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When Fighting Culture Wars, You Can’t Play Nice
Five ways to win the battle
When I first delved into the history of culture wars, I questioned how anyone could fall for such blatant manipulative nonsense. I’ve lived through many iterations: prayer in schools, gay marriage, war on Christmas, and now critical race theory and trans athletes competing in athletics.
Still, it feels different than it did in the 80s and 90s. There was more sincerity behind the battles. Both sides genuinely believed they were fighting for a particular worldview. Today, it seems we wage culture wars more as an exploitative electoral tool than as a means to inculcate a desired set of values.
Culture war insanity reached a fever pitch recently when Ted Cruz displayed a poster of the book Antiracist Baby and asked Judge Brown if she thought babies were racist.
Nobody of sound mind would claim the question zeroed in on Judge Brown’s qualifications as a Supreme Court Judge. More likely, Cruz designed to question to create a circus-like event to travel the rounds of social media and conservative news outlets. It worked. And that helps explain the modern iteration of culture wars.
Some of the fights may stem from deeply held views, but the political operatives foment these clashes as tools to rally the base and gin up…
