Sometimes a phenomenon exists for a long time before being encapsulated in a concise, thought-provoking, and often (though not always) amusing aphorism.
An excellent example would be Murphy's Law, and by extension many of the similar, often eponymous, laws.
Some of those are humourous, some are in fact quite serious though have a comedic element particularly out of context. Most speak to at least a colloquial truth.
What Whilhoit did was manage to buttonhole a hypocrisy of modern conservativism, perhaps over the past few decades, perhaps a century or so (Anatole France, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread", further evidentiarially supported by SCOTUS in Grants Pass), perhaps by millennia (see the opening paragraphs of A.H.M. Jones, Augustus, describing the political situation in the late Roman Republic, quoted here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22208105>, and at greater length: <https://web.archive.org/web/20230607042525/https://old.reddi...>). It's not so much a proved hypothesis as a phrasing which fits the understanding of many and expresses it concisely and memorably.
An excellent example would be Murphy's Law, and by extension many of the similar, often eponymous, laws.
See:
- List of Eponymous Laws: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws>
- Murphy's Law and other reasons why things go wrong! by Arthur Bloch: <https://archive.org/details/murphyslawotherr0000arth>
- Compilation of Murphy's (and similar) laws: <https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fgandon/miscellaneous/murphy/>
Some of those are humourous, some are in fact quite serious though have a comedic element particularly out of context. Most speak to at least a colloquial truth.
What Whilhoit did was manage to buttonhole a hypocrisy of modern conservativism, perhaps over the past few decades, perhaps a century or so (Anatole France, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread", further evidentiarially supported by SCOTUS in Grants Pass), perhaps by millennia (see the opening paragraphs of A.H.M. Jones, Augustus, describing the political situation in the late Roman Republic, quoted here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22208105>, and at greater length: <https://web.archive.org/web/20230607042525/https://old.reddi...>). It's not so much a proved hypothesis as a phrasing which fits the understanding of many and expresses it concisely and memorably.