Conservatives Have Lost the Culture War
Conservatives Have Lost the Culture War
We live in the world of Taylor Swift and Barbie, not Elon Musk.
Republican politicians like Ron DeSantis may rail against “woke” corporations. The reality is that when companies like Nike and Disney—no progressive angels themselves—seem to align with the left by promoting anti-racism and LGBTQ causes, they are catering to the tolerant demographic that matters most to the bottom line. It’s understandable why older conservatives would feel business has left them behind, ranting about supposed lefty strongholds like Blackrock and Disney. But there’s no top-down conspiracy of woke corporations as defined by Tucker Carlson. It’s just capitalism.
This is especially true given the Republican Party’s increasing reliance on far-right religious voters, whose cultural power is also waning rapidly despite recent judicial and legislative wins. Americans are becoming rapidly less affiliated with organized religion. Younger people are markedly less religious than their elders. In 2021, membership in religious organizations fell below majority levels for the first time, and “nones”—those who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or nothing specific—now account for around 30 percent of Americans, up from just 9 percent thirty years ago. White evangelical politics is the province of mostly older voters disconnected from the broader culture and economy.
I feel that this really sums up the sentiment that I notice in my area.
"Most crucially, major corporations crave younger consumers and lifelong brand loyalists. Outside of cable news, older consumers are less attractive to most advertisers. And younger people (meaning anyone under 45!) lean decidedly to the left. The most coveted 18-29-year-old demographic leans farther left than any other. Long gone are the days of the Reagan youth, when 18-24-year-olds backed the Republican over Walter Mondale by over 30 points in the 1984 presidential election, and corporate America catered to them accordingly."
The 55+ demographic has had the cultural and political focus on them their whole lives. Now that it's not catering to their opinions they are throwing a tantrum.
76To be clear, Reagan youth were on the generational cusp between Boomer and X. The "quintessential" Boomer youth experience was the Vietnam war, ~15 years prior to the cited 1984 election.
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They also lost the science war.
55As a scientist, I am not sure this is the case. They have paralyzed science-informed policymaking and are currently tearing apart the university systems in several states. They have kept NSF funding flat for years, eroding American leadership in science. So I am very worried for American science right now.
11Indeed. Anyone looking at what's going on in North Carolina would tell you that they're busy dismantling the administrative state at a rate that's flatly unprecedented, and in a way that'll take many generations to correct. And most of what they're doing from here on out will be shrouded in impenetrable legislative secrecy.
8They also lost The Game.
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They also lost The Game.
7Good damn it.
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Lost the sex game too
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I feel like statistics on religion are largely useless, especially in Western, mostly Christian nations. So many people follow the "I said a prayer when I was 10 so now I won't go to hell" version of Christianity that a huge chunk of those yes responses are actually functionally atheists and have been for a long time.
I don't mean to imply anything negative about atheists here. I just think the only thing really changing is that younger people don't see the point in pretending to be religious anymore. They're at least casually familiar with the tenets of Christianity and are pretty aware that what their parents are doing is not religion but some sort of weird social and political club with little resemblance to the religion it's supposedly based on. In fact, I'd argue that the percentage of people who take religion seriously on a personal level has always been much lower than official numbers like this would indicate.
53Church attendance has been down, and that has probably been a better metric. Congregations are a great way in getting people to comply with the church even if they don't believe. That you don't even have to pretend to go to church is a big sign of religion's lack of control over society.
27Memes is all it takes now to sway people's beliefs.
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I think the reverse is much more likely true. People are more likely to have deeply held religious beliefs and just not belong to an institution or identify with organized religion. See: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spirituality-among-americans/
Atheism is certainly on the rise, particularly "soft" atheism or apathetic agnosticism among younger people, but it's much harder to distinguish between people who have a deep conviction that there is nothing supernatural in reality and those who believe that, for example, there is a loving god or gods, but that god or gods cannot be explained scientifically. Members of both of those groups would nevertheless draw a hard, firm line between them, and that line would be easy to miss if the only thing you're counting is how many people claim membership in an institution.
I agree that consequently, while data about religious affiliation might essentially be accurate, it probably paints a misleading picture about religious and spiritual belief. I just think the number of folks who believe in something immaterial is more likely to be higher than numbers portray--not lower.
