this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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I'll remind you that prohibition required a Constitutional amendment, the idea was very popular.
Popular amongst Protestant busybodies with more zeal than sense and outsized influence on politicians, sure, but not necessarily the population in general.
I'll in turn remind you that it became so unpopular that they passed a new amendment to get rid of it, the only time that ever happened.
It was popular for a reason people don't understand now: women were getting the shit beaten out of them by their drunken husbands. So a huge number of people, especially women, thought prohibition would stop that. Unfortunately, it just created a whole new kind of violence without reducing the domestic violence.
But the cause was a lot more noble than people give it credit for.
A lot of people don't know that Abraham Lincoln was a big proponent of prohibition. It was seen by progressives as an important step to move society forward.
They thought wrong. Typical of conservatives to blame something external and simple for a societal problem rooted in toxic gender roles and family structures.
Except for the fact that there's nothing noble about jumping to conclusions and trying to solve the only tangentially related problems of some by depriving everyone else of something that most of them enjoyed more or less responsibly.
On the contrary: we still understand that domestic violence is awful and we now also understand that alcohol doesn't in itself cause it.
are you seriously blaming conservatives for something that the progressives of the time championed?
The "progressives" of the time were quite conservative, yes.
Scapegoating a chemical compound for problems caused by toxic gender roles and social ills wasn't progressive and legislating based on such a colossal misunderstanding of cause and effect rooted in religion, moral panic, and othering is textbook conservatism.
Dude, it was the 1920s. People did not understand that the problem was not alcohol-related. Also, many people, mostly men, did not think there was a domestic violence problem because they thought it was an okay thing to do. You are looking back on it with 2024 knowledge and values.
That's actually my point: they passed major legislation based on a guess not supported by knowledge. People knew THAT is a bad idea in the 1920s (and 1919 when the law was passed), though it seems to have been forgotten in the century since..
I'm fully aware of that. My point is that the people who didn't agree that it was ok was wrong to pass law based on an unproven assumption as to the underlying reasons.
More like 1990s values at the latest. Demagoguery and scapegoat politics haven't gotten the bad rap it deserves in the wider population for a LONG time..