1990s Political Correctness

[Kosher Dill]

I just finished up with another book written at the time: Dictatorship of Virtue, from 1994. It was a real eye-opener as to just how far the rot had already set in by the late 80s/early 90s. Much of the book could have been written today.
The "diversity training" industry was already in full flower, for example. "Identity politics" was already a well-known term, as well as canards like "speech is violence", "racism = prejudice + power", and so on. People transgressing the new taboos of identity politics were called Nazis and members of the "New Right" (used similarly to the "alt-right" today). Academics who expressed unapproved views were run out on a rail - even at Bible colleges, which you would expect to be bastions of conservatism.

The biggest differences from today are that transgenderism was barely on the radar at all, and that the old guard was still around and willing to push back a bit. Even mainstream journalism still had people who were willing to stand up and say "This is ridiculous".

There's a chapter about the removal of AP European History from the high school in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1990, which is definitely worth a read as a sort of time capsule. There doesn't seem to be much information about it online because it was a local matter from pre-internet times, but suffice it to say that an immensely popular European history course was removed from the curriculum at this prestigious high school because it was too white. Parents and students organized to have the course reinstated, and the school board fought tooth and nail against it. And again, the playbook used by these proto-SJWs will be very familiar to modern observers.

EDIT: 30 years later, apparently the very existence of this course, and the controversy, has been forgotten even at the school itself.

Students petition for AP European History class

“What do you know about France between the Enlightenment and the first World War?” This question was junior Jack Heuberger’s explanation for why he believes offering an Advanced Placement European History class would benefit the social studies department. He believes that students at the high...

thesagonline.com

The book ends on an optimistic note, but I think the real question at this point isn't "How did we fall away from our late-90s progress", but rather "Why were the late '90s and early '00s an aberration from the larger trend since the 80s?"

Surprisingly, she wasn't. We couldn't afford a professional plumber

"Isn't there some other way I can pay for this?"

 

[Dom Cruise]

There was minor stuff, mostly just black people being black people. Other than that near the mid 90s I remember a Girl Power push but it didn’t seem super PC or anything, in fact I kind of miss it. That’s the kind of feminism I can get behind. It wasn’t complaining that men were holding them back. No. They held their heads high and said they were just as capable as any man. Which I mean.. they were wrong but I admire that drive and aspiration.

Girl Power was also very predicated on sex appeal, back when the left had the Religious Right as their boogeyman a girl "owning" and flaunting her sexuality was seen as empowering, but since they turned inward on themselves the kind of "Howard Stern" liberalism that was all about sex became the new enemy instead and now today burkas and hijabs are unironically seen as the new "empowerment"

True, although I think the fact that you had the infamously corrupt Louisiana state government at the time plus the botched FEMA response and Bush as a scapegoat of sorts did a lot to diffuse it before it could get bad.

Aside from Kanye West and Spike Lee, you didn't have too much tensions once the initial state of emergency ended and a proper relief effort could finally be made.

Of course, Kanye West is mentally ill and Spike Lee was always a race baiter even back in the 90's. You even had jokes on Family Guy and MAD TV that made fun of Spike Lee's obsession with race and black identity politics. That wouldn't fly nowadays.



Thank God that commercial didn't play where I lived. Mom used to pour used motor oil down the sink in our bathroom every so often back when I was a kid.

If Twitter had existed in 2005 we probably would have had the cultural shift caused by the Trayvon Martin shooting happen several years earlier, but it didn't, so there was only so much race hustlers like Spike Lee could do.

But it proves that attitude was out there, I remember scratching my head back then over how people were acting like it only affected black people or at least the black population of New Orleans was the only ones who mattered (anticipating today's "Black Lives Matter" which might as well translate to "Black Lives Matter Only") and that somehow it was Bush's personal fault that a natural disaster happened, as if he can control the weather.

There were always anti-white racists and man hating feminists out there but their power used to be mercifully limited until social media came along.

 

[Syaoran Li]

"Isn't there some other way I can pay for this?"

Heh, my mom actually did do that with one of the neighbors who worked for UPS. Surprisingly, Dad wasn't at all upset by it when I told him after having the misfortune of finding out.

Then I later found out my parents were swingers when I got older.

