Republican politicians like Ron DeSantis may rail against “woke” corporations. The reality is that when companies like Nike and Disney—no progressive angels themselves—seem to align with the left by promoting anti-racism and LGBTQ causes, they are catering to the tolerant demographic that matters most to the bottom line. It’s understandable why older conservatives would feel business has left them behind, ranting about supposed lefty strongholds like Blackrock and Disney. But there’s no top-down conspiracy of woke corporations as defined by Tucker Carlson. It’s just capitalism.
This is especially true given the Republican Party’s increasing reliance on far-right religious voters, whose cultural power is also waning rapidly despite recent judicial and legislative wins. Americans are becoming rapidly less affiliated with organized religion. Younger people are markedly less religious than their elders. In 2021, membership in religious organizations fell below majority levels for the first time, and “nones”—those who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or nothing specific—now account for around 30 percent of Americans, up from just 9 percent thirty years ago. White evangelical politics is the province of mostly older voters disconnected from the broader culture and economy.
I feel like statistics on religion are largely useless, especially in Western, mostly Christian nations. So many people follow the “I said a prayer when I was 10 so now I won’t go to hell” version of Christianity that a huge chunk of those yes responses are actually functionally atheists and have been for a long time.
I don’t mean to imply anything negative about atheists here. I just think the only thing really changing is that younger people don’t see the point in pretending to be religious anymore. They’re at least casually familiar with the tenets of Christianity and are pretty aware that what their parents are doing is not religion but some sort of weird social and political club with little resemblance to the religion it’s supposedly based on. In fact, I’d argue that the percentage of people who take religion seriously on a personal level has always been much lower than official numbers like this would indicate.
I’ll consider them as having lost when they’re out of political power and no longer a serious threat.
Abortion rights aren’t going to reinstate themselves.
I feel like their tantrums are death throes of a dying ideology. You’re right, they remain dangerous for the moment, hopefully for the last time.
Unfortunately, I suspect human tendencies for tribalism and prejudice will not completely vanish anytime soon. Which means reactionary assholes will always be around and we should never let down our guard.
For countries that are currently more progressive, beware. Education and entertainment are the first things they attack. By the time they’ve gotten enough power to rig the courts and control the reality of their followers, they’ve become an enormous danger.
BlackRock is leftist? It’s a nightmare built from unrestrained neoliberalism!
Anything that is not openly fascist is leftist to these people.
They also lost the science war.
Also the civil war
Did they win the war on drugs? That seemed to go well.
No, they lost to people on drugs.
They don’t really lose. They just stop talking about things and start talking about something else crazy. Their followers do not care.
I hate the use of the word “tolerant”; I don’t tolerate people of different races, religions, sexual orientations, etc., because there is nothing to tolerate. I just accept them.
The people I tolerate are people who try to impose their religion by force, people who profit from hurting others, Nazis, terrorists, etc. I don’t tolerate them because I’m tolerant; I tolerate them because I have no choice in the matter. They exist no matter what I think of them. If I could banish them all to Siberia, I would.