People prefer the purity standards of their culture, and "their culture" in America is ephemeral. It's not a coincidence that the guiding lights of the Republican Party sound like a bunch of mullahs these days: they're rallying followers through ardent calls for adherence to morals.

Graeber made the point in The Dawn of Everything that cultures define themselves far more often by what they are not than by what they are. For example, the tribes of coastal California tended to be ascetic and egalitarian while the tribes of the Pacific Northwest were garish slavers. Peoples that share climates but do not interact due to geography tend to develop similarly while people who share climates but do interact tend to develop defiantly.

I say this because the Democrats have made much of their multicultural desires and beliefs lo these past 50 years. This was much less of a deal when Democrats and Republicans weren't liberals/conservatives. Now that they are, the more Democrats speak their pronouns the more Republicans will police bathrooms. There will come a time, however, when cultural grievance will no longer be the majority of what half of the country wants. It's exhausting and you get nothing from it.

We survived the Mask Wars. I'm currently working on some sort of metric that allows us to put up a green-yellow-red fire danger because ultimately we've got sick children parading through here all day every day and respiratory illness is a thing. But the number of people going "ZOMFG I'M NEVER GIVING UP MY FREEDOM TO YOUR 5G INFESTED MASK" has dropped to zero. It's a lot of fucking work and nobody fucking cares for your performative Republicanism.

And yeah, I'm in a liberal corner of a liberal state and I know it. But the payoff for walking the stations of the cross in public is now no greater than walking the stations of the cross in private so really, thumb your rosary beads it's easier.

Hang in there. The tide is turning, I can see it.