(no subject)

[eirias]

I have been increasingly obsessed with the so-called "culture war" in recent months. NYT Columnist David Brooks is the one who first alerted me to it as a national phenomenon; although I think some of his readings of culture are shallow and unhelpful, they do strike a familiar chord. I read Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?" this summer, and again, it was simplistic in some places and glossed over some details that might have been useful (e.g., explain to me again which recent Democratic initiatives were intended to help poor rural people?), but there is the sense that he is on to something.

Actual rural people seem to have this sense too. Within two days of the election I had two separate conversations with Christian acquaintances from northern Wisconsin who said they felt left out and belittled by Democrats. (One of them described himself bashfully as "kind of a Jesus freak" - I may not agree with your religion, but man, no one should have to be ashamed of it.) The broad similarity between the 2000 county-by-county electoral map and the 2004 one gives some credence to the idea that people are voting by identity and not by platform, since platforms changed completely and yet Bush took most of the same places he took before. And if I'm honest with myself, I have to say that I do it too, to an extent. I want a candidate who is like me in some ways (though hopefully a lot more clueful about economics and foreign policy and uh, pretty much everything else).

So, we have many public thinkers saying that current politics is best viewed in context of this culture war between poor-rural-Christian-traditionalists and rich-urban-secular-intellectuals (or something like that), and we have some data that seem to fall in line. It's interesting that there is such an apparent relationship between theory and practice, to be sure. But how can we know, at this point, where lies causality? Is it possible that the pundits, by casting everything in terms of a culture war, have stoked the fires of discomfort in people who wouldn't have otherwise noticed? The particular polar culture war thus described, as a potential meme, has everything going for it - it's simple and intuitive, it puts a lot of people in a group they feel sure is comprised of "the good guys," and it can explain a lot that otherwise seems inexplicable (e.g., why those other people disagree with you when you are so obviously right). Would my landlord have ever felt disrespected by Democrats if he hadn't read that it were so? Does he even know any liberals other than his tenants?

I'm not sure how in principle you'd tell the difference between "our inherent differences have led us to this culture war" and "our writers have led us to this culture war." But insofar as the latter is a possibility, I think I'm going to have to conclude that a little knowledge is an even more dangerous thing when it is in the hands of a pundit.

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[rms10.livejournal.com]

Note that I should have said "observant religious folk" instead of "Christians", although I imagine Christians veer Republican in higher proportions than other major religions in the U.S.