When someone says they don’t care about social issues it is only because either the values of society are their values, or they simply do not trust you enough to really share their opinion.
I’m going to start this essay with a confession. During the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, I was an Andrew Yang supporter: sticker on my car, attending a rally, and making a regular - small - contribution to his team kind of supporter. I remember regularly refreshing the RCP poll tracker to see if he was budging up at all. I have one specific memory of a poll putting him far above his normal values - noise does that - and watching in anticipation as this was the moment when everyone realized his kind of optimistic vision for the country would work. It did not and I had given up on him before his humiliating performance in the first debate. He has proceeded to move from project to project, including a failed run for Mayor of NYC, and the Forward Party. Before finally, settling into the comfortable retirement of every failed politician, podcasting. Andrew Yang’s failure to win the nomination was never surprising to me but the fact that his entire political project seems to have fallen by the wayside candidly was. Andrew Yang represented the sort of politics that everyone around me seems to say they want; he was extremely bright, young, patriotic, and pro-solution. In short, a politician who did not lean into culture war topics at all. I can’t think of him, for example, ever talking about BLM - a fact supported by the lack of references to BLM on his Wikipedia page(as of 6.13.2024). But as I have reflected more on his defeat in the following 4 years, I think his lack of focus on the “culture war” is exactly why he failed. Because we really only care about cultural issues. Who societies assign dignity, respect, and representation to are the most important questions any group of people can grapple with. As an example of this, Bryan Caplan(an economist from my alma mater) recently held a twitter poll asking “why” we celebrate pride month. His options were: “(a) Merit - LGBTs are better than straights”, “(b) Compensation - Straights mistreated LGBTs in the past”,”(c) Reassurance - So LGBTs don’t worry mistreatment will resume”, and “(d) Bogus question - Our society shouldn’t celebrate Pride Month'' but he left out the obvious answer. We celebrate LGBT’s because they represent a core part of our national project. To many people asking why we celebrate Pride is like asking why you celebrate your Mom’s birthday. Protecting and celebrating the ~in~ group is the point of society in the first place.
Since Andrew Yang’s party offered nothing that truly differentiated it from mainstream Democrats on the issues that people actually care about - he was pro-choice, pro-queer inclusion, pro-immigration - voters saw him and his entire political project as fundamentally vacuous. Of course, he did have his own policy recommendations, much of which was focused on a revitalization of the American civic spirit while also pushing for an expansion of the US government to more of the Northern European model. But at the end of the day he existed within the mainstream of center-left politics and it is inconceivable that he would do anything to violate those boundaries. The cultural positions of the Yang campaign were inherently liberal ones and despite belly aching from the center-left the current Democratic party establishment is already firmly in the same camp as him. The thought that his party would ever run Christian Nationionlist or even someone like Richard Hannia is downright laughable. Because all of the economic policies that he supported were window dressing to more important cultural issues to which he had nothing novel to add.
So often online or in my own life I will hear some version of the idea that the culture war is a construction of the elites to suppress real proletarian unity. A line like “ The Culture Wars to Distract from Class Wars''. But what frustrates me so much about this saying is that it is universally used by someone who takes their position on the culture war as inherently rational and the deviation as fundamentally irrational. For example, I’ll see people like Tim Pool(who used to insist he was a liberal but I believe he has dropped that charade) arguing that the culture war was a response to the corporate elite becoming terrified by Occupy Wall Street but I just don’t buy it at all. Although conservative engage in this framing, the group, anecdotally, most likely to make this type of argument are progressives who are using it as a screen to defend their cultural victories of the last 3 decades. When in 2021 the Fabian Society - a socialist organization in the UK - said “Progressives of all stripes - and the Labour Party in particular - must focus their energy not on winning culture wars, but on calling them out, building bridges and ending these divisive battles.'' We all know this is a complete lie. No modern progressive would view the expansion of Queer rights as something which is unimportant to win, or something that they would willingly throw away in exchange for economic reforms. The purpose of referring to these topics as “culture war” is to portray the other side as hysterical lunatics engaging in histrionics over something that doesn’t really matter and they should stop trying to tear the country apart rather than simply accepting their victory.
I only emphasize progressives here because that has been my lived experience. I can empathize with people who grew up in another era - for example the 1980s - who may view this focus as unfair. When I watch The Boy’s for example I have to appreciate the show creator Eric Kirpke was my age during the War on Terror. We each instantiate at Year 0 and so our experience sets are different. In my own lifetime the trend has been decisively towards a series of progressive victories and then commentators carting out the idea that resistance to them is simply engaging in a useless and divisive culture war.
