How will we know when woke is over? The end may be in sight, judging by a few expensive new beer and car ads. A nearly four-minute Volvo ad on Instagram brought tears to my eyes with a beautifully crafted pro-family tale of children and danger. ‘I just want to say and do the right things now,’ says our new dad quietly. The ad scored 65,000 likes. Then there was tone-deaf Jaguar, showing weird transgender Teletubbies in an ad which may have looked edgy years ago, but now sparked only viral contempt. Jaguar’s director Rawdon Glover whined the ad’s message had been lost in a ‘blaze of intolerance’.

Nothing is more unwanted or derided than yesterday’s fashion, and no one knows that better than the multibillion-dollar ad industry, where commercials can take months to incubate, not to mention wads of money and research. Duds are costly, as Bud Light found out when sales fell by $1.4 billion last year after a Dylan Mulvaney transgender ad offended its customers. The beer firm has now, in an act of customer contrition, aired a new ad mocking woke, with an average, check-shirted Joe in a baseball cap walking into a dark, sexy, snake woman commercial, and discovering he’s in the wrong ad.

Politics may be where issues are finally fought out in a democracy, but as the great Andrew Breitbart said, it’s downstream from culture, and that’s what the advertisers are playing with here. This feels like a hinge moment, a paradigm shift, with a fresh new era booting out the shibboleths of a now-exhausted epoch that began with the 1960s hippies. Jaguar didn’t realise the cultural tide had gone out on woke, and was left exposed pandering to the transgender mob.

One of the fascinating aspects of this Biden-Trump interregnum is the voluntary reorientation the world is making in anticipation of his presidency. Without Trump lifting a finger, a new era is forming. From Qatar kicking out Hamas officials, to Hamas seeking peace, to migrant caravans dissolving before reaching the US border, to far-left congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  dropping pronouns on her X account, to Democrat cities dismantling illegal migrant shelters, to companies willingly disbanding DEI teams, people are reading the room since the Trump election and making adjustments accordingly.

Nothing is more unfit for purpose than the propagandist US legacy media, its ratings in free fall post-election. Far-left MSNBC is being sold off, and Musk chats casually about buying and restaffing it. Morning Joe’s now-disgraced cool kids Joe and Mika went to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of a man that days before they’d described as a fascist, earning the disgust of their previously adoring fans. The New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have all laid off key personnel, with the Los Angeles Times owner sacking its entire editorial board in a quest to reintroduce fairness. Conservative writer John Podhoretz drew attention to these moves on X, declaring ‘Tectonic plates are shifting.’ It’s cleaning house time.

Meanwhile Musk’s X is achieving new audience records and, as the Maga town square, the platform has become the new clearing house for inside-the-beltway campaigns for and against various high-profile individuals seeking jobs in the new administration. Old clips meant to embarrass those who want high office are circulating, as the cut and thrust of various interests fighting for their candidates plays out in full view of the public.

But even as these transitory news items wax and wane, deeper currents of change are becoming apparent. Gen Xers are taking the baton from the baby boomers, with many of Trump’s nomination picks in their forties: Pete Hegseth is 44, Tulsi Gabbard 43. So far his staff picks are on average some 20 years younger than in his first regime. More significantly, many have big families: Musk is aggressively pro-natalist and has twelve children; Sean Duffy (and wife Fox TV anchor Rachel Campos-Duffy) have nine; Pete Hegseth has seven, RFK Jr has six, Trump has five, Rubio four and a number have three. Already the new cost-cutting department Doge has announced cuts to abortion-provider Planned Parenthood.

This Brady Bunch approach cannot help but inform decision-making, especially since the US is in a reproductive drought, with the fertility rate dropping to an historic low of 1.6 births per woman in 2023, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

Many US women are not partnering up, and will remain childless, either from choice or lack of a suitable mate. A 2024 Morgan Stanley study predicted that 45 per cent, or nearly half of all women between 25 and 44, would be single and childless by 2030. Already single women of voting age make up one-quarter of the electorate, and they voted overwhelmingly for Harris in 2024. Married women, on the other hand, voted for Trump, but not as massively as single and married men. These gender disparities spell demographic doom for the US, not to mention the social discord that gaping political differences generate in the dating game.

I suspect this is the final legacy of some 60 years of feminism: young women have been told for so long they can have it all, and need brook no failure, that the normal human compromises of living together have become a bridge too far, and mean a lowering of self-esteem. Quentin Bryce, then governor-general of Australia, finished her valedictory speech at my daughter’s Year 12 graduation with the words: ‘Be bold, be bold, be bold!’ But unmitigated boldness is no recipe for happiness, just as mundane jobs and political action are weak substitutes for lack of intimacy and a barren family life. Two young women in my immediate family have recently discovered the unparalleled joys of child-bearing and been transformed in the process. I fear for the future happiness of single, childless women chasing empty Baby Boomer feminist values that will not deliver the fulfilment they hope for. Like Jaguar with its ad, they face being stranded on the outgoing tide of an ebbing cultural movement.

At last, the heavens seem to be righting themselves, and normal values resurfacing. Trump is completing his hero’s journey, and in the process has inspired a new generation of young men with hi alpha male display of strength, courage under fire and leadership. Let us hope that motherhood and family life also regain the respect they deserve.

Here in Australia, the wokest government we’ve ever known had better watch out.