Everything Is the Culture War Now

By Jim Geraghty

Thursday, April 27, 2023

 

Yesterday, NBC News unveiled a new poll with a lot of questions focusing on social issues, and not all that surprisingly, it found “stark partisan differences on major cultural issues — racism, accepting LGBTQ people, the term ‘woke,’ and even the fundamental goals of American society.” The good folks at NBC were kind enough to have me on their panel discussing these topics.

 

One of the things that stands out about this poll, and makes it really intriguing but also disputable, is that it often gave respondents two options and asked which is most important, and aimed to dissuade them from saying, “both” by not listing that as an option. For example, the surveyors asked, “Which should be a more important goal for our society these days — promoting greater respect for traditional social and moral values, or encouraging greater tolerance of people with different lifestyles and backgrounds?” “Both” was only recorded if that was volunteered as an answer, 5 percent volunteered that answer, and another 3 percent said, “not sure.”

 

How do you think 1,000 American adults would answer when asked that question? Take a guess.

 

This month, 50 percent of Americans said, “promoting greater respect for traditional social and moral values” is more important, and 42 percent said, “encouraging greater tolerance of people with different lifestyles and backgrounds” is more important. Those numbers are barely changed from 2013, smack in the middle of the Obama years.

 

Wait, there’s more. When you break down the respondents by race, “traditional values” was picked by 51 percent of whites, 48 percent of blacks, and 51 percent of Hispanics. “Tolerance for different lifestyles” was selected by 40 percent of whites, 47 percent of blacks, and 44 percent of Hispanics. Whatever racial divisions America has, those three demographics see this choice roughly the same way.

 

You would think a poll result like this would encourage conservatives. But I suspect this poll result will be largely ignored because it doesn’t fit the narrative either for progressives who want to hear about culture-war triumphs, or folks on the right who on some level actually enjoy hearing about how decadent and depraved American society has become. Year by year, the loudest voices on the right have adopted a dystopian “this country is going to hell in a handbasket” vision; hearing that half the country wants to promote greater respect for traditional social and moral values might actually stir hope, confidence, optimism, and even unity, and lordy, we can’t have that, now can we?

 

As you would probably suspect, 74 percent of self-identified Republicans said “promoting greater respect for traditional social and moral values” is more important, while 67 percent of self-identified Democrats said “encouraging greater tolerance of people with different lifestyles and backgrounds” is more important. Independents split, with 49 percent picking traditional values and 41 percent siding with greater tolerance. (I wonder how many cultural traditionalists stopped defining themselves as Republicans during the Trump era.)

 

Now, as our panel discussed yesterday, a lot of these terms are subjective. How do you define “traditional social and moral values”? Which “different lifestyles and backgrounds” do you have in mind? You could easily envision a churchgoing Baptist African American who usually votes Democrat or a devout Catholic Latina mom who want to prioritize both. Also note that back in 2020, another NBC poll found 47 percent of those who described themselves as “LGBTQ” also described themselves as “moderately or highly religious. Those who were older, Black or lived in the South were the most likely to be religious.”

 

NBC’s most recent survey asked, “Is America racist?” “Not sure” was only counted if it was volunteered as an answer, but there was no “yes in some ways, no in other ways” option. Among all adults, 59 percent agreed America is racist; 53 percent of whites agreed, 69 percent of Latinos agreed, and 79 percent of black adults agreed. (I would note that the poll report refers to this demographic as “African-American,” but the article on NBCNews.com refers to them as “Blacks.”)

 

The survey asked respondents if they or a family member, friend, or coworker are transgender; 28 percent said yes and 72 percent said no. (This is likely to shock a lot of people in the Acela corridor.) Among those who know someone who is transgender, 67 percent agree with the statement, “We have not gone far enough in ending discrimination against transgender people.”

 

This is a poll designed to push people off the fence into one camp or another, and to see what they believe when the more neutral, consensus, or socially approved answers are taken off the table. It’s not the same as a push poll; it’s more of an examination of where people lean when the easy answers are removed.

 

It is also worth noting that Americans likely have some contradictory beliefs. Seventy percent of American adults agreed with the statement, “Our country needs to do more to increase social justice.” At the same time, 64 percent agreed with the statement, “Our country needs to reduce political correctness and cancel culture.” Sixty-one percent of respondents agreed that they “want our country to become more tolerant and accepting of the L-G-B-T-Q community.” But in the same survey, 59 percent agreed that “we have gone too far promoting L-G-B-T-Q lifestyles in our culture.” Maybe they’re just tired of rainbow decorations in store windows every June.

 

One of the things I noted is that, so far in 2023, the nascent Republican presidential primary is being fought almost entirely on social or “culture war” issues. Sure, candidates have all kinds of policy proposals, but it’s the culture-war stuff that gets the crowds jazzed: What kind of gender-change procedures should be legal for those under age 18, if any; whether schools should inform parents about the pronouns their child prefers; whether those born men should compete in women’s sports; whether the Disney Corporation is attempting to indoctrinate the young fans of its pop-culture offerings; what’s being taught in schools and so-called “book banning” (requiring books in school libraries to be age-appropriate is not a ban); even the Dylan Mulvaney promotion by Bud Light.

 

The verdict of this cycle is painfully clear: Arguments about economics and foreign policy do not get the blood pumping. In fact, the best way to get people talking about economics or foreign policy is to wrap them up in aspects of the culture war — “Woke Inc.,” ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing, contending that the U.S. military “has now gone woke at the top levels, by trying to indoctrinate everyone down to the lowest ranking patriot,” as former president Trump put it.

 

At one of Trump’s recent rallies, Ted Nugent declared Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky a “homosexual weirdo.” Since the beginning of the war, some opponents of U.S. aid to Ukraine such as Donald Trump Jr. have showcased a 2014 video of Zelensky, once Ukraine’s most popular comedian, dancing in a parody of the Ukrainian band Kazaky, a male dance-pop act that often dances in leather and high heels. (You can find the video Zelensky was parodying here.)

 

This is akin to the U.S. electing Dana Carvey as president, and opponents contending he’s a crossdresser because of Church Lady sketches, or electing Weird Al Yankovic as president, and contending he’s a crossdresser because he dressed up as Lady Gaga for a parody video.

 

It’s a free country, and you can prioritize what you wish. But I would note that just because people don’t want to pay attention to non-culture-war issues doesn’t mean they go away.

 

During China’s 20th Party Congress last October, President Xi Jinping emphasized Beijing’s commitment to artificial-intelligence development and “intelligent warfare” — a reference to AI-enabled military systems. (Hey, we’re coming up on four years since something experimental from a Chinese government-run laboratory got loose and killed millions of people.) China is building sophisticated cyberweapons to “seize control” of enemy satellites, rendering them useless for data signals or surveillance during wartime, according to that Discord leak. Pro-Russian hackers are making an ongoing cyberattack to take down air-traffic-control systems all across Europe. And the Pentagon admits that U.S. hypersonic weapons are not as advanced as those already developed by China.

 

In that war game on Capitol Hill conducted last week, the U.S. ran out of long-range missiles quickly, and “Beijing’s missiles and rockets cascade[d] down on Taiwan and on U.S. forces as far away as Japan and Guam. Initial casualties include[d] hundreds, possibly thousands, of U.S. troops. Taiwan’s and China’s losses [were] even higher.” The U.S. economy tanked, and most of America’s allies chose to stay on the sidelines.

 

God forbid some scenario like that comes to pass. But if one does, people will ask if we spent too much time thinking about a culture war and not enough time thinking about the potential risk of an actual war.