'21-4: The Never-Ending Culture Wars
Hello, friends, and welcome back. Thanks for reading. Today I’m going to explore a topic that I’ve been absolutely fascinated with lately—the concept of culture wars. Recently, while Democrats were busy trying to pass the American Recovery Act to provide necessary economic and medical relief in response to the Covid crisis, we saw conservatives go crazy over a decision to stop publishing six lesser-known Dr. Seuss books due to racist portrayals in those books. It’s a war not about how to run the government, but about the culture of America, what we stand for, and who we are. Sometimes those wars feel necessary but other times they feel incredibly stupid.
To be clear, the Dr. Seuss decision was not made by Democrats in Congress or any other governmental entity. Rather, the decision to cease publication was made by none other than Dr. Seuss Enterprises itself—the company that promotes Dr. Seuss’s legacy. In the company’s published statement, they said “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”
This offended Republicans so greatly that some went to the halls of Congress and to their Twitter feeds to lodge their hyperbolic disgust (to say nothing of the hours that Fox News devoted to the topic). I’m looking particularly at House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who actually spoke on the floor of Congress, ostensibly to oppose H.R. 1, a voting rights bill, and said “Under the Constitution, we generally defer to states and counties to run elections. Democrats want to change that. First they outlaw Dr. Seuss, and now they want to tell us what to say.”
They? Again, it was Dr. Seuss Enterprises that chose to stop publishing six minor Seuss books, but he spoke as if it was Congressional Democrats acting by legislative fiat. Awfully convenient for sparking outrage, but not very forthright.
To me, this seemed like theater. Did they really care? Is this even their fight to pursue? Aren’t they supposed to be in Congress making laws to govern and ensure the welfare of our nation, not complaining about which books a private company choses to publish or not? Is this anger serious? Is it a distraction? Is it a tactic to gain and keep otherwise uninformed voters? Is this a new political phenomenon? Is it always Republicans starting these culture wars? These were my questions.
I stumbled upon a fantastic article, which is actually a summary of a book that I admittedly have not read, by author and religion scholar, Stephen Prothero. His book is called Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (Even When They Lose Elections). (Pardon me for writing two newsletters in a row where I simply review another author’s work, but these folks are a lot smarter than I am.)
Prothero defines culture wars as public disputes that extend beyond economic concerns to moral, cultural, or religious matters that are less open to negotiation and compromise. The culture wars address questions of what is the meaning of America and who is a true American. The wars are fueled by heated rhetoric and the conviction that one’s political opponents are the enemies of the nation.
Spot. On.
(Side note—Prothero first published this book in January 2016, before Obama left office. And yet its conclusions still ring true today, five years and two presidents later).
While it feels like we’re in a unique period of political turmoil right now, I think that’s just my narrow bias as a person who has not been alive for all of American history (and also not a historian). Prothero explains that we’ve been fighting culture wars since day one in this country. From the election of 1800 (Jefferson versus Adams), to anti-Mormonism, to anti-Catholicism of the early 19th century, to the prohibition and repeal era of the 20s and 30s, to our contemporary culture wars over abortion, homosexuality, race, and religion—we’ve been fighting what it means to be American forever.
And those are just the big examples. There are countless Dr. Seuss’s, satanic panics, and wars on Christmas in between.
This makes me feel two things. First, in a strange way, it comforts me to know that this is “normal,” and that our nation can survive this turmoil (although it’s not guaranteed).
Second, it drives home to me what I’ve thought for a while, that there is no “golden age” of America. The former president’s call to “Make America Great Again” rang hollow because they cannot point to which period in time they want to go back to, when everything was perfect. Things have always been in a state of change and progression. Not even the oft-cited founding fathers could agree on what America should be and mean. The concept of a “lost” America is a fiction.
A few more interesting conclusions from Prothero. First, he argues that culture wars are, by and large, conservative projects.
The whole identity of modern conservatives is based on anxiety and fear that a beloved form of culture is passing away and it is worth fighting to revive it.
Public prayer. Confederate statues. Traditional marriage. I would add my two cents that these fears may be real, imagined, or exaggerated. Conservatives also fight to maintain hierarchies and privileges, Prothero says, especially those that are falling away (White supremacy. The men’s rights movement. Police untouchability.) The Left may sometimes instigate or respond to culture wars, but culture wars are waged disproportionately by the Right.
A major argument of Prothero is that liberals typically win the culture wars. A large reason for this may simply be because conservatives attach themselves to lost causes at the outset. For example, they fought against Irish and Catholic immigrants when their presence had already become too well established to stop. The same is happening now with Hispanic immigrants. The one I truly don’t understand is the fight to keep confederate statues, when that war was quite literally lost over 150 years ago with the end of the Civil War, and again roughly 60 years ago with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. (That war may never end in America, unfortunately, so we’ll keep fighting). Liberals tend to win, he says, because we often actually have the Constitutional ideals of liberty and equality on our side.
In a way, losing these culture wars is okay to conservatives, though, because the goal isn’t necessarily to win the culture war, but simply to use the culture war as a tactic to gain supporters and the resulting political power. Preaching the gospel of saving what has or may be lost is an emotional tool to get voters. Conservative losses actually energize them more and drive home the feelings of despair and loss that they ground their existence on. It’s a cycle.
Reading this all made so much sense to me. It’s why conservative politics seems so much like theater to me a lot of the time. It seems a tad over-dramatic to be fighting theoretical enemies and ideological concepts, when our country is faced with tangible problems like Covid, poverty, gun violence, racism, you name it.
Conservatives spent enormous amounts of energy railing against the symbolic gesture of taking a knee during the National Anthem at a sports event, while at the same time willfully ignoring and minimizing the real and present problem of race-based police brutality upon which that kneeling was trying to shed light.
It all seems like distraction politics to me. And what’s worse is it seems that behind the culture wars there are no real policies. The GOP did not even put forth a platform during the last election—they just said they’d continue to follow their leader, wherever he may go. They are promoting an idea and concept of patriotic Americanism, but it’s all a veneer. The policies being pursued by Democrats are extremely popular among all Americans (maybe a topic for another day), so one of the Republican’s only remaining tools is culture war. Scare your followers into voting for you, even against their own best interests.
For example, who cares if I can’t afford healthcare, at least we’re not socialist. They give up on the very real and achievable possibility of universal healthcare because of a boogeyman that is not at all real.
What do you think of Prothero’s conclusions? Is it too one-sided? Is the Left just as guilty of starting and pursuing culture wars, or is it overwhelmingly a “conservative project,” as Prothero says?
We can’t stop fighting for what we know is right, but it does give me small comfort to think that we liberals will win the culture wars that matter. I hope. In the meantime, how do we get conservatives to stop having so much fear and anxiety about the world, which leads them to vote this way?
Like what you’ve read? Please subscribe to get this type of content delivered to your inbox once a week. I appreciate you more than you know!