It appears the dramatic shifts of the past 30 years are nearing their end, with a period of indefinite calm on the horizon.
The gay rights movement appears to be poised on a seesaw: the gains obtained over the past several years have little institutional support, and are subject to repeated oscillation with the passing fortunes of elected leaders. Continued economic instability, coupled with the driving force of this instability, the capriciousness of democratic electorates, is resulting in a null-sum game between conservative and liberal parties. This because the electorate is not making judgments based on values, but on circumstances.
The problem with modern electorates can be summed up in the sentiments of aixelsid: the thing which must be confronted is not obstacles to better living, but potential threats to survival. What this kind of thinking entails is a belief that peace is the priority, and any and all sacrifices must be made to save that peace. This requires "deals with the devil", which are not truly loathesome so much as simple matters of practicality. While there is, statistically, a canceling vote on the center left against aixelsid, it is like not to be exercised out of antipathy and protest against the corruption of political bargaining.
The only real solution is to deny aixelsid a vote, on grounds that he will misuse it. But this has its own difficulties.
The ACA will probably be pronounced dead this week. This is quite the rationalizing court, on par with the activism of the Warren court of the 60s and 70s, but in reverse. While the truth will be that the overturning of ACA is legally indefensible, it is difficult in our polarized society.to obtain the kind of unified judgment against the court that historians of the past might have obtained. Or perhaps it will be obtained, but we'll only hear about the opinion of the Hitta in the group in the media.
I do expect to hear a lot of flowery language used to disguise the simple fact that the court has broken the law. The U.S. code is quite clear on what a tax is, and if the mandate is not found to be a tax, that's a violation of the constitution, which stipulates that definitions offered by congress in the code must be observed. I will be taking some time to email each Justice who concurs with the opinion with a one sentence letter: "You are a criminal".
Another sign of weakness in our political systems is an increasing initiative to defeatism in the left wing. Democratic Underground has become rife with it, so much so that if it went offline tomorrow and never went back up, I would be a very happy camper. As a meeting place for the American left, Democratic Underground is in gradual decline. However it is hobbled by a lack of grass-roots initiative on the part of Democrats in general. I already wrote about what happened in Egypt and the disaster that is evolving there. People tend to think democracy is a magic bromide for society's ills, but democracy is not: social justice is.
I see all over the globe a left-wing that is ashamed of its own history, a left wing that goes to the streets and accomplishes great feats of form, but nothing of substance. It thinks it's accomplishing something, but it's actually a mouse playing in a cat's cage. The recent acts against employee unions, on both the state level and the national level (by the Supreme Court) are meant not only to weaken unions, but to prevent the message of social justice from getting out. With the message stifled, the next phase is to obtain control of independent media outlets with a reputation for centrism. CNN is a key example of how to do this. These two initiatives are key to turning blue states red. The other key is the strategy of divide and conquer, which the Right doesn't really have to do these days because the Left is content to cannibalize itself: self-interest has taken root in the left-wing as increasingly there are bids to exploit protest slogans, and through the alliance of the exploiters with the aforementioned media powers the conflict preventers, in all their pathetic initiative to appease, have come out on top, while the more effective, tougher voices are at the bottom. Nowhere is this more apparent than Democratic Underground, which now uses a jury system to censor voices calling for harder, tougher measures against the 1%. The Greeks should be burning the mansions of the tax evaders and austerity pillagers who have decimated their livelihoods, but you don't see anyone calling for that on any of the places where these calls might get attention. Not that they aren't being made: they are simply being censored.
With the Left wing divided against itself and the Right fighting a cultural wave to sustain their values against increasing cultural derision and revulsion, the scenario is a perfect storm against the forces of social justice in which attempted reforms fail and ground is gradually lost. The unions are nearly dead, the rich so powerful that there is meaning to the term "you'll never work in this town again", and the distance between the rich and the non-rich so great that there is no effective communication by the rich to the poor, nor even sympathy. This is leading us to the collapse of the Progressive Era, and desolation of alpha Si in the name of rouge gamma Se.