 

[Spangled Drongo]

Older, left wing relatives of mine swear up and down that most of the censoring back then was done to appease the religious right rather than the left, and go into complete denial when I tell them about the cancel culture of the left today. I’m too young to remember any of it (am in my mid 20s) but do know of the moral panic over video games being violent and Satanic. Can anyone older confirm/deny this?

 

[Syaoran Li]

Older, left wing relatives of mine swear up and down that most of the censoring back then was done to appease the religious right rather than the left, and go into complete denial when I tell them about the cancel culture of the left today. I’m too young to remember any of it (am in my mid 20s) but do know of the moral panic over video games being violent and Satanic. Can anyone older confirm/deny this?

I'm in my mid-late 20's but I grew up in a deep fundie part of the country. I can confirm that the majority of censorship in the 80's, 90's, and early 2000's was done to appease the Religious Right with only a few examples of what could be seen as "woke" censorship today (like the corporate ban on Song of the South)

A lot of Generation X and Early Millennial liberals can't seem to grasp the concept that leftists could ever be moral authoritarians or pro-censorship. They've spent so long having to deal with the Religious Right and the neocons that believe corporate censorship and moralism as solely the domain of moral conservatives and traditionalists.

The fact a lot of Boomer fundies back Trump out of pragmatism and the Woke Left's constant sperging over the long-defanged Religious Right probably doesn't help matters.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Older, left wing relatives of mine swear up and down that most of the censoring back then was done to appease the religious right rather than the left

In terms of censoring media, this is absolutely true. Just to name a few '90s and early 2000s examples in the US:

- Funding for the NEA became a hot-button issue in the early '90s after funds went to exhibiting Robert Mapplethorpe, "Piss Christ", and other transgressive (or "degenerate", if you prefer) art.
- Congress held hearings on violent video games in 1993, which eventually led to the founding of the ESRB as a sort of self-defense move by the gaming industry.
- Walmart would refuse to stock CDs with obscene lyrics, forcing artists to either self-censor or produce "clean edits". In the days before internet distribution of music took off, this actually mattered.
- Pornography and pornographers were a major target of Attorney General John Ashcroft in the early years of the Bush administration - in fact, a lot of the new post-9/11 government powers intended to fight terrorism actually found their first uses on pornographers. Or just look at the entire career of Larry Flynt, speaking more broadly.
- I'm having trouble finding references at the moment, but complaint/boycott campaigns from groups like the American Family Association used to be much more effective at pressuring broadcasters and publishers who carried "immoral" content.
- And to bring things back around to a CWC reference, the '90s saw a federally-funded push by Christian fundamentalists to teach abstinence-only sex education in schools - that is, censoring material on birth control from schools. The king of autists himself was taught this way, but he notoriously said F ABSTINANCE!!

Proto-cancel culture did exist back then, but it's not like anyone was able to stop "The Bell Curve" from being published or anything like that.

 

[Spangled Drongo]

I'm in my mid-late 20's but I grew up in a deep fundie part of the country. I can confirm that the majority of censorship in the 80's, 90's, and early 2000's was done to appease the Religious Right with only a few examples of what could be seen as "woke" censorship today (like the corporate ban on Song of the South)

A lot of Generation X and Early Millennial liberals can't seem to grasp the concept that leftists could ever be moral authoritarians or pro-censorship. They've spent so long having to deal with the Religious Right and the neocons that believe corporate censorship and moralism as solely the domain of moral conservatives and traditionalists.

The fact a lot of Boomer fundies back Trump out of pragmatism and the Woke Left's constant sperging over the long-defanged Religious Right probably doesn't help matters.

Much the same among my lefty boomer relatives - they come from a time when their side was the one in favour of free speech, freedom of expression and against censorship. They were alive when gay relationships were only just becoming decriminalised and indigenous people were being granted basic human rights, and were the hippies holding up the signs in protest, and even though things have changed a lot since then they’re set in their ways and whenever the right can be blamed for anything they’ll go relive their glory days not realising they’re making mountains out of molehills. But since the censorship nowadays is coming from their side they’ll outright deny that it happens or blame it on a fringe minority/call it a false flag being spread by the evil conservatives to make people hate the left. They think the left is still the side in favour of free speech and they’re being silenced and movements like BLM are just about human rights, rather than having the goal of creating racial tensions and overthrowing the system.

