Posted on 03/17/2018 8:20:50 AM PDT by Mafe
In a recent article, David Brooks (New York Times “conservative” columnist who — surprise — writes as a “progressive”) suggests that “the culture war” is over or close to over: progressives have already won. Their opponents, “the … less educated ... tribalists” have “self-marginalized over the past two years.”
In addition, progressives “are getting better and more aggressive at silencing dissenting behavior. ...” As a result, they could now “be on the verge of delegitimizing their foes, on guns but also much else, rendering them untouchable for anybody who wants to stay in polite society … [avoid being] morally illegitimate or socially unacceptable … [or just avoid having] your career … end[ed].”
How then does Brooks account for the Trump election, the dominance of Republicans in national and state legislatures, and the millions who are fed up with elite if not polite society? He calls this politics and tries to separate it from culture. He says that: “Conservatives … [representing 40% of the country] have zero cultural power, but they have immense political power.” The idea seems to be that this is just temporary, that cultural losses will eventually turn the tide politically as well.
Hmm. Are progressives really waging war against atavistically tribal conservatives? What could be more tribal than the group identifying with politics progressives espouse? Moreover, human thought and action do not fit neatly into categories such as culture and politics, and even if they did, one cannot omit economics. The most plausible explanation for the Trump victory is that Barrack Obama and the Democrats badly miscalculated on immigration. They thought they could sew up millions of present and future Hispanic voters without creating a backlash among other voters. They may have been right initially, but went too far, and a massive backlash resulted.
Immigration is indeed a political issue, but also a cultural issue, and an economic issue, and one cannot pretend to understand it without looking at it from all these and other angles. It is especially easy to overlook economics, as Brooks does, because on many economic issues (trade and immigration notably excepted), Trumponomics is no different than Obamonomics. This is not surprising, since similar Wall Street figures have dominated both administrations. In monetary policy in particular, there is absolutely no difference between Trump and Obama.
Are opponents of immigration simply “cultural" racists, as most progressives seem to assert? Joseph Epstein, distinguished essayist writing in the Weekly Standard about the dire situation of blacks living in Chicago, a city run for decades by progressives, offers one possible rebuttal of this charge. He writes: “it could be argued that the left generally has contributed as heavily to the condition of contemporary blacks as lingering racism. In fact, encouragement in the belief that all black problems are at root owing to racism is certain to keep blacks in their place, and might itself just be the ultimate racism.”
‘homosexuals attack him, and America responds by overwhelming his business locations with support’
this and the NFL are examples of the progressives going too far too fast, and overestimating their influence...however, incremental erosion of the culture, on an everyday basis, continues apace...
ABSOLUTELY. Good analysis, Doc.
He thinks conservatives are uneducated? Has he not heard all the smart liberals throwing around all their imaginary rights to abortion, healthcare, safety, gender identity, meals, etc? They are being led by a bunch of high schoolers and no one corrects their mistakes and logical fallacies. Idiots led by fools.
I’ve been wearing my NRA hat frequently...in Maryland.
Haven’t had one negative comment or look.
Had we lost, I’d be frequently challenged.
Don’t have to read the article to know the answer. It is not that they won, it is that no one fought back. Or either outright surrendered.
GWB is correct that most Hispanics share our values, we simply have to remind them how abused they were by socialist pigs in their own countries, witness Venezuela.
In fact, I'd say anyone who looks for leadership in a culture war probably isn't even on the battlefield.
In the cultural realm Pop Culture and Hollywood is just an overwhelming force. Day in day out they chip away at traditional values. How long did it take to go from Wil and Grace to men in women’s bathrooms and a thousand years of the definition of marriage to get tossed?
A few weeks ago, I was at an airport coffee shop.
The clerk said something about nearly running out of Styrofoam cups. The hipster in line next to me said something about that being a good thing.
I said “well, actually, Styrofoam is far cleaner environmentally to manufacture than wax coated paper is, plus the coated paper actually breaks down slower than foam does. It was a good conversation and he thanked me for the brief education. We’re not necessarily winning but we also aren’t losing
Economic, scientific, and moral progress exists in spite of the progressive culture- not because of it.
Now the elite are using the argument to take away the 2nd amendment to chip away at the 1st and 4th.
SPIT!
And that right there is the fast track to converting a "culture war" into something very different.
That something would bewilder the proglib comrats in its form and effectiveness.
.
Trump is trying very hard to be a populist, and populism is the salve of governance, just beware of the fly in the ointment.
Culture ebbs, culture flows, culture is constantly in flux. Nobody wins the culture war. It’s like declaring a permanent majority, wait a couple of years, it’ll all be different.
The war has just begun.
People are cowed into submission until they rebel.
Brooks seems to enjoy the prospect of conservatives being driven out of polite society.
I’ve sometimes opined that if we aren’t seeing the effects of scriptural “strong delusion” in the Left — especially when you consider the importing Islam and not merely the native madness, perversions and murders — then I don’t want to see what the real strong delusion will be like.
I do this in a similar way to pointing out that if it looks like a Romans 1:18-32 era we shouldn’t be surprised to discover that it WAS a Romans 1:18-32 era.
But of course these are related, for both happen because people turn their backs on retaining knowledge of God.
They haven’t just won it, it’s been a massacre.
Same sex marriage, gender fluidity, bathroom laws, white privilege, diversity idiocies, openly gays in the military, the demolition of borders and nation states,the diminution of family, toxic masculinity, the takeover by the left of 90% of major public, private, religiouz and corporate institutions.
If history teaches anything it is that no one “wins” a war for very long.
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