history repeats, first time as tragedy, second time as farce - Marx
those who forget history are condemned to repeat it - Santayana

Democracy is the sacred cow of our modern age every military coup leader upon taking power would declare "I will hold election soon" Trump followers, storming Congress to stop the elected president from being proclaimed, believed they were fighting to save democracy from election fraud China declares that its democratic path is more correct than America's.
Republicans and Democrats used to be ideologically clearly differentiated: small vs big government hawk vs dove religious vs free thinking today much of the distinction is lost most importantly, right wing, being business oriented, wanted social stability, law & order, while left wing was dominated by various kinds of activism political correctness, anti science were left wing attitudes, the earliest example being speakers about intelligence inheritance being shouted down in university campuses. Today such divisions are far less marked: both parties are fine with deficits and have numerous litmus tests of political correctness.
The great ideological shift took place on the right was driven from below as well as above: suffering from decades of economic dislocation with wall street neglecting manufacturing to focus on financial engineering, wanted answers and received trumpian slogans think tanks and research foundations endowed by wealth people kept teams of writers that pump out justification of the latest slogans.
what is conservatism? going by what happens on the ground, it seems to mean little more than freedom to own guns and appointing anti abortion judges is Liz Cheney more conservative than Else Stephanic? I doubt very many of the american conservatives care about it Liz Cheney does not believe in the current trumpian slogans, Else Stephanic does Make America Great Again!?

(pic below shows Reagan the hawk & Bush the dove - at least, so the conservatives imagined - with Gorbachev, their friendly communist)

Why are feminists liberals? Those who want male female equality in power presumably think power is a good thing, in which case more power should be better maybe feminists should want equal power authoritarian systems. Maybe current feminists dislike authoritarian systems because these are dominated by men. Once equality is achieved, they would prefer more power at the top, like Lenin, whose brother was an anarchist, and he was totalitarian once in power.

Do feminists oppose prostitution? Should women be free to use their bodies to earn income? Despite the logic, at least some feminists argue that prostitution is a form of rape, that the sex workers do something they would normally not be willing to do, that being paid to do it is a form of coercion,

Censorship is associated with authoritarianism, so for now at least, feminists are against censorship. What about censorship against pornography? Here again feminists usually say pornography too is a form of rape, that money is the coercive factor. However, in porn videos both men and women are paid who is raping who? In videos one man has sex with several women it shows inequality but there are also stories in which one woman has sex with several men. Is that female exercising power over male? I believe feminists have much to logically work out.

A couple of years ago the Singapore government was promoting an electronic payment system, and showed an advertisement in which a politician dressed up as several characters to show everyone can use the system. it was attacked as racist because a Chinese man dressed up as men of other races curiously, no feminist protested that he dressing up as woman was sexist. Feminists need to work harder

It is often said "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". The publisher of Playboy Magazine was in fact something of a terrorist. His magazine would now an then be banned by a city official, and sellers get arrested women organizations, usually right wing ones, protest the immorality - left wing women were often unsure whether taking off clothes for money is liberation and empowerment, or objectification judges would now and then be asked to pronounce on legal issues of whether nudity is art or free expression in any case, Hefner was in the forefront of movement cutting down censorship in America - over several decades and many test cases, censorship retreated, and Hefner took credit as the great liberator.

More significantly, he actually set himself up as a social philosopher, writing at length about his hedonistic lifestyle's merits I am not sure how many people took him seriously, or even actually read his numerous Playboy Philosophy articles. He certainly practised what he preached, having one new girlfriend after another (sometimes several at the same time) in his 70s he tried to marry for the fourth time but his wedding was cancelled when the bride failed to show up she did briefly go back to him however no wedding took place eventually.

History has not been kind to him. The uncensored social environment meant steady expansion of porn availability, so that his stuff looked tame, old fashioned. Internet made monetization of published content more difficult He himself could no longer put his mind on management, so his daughter Christie from his first marriage came in as CEO for a period of time - she even went to China to open casino, but was not successful later his son from second marriage tried, and was still trying when dad passed away.

It is perhaps fitting that the most remembered photo about him will be trump on cover of Playboy. To balance, I show his portrait with first family.

In 1995 Singapore was not the familiar name internationally that it is today Lee Kuan Yew made his speech to Congress 10 years earlier his interview with William Safire was still 4 years into the future nobody knew the momentous change occurring in China was based on the LKY model of one party rule with capitalism nor Trump and Kim Jong Un would summit there so it was big news that a porn star from Singapore would achieve world record of biggest gang bang. Reporters quickly discovered that she was a Raffles Girls School graduate called Grace Quek, whose family still lived in Singapore. However, due to the still conservative social atmosphere, the news was treated in a low key fashion her I do not know whether she was disappointed or relieved.

In 1995 pornography was not yet a throwaway commodity you could not get free downloads of videos, but have to buy them, in tape or VCD (DVD was not yet available) since pornography is officially banned, there are no shops where you could buy them, and web purchase still got deliver and custom issues. I would guess very few people saw the video, again maybe causing disappointment or relief to her.

At the time she was a graduate student in University of Southern California she said she wanted to specialize in women's studies, which presumably involved liberation or empowerment through sex she later learn to write computer programs (while waiting for her turn to go on stage as exotic dancer) and developed a business she stayed in Marina Bay Sands three years ago when she returned to Singapore to visit her mother so I assume she is going fine operating her business I do not know whether she earns income from subscriptions and video downloads of her porn videos.

I have always been morally indifferent about pornography and prostitution even suggested several times that better brothels in Singapore might help families to stay together with husbands finding alternatives to extramarital affairs.