 

[ロボ﹏§¤r﹏h¶rœ]

There was none where I live.

Also, give me my edgy humour back.

 

[Chad Holdenford]

There was none where I live.

Also, give me my edgy humour back.

I'd kill to have a Brazilian Portuguese dub of this version of Ghost Stories. When it came here in the mid-2000's, it received a normal dub based on its original script. Needless to say, next to nobody remembers it once aired on Cartoon Network at all.

To stay on topic, my nice and incredibly hypocritical Brazil was either too lenient or up their ass about certain stuff. I'll give you some examples:

Hot girls dancing with wet shirts and wrestling on jacuzzis on Sunday afternoon? Just fine.
Cartoons like The Simpsons depicting "adult situations"? Too much for kids, it needs to air after midnight. It is an animation and therefore it's for kids, right? Yeah, do that.
Girls and women of all ages dancing in a very suggestive manner in the morning? Hefty fine.
Anime like Saint Seiya and Dragon Ball Z, involving lots of fighting and blood galore? Kids shouldn't see this, censor them NOW NOW NOW!
WWF Wrestling? Can't air this on the afternoon, too violent, either move it to a night timeslot or put the kibosh on it, preferably the latter.
Movies full of expletives? Dub them with generic shit like "Darn it" instead of "Dammit", "Stuff" instead of "Drugs" and "Son of a gun" instead of "Motherfucker".
Songs about sex? Yeah, sure, why not.

You get the idea. And now we are held in the same standards as american SJW's. If it offends the poor sensibilities of progressives, it won't air, period. And if it slips up, they'll fuss and foam about on Twitter until its pulled off the air.

 

[Frostnipped Todger]

I turned 15 in 1990,and was also involved in the punk and hardcore scene, so I pretty much watched PC go from an underground thing to completely mainstream.
Looking back, it was pretty chill, I still hold most of the views that I had back then. Racism was bad, but racist jokes (not insulting someone to their face) were just slightly edgy humour, sexism was bad, but lots of people loved the Macc Lads. Porn was somewhat tolerated, but neither praised as "brave" or seen as a moral abomination. Anti-war stuff was huge, especially during and after Gulf War 1. Globalisation was seen as an evil, and the working class was still seen as a cause to rally around.
People my age had grown up during the cold war, so communism (and to a lesser extent socialism) was looked down on, except by a few fringe people.
The big change came after the Riot Grrl scene got going, and there was a surge in anti-male sentiment. From there the whole idpol thing got started (mostly from women in the scene, because feminists are crazy) , and I remember having conversations with radfem girls about how it was ironic that they would listen to hip hop but a white man talking about women in the same way would be extremely offensive, or Patti Smith singing "Rock and Roll Nigger" was fine, but when a man covered the same song it was racist.
I pretty much noped the fuck out after that.
Of course, this is before most people I knew had the internet (in any serious way), and the train went off the rails with the advent of social media.

TLR... People were less uptight, and more likely to take a joke.

 

[Abilene]

There was none where I live.

Same. There was weird shit like this:

They basically changed Cowabunga to "de puta madre" in Spanish, which is loosely translated as "fucking great".
In both movies. Just because they could get away with it.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

The '90s were slow (I was still a kid).

The '00s were "average"?

The '10s were a blur.

Then time slammed on the brakes in 2020.

So in a way, the '90s - with less political correctness - seems kind of like "last decade", and now it's "suddenly" Clown World.

 

[soon]

in the 90s when you called a nigger a nigger, he answered with yes massa. based times.

 

[Pointless Pedant]

People pouring oil and grease down drains annoyed me more than anything else in this thread. I'm not a plumber but I've had to deal with the consequences of that, and it stinks.

 

[Syaoran Li]

The term "self esteem" was big in elementary school, even as a child I knew something was wrong with that term.

The 90s was also when the first real whiffs of ant-Confederate stuff started.

I will also say that the whole no prayer or anything the least bit religious in schools may have been worse in the 90s. Im sure it is dependent on region, but my kids go to the same public elementary school I did and I certainly notice religion being much more open then when I was there. They still say Christmas and the like.

I honestly think the "No Prayer in Schools" and push for ultra-secularism came about because of the well-intended naivety of 90's political correctness. They were worried about upsetting people who didn't celebrate Christmas or pray. It was less of an atheistic anti-religious response and more of a secular "let's be totally neutral so nobody gets offended" thing.

