The Culture War Is Alive And Well
Pat Buchanan’s most recent article, Are Biden Democrats Holding A Losing Hand? offers some pretty straightforward political analysis. Buchanan looks at the issues that are topping the list for voters and concludes that the Dems have a losing hand. Buchanan identifies four leading issues—each one of which is a festering sore that will almost certainly worsen over the coming months:
With the economy the predominant issue, the last business day of April brought disquieting news for Democrats.
The issue now ranked second as a national concern is the crisis on the border …
Third in voters’ concern is the explosion in violent crime …
The wild card in Biden’s poker hand is the war in Ukraine.
The Dems thought they had a sure fire fifth card—the J6 Event, the “insurrection”. That, too, has failed to capture the minds and hearts of Americans outside Prog strongholds.
Rather than do battle over these issues, therefore, it seems the Dems are trying to shift the battlefield and turn the Midterm Elections into a classic culture war. That would be the meaning of recent moves by the Dems, all of which appear geared toward hanging onto their base, which polls show are defecting toward the GOP. We’re talking Blacks and suburban women, here. This is the meaning of Ketanji and of the trashing of the SCOTUS via leak. Abortion is to be the centerpiece of the strategy, supported by the mixtum gatherum of issues that Dems believe are dear to the hearts of Blacks, Hispanics, and suburban moms: a smorgasbord of aberrosexual LGBTQWERTY deviations to be forced upon young children in government schools. Oh—Critical Race Theory, too.
On the GOP end of the political spectrum, the wild success of Ron DeSantis—following on the wild success of Glenn Youngkin in VA—seems a clear indication that the culture wars will be front and center. Just as clear an indication is Trump’s continuing and overwhelming success in getting his selections elected in GOP primaries. Never mind the quality of some of his endorsements. The point is that Trump, the leader of populism in America, is showing that he owns the New Right and that the New Right continues to be the ticket for GOP electoral success.
In all this we see that cultural issues are combined with class differences, as well. The Dems are increasingly identified not only with cultural issues but those cultural issues are being recognized by Americans as the expression of class differences, as well. The aberrosexual issues that Dems are trying to foist on Blacks, Hispanics, and suburban moms are now seen to be part and parcel with the upper class of urban Whites. What happened in VA, and is happening increasingly across the country, is that people—like suburban moms—who may have once aspired to become part of the genteel urban Upper Class are having second thoughts. They are no longer certain that the class that controls the Dem party and despises their lifestyle is their kind of people, or that they want to entrust their children to them. Identifying themselves as the class that is willing to trash even the most cherished American institutions in their quest for power may also prove to be a losing card for Dems. Americans remain, in many ways, a people that is bound to tradition.
If you examine the four issues that Buchanan identifies, I believe you will see a culture/class dimension to each of them. Inflation, border invasion, crime, war. Each of these issues presents a cultural threat to normal white and blue collar Americans—they constitute threats to their preferred way of life. Beyond that, tolerance for these deviations from or threats to a normal and secure life is increasingly identified as a class attitude—the ruling class is insulated from these threats to a degree that the subject population is not, and their tolerance for these threats is resented. That’s largely what the continuing Trump phenomenon is about, and which smart politicians have caught on to. Populism in America is about a melding of the cultural/class interests of the middle and working classes.
In the face of this cultural and class divide, the Zhou regime’s brain trust has been inspired to stage what some are now calling Zhou’s “deplorable moment.” Like Hillary before, Zhou—speaking as head of the Dems—has chosen to deride MAGA Americans as, in essence, domestic terrorists. Indeed, we are told by the brazen Psaki to expect much more of this rhetoric in the coming months. Americans will be asked to focus on and embrace LGBTQWERTY-CRT-Give-us-your-kids.
One more wild card. I think we’ve seen that Americans, by and large, have had it with the Covid Regime. But the Covid Regime has not had it, yet, with the American people. There is a continuing trickle of information that about the virus and the injections that is eluding the censorship regime—a regime which is also increasingly unpopular. Don’t count this out as part of the complex of culture related issues. Ron DeSantis has shown to what political use the Covid Regime can be put—other GOPers may learn from his example.
Economy - border - crime - Ukraine. Yes. Yet I am surprised that so many people have fallen for the Ukraine "wagging the dog" operation. I spoke with a financial advisor yesterday who blamed Putin for throwing a curve ball into the prospects for the U.S. markets and economy. No mention of Biden's actions and their effects prior to the special operation whatsoever. No mention of the Billions of dollars of military equipment our government has provided to further the killing and the profit. How can we even challenge the talking points of the media and the societal institutions, much less replace them? That is very troubling to me and also a reason I am thankful for the few people such as Mark offering alternative (and true) narratives.
Jeff Childers has a good point in today's article. Since extended quotes seem to be the coin of the realm here, I'll just paste it in:
The actual gist of the decision is: usually, whenever the Court finds a new IMPLIED right in the Constitution, as opposed to an explicit right, it is very careful and cautious. Normally, decisions finding implied rights look back through history to prove that the particular right has always been recognized to exist under the common law. But in Roe v. Wade, the Court bypassed that traditional analysis and blithely overlooked the fact that a right to abortion has never been historically recognized; in fact, just the opposite, it’s generally been criminalized.
So, Roe v. Wade essentially did the OPPOSITE of what the Court always carefully does when finding an implied right. Instead of merely recognizing a long-observed right, the original Roe decision REVERSED an historic antipathy toward abortion. In other words, the draft decision explains that Roe v. Wade created a brand-new right, which is not the Court’s role, but should have been reserved to Congress.
Ultimately all the Roe Draft would do is defer the decision over abortion to the federal government and the states. Since Dems control the White House and the House of Representatives, and narrowly control the Senate, they could conceivably pass a new law anytime. The vaccine mandates prove the Biden Administration is not shy about issuing questionable executive orders, so Biden could possibly order an abortion mandate pre-empting state laws anytime he wants.
If you are strongly pro-choice, remember that Democrats COULD pass federal abortion protections anytime — they could’ve already done it — but, I predict they will NOT pass any such law, because they prefer to use the issue as a political catalyst. Instead, they’ll complain about Republican obstructionism and whine that voters need to give them even bigger majorities in Congress.
(more at https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/-coffee-and-covid-wednesday-may-4 )