Beyond the Culture Wars

It's not as simple as there are a bunch of racists on the right. There are, but a lack of interest in politics is the wider problem. What do we do when politics can't be ignored anymore?

I grew up in Texas, in an area where people moved when their former small town was still too big for them. It was the type of place that trended heavily Republican. One of my earliest memories is of the night my parents voted, leaving us at our grandmother’s house while they were away. Later, my dad told my mother that Reagan had won by one vote: hers. She didn’t believe that, of course, but they had some fun jostling each other about it.

They didn’t know at the time that they would only get poorer under Reagan’s policies. He was a masterful distractor, and even his corruption didn’t seem to tarnish his image. As I grew up, I watched scandal after scandal rock the Reagan white house, and like Trump, none of it seemed to stick. Even as he invented the idea of the welfare queen, building a permission structure to “other” even family relatives who’d fallen on hard times didn’t seem to connect the dots for my family and community. The policies being enacted systematically stripped people of their rights, reorganized wealth, and forced the have-nots to prove their worth, despite widespread knowledge of issues like robber barons and the Great Depression from personal experience being the real culprits.

But they didn’t connect policy with personal events. This is the culture war that’s unfolding now, and what I believe many are missing. My family, like so many others who moved to Texas, was fleeing something, usually government mismanagement. In the 1840s, there was a significant economic downturn known as the Great Panic, which wasn’t quite the Great Depression, but did create a massive migration event from the Midwest to the South. Before that, there was the land speculation under President Andrew Jackson that destroyed one of the two central banks. What many of these internal migrants thought, and what Reagan connected with, was that government mismanagement created their plight, and they’d be better off on their own. Hell, Texas was founded by people who fled perceived religious persecution. Self-sufficiency runs in the rivers and streams and blood of the Texas people.

Reagan had merely tapped into the notion and used it to gain power, as did Trump. It’s too simplistic to say that people are racist, or sexist, though there’s a fair amount of that (and I promise it’s not limited to conservatives). A closer inspection reveals individuals who have been abused by the government and seek to regain agency over their lives. To them, government is this big, scary thing that caused them and their family pain, and we have to rely on each other instead. This is all a bit ironic to me, considering that government is people relying on each other, but it’s the truth that I see.

Once you have no government or decry the government, the only people left to rely on are those in your community. And as such, community is a lot of what drove folks where I grew up. Didn’t have money this month? Reach out to a neighbor for help. Can’t pick up kids from the bus stop after school? A neighbor would do it. Looking for a place to live temporarily until you get back on your feet? A neighbor. So the bonds of the neighborhood are pretty strong. Forgiveness is a necessity, because you never know who that neighbor is, you may. Need next.

It is precisely these values that people like Trump and Reagan took advantage of. They painted themselves as part of the community and preyed on the kindness and forgiveness of the community members. They were able to do this because of loyalty—once someone was in our in-group, they stayed there, and trust is implicit across the community group. This is one reason why so many people remain supportive of Trump. They have placed their trust in him and consider him one of their own. As such, he’s got their loyalty, which manifests as the benefit of the doubt. So, the bar to convincing this community that he’s a problem would require enough evidence to overcome not just a reasonable doubt, as the court of law would, but also to overcome the unreasonable benefit of the doubt that we often afford our closest friends.

Once you’re in, you’re in.

This dam will break eventually. We’re already seeing cracks due to Epstein, and we need to be prepared. When folks come to their realization that they’ve been lied to by someone they consider part of their very exclusive community, and that they’ve been wronged, and that there is a better way, they will be angry, hurt, and scared. What we do in response to that, whether we take a victory lap or offer a hug, is what will make our country or break it…because unity is essential.

They must see it first, though. We must continue to fight in the interim, yet be willing to accept them when they finally reach that point. It won’t be a flood. It’ll be person-by-person, and that frustration will make us angry. Regardless of our feelings, there’s a balancing act we have to get right. It’s a hard one to make work. Still, our collective futures rely on our ability not just to win another round of politics, but to bring empathy as well, so we can permanently change hearts and community for the better.

Not naive. I know not everyone will break free of the spell, and many who do will be precisely those racists and sexists we often generalize the conservatives to be. More will be disappointed and vulnerable at the end. And what we do in that moment will determine all of our fates.