Submitted to a Candid World
Culture wars
Knowing Ourselves
With the loss of Senator Olympia Snowe, the United States Congress continues to bleed moderates, even as Republican presidential hopefuls ramp up the language of division, in their attempts to unite the party behind the narrowest message possible. With the passing of time, we’re becoming more polarized, not less. Maybe we should talk about why.
Especially in the culture war era, many of our disagreements stem from a lack of understanding, and preconceptions about what it means to be liberal or conservative, northern or southern. Both sides of the aisle are equally guilty of building up the narrative of “difference”; take Senator Hatch’s recent, senseless dig against (I think) Brooklyn, or Obama’s unequivocally tone-deaf comment about southerners “clinging” to guns and religion. Similarly, I’ve traveled in enough liberal circles to hear honestly-felt redneck and “flyover” jokes, and enough conservative circles to hear honestly-felt suspicion about anyone who lives in New York City. I’ve also seen homophobes from small-towns become passionately pro-gay rights after actually meeting someone who is gay, and northerners give up their suspicion of the South after living there and getting to know the people (I’ve walked the latter path myself).
This is to say, the surest antidote to sociocultural biases is shared experiences. We’re not actually as different as partisan leaders would make us out to be (as the Republican Party’s losing gamble on contraception seems to prove). Bridging the cultural divide may be as easy as building a mechanism that brings us closer together, by confronting us with that central truth. A few novel ideas, then:
High-speed rail: a population is its transportation network. Rome was its roads, the Hegemony was the farcasters, and the greater New York City area is essentially a creation of the rail companies that serve it. The LIRR and MetroNorth create the suburbs of Westchester and Long Island, enabling New Yorkers to live in one area while working in another, and forging a larger community in the process. The farther out those connections radiate, the stronger they bind the periphery to the center, changing both center and periphery along the way. Massive infrastructure investment and its attendant benefits are far from foreign concepts to Americans — Eisenhower’s interstate system allowed Americans to explore far-flung parts of the country, and essentially spawned the idea of middle-class tourism. Similarly, true national high-speed rail would enable us to live in distant parts of the country, and so put an end to a politics where Southerners can rail against Northerners (or vice versa) based on myths, rather than actual experience.- Internal exchange programs: as countries go, especially compared to Europe, the United States is huge, and remarkably diverse. The same notion that justifies foreign exchange programs — a single person, with knowledge of far-flung locales, can communicate respect and understanding to his home on return — could animate an American exchange program, where talented high school students receive scholarships to study “abroad” in California from Texas; in Atlanta from New York; in Iowa from Baltimore; etcetera. Such programs would surely draw upon private (rather than public) financing, but ideally, accomplish a real public service.
One side of the aisle disproportionately gets away with setting us against ourselves; they’ve practically built campaigns on it. But both sides are wrong to engage in the politics of social division. If we’re going to raise the level of public discourse in this country, we should start – not end — by appreciating where each of us is coming from, and spreading that message in our communities.
Inferring from Aberration: How the Culture War Magnifies
Several point to an absurd incident out of Pennsylvania, where Judge Mark Martin recently acquitted a criminal defendant of assault because his victim, Ernie Perce, was dressed as a “zombie Mohammed,” thereby (apparently) provoking the assault. An excerpt from the trial transcript, as reported by another blog:
Whenever it is very common, their language, when they’re speaking to each other, it’s very common for them to say, uh, Allah willing, this will happen. It’s, they’re so immersed in it. And what you’ve done is, you’ve completely trashed their essence, their being. They find it very, very, very offensive. I’m a Muslim. I find it offensive. I find what’s on the other side of this [sign] very offensive. But you have that right, but you are way outside your bounds of First Amendment rights. …
The apparent argument, that some religions are entitled to more deference than others, is simply wrong by any interpretation of the First Amendment. What the Speech Clause of the First Amendment gives, the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses cannot take away. Judge Martin is categorically wrong to acquit a Muslim defendant of assault, merely because his particular interpretation of Islam “required” him to undertake the assault. Religion has never been a shield against laws of general prohibition in this country. And regardless of however complex the actual prosecution may’ve been — Volokh, characteristically, adds some nuance to it — it is definitionally improper for a judge to admonish a crime victim not to avail himself of his First Amendment rights.