13There is also the "New to Q Pipeline". Spiritual people are being sucked into Q Anon and other far-right beliefs.
2apathetic agnosticism
Is there a pathetic agnosticism? I feel I would fit there better.
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since when has losing stopped them
39As the article points out, they're determined to bull through anyway. But the effort is doomed to failure. Even if they achieve victory conditions (effectively ending democracy) it won't last. It'll just make the next revolution that much more painful. But their sense of entitlement won't allow them to stop.
25I call it Prison Warden Mentality,
They just cannot imagine any course of action except that which keeps their "prisoners" in line
Whenever you hear about the decay of family values, this is what they're actually saying, that it's getting too easy for the prisoners to choose not to be prisoners
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Winning the culture war doesn't matter one whit if we let a fascist in power. Too many of those young less religious people don't vote and any culture they have will be deleted.
36Which we will constantly be in danger of because you don't need to win the popular vote to win the presidency
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I think we have very different definitions of "lost".
Because last I check, they still have a microphone and are getting away with book burnings, still attend large rallies, and even have jobs.
36Just because there are a few thousand people who still worship Norse gods doesn't mean the religion is thriving.
Yes, they're still making noise. If anything, they're making more noise than ever. But public sentiment is against them by a wide majority. Even a majority of Republican voters favor gay rights along with female reproductive rights. What we're seeing is the impact of a minority imposing its will on the majority, and it cannot last.
They're the dog that caught the car, but they can't keep it.
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They've rejected reality and created their own. They didn’t lose, they seceded. Their reality is almost quite literally made up to suit whatever they want whenever they want to.
28BlackRock is leftist? It's a nightmare built from unrestrained neoliberalism!
27Anything that is not openly fascist is leftist to these people.
14On the day Johnson was voted in, several major right-wing social media accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter, began circulating clips of an interview Johnson gave to PBS in 2020, in which he told journalist Walter Isaacson that the police killing of George Floyd was “an act of murder” and called for “systemic change.” Notably, Johnson said in the interview that he had learned about racism in America through the experience of raising a Black son, Michael.
Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh described Johnson’s comments as a “full-fledged endorsement of the Left’s racial narrative,” while far-right anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer accused the new Speaker of being an “undercover Democrat.” Pro-DeSantis conservative influencer Pedro Gonzalez wrote that Johnson had “completely internalized left-wing racial libel about white supremacy and privilege.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson Responds to New Round of Scrutiny About Black Son
That's right the Christo-Nationalist was deemed far left because they recognized that Black people have it harder than White people.
On a side note, Vanity Fair calling Michael, the Black son is extremely tone-deaf and cringe.
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They don't really lose. They just stop talking about things and start talking about something else crazy. Their followers do not care.
20I hate the use of the word "tolerant"; I don't tolerate people of different races, religions, sexual orientations, etc., because there is nothing to tolerate. I just accept them.
The people I tolerate are people who try to impose their religion by force, people who profit from hurting others, Nazis, terrorists, etc. I don't tolerate them because I'm tolerant; I tolerate them because I have no choice in the matter. They exist no matter what I think of them. If I could banish them all to Siberia, I would.
18I'll consider them as having lost when they're out of political power and no longer a serious threat.
Abortion rights aren't going to reinstate themselves.
17I feel like their tantrums are death throes of a dying ideology. You're right, they remain dangerous for the moment, hopefully for the last time.
6Unfortunately, I suspect human tendencies for tribalism and prejudice will not completely vanish anytime soon. Which means reactionary assholes will always be around and we should never let down our guard.
For countries that are currently more progressive, beware. Education and entertainment are the first things they attack. By the time they've gotten enough power to rig the courts and control the reality of their followers, they've become an enormous danger.
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But there's no top-down conspiracy of woke corporations as defined by Tucker Carlson.
Anyone remember Bill O'Reilly ranting about the "War on Christmas" years ago?
Same shit, different day.
17The most woke thing any corporation cares about it its own bottom line. And actually Nike and Disney are smart enough to know which demographic matters most so of course they're going to be as inclusive and anti-racism as possible (or at least put on the face of being such). And I really think today's upcoming generations are smarter in that regard - they see the values of inclusivity, not the drawbacks. I hope people today will really help turn the tide in the coming election and show the old guard that the status quo and this catering to religious over-zealotry has no place anymore, and isn't something most people in the world want to be around.
