We live in an age of whispered conversations.

There are aspects of American life that everyone, or nearly everyone, knows are absurd but is too afraid to speak out against and feels powerless to reverse.

Below are the kinds of conversations that are happening all the time.

The maternity-ward nurse in a low voice: “Where the form says ‘birthing parent,’ that means mother. They just changed it. It’s crazy.”

The group of moms together at the local coffee shop, making sure that no one else can hear from a nearby table: “Did you see what happened in the high-school track competition? Why are guys competing against girls?”

The staffer at a bank to a friend he or she can completely trust near the water cooler when it is absolutely certain no one else is around, “That training was ridiculous and a waste of time.”

This phenomenon surely had an influence on the outcome of the election.

As the Financial Times has documented, progressive elites “hold views often well to the left of the average voter — and even the average Democratic voter — on cultural issues.”

“America’s decades-long progress towards racial and sexual tolerance and equality,” the paper notes, “has been a gradual shift, led by progressives with the center and right quickly following.”

The new cultural shifts are different. Largely driven by “the activists and nonprofit staffers that surround the Democratic Party,” they “have been abrupt and are leaving the majority behind.” For the longest time — national elections from 1948 to 2012 — the Democrats were considered the party of the working class and the poor, but now they are “seen primarily as the party of minority advocacy.”

As the Democrats have traveled left, effectively making the center of American politics also further to the left, people who were in the middle might find themselves right-of-center without really moving.

Properly understood, Donald Trump’s opposition to trans surgeries for inmates and illegal immigrants, and to males playing in female sports aren’t right-wing positions. They’ve only become perceived as such because progressives have embraced ideas that would — from the perspective of a decade ago or so — been considered unthinkable.

When Republicans have raised objections to these ideas, they have been portrayed by the Democrats and the press as the “culture warriors” and extremists.

Surveys show that Americans are now afraid of speaking their minds, and for good reason. Livelihoods and reputations can be destroyed by an ill-considered comment or social media post, so the vast majority of people keep their heads down, even if they are mystified or appalled by what they are witnessing.

Hence, the whispered conversations. But the voting booth is private. And this surely is one of the reasons that Trump won. His candidacy was a rare opportunity to register an audible dissent from woke impositions that have had to be suffered in silence.

Rich Lowry is editor in chief of the National Review