To: My old far-right conservative friends
Re: Your Culture War
Dear old friends!
I write to you today from a position of great confusion, hoping eagerly that you can shed some light on matters that have, of late, vexxed me greatly.
There was a time, not all that long ago, when I walked among you. We hung out together, dined together, raised our kids together. We shared our hopes, our concerns, our ideas, our aspirations. We did all this within the framework of our particular culture – our Midwestern, middle-class, backyard barbecue culture, the one that celebrates church picnics and newborn babies and Johnny Cash. The one we were born to. The one we had to drive 500 miles to get to the edge of. That down-home, God-fearing, Reagan-voting, Bible Belt culture.
I remember it all both fondly and clearly, and it’s in that context that I have to observe – now, from the outside looking in – what's up with our old culture? Why is it that everyone who’s still part of that culture seems to think that it’s at war with everyone who’s not a part of it? This is of great concern, as you might guess, because I’m no longer part of it – which means you’re at war with me. And that makes me sad.
At face value, this is all to do with our old crowd’s deepening affiliation with the political right, an affiliation that began way back in our youth. The political right has always been at war with everyone not within its own tent, and so it makes sense that rubbing elbows with them would lead you all to join in their kerfuffles.
But it was the church, not the politics, where we enjoyed our original cultural bond – and I’m now seeing that this is how the political right created this alliance with you in the first place.
“There is a religious war going on in this country,” Republican Pat Buchanan told the Republican National Convention in 1992. “It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.”
Historian Heather Cox Richardson followed up. “A generation later, that culture war has joined with the economic vision of the older party to create a new ideology,” she wrote. “More than half of Republicans now reject the idea of a democracy based in the rule of law and instead support Christian nationalism, insisting that the United States is a Christian nation and that our society and our laws should be based in evangelical Christian values.”
And now all we hear when we turn on the news or page through social media is culture war, culture war, culture war. Attacks on trans rights. Attacks on “Critical Race Theory”. Roe v. Wade. All-out war.
A great deal of my bafflement over the politics of it derive from the positions of the politicians who are leading these charges, apparently with your support: they are taking policy positions, regarding both the economy and the role of government, that are more harmful to you than they are to your perceived ‘culture war’ opponents. Put another way, they are shouting opposition to people who aren’t you to rally your support out of one side of their mouths, and strategizing policy changes that will squeeze you financially all the harder, while removing services you and your families need on the other.
The policies, if they become the focus of everyone’s attention, will not go over well; so they distract from them with these endless new ‘culture war’ attacks, which are all contrived (and are not originating from any group you perceive as ‘opponents’), to keep the spotlight off their deeper agenda.
“America’s culture wars,” wrote journalist Gary Gerstle, “distract from what’s happening beneath them.”
Now, that’s not new; politicians have been using that sort of sleight-of-hand for centuries. And why not? It works well. We are an easily-distracted people, and it doesn’t take much to get us riled and unfocused.
Nor am I terribly worried that this latest ‘culture war’ will come to much. We live in a nation built to withstand such shocks.
No, my concern is more long-term. It leads me to an earnest question.
What does winning look like to you?
Seriously, what’s a win for you? If I understand your standard-bearers, it means asserting your social order on those who aren’t part of it, implementing public policy that favors you and disfavors others. It means enacting laws that entrench your values, which dismissing those of others.
It means promotion of your faith – which no one, no one says you don’t have a right to embrace! - above the beliefs of others. It means encoding the principles of your faith into laws others must follow, under pains and penalties your culture will decide.
You believe that your culture is superior to the other cultures around you, and that yours must prevail and theirs must be dispensed with. Your win seems to be making that happen.
And what does that look like?
To put public policy in place that enforces your cultural wish list and grants you favor over those not of your tribe will require legislation that is pushed through over the will of the majority. You must acquire the political power to overwhelm those whose well-being you are setting aside for the advancement of your own.
Once you’ve achieved this, you must know that everyone else – myself included! - will move heaven and earth to reacquire the rights you have stripped us of. So in order to make permanent your culture war win, you must persuade every one of us that it’s for our own good, and that we should adopt your culture and forego our own, else we vote your folks out of office and restore our own rights.
So to keep your culture-war gains, you must use your power in the moment to silence us and strip us of our votes, as well. You must bring democracy to an end.
Do you think that’s going to go over well? Do you think we will suddenly become docile and cooperative? No; we will fight you all the harder.
At this juncture, you may now have destroyed the plural culture of America and asserted your own, but we are all still here. So you have three options: you can 1) subjugate us; create a social where we are compelled, by law and/or by force, to live as you insist we must; 2) vanquish us; expel us from the United States; or 3) eliminate us altogether.
If you see another option beyond these three, I’m all ears.
I should note that you are not the first to wage ‘culture wars’ within a modern society. They tried it in Germany; they tried it in Russia; they tried it in a number of smaller nations. It always turned out the same.
Why? ‘Culture wars’ aren’t something you can ‘win’. The term ‘culture war’ is, in the end, just another way of saying ‘intolerance’. And that always ends in bloodshed and tragedy.
You can’t possibly win. If there was a win, achieving it would be monstrous. So – please! - just stop this stupid war. Stop listening to those who are pushing you to wage it.
It's not just that it’s the right thing to do; it’s that I myself support the idea of a nation where many cultures may exist side-by-side, and many people from many backgrounds with many different worldviews may enjoy our shared freedoms, I am now one of the objects of your intolerance.
And that makes me sad.
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