Unsurprisingly, some’ve taken this incident as proof of the “creeping threat” of Shar’ia law. This is wrong. There’s no evidence that the judge applied any actual standard of law, religious or otherwise, in the case — and that’s the problem. He went so far off-book as to either decide the case, or improperly harangue a crime victim, based on his own private sense of morality, and his (flawed) belief that pluralism means selling out to our thinnest-skinned elements. That’s not Shar’ia — that’s garden variety bad judging. Moreover, there is no law, and none can be drafted, against bad judging. We simply have to endure it, and correct it through the system by removing the judges, or appealing the cases (sadly, no appeal is possible here, on a criminal acquittal). To use this incident as “evidence” of a need for a ban on Shar’ia law in American courts is to note a problem that the law could not solve, and to which the basic, irrational fear underlying Shar’ia bans does not speak.
What’s at play here, in the right’s overreaction, is a common problem for modern democracy, especially evident in culture war issues: when a single act bears on the national consciousness, we tend to imagine it’s as common as it is important. In the public’s mind, there’s no such thing as an isolated tragedy. Like the Springfield “bear attack,” society will not allow a wrong to go unanswered, no matter how unlikely its recurrence, or how meaningless (or unrelated) the belated response (YouTube). The absurd amount of time we dedicate to discussing the “threat” of Shar’ia is no different — except for its racially charged overtones — from the truly absurd amount of time we dedicate to debating whether to criminalize flag-burning, despite the complete lack of any evidence suggesting that Shar’ia is a true, immediate threat; or that there is (as President Bartlett said) an “epidemic of flag-burning.” We magnify things that matter to us, and our view of America, in proportion with our values, not in proportion with the facts.
Ideally, we should take off the tinted glasses that make each of us view the world with some of its traits shrunk, others blown to monstrous proportion, and others relegated to peripheral vision. This may be optimistic. And for the Republican Party — with its new standard-bearer, Rick Santorum — deliriously so.
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David Addington’s Decidedly Un-Christian Lies about the “Christmas Tree Tax”
The war on Christmas started early this year, with a post from David Addington — yes, the same David Addington who participated in the vindictive outing of a CIA agent to score some political point, and authorized warrantless wiretapping of American phone lines without congressional oversight — charging that President Obama just “couldn’t wait” to impose a $0.15 per tree tax on live Christmas trees. Because Lord knows our Muslim President loves nothing more than messing with Christians.
Pretty tone-deaf, right? At least, it would be, if Addington’s story were true as written. Addington spins the “tax” as another instance of senseless, anti-business regulation from a White House oblivious to the real causes of unemployment; and as further proof that the President either doesn’t “get” or simply doesn’t care for America’s Christians. Except the program was created at the request of the live Christmas tree industry, to help them compete with the artificial-tree industry, whose market share “increased 655 percent from 1965 to 2008,” and as such, threatens to crowd out traditional “choose-and-cut” growers. The order itself offers a full explanation, which Addington apparently overlooks in his haste to spin the American President as (somehow) un-American:
The Christmas tree industry has tried three different times to conduct promotional programs based on voluntary contributions. Each time, after about three years, the revenue declined to a point where the programs were ineffective. The decline in revenue is attributable to the voluntary nature of these programs. Therefore, the proponents have determined that they need a mechanism that would be sustainable over time. They believe that a national Christmas tree research and promotion program would accomplish this goal.
