Even if most people had not heard of the 4 Nations hockey tournament that concluded this week, they were thrilled by the national anthem faceoff that accompanied the matches.
Part of this was catharsis: For a while, one would be hard pressed to find a crowd singing along in full to the U.S. National Anthem five years ago. Such a move was socially unacceptable. Kneeling, too, was a prominent reaction.
After all, 2020 was not all that long ago:
With real patriotism on the rise, it feels like a different world. Five years prior, the country’s most prominent concerns were Black Lives Matter riots and efforts to impeach President Donald Trump. COVID-19, of course, colored every impression of everything, and usual left-wing sexuality interests dominated the societal landscape.
Democrats moved dizzyingly fast into all this, and now, we can be a little bit grateful for it.
Sure, gay and transgender items have been in steady incline over many decades. But the LGBT movement is distinct from its actual effects, in that each advance has confused society’s relationship with the concept more and more. “Marriage” rights once catapulted from non-existent to undeniable. The year 2016 is when most people can remember the beginning of transgender advocacy, at which point in-group and out-group dynamics placed instant pressure on conformists. It has only become crazier, as we well know in the present.
The transformation was quick, but its quickness was able to stay somewhat under the surface. Not so with racial matters: It erupted, literally, with George Floyd’s death in May of 2020 after building since Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012. The violence was one aspect of the riots, and deep shame followed. White liberals reacted instantly with shows of anti-racist intent, almost as instantly as black liberals called out the perceived injustice.
We are in the process of undoing a left-wing normal these days. It highlights just how recent were the events of 2020, how ever-changing it all is — and much of that has to do with how open to transformation the Left was in the first place.
Of course, the same applies to the Right: We are snapping back, currently on an election high. That is just how political reactions work. Yet for some reason, Democrats are clinging to what helped them lose. As former Vice President Kamala Harris polls best among Democratic frontrunners for the next election, it seems that her party of progress wants no leftward slow-down.
Such speed landed them in a disaster most recently, and conservatives can be glad it all went by pretty quickly. Hopefully, the same result will occur, and keep occurring, until it is safe to calm things down.