The Right Finally Joins the Culture War!
Apparently, it's been a one-sided affair up until now.
Via memeorandum, I see an essay by Ben Domenech and Emily Jashinsky at The Federalist headlined “At Long Last, The Right Has Joined The Culture War” and with the subtitle “The left has understood the power of the culture war for half a century. But something happened leading into Tuesday: The right figured it out too.”
All I can say is, it’s about time.
who knew there could be a war with only one side fighting.
It’s a side issue, but given that Ben Domenech adores Trump and his wife Megan McCain loathes Trump, I’ve always wondered how they can stay married, let alone live in the same zip code.
As for the right suddenly joining the culture war…they’ve been fighting it since most of us were kids, if not longer.
I was getting mighty lonely.
Thank Odin the right finally decided to join in. I was getting bored.
—
I know Domenech is pretty stupid. Did he really believe that the right was not waging political culture war?
Jerry Falwell would disagree. And that was the 70s.
The pearl clutching makes me want to vomit.
Domenech is married to Megan McCain. Shallow and oblivious is the common currency.
It explains the attraction.
Running your life off of resentment must suck.
Re: top photo
That’s a very nice statue. The body is realistic.
What is that statue? I like it.
Saw that link, chalking this post up to @james you reading this so we don’t have to. Thanks James
@de stijl: Caïn venant de tuer son frère Abel, by Henri Vidal in Tuileries Garden in Paris, France. via
We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
@Jon: Gah, no edit.
Bigger/better picture.
Got our Starbucks in Christmas cups yesterday. Imagine, Starbucks has been doing these agnostic holiday cups for so many years without a peep from the fundies until now. Next thing you know, they’ll start lambasting people who say “Happy Holidays”.
@gVOR08:
They might act as if there was a war on Christmas.
Be super pissy at you if you happened to say “Happy Holidays” to them. While ignoring the fact that most of Christmas is essentially pagan.
@Jon:
Thanks!
I like that statue a lot. Buffer than my form, but realistic.
I appreciate that.
One wonders if fire will ever be hot.
As is so often the case I’m left to wonder whether MAGAts are idiots or liars. Are they A) actually so stupid they believe their own lies? Or is it that B) they know their people are such idiots they’ll believe anything? As usual the answer is C: Both of the above.
Scott Lemieux at LGM reviews the sudden and recent origin of CRT as a political issue. Compare and contrast with the Federalist piece James linked. And thank you James, as @Sleeping Dog: says, for reading The Federalist so I don’t have to. Although you made me skim this piece.
The Federalist piece is what I refer to as The TAC Fallacy, the belief that changes in culture are the result of some Demoncrat/Deep State/Soros conspiracy and the right is just clumsily and slowly responding. Except the TAC guys actually believe this and it’s unlikely Domenech does. It’s basically an extreme version of the Murc’s Law fallacy. Contra the Federalist link, I’ve been commenting for some weeks that CRT provides us an unusually clear and well documented example, if we’ll just look, of how FOX and the GOPs manufacture this nonsense almost from whole cloth.
@gVOR08: It is also very much the abuser’s excuse: look what you made me do!
It is now illegal in my state to teach critical race theory.
The definition seems to be whatever makes white folks uncomfortable.
How is that remotely constitutional?
http://northportsun.fl.app.newsmemory.com/?publink=43af157d1
@Michael Reynolds:
D. Neither. Their speech is primarily pre-symbolic and if the particular words they’re saying have some meaning attached to them is irrelevant. Like a parrot saying “Polly wants a cracker”, the vocalization just means they want attention, or at best that they’re hungry, but it doesn’t have any actual attachment to having a preference for crackers.
@Jon:..Gah…
At least he’s not groaning from catheter pain…
@Mister Bluster: We don’t know that for sure; the Bible is unclear as to whether or not Cain was catheterized when he killed Abel. I’ve seen cogent arguments for both sides.
@Stormy Dragon:
I used to have a neighbor that had a smart bird. We were buds. Her bird was a total effing bad-ass.
That bird would perch on my shoulder. Demand head strokes. I think it was a guy. It was bright and beautiful and the bird plumage truism is that guys are gaudy and preening. He (I really have no idea, I am assuming) loved head strokes.
He was quite the character. I was a new person he could buddy up to.
@Stormy Dragon:
If all they want is attention they seem to have accidentally acquired an awful lot of power in the process.
Wait, do Trumpies think they’re going to start making movies and TV and music? They can’t even write a decent conspiracy theory.
@Jon:..the Bible is unclear…
Apparently there are two creation stories in Genesis so how are we ever to know?
I think James did us all a disservice when he didn’t quote anything from the article.
It’s a lot of words.