Like all federal regulations, the announcement takes pains to list and explain those comments received both for and against the proposal. Naturally, Addington’s specific objections were presented to the USDA, and specifically rejected. At the Christmas tree industry’s request:
Another commenter stated that the proposed rule should be withdrawn as it was an inappropriate use of government power citing free markets, limited government, and individual freedom. The Proposed program was presented to the Department by an industry wide group of producers and importers who requested that such an industry-funded program be implemented. USDA has concluded that a research and promotion program for fresh cut Christmas trees is within the scope of its authority under the 1996 Act, and therefore is establishing this industry supported program.
Can a regulation be anti-business, when it’s written and implemented by the very businesses it burdens? I suspect not. And it’s pretty tough to be anti-Christmas when your stated goal is preserving the idyllic Christmas-tree-buying scene depicted to the left, in Watterson’s classic example of Christmastime Dad-trolling. In fact, the fairer argument is that the Obama administration sold out to “Big Natural Christmas Tree Agribusiness” to save the pleasant, bucolic live tree tradition from modern, insurgent, blandly technical artificial tree-makers. If there’s a story about government abuse here, it’s that the Obama administration put its finger on the scale of the free market to preserve the sight, smell, and feel of Christmas as Watterson and Norman Rockwell imagined it. To save rather than steal Christmas.
But that’s not the story Addington (or Heritage) want to tell. Instead, they want to convince you that America’s sitting President has it out for both America’s beloved traditions, and for America’s “marginalized” Christian majority. They want to use religion to cultivate a persecution complex, deepen the culture wars, and set brother against brother at a time when we’re supposed to learn to love and come to terms with our enemies. It’s hard to spin that choice as anything but naughty. For the Heritage Foundation’s sake then, let’s hope — as in Calvin’s rhyming dream sequence — that Santa’s decided to reward rather than punish such petty mendacity.
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Moderates, Atheism, and Mutual Cooling in the Culture Wars
It’s fair to say I have mixed feelings on the atheist movement. On the one hand, more than a few of my closest friends count themselves as leading lights in skeptic circles, and the work they do, pushing back the fog of fundamentalism and bigotry, serves an invaluable counterweight to the type of religious militarism that’s almost as dangerous under cross as it is under crescent.
On the other hand, there’s a tendency at the movement level for atheism to lapse into a new kind of dogma and, like fundamentalist Christianity, reject the very pluralism that the movement used to hold out as a goal. Ross Douthat notes the problem, and I tend to agree: atheists and religious moderates should be able to find common ground in rejecting fundamentalism, both as a worldview, and in validating those parts of organized religion that tend to actually create better people. I object to, and take offense at, the notion that humanity needs a divine being to provide an objective morality substantial enough to quash our naturally selfish impulses. To men and women of a certain conviction, a decent respect for the life and property of others should flow naturally — without any need for recourse to some heavenly notion of punishment and reward – from the simple fact that we are, in fact, bound together in our destinies. But for those who need the crutch of religious morality, let them have it.
But if we see an angry, militant type of atheism emerging as a dominant force in the movement, we shouldn’t overlook the role religious fundamentalists have had in creating that wing. Any alliance between religious moderates and non-theist moderates would face fire from both sides: militant atheists who view religion as a plague to be eradicated, and militant theists who see atheists as something less than human. Productive dialogue requires two willing players; arguably, we don’t have either.
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Cultural Leadership
Rick Warren, the halfway-liberal evangelist briefly involved in the President’s inauguration, offers two tweets on cultural leadership, for those who believe the task can (and should) be undertaken:
Politics is always downstream from the source of culture. By the time a law is proposed, the water’s already contaminated.
If you’re serious about changing culture, start with music. Its power is unequalled. That’s why I mentor musicians.
I read these together, as a syllogism, which I think is probably correct:
(1) If your goal is to influence national politics, (2) remember that culture is prior to, and more powerful than, politics. (3) Therefore, to change politics, one must change culture.