Nowadays, it's a lot more obvious that Christmas is a de facto secular holiday for non-Christians and is the most popular holiday in the developed world even in countries where Christianity never took root. In Japan it's popular, but is seen more as a romantic holiday like Valentine's Day while New Years is seen as the big family gift-giving holiday.

There's a reason why Christmas is the only religious holiday that's also a federal holiday.

I remember the first whiffs of anti-Confederate sentiments, but I think most of the initial sentiments were more about having Confederate flags displayed in government buildings since the CSA engaged in armed rebellion against the government and the racial connotations were more of a secondary thing.

Even as late as the early 2000's, it was seen more as a generic Southern flag that was dependent on context as opposed to the "worse than the Swastika" attitude the Woke Left has today. It was wrong for KKK and the skinhead gangs to fly it, but otherwise it was a generic shorthand for someone being a Southerner or maybe a blue-collar redneck.

Race-baiters like Spike Lee bitched about it, but the general context was that as long as you didn't shove it in black people's faces, it was fine if you were South of the Mason-Dixon line and were just using it as a point of Southern pride.

If you were flying it North of the Mason-Dixon line and you weren't a Civil War reenactor, at a Civil War museum or battlefield, or a Southern transplant, it was viewed more suspiciously.

No joke, I've seen a lot of blacks fly the Rebel Flag with pride in the area where I'm from. Granted, most of the blacks I knew as a kid were the rural "Chad Blackneck" types as opposed to suburbanite blacks, Twitter college socialists or inner-city joggers.

I honestly wonder if at least a small part of the Woke Left's turbo-hatred of the Confederate Flag and old Confederate symbols in general has to do with their hatred of the Bible Belt, which is mostly comprised of Southern states, especially for the non-black SJW's.

I'd imagine a lot of the DNC who supported this wider push against any symbols of the Confederacy in the wake of Charleston wanted to stoke the fires of racial division and probably have an intense hate for the Southern "red states" because of the 2004 Election where large turnout from the Religious Right ensured Bush won the electoral vote and the popular vote.

The Millennials and Early Zoomers are zealous in their rhetoric partly because they pretty much actually are indoctrinated zealots and partly because they have a "Fuck You, Dad!" mentality, especially if they grew up in a red state before heading to college.

 

[Pointless Pedant]

School prayer was officially declared unconstitutional because of the First Amendment in the early 1960s. You can read more about it here, but it long predates any of the current culture wars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engel_v._Vitale

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abington_School_District_v._Schempp

The old religious right tried to push back hard against this, but "Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion" is very strong language and it didn't go anywhere.

 

[Maurice Caine]

I honestly think you might be onto something with the decline of Christianity in the wider culture having a major effect with the vindictiveness of the Woke Left and the rise of black supremacism in the mainstream.

On average, the Millennial generation had a deep-seated resentment towards Christianity thanks to both the antics of the Religious Right moral guardians and the Bush Administration's failures and close ties to said moral guardians.

Unfortunately, our generation threw the baby out with the bathwater and so many Millennials flocked to the New Atheism movement as well as SJW's, radical feminists, black supremacists, neo-communists, and all the other previously fringe groups that would coalesce into the wider Woke Left in the 2010's.

There was a racial detente of sorts in the years after Rodney King but before Trayvon Martin and things had visibly and steadily improved for race relations during the Clinton and Bush Administrations. Not even the mismanaged response to Hurricane Katrina was enough to sink that, but I think the letdown of Obama and the rise of what would become the Woke Left really kicked things into gear.

Obama's comments about Trayvon and the media circus surrounding the Zimmerman trial were both after Occupy Wall Street had collapsed in on itself. Given the fact Obama was part of the neoliberal clique and in league with the corporate bigwigs, I think a lot of the increased racial tensions post-2013 were at least partly intentionally stoked by the powers that be. They didn't want another Occupy to get started and organize before it could be subverted a second time.

Identity Politics are a hell of a drug, and the Millennial generational A-Logging against Christian values made it even easier for the division to be sowed.

So where do we go from now?

 

[Syaoran Li]

So where do we go from now?

Honestly, I don't know.

