>

With the 6-3 Conservative Supreme Court, it’s gonna be pretty difficult for the country to inch any further left.
Overton windows are too simplistic of a model to be useful in the real world. >

I agree with this. In some ways, I think we have become bi-modal as a society and maybe having two windows is a more accurate representation. But I agree even those fail to capture the fully dynamics in play in current society and the forces that are contributing to it. >


In favor of reigning in large corporations such as Disney

DeSantis isn't in favor of reigning in large corporations. He is in favor of reigning in large corporations that he disagrees with the politics of. If you had a large media conglomerate that was every bit as bad as Disney but was more friendly to conservative culture war issues then DeSantis wouldn't say a word against it. >

Yes. It is moving both farther left and farther right. The gulf is widening >

Dems Inching left, but the right is in full sprint off the authoritarian cliff >

Child sex surgeries and drag queen story hour weren’t around 10 years ago. But it’s the right that’s extreme. >

Yes. Assaulting the capital to overthrow an election is extreme.
And drag queens have been around for a long time. You just realizing they existed doesn't mean it's new >

Jan 6 was just a rowdy protest... Youre making it sound like it was one of the worst days in all of US history... Dude calm down... 
Especially when you compare them to the BLM 500 riots that same year that you pretend never happened. 
We are talking about promoting drag queens for public schools. They are pushing a queer/transgender agenda on kids. But yea you can pretend that is not happening either. >

Again with the whataboutism when trying to downplay an insurrection.
Blm activists didnt try to overthrow the govt. for a sore loser who threw a hissy fit because he couldn't get re-elected. >

Sorry but your part had 500 riots all over the country and caused billions in damages and dozens of people were murdered. 
And Jan 6 was just a rowdy protest. But youre over here pretending it was worst then 9/11... Like seriously, do you even believe your own BS?
BLM riots burned down police stations, court houses, small businesses and took over blocks. Did you forget Chaz? (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) Or are you also pretending that never happened? >

You don't seem to understand the difference between people who were peacefully protesting police violence against the people until those police unironically assaulted those protestors, some of whom then decided to fight back... And your treasonous brainwashed morons who decided to storm the capital, in hours of killing members of Congress and the VP - which was only one piece of a larger scheme to get Republicans in Congress to reject the results and accept fake electors to seize power. >

Ah yes, the firey but mostly peaceful riots. >

Yes. When 98% of the protests we're not assaulted by police, they were peaceful. When police started attacking peaceful citizens. Some fought back. 
You blame the aggressors not those who reacted for the violence. This isn't a hard concept >

Both parties/voters are trending more toward their respective direction. 
Democrats (as a whole) are starting to act/be what they claim to be: a solid center left party with different factions having a tug of war in which direction they want to go. Biden made moves that appeased the progressive fractions of the party (student debt cancellation in particular) but his move in shutting down the rail strike proves that the neoliberal grip in the party is still strong (even though I understood why he did it, the American people probably wouldn’t care about standing with striking rail workers if the economy and their way of life absolutely collapsed around them, it sucks but that’s the basic truth). 
The GOP has gone HARD radical right though. The neoconservative portion of the party (which isn’t even Center right to begin with) is still strong in the establishment, but to the base, it’s a solid NO. >

I still don't understand how 4 sick days was the sticking point on that railroad strike.  They got 20% raises but 4 sick days is too expensive for the companies??  Give them the damn sick days! >

US railroad companies basically refuse to maintain enough track to actually function properly. For tax reasons they single track long stretches, so need to use truly massive trains to cross these while keeping things safe. They also employ a lot less people, having only a skeleton crew for whole train. If one too many workers calls in sick, you legally cannot move that train, and so 100's of cars are stuck. Because of the massive single track sections, even half an hour of delay could mean waiting for the next time the track direction changes and the track has capacity for an extra train, which is often multiple days.
Essentially, the train companies looked to make the system as lean as possible, but in doing so starved it so close to the brink of failure that one or two sick days a year can shut them down. >

There is an incredibly simple solution that would've appeased the workers though. My employer gives us 5 paid sick days per year, and if we don't use them then we get paid out at the end of the calendar year. So it's bonus money. A lot of my coworkers brag about never using their sick days and getting a fat cheque for it. It's a good way for the company to incentivize workers not to call in unless they were actually way too sick to work. >

