A Democratic campaign theme and even an advertisement in its closing stretch is a sign, for some of us past the age of 50, that the zeitgeist has completely left us behind.
Not that the zeitgeist’s disdain for our apparently old-fashioned sensibilities wasn’t already obvious. We regularly see open, public vulgarity from presidential candidates of all stripes and see campaign emails, presumably vetted by consultants, full of vulgarities, too. (As a minor example, just as I write this, a message comes across the transom from “J.D. Vance” with the subject line of “It pi**es me off.” What, pray tell, is wrong with “ticks me off?”)
Of course, popular culture has been on a steady, half-century descent into ever-further trashiness. Never, though, did it seem possible that even a relatively “sweet” and non-raunchy popular (streaming) series would feature a rabbi hooking up with a dating-life/sex podcaster and then taking her on an intentionally sex-heavy weekend at a faith-based camp for teenagers. Is that — clergy of any faith openly flaunting cohabitation with non-married others in the company of teenagers — really a thing, really just run-of-the-mill, in our bicoastal enclaves?
From podcasts back to politics, never did some of us think we would see a presidential candidate lift a self-imposed interview moratorium by doing a podcast known not just for dating talk but extremely raunchy sex talk, which is what Vice President Kamala Harris did when appearing on the Call Her Daddy show.
Then again, the mind boggles that a Democratic nominee for a state legislative seat could be exposed for engaging in explicit sex on camera for pay and yet still come within 2% of winning her race and still be able to envision a successful political future. Yet, that happened less than a year ago.
Despite all that, Democrats and their allies have gone even further by now trying to make pornography not just a career killer but instead an absolute asset. It isn’t only that Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), is encouraging young men who like porn to “just do what you do; you be you,” or that Democratic leaders repeatedly refuse to denounce flagrantly pornographic materials that show up in non-age-limited school libraries. Now comes what is surely the vilest video commercial ever aired by anyone closely aligned with a major political party.
In an attempt to earn votes from young men, an ad by the Democratic-aligned Progress Action Fund blasts Republicans for wanting to restrict pornography. To do so, it depicts a young man obviously engaged, under his bed covers, in enthusiastic, well, onanism.
Forget the politics of it. Just consider the very idea that a professional group dedicated to winning votes thinks this ad is even close to being within reasonable bounds, much less that it will be politically helpful. Where and when did this become something even within light years of being politically savvy?
That’s the biggest worry here: Namely, what does this say, not about politics, but about the overall cultural zeitgeist? Is our culture really so far gone? Are some of us so completely out of touch that we essentially are living not just in the wrong decade but in the wrong galaxy?
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Or could it be that these Democrats are the ones who have outstripped the zeitgeist to their own massive detriment?
Either way, it ticks me off.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
