Culture War
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The Age of the Prude Is Over February 20, 2025
It was just last spring when a viral video of a bouncing, scantily clad Sydney Sweeney was heralded by the Right-wing internet as an early harbinger of the coming vibe shift. “Wokeness is dead,” declared commentator Richard Hanania, in an X post that...
Rude Awokenings December 09, 2024
The 2024 election was a repudiation, among other things, of the secular theology sometimes known as the Great Awokening. It is that secular form of Calvinism which insisted that America exists in a constant state of oppression, that America is define...
Is The Woke Era Really Over? November 25, 2024
Depending on what kind of echo chamber you hang out in, the victory cries of the anti-woke crowd have been reverberating at increasing volume. And why not? The trouncing of Democrats on November 5 and the decisive resurrection of Donald Trump has bee...
The History of Wokeness November 14, 2024
Over the summer, I drove down to one of the numerous beach towns in Ocean County, New Jersey with two friends: one is a cop, the other a special ed teacher and athletic coach; both are black Americans in their late 20s. Over a dinner of chicken franc...
Contradictions of the New Elite October 02, 2024
Starting in the interwar period (between World Wars I and II) and rapidly accelerating in the 1970s, there were shifts to the global economy that radically increased the influence of the “symbolic industries” — science and technology, education, medi...
To the Woman Who Trashed Me on Twitter September 17, 2024
Back when Donald Trump was last running for election, as the Great Awokening made its speech-chilling sweep through the American media, a small number of writers and public intellectuals admitted to not being entirely onboard with the new orthodoxy o...
You've Got Mail! September 13, 2024
In the 1990s, we lived flippant and searching lives, and it suited us. We are Reagan babies who grew up in the Clinton era. The world was on a collision course with the World Wide Web’s brave new technology that seemed to be both mysterious and excit...
The Politics of Enmity July 25, 2024
You would think that the attempted assassination of a president would be a moment in which Americans could briefly set aside their differences and denounce political violence with one voice. But there was no such comity to be had after a gunman nearl...
On James Shapiro's 'The Playbook' May 08, 2024
For a nation still comparatively young among world powers, the United States approaches its Semiquincentennial (250th birthday) with a muscular, impressive, often shameful history, cycles of progressive reform and reactionary fallout that supposedly ...
The Latest Online Culture War Is Humans vs. Algorithms April 30, 2024
The algorithm has won. The most powerful social, video, and shopping platforms have all converged on a philosophy of coddling users in automated recommendations. Whether through Spotify’s personalized playlists, TikTok’s all-knowing For You page, or ...
How Revolution Happens—and How to Stop It March 21, 2024
I think we underrate just how boring identity politics is.Obviously, it’s an attack on Western civilization, but on a more prosaic level, it’s just very tiresome, because when you’re talking about identity politics, what are you talking about? You. A...
There’s a Therapist Under Ocean Blvd March 11, 2024
Abigail Shrier’s new book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up opens with an epigraph quoting Lana Del Rey’s song “Born to Die.” Lana’s lyrics (sometimes love is not enough / and the road gets tough / I don’t know why) are perhaps apt as an an...
Playing the Victim March 04, 2024
The tidal wave of poststructuralist discourse that crashed onto the American academic scene in the 1970s has left numerous cultural tropes that have trickled their way down into mainstream culture. Is all this talk about social justice and decolonisa...
AI Companies Are Getting the Culture War They Deserve February 23, 2024
Whenever a new AI tool comes out, thousands of users rush to test it, trip it up, and figure out what it’s capable of. This week, it’s Google’s turn, as members test out various tiers and features of Gemini, its recently rebranded and upgraded group ...
Can Conservative Filmgoers Win the Culture War? February 22, 2024
Better movies than The Princess Bride have charmed conservatives out of their principles — GoodFellas, Pulp Fiction, Avengers: Endgame, Gladiator, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. But reader defenses of TPB, spurred by my review of t...
Jon Ronson’s Guide to the Culture Wars February 13, 2024
In his BBC Radio series “Things Fell Apart,” the British-born journalist Jon Ronson introduces himself as “a writer living in America, the land where culture wars begin.” What are culture wars? Early in the show’s first season, which aired in 2021, R...
Raging Bill February 13, 2024
Ever since he was a boy, Bill Ackman dreamed of becoming a businessman. He sold ads for Let’s Go travel guides from his dorm room as an undergrad at Harvard and co-captained the business-school crew team, which had oars decorated with dollar signs. “...
The Fires of America’s Culture War Were Already Burning February 08, 2024
America is a land of revolutions and awakenings; revolutions in its political order and awakenings in the souls of its people are woven into its history. Another revolution has taken place within America in the last few years, and a new awakening amo...
The Real Threat to Classical Music January 09, 2024
In 1955, Henry Pleasants, the American music critic and intelligence officer, wrote in The Agony of Modern Music, “Serious music is a dead art. The vein which for 300 years offered a seemingly inexhaustible yield of beautiful music has run out.” Yet ...
Beyond the Calendar Wars January 02, 2024
L’affaire de Conservative Dad’s Ultra Right Beer limited-edition Real Women of America 2024 pinup calendar—what many are calling the culture war battle of our time.You’d be hard pressed to find a better encapsulation of today’s American right: Conser...
The Poverty of Anti-Wokeness January 01, 2024
Ten years ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates, then a rising writer at The Atlantic, attended a gathering of liberal journalists at the White House. On his blog, Coates had taken a dim view of the post-racial era that had supposedly dawned in 2008, but in a previo...
An Interview with Yascha Mounk September 21, 2023
Some call it “wokeness”—a word that once felt right but now feels more like an overbroad culture-war term of abuse. Others might call it social-justice extremism. But that seems too charitable: True “social justice” is about helping the world’s poor ...
The Abnormal as the New Normal September 21, 2023
For many decades now, conservatives in the United States and elsewhere have faced a dilemma. By disposition, conservatives are inclined to endorse precedent. But since the dominant culture is liberal, conservatives must make their peace with progress...
Malleable Identities September 15, 2023
In our age, it has become a widely accepted truism that identity is self-determined. And yet, few have been willing to tread into the menacing waters of transracialism. While the gender transitions of Caitlyn Jenner and Elliot Paige are celebrated wi...
Baseball at the Abyss September 08, 2023
On June 16, some 2,000 people gathered outside Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium to protest the team’s having chosen to honor, on the field before that night’s game, a group whose core mission and purpose is the open mockery and parody of Catholicism. Seve...