The problem is that the rail companies just can't take the risk of extra sick days being taken, even with those incentives. One extra sick day a year could cause massive problems. It is, of course, entirely their own fault for being such miserly penny-pinching twats, but that is the corner they have backed themselves into. >

On net it's moving left.  Despite the right having coronaries about gender, acceptance of LGBTQ is more than I ever dreamed 20 years ago.  Just the fact that trans folks have the support they do is amazing.
Obamacare seems to be the new minimum standard for health care in this country.  GOP failed to kill it and seems gun-shy to try again. Again, better than I would have thought possible 20 years ago.
What would have been the left side of the stage represented by Dennis Kucinich (the laughing stock)  in the 2008 Democratic primaries is now mainstream Democratic under Biden.  That's something.
The GOP isn't moving right. They seem to have jetttisoned philosophical underpinnings of policy and policy ideas in general. They're just moving stupid.  I mean, can anyone tell me what Kari Lake's or Herschel Walker's policies were? >

I agree with you. But would this mean that MAGA and it's socially conservative tenets will dissipate from here? It doesn't sit right with me to think that this wave of social conservatism will just come and go like that. It seems that historically these trends tend to build over time and once they get moving they're hard to stop. >

Yeah, a lot of the comments here rely on this just passing by. There’s nothing saying that it absolutely will. After all, the GOP just won by like 3 points. Plus, most people are willfully ignorant of what goes on in politics at the local level, let alone the national level. 
I’d say my concern is that a lot of the social rights we currently have were secured underneath the Warren court. If this court plays a consistent role in overturning things, there’s nothing to stop us from gradually (or rapidly) sliding back. While it’s nice to think that people would fight back, most people wouldn’t. There are always more followers than leaders. >

Yes. However this occurrence, a "reversal" of social progress, would be historically unprecedented. This makes me hesitant to believe that MAGA's policies will have staying power. >

Would it?
After Rome came the dark ages.
The Weimar Republic was pretty socially liberal and that worked out well.
Hell, look at the Iranian Revolution.
The belief that progress is inevitable is what got progressives in this position in the first place. We need to stop acting like social progress can’t be reverted. >

Among academic circles, the belief that history inevitably trends towards a better and better future is known by the adjective "whig", as in "whiggish history".
In any case, I will point out -- the Weimar republic was indeed more liberal than its successor, but its successor was short-lived. In the long term, Germany is just as progressive as any other western nation.
I can't speak to the Iranian revolution, but it does bring forth an important point when speaking of these two examples: their backsliding was geographically confined. If the U.S moves rightward, it stands to reason that western Europe might as well, as we have seen similar nationalist currents appear there, and historically the two regions follow similar trajectories since at least the end of the second world war.
The U.S and Europe moving right on social issues would be a tectonic GLOBAL shift. They are by far the most left-wing blocs on earth. The next emerging power, China, is not known for its progressive streak, to say the least.
When the Weimar Republic and Iran regressed, they were rebelling against the example and trajectory set for them by the western nations.
In this scenario, those very national examples would be abandoning their own liberal tenets. This would change the trajectory of the ENTIRE world, not just the U.S and Europe, most certainly leaving a lasting change. Not like the rise of fascism in Germany.
The fall of the Roman empire is the most likely example of long-term "regression" in history. However it should be noted that the history profession has recently dedicated itself to extensive efforts in "rehabilitating" the image of the dark ages. I don't know enough about the topic to comment on it, but there may not have actually been any regression at all. It seems that the public has many misconceptions about how dark the dark ages really were. >

Yeah, the dark ages weren't really "dark."  But they were politically fractured.  The economies of Europe were smaller & more confined without the Roman Empire.  World leadership shifted to the middle east. >

"What do you think? Is the U.S moving rightwards? Leftwards? A mix of both along economic/social dimensions?"
A mix I would say. Culturally we have been moving steadily leftwards my entire life... at least as far a sexual tolerance and drug use is concerned. But we also are becoming more authoritarian in many other ways; whether that is a rightward shift or leftward one would depend on who you ask; "both sides" claim the other side is the authoritarian one.
Economically, corporations and banks are more powerful than they have ever been... and they seem to want to push us into some sort of modified Beijing model that would make them even more powerful, while stripping common people of the ability to accumulate wealth; "In the future you will own nothing and you will be happy". Although some might regard that as leftward shift, I don't see it as something to celebrate.