6This is the case I try to make to people on the left who complain about corporate white washing, or whatever they want to call it. Mainstream corporations feel like it's advantageous to have their symbols out there in pride parades, environmentalist goals, anti-racism, and anti-sexism. Corporations are obligated at a certain level to follow the money, and they have read the signs and chosen to align themselves with these progressive causes. If nothing else, this is a good sign of where the country is headed.
6Or being Co opted.
4I tend to complain about "corporate white washing".
My reason is that companies tend to put themselves out there on issues that are popular on "the left", but specifically on the ones that are edgy but don't affect their bottom line. They might all go "black lives matter", but do any of them go "end prison slave labour"? Or "actually do something effective against climate change so Saharan people don't boil to death"?
The point is not that people don't like corps backing issues. The problem is that corps like to present a happy progressive brand while funnelling money to boil the earth and genocide poor people so that their line continues to go up.
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I'm not sure I agree - the change of generations isn't a new process and our political parties have survived it before. Certain ideas that were controversial for past generations won't be controversial for future ones, but conservatism and the general phenomenon of the culture war will persist. (I think the Trump phenomenon is in fact conservatism adapting itself to modern conditions.)
5It's not like new culture wars won't be started and fought just the same. But there was a time when slavery was the topic of a fierce culture war in the US, and it wasn't resolved until it broke out into a literal war. Now, nearly two hundred years later, it's still unacceptable to suggest that people who look different are better off as property rather than people. Even Florida's attempts to whitewash Southern slavery doesn't go so far as to blame the slaves weren't people.
They've lost this culture war, just as they lost the fight for slavery and later to keep the population segregated. They'll try again in time, but for the moment, the question of abortion and homosexual rights is largely settled at a cultural level. The conservatives lost, and that's why they've largely moved on to nitpicking the definition of gender and trying (unsuccessfully) to defend their legal victories on women's reproductive rights.
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This is a perfect example of how liberalism enables fascism - conservatives have managed to frame superficial human decency as "leftist" (or - bad) to the point where catering to them is no longer profitable? Not a problem, corporations just put on their "we care" masks (while the machine underneath is still, in some cases literally, crushing orphans) so now they can firmly milk the liberal (but definitely not leftist) consumer who will gush about how "good an ally" or whatever one brand or another is, while they continue to do business as usual - destroying the planet, exploiting and oppressing workers globally, and funding the states that enable and even support these actions, all to fill the pockets of a room full of people, who already have more money that anyone could spend if they lived a thousand lives, and who will never willingly stop this system that works so well for them (and that will decay in to full blown fascism again and again as they fight for power at our expense).
People think, rightfully, that horseshoe theory is bullshit, but pointing out that both sides (edit to be clear: that is conservatives and liberals, not actual leftists) serve the same master - capitalism, isn't that, it's indisputable fact.
-4This is a perfect example of how liberalism enables fascism
Today I learned that being inclusive and working toward the betterment of all people instead of a privileged elite is fascism.
4Wink. What you really learned is, some people will leap on any excuse to bash liberals as if liberal was "bad." It not only isn't bad, it isn't stupid either. I can assure you that liberals are wise enough to see how the bottom line for corporations means putting on a facade of caring - of course they do, because they aren't stupid either. And yes it all serves the goals of capitalism - try finding a workable society where that ISN'T the case. It's not because of liberals not being bright - it's because that's the world that we all live in.
2working toward the betterment of all people instead of a privileged elite is fascism.
Lmmfao, I don't know who you think you're describing there, but it isn't the democrats.
(edit just to add this quote from the article you chose to include which directly contradicts this clueless statement of yours, and which made me think you had actually posted this article critically: "But there’s no top-down conspiracy of woke corporations as defined by Tucker Carlson. It’s just capitalism." which begs the question - who the fuck do you think capitalism serves? 😂🤦♀️)
The truth might be uncomfortable, and I can understand the knee-jerk reaction to protect your cognitive dissonance, but it's based in wilful ignorance, not reality (in which they serve the literal opposite). Feel free to educate yourself further (don't worry, I won't hold my breath lol) -
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
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