Why Is There a Culture War?
Understanding the progressive left and religious right
I've held every political view at some time in my life. So I understand where each group comes from, including the secular progressive left, the comfortable middle, and the religious right. If you want to understand any or all of these groups, maybe this essay about my own experience will help. If you're on the religious right, this will not be a comfortable experience for you.
I started life as a poor kid, son of a single working mom. I didn't get to do a lot of things my peers did growing up because we didn't have the money. I didn't play sports, both because of ill health and the lack of money for shoes and equipment. I didn't learn music because we couldn't afford an instrument or to pay for band lessons. I didn't go to summer camp — no money. I felt less than the other kids, and as I grew into my teen years, I resented it. What accident of birth gave them privilege and comfort while we lived in poverty?
Then I went to work. I saw how a business owner lorded over his low income workers, browbeating us for being too slow, demanding we work a patchwork quilt of hours whether they fit our lives or not, telling us we were expendable and there were others who would gladly take our places, paying us $1.65 an hour for working our asses off, while he sat up in his office reading the newspaper and his son, just a few years older than me, took the profits to the bank. I felt exploited and saw the others around me exploited, our hard labor providing the ease and comfort and prosperity of an upper-middle-class owner. It was an early lesson in how capitalism works. Those born to privilege remain in privilege, those born poor usually remain poor, and if you're lucky either very hard work or education can provide a little upward mobility. But most remain more or less where they are born. Additionally, I saw that the system is designed to provide excessive prosperity for a few in the winner-take-all economic lottery while most barely make it day to day.
In a supposedly democratic nation lauded for being the most prosperous and democratic in history, it seemed grossly unjust that so few actually enjoy that prosperity while most are born to struggle, just sort of survive economically throughout life, and die without having much to pass on to their kids. That system seems incredibly unfair given that there is sufficient prosperity to make everybody well off, if only it were distributed more fairly — not equally, just reasonably fairly to everybody.
That was how I came to be on the Left as a young college student. I wanted justice and prosperity for everyone, not a caste system in which most were born, lived, and died without enjoying much of the prosperity of the richest, most democratic nation in the history of human civilization. In college I read Marx and his opposites Locke and Adam Smith. As a worker and poor kid, Marx made a lot more sense to me and I became a Socialist. You might wonder how a poor kid got to go to college. In the early Seventies, public college in California was nearly free, subsidized by state government. I worked half time and went to school full time, something kids can no longer do today without going into massive debt. Upward mobility is all but eliminated unless you are willing to shoulder debt of at least $10,000 per year of college at a minimum. I graduated debt free (which is how it *should be* for everyone!).
After I graduated, I went to work for technology companies, where I earned high wages as a professional technical and marketing writer. Eventually, Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, and the money I earned corrupted me and I became middle class, maybe on the edge of upper middle class, and conservative. It was all about me and my family and preserving what I earned, not caring about all those like me whom I had left behind. Thanks to the Zeitgeist, especially Limbaugh, I felt justified in my selfish greed.
About that time, I also fell in with conservative Evangelical Christians and my conservatism felt justified not just by virtue of my good income but also as a social movement and subculture. I came to believe I was among the chosen godly people and all those other godless rabble like I had been in college were leading the country to hell. I bought into a subculture that was unconsciously white, elite, and self-righteous. We believed we had the only godly values, and all those who were not part of the club were headed to hell and trying to take us with them. I remember thinking I should join a militia group to be ready to protect the country and my family from the godless hordes around us. We were so steeped in our subculture that we simply had no awareness of others except as enemies of god to be feared. Frankly, it's the same kind of mentality that in earlier eras burned witches at the stake. Oh, we gave to charity to "help the poor," and I did genuinely have a heart for those who struggle financially, emotionally, or spiritually, but in retrospect, my conservative faith was a subtle form of elitism and selfishness in the name of god. To be sure, I believed wholeheartedly in god and worshipped deeply. The experience strengthened me in my belief and faith in god which remains with me to this day, though the nature of my spirituality has greatly changed, broadened to be far more universal and inclusive.
