It's a weird feeling to know when you're living through an era that will go down in history as something infamous, just imagine what of "summer of 2020" is gonna mean to people in the future.
Indeed, it is a weird feeling.
Especially if you're an armchair historian like me and have been a history sperg ever since you were a small kid.
Honestly, if Trump wins a second term and the GOP keeps control of the Senate (or even gains control of the House again) this year, then I think 2020 will be more or less the end of "Current Year" and the 2010's SJW mentality in the same way that 2001 was more or less the last year of the 90's cultural zeitgeist or how 1963 was the last year of the quaint 1950's Americana mindset and culture.
At that point, there will be a political realignment and we'll be entering a Seventh Party System in earnest, and after that who knows what will happen or how things will play out?
Culturally, I think we could very much see a realignment and a wider backlash against the pretentious woke moralism and austere left-wing IdPol culture.
Call me a bloomer or an optimist, but 2020 has become such a shitshow partly because of the black swan curveball that was COVID-19 and because the Woke Left is desperate and so are the neoliberal corporatists who have wasted billions of dollars backing the SJW's with the law of diminishing returns finally kicking in. You could already feel a few inklings of this potential backlash all throughout the second half of 2019 but the pandemic and desperation over the election more or less sent it into overdrive.
The 4th of July turned out to be a bunch of illegal celebrations in open defiance of the pandemic lockdowns and the BLM and Antifa types trying to "cancel" the holiday. The so-called grand uprisings and the attacks on Gettysburg turned out to be little more than online LARP'ing and paranoia signifying nothing.
The SJW's overplayed their hand and the people are slowly getting pissed at the Woke Left, even if they'll pay lip service to them on social media. If this translates to a Trump win on Election Day, the DNC and the corporate elites will definitely get the message that 2016 was not merely a fluke and change course to recoup any losses and maintain their power while the Millennial Left will be stuck with holding the bag and taking the blame.
Now that 4th of July weekend is essentially over, the worst of the rioting has more or less died out entirely outside of the usual Seattle and Portland hot spots, and I expect things to quiet down completely until the day after Election Day or the day of the Chauvin trial verdict, whichever comes first.
Even then, the severity of the George Floyd riots have likely served as a wake-up call for many people and I think that a second attempt at rioting, looting, and armed insurrection will backfire badly, especially if Trump wins 2020.
I said in another thread that the 2020's could very well end up being a reverse echo of the 2010's, with 2020 being a horrid and turbulent year of catastrophe and the rest of the decade being a pretty cool time for America.
2010 was a pretty calm year for the United States (aside from Deepwater Horizon) but the 2010's as a whole were a hellhole of a decade that led to the current mess we're in right now. The 2020's might end up being a complete inverse of the 2010's in terms of pop culture and society.
