Culture War!
The bad news is also the good news
So I have some bad news: We are in a full-fledged culture war that permeates our media, radicalizes our politicians, and paralyzes our government.
And yet, this is also the good news in a way. GOP extremists do not exactly want to destroy democracy and usher in a fascist era in the United States. Woke progressives don’t really want to bankrupt the country and shame your children. It’s just that both sides are so desperate to survive as cultural entities, they are losing sight of our real, shared goals and ideals.
We need to understand our political adversaries today as frightened and desperate, instead of evil.
Nature of the culture war
The war is existential for those who are caught up in it. Each side, and particularly the Republican base, feels they are about to be eradicated, culturally. By this I mean that their beliefs and traditions will not be honored and respected, their children will come to reject the wisdom and traditions of their parents and communities, and the character and belief systems they have held on to for centuries will be marginalized or eradicated.
Unfortunately, this makes it very hard to work with or compromise with anyone viewed as on the “other side.” To compromise on policy requires some overarching goals such as peace, prosperity, Godliness, justice, fairness, and security. If the main goal of your opponent is to actually destroy you, there can be no compromise.
This mindset therefore undermines democracy itself. If Democrats win enough power, they will wipe out GOP opposition using two main techniques. First, they will re-educate Republican (white, rural, working class) youth to undermine older values of religion, self-sufficiency, and “honor culture.” Second they will increase immigration and pathways to citizenship to accelerate the demographic electoral shift away from the GOP.
If Republicans can seize enough power they will build up non-democratic bulwarks against the new, urban-elite and minority majority Democratic coalition. Specifically, they will gerrymander, pack courts, welcome foreign election interference, riot, undermine faith in elections, and possibly engage in violent insurrection or interference with democratic governance.
Fortunately, most people do still have common values and goals. But we are in danger of losing sight of them if we get swept up into the culture war.
How the Right sees things
It is fascinating to note that the Right has galvanized around Critical Race Theory. Not as a theory — CRT has been in law schools for over 30 years, and nobody really cared. But when CRT grew to a point it could indoctrinate a larger portion of America’s school children, mainstream soccer moms and otherwise apolitical parents practically lost their minds. They organized, yelled, shouted, and packed school board meetings across the country.
They understand that if the Left can get hold of the kids, the children will turn against their parents and the parents’ and grandparents’ belief systems, effectively eradicating that strain of thought.
We have already seen this play out in elite colleges, where young adults increasingly graduate dedicated to “woke” ideology, that then seeps into Big Tech, government and other institutions.
How the Left sees things
The left are an alliance (as are the GOP, actually). Elite, urban knowledge-workers are bound together with minorities.
The elite knowledge workers are materially comfortable. They have good jobs, vacation plans, decent schools for their kids, bright prospects, and an increasing array of working-class gig workers to drive them around and do their laundry. They see the GOP base as ignorant rabble, set on forcing them into a primitive theocracy where courts and illegitimate politicians dictate how they can think and live: principally around abortion, teaching of science such as evolution, determining their own sex lives, and feeling accepted in their gender identities.
Minorities in the Democratic coalition simply feel like the rural and working-class whites are likely to kill them and their children. This is sort of true, but also overblown into a rabid panic over “white supremacy” because it is a great narrative for getting Black people, in particular, to the polls, and turning elite knowledge worker white guilt into political donations.
What we can do to to heal
When you see one of “those people” acting in either of these ways, don’t buy into the idea that they are (all) actually out to get you. Maybe a few are, and you have seen that too much in media. But in the real world, what you saw is probably rare. A thousand people stormed the capitol on January 6th… But over 70 million GOP voters did not and would not.
If you are black, or yuppie, the vast majority of white Americans don’t want to harm you. Sure, they may resent you as you drive by in a Google Bus while they collect your trash or fix your toilet. A couple rough characters may push you around in the wrong bar. But most are decent people with families who will pull you out of a snowdrift if you ever need it, regardless of your race.
Conversely, even if you’re a hardcore redneck, the vast majority of yuppies don’t want to destroy your lifestyle other than a few aspects that directly impact them and where there is at least a legitimate concern. Such as getting your guns stolen so they get killed on the streets of their increasingly dysfunctional cities, traveling to biker week in the middle of a pandemic, then flying back home to them, or attempting to overthrow the United States Government after binging QAnon like some kind of lunatic for six months.
More seriously: understand that this “other” person is not one of “them” who are stupid, immoral, violent or morally corrupt. The other person you actually see on the street, statistically, is trying to do their best, and you can talk to them and rely on them.
Consider. Maybe that other American is just scared. They are actually terrified for their culture, their lives, their future, and those of their children.
You have a lot in common. You want the best for everyone, and so do “they.” You value freedom and so do they. You strive to have compassion and charity for other people, and so do they. Move past your fear and open your heart. Maybe your mind will follow.
Resources
For those interested, you may participate in a workshop, debate, or dialogue with a group like Better Angels, who bring real people together to talk through what is going on, breaking us out of our media bubbles.
“The Constitution on Knowledge” by Jonathan Rauch describes how pre-Enlightenment religious wars were overcome by a commitment to respectfully disagree and communicate, forcing conflict into peaceful and productive pathways.