The law rarely leads. In most cases — like in desegregation — it lags far behind, waiting for the ascendancy of a newer and more progressive generation to write their lifestyle and beliefs into law. And when the law leads, even if it effects cultural change, it rarely prompts the kind of consensus that results from organic development. To that extent, the preacher is on to something, but for one serious problem: I don’t think it’s possible to affirmatively lead the culture in the top-down manner he assumes. Put another way, I don’t think one can countermand organic cultural change through the counseling of individual players, or even through aggressive activism.
This is the flawed background assumption of the “culture wars”: that leaders, or groups largely disconnected from the dominant popular culture, can arrest the pace of its change. To my knowledge, it’s simply never happened in human history — and certainly not in a free society — but for whatever reason, it’s still an act played out in every generation, the culture going in one direction, and some remnant of the old guard attempting to “stand[] athwart history” yelling “Stop!” Maybe the background culture comes from a more genuine place; maybe, as an amalgamation of multiple influences, it’s less susceptible to voices narrowly focused on a single theme.
Whatever the reason, I don’t believe that cultural conservatism, as an ideology, has ever won a battle, despite hewing to Warren’s playbook. Rome hellenized despite the Catos, and was later Christianized despite Julian & his elites; the Catholic church lost its temporal influence despite the Papacy; the Beatles drowned out Cole Porter; the South desegregated despite Thurmond & Helms; and America will come to accept gay marriage despite her Santorums. Who’s to say whether it’s good or bad, but it is the course of history. “Politics is always downstream from the source of culture,” and the current’s too swift to paddle backwards.
The Reinforcing Stereotype
A few years back, an (ex-)girlfriend and I were in line at, I think, the New England Aquarium, when we wound up talking to a couple from Atlanta — my home, and where we’d just come from. My companion was from nearby Philadelphia, so naturally, we two couples were trading stories of things to do, and see, in our respective geographies, when one of our new friends asked me — “so where are you from in Atlanta?”
I’ve since come to dread this question, and learned to either hedge, or lie. Because with my answer – Buckhead – the conversation ended. You see, Buckhead is a wealthy neighborhood, and infamous for producing smarmy, entitled types. Neither I nor my family fit that mold, but it didn’t matter. I’d suddenly become a new person in the eyes of our line companions. The stereotype trumped an interaction that had been, until then, quite pleasant.
Similarly, leaving Texas yesterday afternoon, I was absolutely unable to convince a flight attendant that, yes, I was sad to be returning to New York. I miss my college friends! And Texas beauty is something that New York can’t replicate, for all of its charms. But she was having none of it. What could a New Yorker see in Texas?! Best hurry back to the big city… with an implied, “where you belong.”
It’s axiomatic that stereotypes are sad, limiting, and never do justice to the individuals they describe. But they’re also persistent, and very real. This, I think, is what’s always bothered me about the “culture wars” — “real” vs. “fake” America, and red meat appeals to small-town vs. big-city values. The more we’re told we’re different, the more we become different.
Un-Common White Angst
Fox News’ latest jihad against the rapper Common is a creation of such spectacular idiocy that it really deserves a monument of some kind. Jon Stewart’s takedown of the whole thing — which Bill O’Reilly basically concedes, but then strives to cover up with a smug tone and some handwaving — is probably as good a one as any, but truly, when again will we witness such an obvious confluence of so many of the worst parts of the culture wars? Probably not in this generation. It’s like the Halley’s Comet of inane social cleavages. You’ve got new art/music vs. old art/music (I mean, kids these days!), young vs. old, cities vs. heartland, and probably some I’m missing, all against a background of black vs. white, and rolled up to drive home this central point:
Middle America: The Obamas Are Not Like You!
Who else but Fox News could carry this “story”? It was practically written to fit their business strategy of alternately scaring and soothing anyone threatened by the pace of cultural change. Listen to any anchor carrying the story, and you can practically hear Fox’s go-to rhetorical baseline: ”get off my lawn!” Remarkable.