The kids born in the 90's (Late Millennials and Early Zoomers) are mostly a lost cause at this point barring the occasional individual exceptions to the rule. Even if Trump wins and the Woke Left collapses in on itself fully, they're just plain fucked. They're the most zealous and indoctrinated but also were too late to really get in on the ground floor and have cushy jobs as "diversity consultants" and HR Department Karens like the Early and Core Millennials did. At best, they'll try to hold onto their gendersped identities so they can extort random Patreon creators for their services as a "sensitivity reader"

A lot of the Early Millennials and some of those Core Millennials who are deep down more liberal and are following the Woke Left as a social trend might get better once they mellow out more with age and the Baby Boomers fully die off and or are little more than a handful of geezers like the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation since that will free up a lot of job spaces and property.

Expect more of Generation X to enter the uppermost echelons of power that the Boomers are in right now while a lot of the Early Millennials will actually start trying to buy houses or start small families since they tend to be a lot less turbo-woke compared to Late Millennials. I suspect a lot of overpriced property might get sold for cheap depending on how this COVID-19 recession ultimately plays out and more of the Boomer homeowners die and free up this property.

The black community is really perma-fucked any way you slice it thanks to the BLM kangz and the riotous joggers who looted and robbed under their flag. If we get a Kamala presidency, expect purges of Antifa and BLM as she ends up becoming the Napoleon to their Jacobins while the rank-and-file blacks and joggers are kept on the DNC plantation.

If Trump wins and we get a massive crackdown from the Feds, a lot of Whites, Asians, and Latinos are going to view blacks with disdain and extreme distrust. A lot of the Core and Late Zoomers and Alpha Generation kids who had to grow up in 2020 will remember this and will probably be genuinely racist, even if they're not cross-burning Nazis dropping N-bombs out in the open, they'll definitely have the "Around blacks, never relax" attitude and it'll be a lot more apparent.

Another thing Trump wants to do if reelected and has already taken some key steps in doing is combating intersectional leftism and Critical Race Theory by executive orders banning it in federal installations and in federal training programs. This could easily extend to any company or institution that accepts federal funds, which will likely take care of the academia issue.

I'm praying and hoping Trump wins (already voted for him with early in-person voting) but I'm still scared and it's going to be close either way.

I think that the Late Zoomers and Alpha Generation who are still kids are going to be the ones who actually live up to the 2015-era "Generation Zyklon" memes while the Early Zoomers are turbo-woke since the only real dividing line between them and the Late Millennials is they were born during Clinton's second term instead of his first.

Core Zoomers are going to be more centrist/moderate overall from the looks of it, similar to Generation X and I suspect a lot of the Whites (and the Latinos and Asians who don't live in California) will be a lot more right-leaning on specific issues and left-leaning on others.

I think COVID-19 and the BLM coup has probably made a lot of these Core Zoomer White and Asian boys "based and red pilled" and even the girls will be more likely to end up semi-based and purple pilled overall depending on their family and what part of the country they live in.

College attendance is probably going down thanks to the debt crisis and that'll probably cut back on the indoctrination rates as well.

Now the Late Zoomers and Gen Alphas who are still children right now? They're going to be more likely to try and embrace Christianity and I'm expecting it to be a lot more Catholic and less Protestant Evangelical both due to immigration and because the Evangelicals shit the bed so spectacularly that they're pretty much doomed now that the neocons have thrown them under the bus.

Plus, there's a part of me that suspects the "traditionalist" Zoomer edgelords of today might end up being the right-wing equivalent of the Beat Generation while the Late Zoomers/Gen Alphas end up being the right-wing equivalent of the hippies and punk rockers. May God have mercy on us all if that happens.

Again, a lot of these predictions are predicated on a Trump victory this year so take my words with a heap of salt for now.

 

[Drunk and Pour]

The 90s political correctness I remember was of the right wing variety. Video games were too violent (Mortal Kombat, DOOM), music was poisoning society (Marilyn Manson, NWA), comedians were too vulgar (Howard Stern, Andrew Dice Clay). Beavis and Butthead were dumbing down children, Murphy Brown was destroying the nuclear family, the Real World was glorifying homosexuality, ect.

Identity Politics is what really switched PC from being a right wing issue to a left wing issue. You can be as vulgar as you want, just as long as it doesn't insult marginalized people. Depictions of violence are okay as long as it doesn't entertain straight white males.

