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• Dicska@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Oh, I was thinking they meant 65-75 people before the pendulum (the second counter on the grandfather clock?) swung back, so 65-75 people per second. I didn’t think so deeply about the maths behind it, just accepted it as a possible meaning. But I’ll do it now.

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  • ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Colloquially, “the pendulum” here is probably public political sentiment. It’s commonly understood, whether true or not, that a population swings back and forth between progressive and conservative values; illustrated by a pendulum swinging from left (progressive) to right (conservative). In the US, this is further inflamed by the two-party system, which unintentionally encourages such polarization and swings in political will.

    So, in the US for instance, the Gilded Age (far right) gave way to the Progressive Era (far left), which led to the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression (right), which led to the New Deal (left), which eventually led to Reaganomics (right), which led to Obama (slight left), which led to Trump (super far right).

    The original question was asking, how long until this pendulum swings back to the left again. The “65-75” answer, it seems, was talking about WW2 in Europe, when the pendulum swung to the right as Hitler took power, and didn’t swing back to the left until after 65-75 (million) people died.

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    • Dicska@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Oh yes you’re right - I’m not a native speaker and I think we phrase it slightly differently, and I took that literally. Thanks for the explanation!

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      • ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Happy to help!

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