First I want to start with some definitional stuff because otherwise this will get way too heady. When those of us who follow politics talk about the “culture wars” we’re speaking broadly about social policy in the United States and how quickly they’ve progressed. Civil Rights in the 60s all the way to the modern push for Civil Rights. This is a battle that – despite what you might hear in the liberal echo chamber – the left has almost exclusively won. Imagine being someone opposed to marriage equality / generally averse to change. Twelve years ago, there were statewide and national pushes for a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Now, the Supreme Court has ruled that marriage equality is protected by the Constitution, making it the law of the land. That’s a huge shift in the US policy and a relatively rapid one. Three or four years ago, trans rights weren’t really a thing you heard about – at all. Now Loretta Lynch is advocating trans rights alongside all over civil rights.
Do me a favor when you imagine the above – try and remove your personal bias. I’m sure you’re probably the most progressive person alive, but a lot of Americans aren’t. They fear change and they fear ceding ground to people they don’t identify with or understand. This is why there are culture wars to begin with.
None of this is meant to excuse outright bigotry or racism or sexism. The Supreme Court also gutted the Voting Rights Act in one of the biggest blows against the Civil Rights movement. But on the whole, the ledger comes out in favor of progress and equality at a dizzying pace in the last ten years.
But a key part of winning these types of battles is knowing where to draw the line, and the left has gotten pretty content with winning every battle. They’re now pushing the battle lines just a little bit too far. It’s not exactly tyranny of the majority, but it’s close enough. Once the lines are pushed too far, there will be a brutal snapback, and we’re already experiencing it with Trump.
There are almost two definitions of PC culture. On the left it’s a culture of checking privilege and not being bigoted. On the right it’s demonizing privilege and all those who had it and using it to thought police people with different opinions. The left is pushing the advantage too far and making the right feel victimized. Trump is, for a lot of them, the savior of their people.
Again, it’s difficult to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand their point of view, but it’s critical to do exactly that. Look – I’m a socially progressive white male. I was born into the upper middle class and got a college degree. I’m about as privileged as you’re allowed to be in this country without being a legacy at Harvard. I cannot conceive of a world where I’m not privileged.
But I understand that other people feel this way. Because the left has a bad habit of taking moral superiority and condescending to anyone who disagrees with them – on anything. This is where it’s pushing the boundaries of the conversation too far. Generally speaking, dealing in absolutes is incredibly dangerous. Once we start pretending differences of opinion are factually inaccurate, it foments the kind of polarization and division we’re seeing take over this political process. It also makes it easy for someone like Trump to come to power.
Part of this is the nature of the two-party system. It makes it way too easy to conflate ideologies that are often separate. Not every Republican or conservative believes in outdated definitions of marriage. It’s just so easy to assume that anyone who believes in limited government is secretly also a bigot. When we jump to those conclusions and conflate those definitions, it makes them feel victimized. When we shout down people who disagree with us, it makes them feel like they aren’t heard.
Even within liberal circles there are so many ideological purity conversations. This contentious primary has proven that. It feels like sometimes as a man you have to preface everything you say with a disclaimer about how you have checked your privilege, and it’s not because you’re being sexist, but you respect someone’s opinion to believe that there’s institutional misogyny at work…it can be exhausting. And that’s when you’re mostly in agreement with someone! Imagine being on the other side. Imagine having every point you make being shot down with “Check your privilege” or “That requires a trigger warning!”
For fuck’s sake, there were students who asked their university to find the “vandals” who wrote Trump 2016 in chalk because it caused them a traumatic experience. That is thought policing. That is the thing we cannot do in a free and open society. Political free speech is protected, no matter how vile the candidate. Once we start prosecuting people for supporting ideas with which we disagree, it becomes very easy to prosecute anyone for anything. Similarly – and President Obama talked about this – university students got Condoleeza Rice – a political pioneer who, as an African-American woman, rose to the highest levels of government (in a conservative administration!) – disinvited from their commencement speech. Once we live in a world where the only right ideas are the ones you have and anyone who challenges them is morally wrong, we’ve created a groupthink culture that undermines Democracy.
We have to find the line and we have to uncross it. It makes my fucking skin crawl to defend people who support Donald Trump. I believe he’s unqualified for the office, has a temperament that could lead to global catastrophe, and has an authoritarian bent that could actually roll back Democratic institutions. But if I don’t acknowledge the validity of the claims of his supporters, if I treat them as inherently morally wrong on every issue, then we all lose. We can’t advocate a free and open society rooted in the idea that liberalism is the be-all and end-all philosophy.
Once we create the thought police – even if it’s just shouting people down in conversation – we’re creating the same Orwellian nightmare that we worry Trump will usher in.
So please, please, can we keep the discourse open and rational and a little less polarized? Liberals won the culture wars. That doesn’t mean there aren’t new battles to fight – there are and there will continue to be, but accusing anyone who disagrees with you of being somehow sub-human, or backwards, or stupid…this turns them into victims and it causes them to look for a champion.
Let’s be a little more civil and a little more democratic. Please?
Chris Talks Politics 2016! 