 

[Pointless Pedant]

Honestly, I don't know.

The kids born in the 90's (Late Millennials and Early Zoomers) are mostly a lost cause at this point barring the occasional individual exceptions to the rule. Even if Trump wins and the Woke Left collapses in on itself fully, they're just plain fucked. They're the most zealous and indoctrinated but also were too late to really get in on the ground floor and have cushy jobs as "diversity consultants" and HR Department Karens like the Early and Core Millennials did. At best, they'll try to hold onto their gendersped identities so they can extort random Patreon creators for their services as a "sensitivity reader"

A lot of the Early Millennials and some of those Core Millennials who are deep down more liberal and are following the Woke Left as a social trend might get better once they mellow out more with age and the Baby Boomers fully die off and or are little more than a handful of geezers like the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation since that will free up a lot of job spaces and property.

Expect more of Generation X to enter the uppermost echelons of power that the Boomers are in right now while a lot of the Early Millennials will actually start trying to buy houses or start small families since they tend to be a lot less turbo-woke compared to Late Millennials. I suspect a lot of overpriced property might get sold for cheap depending on how this COVID-19 recession ultimately plays out and more of the Boomer homeowners die and free up this property.

The black community is really perma-fucked any way you slice it thanks to the BLM kangz and the riotous joggers who looted and robbed under their flag. If we get a Kamala presidency, expect purges of Antifa and BLM as she ends up becoming the Napoleon to their Jacobins while the rank-and-file blacks and joggers are kept on the DNC plantation.

If Trump wins and we get a massive crackdown from the Feds, a lot of Whites, Asians, and Latinos are going to view blacks with disdain and extreme distrust. A lot of the Core and Late Zoomers and Alpha Generation kids who had to grow up in 2020 will remember this and will probably be genuinely racist, even if they're not cross-burning Nazis dropping N-bombs out in the open, they'll definitely have the "Around blacks, never relax" attitude and it'll be a lot more apparent.

Another thing Trump wants to do if reelected and has already taken some key steps in doing is combating intersectional leftism and Critical Race Theory by executive orders banning it in federal installations and in federal training programs. This could easily extend to any company or institution that accepts federal funds, which will likely take care of the academia issue.

I'm praying and hoping Trump wins (already voted for him with early in-person voting) but I'm still scared and it's going to be close either way.

I think that the Late Zoomers and Alpha Generation who are still kids are going to be the ones who actually live up to the 2015-era "Generation Zyklon" memes while the Early Zoomers are turbo-woke since the only real dividing line between them and the Late Millennials is they were born during Clinton's second term instead of his first.

Core Zoomers are going to be more centrist/moderate overall from the looks of it, similar to Generation X and I suspect a lot of the Whites (and the Latinos and Asians who don't live in California) will be a lot more right-leaning on specific issues and left-leaning on others.

I think COVID-19 and the BLM coup has probably made a lot of these Core Zoomer White and Asian boys "based and red pilled" and even the girls will be more likely to end up semi-based and purple pilled overall depending on their family and what part of the country they live in.

College attendance is probably going down thanks to the debt crisis and that'll probably cut back on the indoctrination rates as well.

Now the Late Zoomers and Gen Alphas who are still children right now? They're going to be more likely to try and embrace Christianity and I'm expecting it to be a lot more Catholic and less Protestant Evangelical both due to immigration and because the Evangelicals shit the bed so spectacularly that they're pretty much doomed now that the neocons have thrown them under the bus.

Plus, there's a part of me that suspects the "traditionalist" Zoomer edgelords of today might end up being the right-wing equivalent of the Beat Generation while the Late Zoomers/Gen Alphas end up being the right-wing equivalent of the hippies and punk rockers. May God have mercy on us all if that happens.

Again, a lot of these predictions are predicated on a Trump victory this year so take my words with a heap of salt for now.

Religious fundamentalism is gone. It's not coming back. I recommend reading through this Pew survey.

https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/

Most relevant graph:



Even now when 65% of the population is still Christian it's basically relevant because of boomer evangelical voters, who are very politically active. The religious vote will have faded into insignificance by 2040. Note that religion has declined even among boomers and Republicans, just by much less.