exactly, and expecting every position needs to be clubbed together as left or right wing is also a big issue. eg I am politically liberal on most of the issues, but if I mention one thing for which I am not on their camp I suddenly become far right.
Every time I see someone mention this sort of enlightened centrism online, that everyone assumes they’re far right all of a sudden for that one unmentionable idea they had, they always just leave it at “trust me bro.”
This feels a little off. I think those who stand to financially benefit the most are taking advantage of the opportunity to do so while they can.
Getting more specific, I don't buy the argument that we're getting more conservative. Instead, I'm inclined to think that a narrow election victory will lead to extreme measures that will create a significant backlash in the coming years. If you're in a position to exploit a system with little repercussions for four years and all it costs is a little bit of dignity and some public image, most corporate leaders would take that opportunity for the money, prestige, power, etc.
I'm willing to bet sizeable amounts of money that most voters do not support rolling back employee protections, or removing the debt ceiling, or buying/bullying [insert random country], or any of the other wildly regressionist statements thrown around by un/elected folks. Conflating the complexities involved in how a person votes with a general mandate for one specific reason people vote is not a good idea. Extrapolate that to over 100 million voters as some unified stance and it starts to feel like propaganda.
> I'm willing to bet sizeable amounts of money that most voters do not support rolling back employee protections
People often vote against their interests. They may not understand that alternatives are possible or even exist, and they can be brainwashed into thinking the other candidate is dangerous and so on... Also, the decline in quality of education isn't helping. So I don't know if there will be a backlash. Even worse, as a European, I'm afraid Musk's propaganda crosses the Atlantic and that we'll get the same fate and will vote to give up our social benefits.
> you can see that in the polls that ask people to self-identify politically
I don't trust these because I don't think most people can self-identify in away that accurately describes their beliefs. It usually just boils down to a binary "left vs right".
There are many people who identify as "conservative", express their disdain for "leftists" over some rage-bait culture war topic of the week, but demand better workers' rights, support unionization, single payer healthcare, and other very leftist ideas.
That's not contradictory, though - such people are cultural conservatives, not economic ones, but cultural conservatism is precisely what people are talking about when they say that it's becoming more popular.
> I'm willing to bet sizeable amounts of money that most voters do not support rolling .... the debt ceiling ...
You lost me here, because the debt ceiling is a recent political construct with the only outcome being to add friction to an already high friction process and to threaten the faith and credit of the United States.
It is neither conservative nor liberal, but obstructionist
> Getting more specific, I don't buy the argument that we're getting more conservative.
Agreed. I'm pretty sure normal folks never actually shifted left, not as much as the far-left ideology people imagined. Folks would use any plausible excuse to end the insanity progressive politics has caused. Mind you the reverse is also true of ultra conservative politics. The world is elastic in this sense, and we see corrections from time to time.
I wouldn't call it a cultural reset. It's more of a revolution.
We've never known a country where the wealthy had this much capability. Owning just one of Facebook, Amazon, Palantir, X, etc makes a person incredibly powerful, but the fact that they've all seemingly combined forces makes me think we are in for an era that makes Cyberpunk novels look like a Disney flick.
In a way it's only power that we're giving them. Stop using Facebook, Twitter, stop buying teslas and shopping on Amazon and these people become slowly irrelevant when the companies do bad at earnings
I think this is actually a misread of long term trends. Not sure when it will be, but there will be backlash to the reset.
It reminds me like when crime rose in 2020 and 2021. It had been falling for something like 25 years. Then it was rising briefly, because of COVID. Many people treated this as a new normal, and a reason to make lasting and dramatic political changes. Then crime fell again in 2023 and 2024, without those substantive changes. The truth is that the short term trend didn't really have to do with criminal justice policy.
I know people love to describe future events in terms of past events but am afraid America is heading in a direction entirely orthogonal to its history.
In terms of a cultural moment it feels like the 80s. Millions of his voters weren’t ideological conservatives but didn’t fully disagree and like the strength Reagan projected after the turmoil of the mid 60s through the 70s.
They abandoned the movement during bush senior and the Clinton years.
The 80s were a reaction to the "liberal" 70s. It's just the natural cycle of history, the majority of people are in the center so when culture shifts too far to one side they start pushing it back.
Sounds like the increase in the amount of information people have access to and the speed of the news cycle, the speed at which the pendulum swings may just be accelerating.
There’s definitely an element of rubber banding and I think this time some of it is built up resentment about how liberals dominated big cultural institutions like TV and movies. That said I don’t think everyone who voted for trump cares about this, but the malaise of the Biden presidency was a powerful proximate factor
> Everyone who is smart see's which way the winds are blowing and it isn't in the direction of "more liberal".
Liberals are most fired up when conservatives like Trump are in office. Where I am, I expect to see more local elections fall to far lefties, I expect more BLM-like protests (which really could only have occurred under Trump), more activism and not less. It is a bit sad because I thought we were making some progress like electing moderates (who I really prefer and think are better for the community) rather than far lefties (who really can only get elected when someone like Trump is in charge).
> The US is looking at a cultural reset back into the mid to mid-late 20th century.
No, things are way too conservative now for that. We haven't had a politician as liberal as Ronald Reagan since Bill Clinton, America definitely lurched right since after the 1990s.
I dont think we're heading for the 30's and arguably the 1910-40s were probably more progressive than the mid-century both artistically and culturally compared to their preceding years. I think a lot of people don't remember how conservative the US was between the 50s and 90s. A lot of the stuff we consider acceptable or OK today was really not tolerated at all in public. See, for example, LGBTQ acceptance, minorities and women in positions of power, welfare state etc.
The US is looking at a cultural reset back into the mid to mid-late 20th century.