But I do keep thinking about the fact that the move to the right among young men, will probably pretty quickly reverse itself, if they keep going after media/video games/porn, etc.

Sure I'd prefer a world where money is spread out more evenly. But if Tesla sold say 500 million cars, and Musk pocketed $2,000 each; while yes, I object to any one person having a trillion dollars, if he sold 500 million cars because they really were the best cars available, there was good competition, no monopoly violations, he was just the best, I'd think ok, like no one needs that much money sure, but at least the economy seems to make basic sense. People make money because they create things of value.

But when Tesla's value is totally disconnected from the actual value the products provide, and instead is just based on Musks's ability to hype the stock. It's not great. And we are getting to this place where the wealth is so concentrated in the magnificent seven it's even making trad right-leaning capitalists get concerned. So no, I don't think his pay package should be aligned towards things that are bad for the national, if not global economy.

I tend to think that long-term trends tends to be a better explanatory factor. There was this interview with this divorce lawyer that really helped shape my view on where we were as a society which basically said we’re in a place with too much post-modernism. The idea of how we imagine the world is just too flexible, there’s too much “freedom” and we’re on a trend back towards a more concrete view of the world. I tend to think this is correct, and that if there is backlash to Trump, or the public and popular notion of conservatism, we’re still, broadly speaking influenced by a group of folks who are ready for a more concrete or “conservative” popular culture. Gender roles, Right and wrong.

But I also think the trend sort of definitionally is already moving back in the other direction, it will just take ~ 10 years to play out as those in their formative years grow into a more liberal mindset(it’s probably just sort of barely impacting a few months of the psyche of the youngest pre-teens now and as that cohort ages they’ll influence the culture back in the other direction)

I think this gets to a lot of people’s criticism of Democrats as being perceived as not having a message.

It would be productive to our discourse if we didn’t automatically see it as two sides.

I think the idea that there are two sides is one of the most toxic ideas in our politics. We associate with teams and anyone on our side must be good, and ignore things like the tyranny of small differences - the far left hates the center left more than they do the right. And there are similar dynamics on the right. Especially in obscure conspiracy filled corners of the internet.

This doesn’t mean all people on the right are bad, or the right is inherently violent! But to ignore the complex breakdown of political ideologies is to ignore the crazy ways things actually happen, not to mention the fact that generally speaking, people who commit random acts of violence like this are not coming from a politically rational place.

And I remember when I studied the columbine shootings; what I learned is how broken those shooters brains were. That I think on some level, I imagined a rational anger directed at their classmates, and not the bizzare rantings of a confused adolescent (which of course they were)

So we of course don’t want to introduce the concept of groypers, or 4chan meme culture or the bizarre rantings of a broken mind that probably led to this tragedy, and instead use this opportunity as to continue to perpetuate this neat story that justifies everyone’s priors.