Until we come to terms with the fact that the culture war matters, that the questions being debated are the important ones - economic questions of regulation or taxation matter much less - American politics(and frankly global politics) will never make sense. If you dispute this I invite you to interrogate your feelings. Suppose there was a politician with stances on some of the major issues of American politics identical to you. I mean IDENTICAL, so whatever you think the optimal tax regime or environmental policy is, they agree, down to the minutia. Even on issues you know nothing about - how do you feel about Basel III? - their policies are informed via whatever method you think is best at discovering the truth, be that consulting Marx, the Bible, or empirical data. But they are viciously racist. Now suspend belief even more and know that with certainty they cannot legislate anything on the topics of racial rights but they will use the bully pulpit to talk about it. Their opponent is a retarded non-racist aging corpse. Who would you vote for?
Economic issues are always and will always be of secondary importance to cultural ones. Arguments that for example rural Republican voters would be better off under a Democratic administration run headlong into the fact that a 5% shift in expected income is nothing next to the fact that the same administration will push for increased migration and the removal of old stock US cultural symbols of which the rural Republican is probably ethnically a member. There is a reason that in the 26 years I have been alive Democrats have never won less than 80% of the Black vote.
The culture war isn’t even an issue of luxury beliefs as I sometimes see people indicating online or in my own life. People don’t care about things like gender roles because we have nothing better to care about but because it is itself important. Look at elections in the developing world and early US history and tell me people aren’t electorally motivated by culture. Humans simply care much more about intangible things like respect than they do about material possessions. I know I do.
What we mean by the “culture war” in the American context is a series of essential questions about what our society should look like. Just to name a few: Has modern man progressed past all of mammalian history and rejected gender roles entirely? I suspect in the next thousand years a trans woman will give birth, does that fill you with disgust or hope? Should a society be pluralistic or homogenous? Should we focus on the successful as objects of emulation or the weak as objects of empathy? Should religion continue to shape our legal institutions? These are vital questions whose answers people genuinely disagree on! In California for example more than 60% of the population is descended entirely from people who immigrated here since immigration liberalization in 1965 if this is good and should be repeated nationally is an extremely important question.
Societies require answers to the question of what and who it represents and often these identities are in fundamental conflict. America can not both be a political project for Christians and Atheists and pretending it can is a big part of the reason we are in the political mess we are right now. It either has to choose to represent one or neither. I am confident that as a nation we will figure out what we represent, perhaps not in my lifetime but eventually. I contend however, that if people want a society which embraces their perspective on the world they need to make compelling arguments for why it is true, not just chalk all reactions to it as culture war backlash.
I’m going to end on one final note. In many ways I think that my Generation, the Zoomers, should really be thought of as a generation whose sole objective is to steward the system we were born or migrated into through the next turbulent century. There is a limit on how much society can change before essential aspects of it begin to break and fray but eventually these very changes become sacred through the passage of time. A lot of problems that feel unsolvable will fade as new generations are born into a world where their essential facts have disappeared. But in the meantime it is vital that we learn how to integrate and show proper respect to the pluralistic collection of contradicting traditions we currently inhabit. I believe that each tradition reflects some distorted image of the truth and the synthesis will be more beautiful than anything man has yet produced. However, if we drop the ball, if we fail to hold this ship together we risk true social decay where the frictions of difference rub off into indifference and nihilism.
The solution to the culture war is not to stop caring about things like abortion but instead to learn how to live in a world of uneven change and interpersonal conflict while simultaneously holding fast to your truth and showing real tolerance. The key to this is respect and it is something that we appear to have totally lost the ability to extend. As someone with ancestors who sailed on the Mayflower, I view the cultural traditions of this country as my ethnic traditions and I take issue with their desecration the same way that anyone would take issue with an attack on their group. When I see for example that Thomas Jefferson’s statue in New York's City Hall has been removed my blood frankly boils. I am as defensive of my traditions and heroes as an Arab or Native American should be of theirs. Not because I’ve weighed the pros and cons of an identity but because it is my identity, I was born to my parents in this time on this continent and I will never apologize for that fact - just as no Human should ever have to apologize for their existence. Until we begin to shame the politicians and cultural figures who operate with reckless disrespect we will continue descending deeper into a culture war blackhole. As Americans we all have too much to lose to allow this to happen.
