The Culture Wars Persist

Daniel Hannan is puzzled. A conservative Member of the European Parliament, a staunch supporter of Brexit, Hannan recently spent a little time in the United States. He came away puzzled. (via Maggie's Farm)

After all, by any objective measure, the nation is doing remarkably well. And yet, it is consuming itself, even destroying itself, over cultural and social issues. It isn’t just the media, though the media has been leading the band. It’s politicians. Apparently, they have nothing better to do than to create a national movement over Christine Blasey Ford’s possibly defective memory of something that happened well over three decades ago.

At the least, this tells us that for all their talk about America's sacrosanct democracy the American left does not care about elections. They care about having the courts do their bidding. Why bother to win thousands of elections, on federal, state and local levels, when you need but have a majority of one in the Supreme Court. The goal is to impose a cultural agenda on the nation, regardless of whether anyone wants it.

As noted in the previous post, the American military now feels obliged to put women into special forces units, even though they cannot do the basic training. It’s not about winning wars or fighting effectively. It’s about diversity. But, it’s especially about proving an ideological point… one that is, obviously, nonsense.

Perhaps, America has become complacent. Perhaps it is so confident of its success that it can move on to cultural issues. Or else, it might be nostalgic for the days of Obama, when America did not care about winning, when diversity ruled.

For those who have declared culture war against Donald Trump, there is another imperative. They have indulged the most absurd and obscene rhetorical hyperbole over the horrors that Trump was about to visit on the nation and the world. They have a stake in showing that things are getting worse. They have no stake in accepting that things are getting better. Considering how unhinged they have been, if given the chance they will do what it takes to sow chaos and confusion, to make the wheels of government grind to a halt. And then they will blame it on Trump.

Surely, they cannot admit that Obama failed. And they will never accept that Trump has succeeded.

Hannan surveys the scene and notes:

I can’t recall a time when American politics was so angry and distempered.

Your economy is growing at a rate north of four percent.

Unemployment is at an 18-year low. Wages are rising, the stock exchange is strong, consumer confidence is surging. The governing party ought to be strolling to an easy victory before a pleased, prosperous and peaceable electorate.

And yet, he continues, no one is talking about it. Political issues have paled while America is indulging cultural warfare:

But barely anyone is discussing the economy. Republicans are not getting an opportunity to talk about the remarkable growth rates. Democrats, conversely, are not getting the chance to talk about the fact that the deficit is being doubled and will soon stand at a trillion dollars. Nor is there much discussion of foreign policy or education or healthcare or any of the bread-and-butter issues that normally decide elections. Instead, the country is convulsed in a kind of clan conflict, in which every totem associated with the other tribe is viciously targeted.

It’s the culture war, stupid.

Case in point: the monstrous atmosphere surrounding the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. We know by now that serious Democratic senators have been saying that Kavanaugh does not deserve the presumption of innocence. A woman accused him and woman never lie about such things. We tried to contact Emmett Till for a comment, and are still awaiting his response.

There is nothing new about the Democratic strategy. The Obama Department of Education issued a directive to America’s colleges and universities… commanding them to suspend a man's due process rights whenever a woman accused him of a sexual transgression. Thus were established kangaroo courts on college campuses. Male students were expelled from schools. Cases are now being heard in real courts. The unjustly expelled students are most often winning.

And yet, the Obamaphiles persist. They want to return to the halcyon days when males were deprived of due process rights. And they want to change the culture to devalue competitive striving and even winning. In their new culture, empathy will rule. Their great hero, Bill Clinton, rode to the presidency by feeling many women’s pain. Given that he was the sexual predator in chief and given that his wife was enabler in chief, today’s culture warriors are attacking men in the name of… Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The #MeToo movement has exposed sexual predators throughout the media and entertainment industries. These predators were given the green light by Hillary Clinton. She let them know that they could do what they wanted to women, as long as they contributed to left wing causes. As has often been noted, when Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual crimes and misdemeanors, he reacted by declaring war on the National Rifle Association.

Remember the time when the armies of the left rose up in highest dudgeon over Donald Trump’s failure to stick to the facts. These armies promoted themselves as champions of objective truth.

Of course, it was all expedient. They did not care about any facts that might contradict their most deeply held convictions. For them it was all about belief. Before the left rallied to exclaim that it believed Christine Blasey Ford, it was rallying to the cause of those who believed that God had put them in the wrong kind of bodies. After all, transgenderism is really a belief… and a belief that has no connection to biological reality. That would be, no connection to chromosomal makeup.

But, I digress.

Hannan points to the deranged analysis offered by a columnist and commentator named Ana Marie Cox. For Cox, it didn’t matter what Kavanaugh did or did not do. It was about how much empathy he felt for his accuser. Yes indeed, aided by leftist activist lawyers a woman steps forward and attempts to destroy you and your family… and you must feel empathy for whatever she thinks happened to her 36 years ago.

Hannan sets the scene:

On MSNBC last week, I heard a woman asserting that whether or not Judge Kavanaugh was actually guilty of a sexual assault was beside the point, because what really counted was his failure to empathize with his accuser.

“We need to judge Brett Kavanaugh, not just by what he may or may not have done, but how he treats a woman’s pain,” said Ana Marie Cox, a columnist and commentator. “I don’t think Brett Kavanaugh takes women’s pain very seriously, and I know that because of the decisions he’s made as a judge.”

Got that? Whether or not Kavanaugh is guilty as charged is irrelevant. His guilt can be inferred from his opinions. Regardless of whether he technically assaulted a particular woman, his conservatism constitutes a kind of meta-violence against women in general.

Speaking of pain, you might recall that Cox was formerly the proprietress of a blog called Wonkette. In it she offered witty commentary on the Washington social scene. So far, so good. But, she also gained a certain kind of notoriety by breaking the modesty barrier and by often blogging about anal sex. It garnered her considerable attention.

All things considered, do you really want to feel her pain?