Can anyone doubt that American culture is simply *weaker* than it was a generation ago? We can't even handle the name of Boba Fett's spaceship anymore. As totalitarian politics advances, culture withers.
There is a certain grim logic to it. Totalitarianism is the politicization of everything. As it advances, it leaves less room to say, draw, sing, or film anything that doesn't advance the agenda, damage the enemies of the elite, or deliver an approved political payload.
Culture could be seen as a process of asking questions, challenging preconceptions, speculating and mocking, dreaming and guessing. None of that is allowed under totalitarianism, which provides all the answers and requires culture to work backwards from its conclusions.
We're being stripped of the language necessary to express challenging ideas or debate politically correct conclusions. It's getting to where we can hardly communicate with each other any longer. Our culture is becoming an impenetrable morass of incomprehensible gobbledygook.
Culture can also be seen as a bridge between the past and future, tradition and possibility. How can such a bridge stand when the past is systematically erased and the future has been ordained by political correctness? Culture now comes from nothing and goes nowhere interesting.
A culture defined by hapless neurotics demanding the destruction of everything that hurts their feelings or challenges their conclusions is not going to produce interesting ideas. It is doomed to contract into an ever-smaller safe space.
Growing up in the time between 60s counterculture and the rise of political correctness, it was common to mock old-time speech codes and decency laws - but they were far less restrictive than today's Woke Jihad, weren't they? Culture was more vibrant beneath them.
There were things you couldn't say a hundred years ago, but today much more is unspeakable, and unthinkable. Maybe the old-time standards of cultural decency were simply less concerned with controlling what people THINK than Wokeism is. Implication was more permissible.
Modern culture has become horribly weak because it's too preoccupied with killing ideas. Without challenge there is no growth. Culture becomes flabby and listless, devoid of sunlight and exercise, forbidden to do anything that might challenge political power.
Politicized culture is alienating because it's so busy enforcing preconceived notions and silencing "incorrect" ideas that it doesn't resemble real life anymore. It just isn't rooted in the human experience. It rings false. It cannot envision anything its masters disapprove of.
There is less you can say today than you could 20 years ago, less you can dream, less you can dare. Much of what we were doing and saying only a generation ago is now forbidden. Our culture is unquestionably weaker and smaller than it used to be. We are diminished. /end
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