That's the way cultural change works in America: the rest of us discard a prejudice that the Right still clings to; in the fullness of time, the Right comes around, too, deploying clever rationalizations to forget they ever bore the prejudice in the first place.
Interpretation
Cultural change often involves overcoming prevalent prejudices, which may take time for everyone to recognize and accept.
Rick Perlstein's quote highlights the process of cultural change in America, where societal prejudices are often initially resisted by conservative groups. However, over time, as society evolves, these groups often adapt and rationalize their previous beliefs, ultimately leaving behind their initial biases even if they don't acknowledge their transformation. This reflects a broader trend in which social progress can eventually lead to a collective re-evaluation of outdated views.
In practice
In a discussion about social reforms, this quote could be used to illustrate how societal norms shift over time.
History does not repeat itself. Nor does it unfold in cycles. The real future is contingent, rich beyond imagining, a perennial gobsmack, tragic and glorious in equal measure; the pundits' future, spun of 'conventional wisdom,' is only a sucker punch to that common-sense fact.
When policymakers, financiers and scientists describe the world decades from now, in the throes of climatic changes that we now only model, they emphasize what might be lost.
The door might not be opened to a woman again for a long, long time, and I had a kind of duty to other women to walk in and sit down on the chair that was offered, and so establish the right of others long hence and far distant in geography to sit in the high seats.
Women need to lead the way to change our culture of burnout - both for their sake and also for the sake of successful men who desperately need a new model of success. And the still-very-macho world of STEM is a great place to start.
How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew what was happening to the world and did nothing.
It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.
Fathers' sharing in the birth experience can be a stimulus for men's freedom to nurture, and a sign of changing relationships between men and women. In the same way, women's freedom to give birth at home is a political decision, an assertion of determination to reclaim the experience of birth. Birth at home is about changing society.
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