Hey, Liberals: You Haven’t Won The Culture War

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/culture/hey-liberals-you-havent-won-culture-war



This may come as news to you, but our country is severely divided. Seriously, though: Tuesday’s election, in which 120 million voters were united only by the belief that the other side’s candidate was a nightmare, was only the most recent illustration of a profound cultural divide in American life that goes back at least 50 or 60 years (and arguably much longer). It’s a major talking point on cable news shows and in opinion columns of all stripes – yes, duh, mea culpa – one that has sparked the careers of numerous pundits and commentators.

David Brooks and Thomas Frank, to cite the obvious examples, have dined out for a decade or more on their purported ability to diagnose the worsening antagonism reflected in the 2012 election, when multicultural metropolitan elite groups on both coasts overwhelmingly voted for one candidate and lower-status white people in the middle of the country overwhelmingly voted for the other. Brooks has long specialized in boiling this down to pithy phrases: Volvos vs. F-150 pickups, Walmart shoppers vs. Whole Foods shoppers, and so on. (As my wife recently observed, in today’s economy it could more accurately be put this way: The people who shop at Target vs. the other people who shop at Target.)

But if we think we can understand this division better by using cute demographic shorthand or by trying to claim that it’s fundamentally about religion or abortion or sexual morality or the role of government or whatever other hobby horse we choose to ride, we’re kidding ourselves. Those are significant issues that provoke strong feelings on both sides, to be sure, but I believe they are symbols or symptoms of division rather than its underlying causes. Anytime we get fixated on the centrality of any one of those factors, we risk being left behind by the rushing river of history.

[Submariner]

1. Who cares? Paula Broadwell has a great set of Fun-bags

that Patraeus got to play with. That's all that is important in the news right now.

[Prometheus_unbound]

2. .

Yes, the culture divide is as wide as ever.

But the demographic group of older, whiter, flyover state, over-religious people is getting less and less relevant.
17th century ideas on family, women and religion will eventually be left behind by most Americans.