The temperance movement spent much of the 20th century *winning*, despite the big setback of Prohibition - indeed, the fact that Prohibition happened at all despite how central drinking is to our culture should really be seen as evidence of how powerful they were
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It's not like AA was some attempt by anti-Prohibitionists to dig Prohibition's grave It WAS a temperance movement, in strategic retreat, carrying on temperance by other means. This is also obvious if you've ever been to a meeting - it absolutely does view alcohol as "evil"
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"If I were in charge I would simply take a top down approach and ban the thing entirely, or at least openly tell everyone it was evil and would damn their soul Why has nobody thought of this" God I hate this kind of take so much
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They've been trying to do that for hundreds of years and every time they do there's a huge backlash and it fails Shakespeare fucking wrote about it, Toby Belch yelling at Malvolio the Puritan "Thinks thou because thou art sad (sober) there will be no more cakes and ale?"
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Eddie Izzard's joke about how in the UK Thanksgiving is celebrated as "We got rid of the Jesus people"
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Come on We're *in* a temperance movement, right now, still The AA bottom-up model of imposed temperance actually has worked, it's created a new social norm of "You're a piece of shit if you offer alcohol to someone defined as 'in recovery'" That never used to exist
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"What if we treated alcohol more like cigarettes" We're doing that! Liquor licenses are exorbitantly expensive, both federal and state governments charge an excise tax on alcohol, and the number of places you can't have an open container increases every day
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(150 years ago if you told a soldier that not only would he not get beer with dinner at all but he *wouldn't be allowed to drink in on-base facilities at all* his head would explode)
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The shit about "It's wine o'clock!" and "wine moms" etc is all backlash to a cultural/legal trend that's all going in one direction long term, and it's a pretty weak backlash Count your blessings
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(And really, don't take credit It's much more likely the legal changes are succeeding because people actually don't want to drink as much than that scolding people and making them feel bad is finally working)
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End of conversation
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