My question is about whether RP and the “establishment” - i.e. the United States government, academics, and the media - could ever be reconciled.

What is the main barrier to this reconciliation? I think that RP is a project or collaborative effort between a community of people who know one another via the internet. That project largely involves getting men in the community laid. In contrast, the project of the establishment mostly involves creating economic growth and ensuring U.S. military security. My belief is that it’s the great distance between these goals that has resulted in RP being a separate, “quarantined” community on the internet. Getting men laid does not grow the economy; growing the economy does not get (most) men laid.

It seems to me that RP involves a certain amount of distrust and skepticism that the establishment has everything under control, tells the truth, and is doing a good job. I know that for me, after reading RP sites, I became a more "generalized skeptic" to some degree. This skepticism comes, in part, from a sense of injury - that men have lost status, education, jobs, and income relative to women over the last 40-50 years, so that "relationship security" has declined for the average man ("branch-swinging"). The reason for this is that a good way to grow the economy was to ensure that women get an education and jobs, which (among other things) required liberating their sexual behavior by supplying abortions and birth control.

This “injury” and distrust of the establishment are exacerbated by the fact that the establishment didn’t warn anyone that this was going to happen, or seem to care or even acknowledge it when it did happen. (Although the establishment does acknowledge the issue of relationship security for married couples with children, since this has economic ramifications, regarding child support, that impact taxpayers.)

With all of that baggage and distrust, is it possible to imagine a time when either (1) RP men change their mind and return to BP, (2) the establishment acknowledges RP ideas to be “truths” and/or accepts RP practices as “normal”? What would be needed for this to happen? Is society currently moving in the direction of reconciliation or even greater divergence?