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Mr. Muggeridge might profitably have added "the clenched fist and the phallus," and pointed to the emasculating tendencies of modern feminism....

Not to mention the "revolutionary tendencies" of modern feminism. As for instance noted here by the novelist John Fowles, author of The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969):

I think it's apparent all through cultural history that when women did in the past get a slightly higher position in society, these are usually the periods of great innovation. With all our faults, this is an extraordinary age for tearing old ideas apart and remodeling the world. These, to me, are very strongly — how shall I put it? — Eve-flavored periods. They're periods when you suddenly feel the underlying, almost unconscious entrance of women everywhere in society. At the root of it, it seems to me, it's women quarrelling with the way men see the world, with the paternalistic, rigid, structured society, machismo society. I think women are paradoxically the more conservative sex and also the more revolutionary sex. — The Wall Street Journal, 11/20/81

Jeepers, that one could have come out of an Obama speech, it is so steeped in the techniques of second-reality construction. Notable is the appropriation of the symbol, "Eve," while remaining silent on what the symbol means, or has historically meant. We need to recall "Eve" was tempted by "the" Evil One, and tempted Adam in turn, to fall away from God's Truth. And then maybe we can grasp what Fowler is driving at here.

To contrast this zeal for revolutionary change with the "first-reality point of view," we have the insight of another artist, Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian director and designer of grand opera:

We have no guarantee for the present or the future. Therefore the only choice is to go back to the past and respect traditions. I have been a pioneer in this line of thinking, and the results have proven me right. People who think they can do better than previously, interpreting works of art in a new key, are very foolish. The reason I am box-office everywhere is that I am an enlightened conservative continuing the discourse of our grandfathers and fathers, renovating the texts but never betraying them. The road has been irrevocably lost, and there must be a search as to why and when this new breed of destructive thinking came into being, often encouraged by the press.
If one believes Wagner had Nazi storm troopers in mind when he was writing about the Nibelungs, what is this except major presumption based on abysmal ignorance? Let's not forget what Leonardo said — the work of art ends in its conception. — The Wall Street Journal, 2/26/82

Zeffirelli points to "the press" as helpful carrier of such unenlighted unconservatism. The novelist Raymond Chandler, author of The Big Sleep and other novels, reminds us that Hollywood plays a significant role in this regard:

No doubt I have learned a lot from Hollywood. Please do not think I completely despise it, because I don't. The best proof of that may be that every producer I have worked for I would work for again, and every one of them, in spite of my tantrums, would be glad to have me. But the overall picture, as the boys say, is of a degraded community whose idealism even is largely fake. The pretentiousness, the bogus enthusiasm, the constant drinking and drabbing, the incessant squabbling over money, the all-pervasive agent, the strutting of the big shots (and their usually utter incompetence to achieve anything they start out to do), the constant fear of losing all this fairy gold and being the nothing they have really never ceased to be, the snide tricks, the whole damn mess is out of this world. It is a great subject for a novel — probably the greatest still untouched. But how to do it with a level mind, that's the thing that baffles me. It is like one of these South American palace revolutions conducted by officers in comic opera uniforms — only when the thing is over the ragged dead men lie in rows against the wall, and you suddenly know that this is not funny, this is a Roman circus, and damn near the end of civilization.

So much for the organs of transmission of what passes for "culture" these days — an insane asylum bursting with energy. On that happy note, let me conclude by thanking you, r9etb, for your excellent series of posts on this thread. It's so good to hear from you!