In retrospect I also recognize now that Christian conservatism is always based in fear and selfishness disguised as godliness. Christians first of all fear going to hell and believe they have their ticket to heaven. Being generous, I'll say they are also fearful for others, the ungodly as they call them, that they will go to hell too, so they spread the gospel hoping to save others. That same fear also motivates them to want to save our society from godlessness, so they try to force their religion on the society at large. But a good deal of their motivation is also simply wanting to impose their conservative values on everybody. They are absolutely convinced they are right and everybody else is wrong, because they know god and the "truth" of the Bible as they interpret it. Though they are a minority of perhaps 30% of the population, they believe their knowledge of absolute truth justifies imposing their beliefs on everybody else. What do they think happens if they don't succeed? They think their vengeful god will take it out on our society and remove our (their!) prosperity. The godless hordes will run the country, force us all to live in ungodliness, and take us all to hell! Well, except for the Christian right because they have their golden ticket to heaven — but they might not get as many jewels in their crowns in heaven because they failed to make America great again!
It's a sad view of life to live in that kind of constant fear and subtle form of disparagement of others who don't hold their particular brand of truth. And it leads to what we see playing out in our culture now — fear and hatred of the other, of immigrants who want to steal our prosperity (like we did from others — maybe a little unconscious guilt there?), of races who are different from us comfortable white folk, of women who control their own lives, of people whose gender identity or sexual identity is different and doesn't fit their notion of godliness, of poor and homeless people who must have done something ungodly to deserve their poverty, of the mentally ill who must have demons. For certain, the religious may think kindly of such poor misguided souls in the abstract and give a little to help them, but they don't want to have to pay taxes to ensure others do better, and they don't want much to do with them socially. (Think of Karen pointing her little pistol at people of color walking to a BLM march near her rich person's house because she was afraid when they got too close to her comfort zone.) Let those misguided people get back into the closet or the homeless shelter (except conservatives don't want to pay for homeless shelters) or their own neighborhoods, just so long as the Christian right doesn't have to rub elbows with them.
I don't mean to paint conservative Christians as evil. In reality many are very kind, loving people who think they are doing the right thing. Many really do try to live the gospel, loving their neighbors, which they think includes saving them from hell. The trouble is they are preached a gospel from the pulpit and reinforced by their subculture that includes politics directly contradicting the love of fellow humans and substituting judgment in the place of love. Many of them are just not deep thinkers. They like having clear cut rules and morals handed down from on high, and they don’t recognize the contradictions or that it's wrong to impose their views on others. I didn’t — at least not for a long time.
After about 15 years as a conservative Christian, job layoffs became a part of the capitalist landscape. I saw my friends and peers get laid off all through the Nineties, and in 2000, a layoff finally got me. I saw firsthand how devastating it is to lose one's livelihood and fear that one might never get it back. I also noted how the exceedingly rich corporation and 1% owners and executives never suffered like the workers did. Even when a CEO got fired, he (yes always a white male) received a golden parachute of $millions and soon went on to ruin the next company by laying off more workers. Throughout the 2000s, I saw many layoffs and was laid off several times myself. In fact, one week in 2010, my wife and I were both laid off within a few days of each other.
The layoffs started to radicalize me again. I realized there is an elite who are never touched by such things, a 1% that always gets the best of everything, and that at best the top 20% of incomes live in prosperity. Meanwhile, the lower 80% live in constant economic struggle, and the bottom 50% (that's still a majority folks!) live hand to mouth or in severe poverty. I realized our society, the richest most democratic in history, does not have even a remotely just or reasonable system of economic distribution, let alone a democratic economy. No one with a heart would design a society that has the capacity to provide incredible flourishing prosperity for every citizen and then deny that prosperity to the vast majority while a tiny few live in unbelievable luxury. Who would design such a system?
I also began seeing my conservative faith differently, as a contributing factor to the harm our society does socially and economically to those who struggle. I started realizing that struggles with poverty, homelessness, and mental illness stem from the lack of compassion in our society and especially in our economy. And once I saw those flaws in our system, I also started to see systemic racism and the terrible harm we do to immigrants, people of color, and Native Americans, both historically and on an ongoing basis. And now we have the return of misogyny with the Dobbs decision smashing women's rights. Honestly, I now understand this society is designed for one and only one group's well-being: rich white men.
So I am a lefty again, a strong progressive. I want our government and economic system redesigned deliberately to work for the vast majority, to be genuinely democratic and allow full participation and prosperity for every last person. And I vehemently oppose that elitist religious conservative viewpoint that seeks to impose itself on everybody, forcing a majority to live according to values they did not choose, leaving most to struggle economically, and pushing many to the fringes to live in hiding because their difference is not accepted. I want a flourishing prosperity for everybody, where we all get a big slice of the pie and everyone has the capacity to live happily just as they are, according to their own beliefs and values. What's so wrong about a vision like that? It's reasonable, it's just, it's genuinely democratic, and it's achievable if we all work together to change things. I'm an optimist; I believe we can do it!