@Michael Reynolds: There’s an advanced bit of Q lore about the bloodlines of JFK, Patton, Donald Trump and Michael Flynn, which I barely followed when I heard about it.
So, now they are crimping from the Da Vinci Code, along with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Except now Tom Hanks is the villain rather than the hero.
Gotta protect the “we are under attack” posture. Not the first screening barrage on the BS front.
@Michael Reynolds:
Well, there was Trumpkin par excellence Rick Santorum, who became CEO of Echolight Studios, a Christian moviemaker, in 2013. They seem not have made any movies since 2017.
I like how the acronyms for the fake R culture wars represent continuously decreasing technologies: PC followed by CRT.
I look forward to PDP, UNIVAC, and Illiac. Make it happen!
@Mister Bluster:
I don’t know, I’m still trying to sort out the 20 Commandments, Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.
@Michael Reynolds:
Since conservatives suck at creating culture, of course they are losing the Culture Wars. As is typical, they think they are losing due to a lack of trying. They can’t grok that they are out of ammunition. They’ve wasted what little imagination they have on their alternate reality BS.
@de stijl: Alas, the Supreme Court of the United States decides what is constitutional and what is not. This is why who gets on it has been considered so important by so many people (and why the Notorious RBG and now the other octogenarian whose name I’ve forgotten are so foolish to not have known when to retire–and there’s even a Chinese/Korean proverb about it, too).
@Mister Bluster: Yeah, that the accounts represent two different stories by two different authors is certainly one opinion. The one I grew up with holds that the second being more in depth and more focused on the creation of man sets the stage for the further story about the fall and why that fall is significant, but are the work of one writer. I’m sure there are others available also.
@CSK: Wow! I just looked them up. They made a lot more movies than I thought they had–or is it that they made the same 2 or 3 movies 17 times total? Archetype is always confusing for me.
Whenever I seek guidance from Scripture I consult Azimov’s Guide to the Bible which ends thusly:
Azimov’s Guide to the Bible
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Probably the same 2 or 3 17 times over. I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard of any of them. Sony Pictures and Universal Studios don’t seem to have ever quaked in their boots at the competition.
@Scott F.:
I just watched on over-long but interesting video on why conservatives aren’t funny. It made the point that conservative comics used to exist – the blue collar comedy tour, for instance – but the retreat from reality into a cultish paranoia made comedy essentially impossible for them. Comedy rests on identifying commonalities and looking at them from a different perspective, not on retaliating against liberal humor, and none of that happens when you’re swallowing hateful lies as your main diet and the only way you know how to punch is down.
There used to be a belief that Germans were not funny. But Henning Wehn is a stand-up working mostly in the UK, and he’s funny even in his second language. It’s not so much that Germans couldn’t be funny, rather it’s that Nazis can’t be.
@CSK: From what I read at IMDB, the movies are all “inspiring Lifetime/Hallmark overcoming tragedy and/or inspired by true events” fare. Given that both Lifetime and Hallmark have established production infrastructure, I’m not sure who would be buying these movies (I haven’t streamed a movie since… ever), so I can see how need for new productions might have dried up.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I think they used to have a website, but it seems to have vanished. Anyway, Rick seem to have moved on, not necessarily to greener pastures, given that he got bounced from his commentator’s gig at CNN this year.
I’ll never forget him saying that when he was elected president, his first message to the American people would be that it’s not okay for married Christian couples to use birth control. I suppose that means it’s okay for Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, pagan, and agnostic and atheist couples.
@CSK: I remember that. My reaction, as I recall, was that I hadn’t realized that he was being elected Prophet of God as well as President. But, yeah, Christians don’t have much say over what “the heathens” do. I wish more Christians realized this and will give him points (a very small number) for his restraint on the whole “Christian Nation” meme. (And probably be forced to take them away as soon as Kylopod or somebody else weighs in with something else more radical that he said. [sigh–eyeroll, facepalm])
@Gavin:
I thought they’d mastered FUBAR already.
@Gustopher:
Wait. Patton Oswald is part of Q lore now?
That’s pretty cool.
@Michael Reynolds:
Zvei peanuts vere valking down the strasse. One vas assaulted.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
It’s not that — it’s a competition, and they’re the adversary. Criticizing married Christians for not breeding comes from the same place as criticizing whites for not breeding — namely, a fear of being outnumbered by Them.
(It also recognizes the truth that religion is primarily inherited, not acquired — which should be proof all by itself that people’s beliefs are generally grounded in anything but indoctrination…)
@DrDaveT: Aren’t generally grounded in…
I got the edit button, and rejoiced — but when I submitting the edit, it told me I was no longer able to edit that comment. Pretty weird, since the comment had only been up for 30 seconds or so.