Social media right now is an ocean of would-be propaganda for traditional heterosexual marriage. There are “tradwives,” who cosplay submissive housewives on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. They overlap with “family vloggers,” typically conservative Christians with large families who chronicle their daily lives online. The world of Christian right content online is far more interested in the maintenance and promotion of the patriarchal nuclear family than, say, the life of Jesus Christ, who died as one of those “childless cat ladies” Vance hates so much. Billionaire Peter Thiel has even funded a woman’s magazine, meant to compete with Vogue or Cosmopolitan, that positions extremely conservative marriage as the only true path for women’s lives.
It’s never coming back. That was a unique moment in world history, which will almost definitely never—and should never—be repeated. It was built on the wreckage of WWII, on US imperialism, and on the threat of a good example.
Will America Ever be “Great Again”?