I don't know if you guys have gotten the same sense I have, but whereas last year, the left seemed confused and scattered and were keeping their heads down in the cultural space, and as a result there was basically no "gay pride" stuff across the country on the scale we had seen in the past, as people were genuinely worried about a Zeitgeist shift; now, it seems like the left are getting bolder and bolder again in the internet space. They're being more open about wokeness. They have the same expectation of not being called a faggot for promoting certain stuff that they did in 2022. I predict that this June, we're going to see an uptick in "rainbow people" promotion and whatnot than last year. Not as high as it was under Biden, but still higher than the low that was last year. I get the sense when I look online that the left, whereas temporarily were discombobulated, are now just biding their time. In some ways they're worse and woker than they even were before, and are just waiting to exact revenge. That's the "feel" I get when I'm on Youtube or other places. Have you observed this same "tone"? It's not something I can pin down exactly....it's more just a way they carry themselves. They have shifted from the aggressive fighters of the religion of wokeness to more of a European mindset of "this is the accepted baseline of truth" within their circles even more than they were in the past. And once a society has an established, codified framework, it's only one power change until the consequences for going against it are persecution. Wokeness feels codified in the left in a way I didn't even feel from the Biden regime, where plenty of infighting with their intersectional Olympics. They kind of have, more like the black community, settled into ingroup preference in a way that's unsettling where anti "other" is more important than their pet issues and they're more in agreement on certain "dogmas".
Maybe I'm just projecting things that aren't there and reading things that aren't there, but it's just the sense I've gotten over the past 4 - 6 months or so.
It's all I watch. Columbo, Star Trek (only the 60s version), Buck Rogers, Andy Griffith show.
I don't want to be demoralized with entertainment.
So many classic shows and movies. A mediocre 1950s film is more interesting even from an anthroplological perspective of getting insight into what people valued and how (and it often is huge narrative breakers) than the best 2020s films.
On narrative breakers, if you watch old movies and shows, you'll quickly see that what they say about the time periods are totally wrong. Women get "sassy" with men. Women work as scientists or in the military in 1950s films and no one thinks it's weird (if you watch the TV show what's my line from the 1950s you'll see women had tons of jobs and no one was shocked no matter how upper eschelon it was...women were never prevented from working...it's just the incentive of being a stay at home mom was high and that's a good thing).
Same with black people. You'll be surprised the amount of black or at least non white roles and how they're treated. You'd be led to believe via narratives that non white roles in 1950s films would be akin to black face Al Jolson stuff.
No people are just in roles, and it's never really made a point of it being anything of significance. Which is how it should be. It's today where it's highly race conscious, where if there's a black character, the script will actually make it a point that they're black.
So yeah, old media is a great narrative breaker. And also because you realize, "well maybe that was just liberal Hollywood", but these films were watched by everyone, everywhere and there wasn't outcry or anger. Back then studios would not put in things if it hurt their bottom line. So the obvious inference is the average 1950s American wouldn't faint and break down if a non-white character was on screen or if a woman was working a job. The women would be feminine and not girlbossy which was great, the gender roles were in tact, but obviously America is not how the acacedmics describe it as if pulpy sci fi 1950s films show all sorts of things that shouldn't be according to their narratives as the audiences would rebel.
It's sort of like the Uhura kiss on Star Trek. The cast and crew were bracing for "racism". It made no impact. The woman who plays Uhura said she was presented with the "worst" feedback and it was a guy from Alabama saying "I don't believe in interracial relationships, however when an all American boy like Kirk has a beautiful woman in his arms, he goes with it". She noted that if that's the worse it got, they really miscalculated.
This is because 90% of the issues with black had to do with forcing integration. Americans didn't care that black people existed. They don't like when the country says "you have no freedom of association". That is a wrong that was done on the country. And the issue people take with that, was twisted into "Americans of the past hate black people". Even the straight up "racists" I would like to time travel to the 1950s and earlier and actually ask about their reasons. Because they would label us in the future "racists without cause" when we have extraordinary amount of cause based on our observance of black behavior. So I wonder what is the thing about the racists that aren't being told to us. Maybe Jebediah wasn't conscious of why specifically he disliked black people, but maybe his dad who had real observable reasons did.
Anyways, that was a long tangent and went all over the place, but I felt like getting on a tear.