One point feels worth addressing: is Common specifically, and rap music generally, “poetry,” worthy of joining the White House’s poetry night? I don’t feel particularly equipped to answer the question. I actually don’t like rap a whole lot — ask my little sister about our epic battles over the radio — but maybe that makes me an even better judge. So, one response.
Most to ask this question don’t actually answer it. Instead, they respond to the question of whether rap is good poetry. But to steal from my chosen profession, doesn’t that go to weight, rather than admissibility? Art can be really quite bad while still remaining art; and it strikes me that, if rap speaks to a certain individual, no matter how slapdash the rhyme scheme, I don’t know who anyone else is to deny that power. Imagine for a moment the wide breadth of creative experiences that have moved you: for me that would involve the basics of paintings, sculptures, literature, music you would expect, but also music you would not expect, and things farther afield, like video games. No, not like MarioKart. Like the original Knights of the Old Republic – one of the best examples, I think, of a game’s ability to tell a compelling story — or more recently, Fallout 3. That’s a new thing for my generation, but it’s no less valid.
Patrons of art, like heads of state, are within their rights to use the position to endorse a particular type of art, and if the opposition doesn’t like it, well, maybe they should win more elections. More, I expect heads of state are free to endorse art without endorsing the underlying message, too. Unless we’re to presume President Nixon’s hearty endorsement of parties in the county jail.
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Divorcing Fiscal Restraint from Social Conservatism
The GOP hasn’t done it. So far, we’ve seen attempts to defund:
Here’s a serious question, to answer an unserious group of legislators: can the Republican Party address budget cuts, without framing it as a culture war issue, and without letting literally insignificant savings on hot-button issues take center stage, and drown out any potentially meaningful debate? We’re quickly gearing up for the healthcare debate, redux, with Republicans offering inflammatory, off-topic counters to stymie actually important reform. Again.
The War on Christmas Enters Adolescence: What To Do About “Grinch Alert”?
A Dallas Baptist church provides “Grinch Alert,” a website where you can “report” businesses and establishments that apparently offend Christians by failing to cater to the absurd belief that an entire season, somehow, belongs to fundamentalist Christians exclusively.
My friend Evan (himself Jewish) suggests overwhelming the site, and diluting its effectiveness, by recommending synagogues as “naughty.” I entirely support this initiative.
Did the Tea Party Actually Win?
A look through the headliners suggests, “no.” Rubio took Florida and Paul took Kentucky, but these expected wins exhaust tea party gains in most-watched races. Joe Miller in Alaska fell to Lisa Murkowski as a write-in. Sharron Angle, of course, substantially underperformed. Carly Fiorina and Christine O’Donnell went down as hard as expected. John Raese lost by double-digits in West Virginia, after being caught referring to his would-be constituents as “hicky.”
These last three races could have been won by almost any other Republican — a mainline Republican — but voters in these key states resoundingly rejected radicals in favor of professional, competent politicians. To make matters worse, those three wins, plus two more, could have flipped the Senate. Absent tea party “populism,” Republicans could be sitting on a 49-vote bloc, and waiting on the remaining undecided races to see whether they would either receive a 50/50 split, or a narrow majority.
Oh, and in New York’s 23rd, Doug Hoffman’s late drop-out deprived Republicans of an easy gain against vulnerable Democratic congressman Bill Owens. Hah!
It’s hard to say for certain how much tea party “populism” helped Republicans energize their voters, and win close races with mainline candidates. But the bloc’s ability to actually send one of its own to Congress seems, at least this morning, pretty disappointing. This puts tea party partisans in the familiar role, always occupied by conservative culture war partisans, of delivering elections for mainline Republicans, and then being disappointed, when the establishment inevitably turns its back on them. Seeing so many of her favorites go down also seriously blunts Sarah Palin’s star power. All in all, things could be much worse.
