There are times — at the beginnings of wars usually — when one side knows a state of war exists while the other side doesn’t. Pearl Harbor comes to mind.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, the residents of Hawaii — Pearl Harbor in particular — slept soundly in their beds, unaware that they were moments away from being bombed, strafed, shot at and in every way attacked. Japan was at war with them. Japan knew it — they, unfortunately for them, did not.
That’s pretty much how the Left has been reacting to the Culture War the republican party declared not just on the Democratic Party but on the majority of Americans, too. We’ve been almost oblivious to it. We’ve heard the war-like chatter in the background but we’ve never taken it seriously. We damned well better — because the war Newt Gingrich talked his side into launching years ago has finally established significant beachheads in American Culture.
Michelle Cottle nails it: “In his zeal to cripple Democrats, Gingrich poisoned the public against the entire American political system. ”
In Newt’s own words: “You have to confront, delay, and undermine and impose failure in order to move the public.”
Newt made it his absolute goal to impose FAILURE on his perceived enemy — everyone who wasn’t HIM. That included the CULTURE in which the rest of us live.
Right Wing Culture is a lot like what Astrophysicist Neil deGrsse Tyson calls the ‘Diminishing God of the Gaps’ — the place you go to when you reach the end of what you ‘know’. Right Wing culture — once thought to be a significant part of American Culture is now understood to be a fringe element at best (and shrinking rapidly). Right Wing Culture is that thing everyone with a sense of humor laughs at.
It is a fact of life that Right Wing Culture has no sense of humor. Oh, it can laugh all right — at other people. Especially if they’re suffering some sort of misfortune. Then they turn hilarious. Right Wing Culture is sanctimonious. It believes it understands the divine; it believes the divine has chosen it to be its representative here on earth. Right Wing Culture is seriously delusional.
Right Wing Culture honestly believes that IT is American Exceptionalism — that its very whiteness and maleness and Christian-ness is exceptional. It’s wrong of course. America’s DIVERSITY is what makes it EXCEPTIONAL. That kind of broad diversity never happened before in one country. It produced remarkable — no, EXCEPTIONAL — results.
White Christian Male culture is the exact opposite of exceptional. Aside from rage and grievance, it can’t point to a single thing it’s added to the conversation. Being weak and having few weapons at its disposal, White Christian Male Culture counts on drawing us near enough to sneak in a dirty low blow to neutralize us.
They’re going to be disappointed this time. A lot more of us are woke now. We’re paying attention.
And — as much as we can — we’re doing the thing that cuts Trumpists & Religionistas & RW Culture Warriors deepest: We’re laughing at them.