A Faint Memory

Today a long-ago memory swam back into my consciousness, a throwaway reference in some movie review (I think it was a review of Poltergeist) that referred to "the good old nuclear family"-- something like "the good old nuclear family triumphs again".

I think I was a kid when I read this, and I can't remember what I thought of it at the time. But it seems a good example of something that's been going on my entire life-- that is, the constant diet of obliquely dismissive comments regarding this or that social institution. But never saying exactly what's wrong with them.

A common example of this used to be sardonic references to "2.4 children." Of course, the birthrate has dropped well below that now, and our societies are dying, so maybe 2.4 children wasn't so bad after all.

But nobody ever really said what was wrong with it. It was just a standard snide comment meant to portray people as-- what? Bourgeois, average, complacent, white-bread, banal...something like that. It was never actually articulated.

I'm sure you can think of many other examples of this. Perhaps the most obvious one these days is "white male". If you refer to somebody (or an institution, or an audience) as "primarily white and male", or something like that....you don' t have to explain what the problem with that is. It's just a generalized expression of disapproval or disdain. Somehow just using the words is scoring a point.

"Middle America" is another example.

I think this is one of the way the left has exerted its cultural dominance for decades now...a constant drip-drip-drip of this sort of derogatory reference, so pervasive and almost subliminal that it's a type of conditioning.

Because really, what's wrong with the nuclear family?

(When I hear leftists use the slogan "It takes a village to raise a child", I have the strong sense that they really mean: "It takes the government to raise a child". The slogan itself is unobjectionable.)