Culture

"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it." George Orwell

(Professor James Davison Hunter) at the University of Virginia, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, in the 90s wrote a book called Before the Shooting Starts, about how culture wars always precede shooting wars and in particular was talking about violence around abortion... He came up with that title five days before the first right-wing attack on an abortion clinic in America. So he’s very good at anticipating what people internalize as motivation for violence, and what he’s saying right now is when there’s no compromise, one side is saying “evil” and the other side (is) saying “you’re denying my humanity,” those are terms for violence. James Davison Hunter Interviewed by CBS Mornings

"No other industrial country has anything like the degree of extremist religious beliefs and irrational commitments that you commonly find in the United States. The idea that you have to avoid teaching evolution or pretend you're not teaching it is unique in the industrial world. And the statistics are mind-boggling. Roughly half the population think the world was created a couple of thousand years ago. A huge percentage, maybe a quarter or so, say they've had a born-again experience. A substantial number of people believe in what's called "the rapture." Large majorities are convinced of miracles, the existence of the devil, and so on." Noam Chomsky: Imperial Ambitions pg 178

... your professed religion (whatever that may be) is NOT something that 99% of believers have any choice in - it comes to a child as part of the "Welcome Package" when they are born. Included in the package - your race, social status, tribal identity, geographic location, etc,, In many societies trying to reject the tenets of that package can lead to expulsion from the group - or your death as an apostate (and the Christians were as bad as other cultures in this)." Hugh Spencer

...what we are now seeing are the obvious characteristics of the West after the fall of Rome: the triumph of religion over reason; the atrophy of education and critical thinking; the integration of religion, the state, and the apparatus of torture -- a troika that was for Voltaire the central horror of the pre-Enlightenment world; and the political and economic marginalization of our culture. Of course, the Dark Ages were not uniformly monochromatic, as recent scholarship has demonstrated; but then, neither is present-day America. The point is that in both cases "dark" is the operative word.
Morris Berman

“If you happen to be a Christian and of European extraction in some way, it’s a pretty powerful drug to think that your race and your religion were chosen by God and represent the pinnacle of human achievement. There’s power in asserting that vision. And at the end of the day, it’s about power. While we are beginning to see serious efforts to try to disentangle white supremacy from Christianity, that legacy still haunts us.”
They took part in Apache ceremonies. Their schools expelled them for satanic activities (6/24/2024)

“Political scientist Corey Robin is right to see modern conservatism as an effort to maintain hierarchies. Conservatives fight to protect the privileges of superiors – what Edmund Burke called the “chain of subordination” of soldiers to their officers, worker to their employers, tenants to their landlords, and children to their parents. But these political hierarchies are not the only concerns of conservatives, who will also go to the mat to defend cultural, moral, and theological hierarchies. And conservatives fight most fiercely to defend hierarchies that are falling away.” from Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars, Even When They Lose Elections: Stephen Prothero. Pg 249.

... the culture war ... are a cluster of public issues concerned , ironically, with the most private of all matters: the body. Controversies about abortion, sexual harassment, pornography, ¨vulgar¨ art or music, sex education, condom distribution, homosexuality, AIDS policy, or euthanasia and the ¨right to die¨ all trace back to the human body. Those issues that do not relate to the body deal, more often than not, with the social institution s that claim authority over the body (family, church, school, law and the like). The body, it would seem, is the underlying symbolic of the culture war. Before the Shooting Begins, Searching for Democracy in America´s Culture War, James Davison Hunter.

Civil paths to peace have always been and still remain the basic way of successfully confronting violence and terrorism...As Buddha said more than 2,500 years ago, the solution to most problems lies ultimately in clearer understanding, and that demands intellectual engagement, and not merely prompt action.
Peace and Democratic Society Amartya Sen (editor) Open Book

The fact is that a large segment of the U.S. electorate has bought into an apocalyptic vision of America that bears no relationship to the reality of how the other half thinks, behaves or lives. We don’t have to speculate about whether this dystopian fantasy might lead to political violence and attempts to overthrow democracy; it already has. And it’s probably going to get worse. The Dystopian Myths of Red America Paul Krugman (7/25/2022) NYT

In the world of culture, elite refers to quality, not quantity. The fact that the true intellectual and artistic elites are now marginalized almost everywhere in the Western world, while power elites are more dominant than ever, is reflected in the values cultivated, values that are a perfect reflection of commerce, technology and kitsch and are completely unrelated to Thomas Mann's description of "the grand and honorable in humanity, which manifest themselves as art and science, as passion for truth, creation of beauty, and the idea of justice". To Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism by Rob Riemen

Our per-capita spending for public media currently stands at about $1.63 a citizen a year, while Finland and Denmark spend seventy and eighty times that amount. This lack of direct government sponsorship opens a widening space for corporate underwriting, despite the compromising and sometimes overtly censoring effects of this strategy." The People's Platform, Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age: Astra Taylor p217

"'The ruling classes have in their hands the army, money, the schools, the churches and the press. In the schools they kindle patriotism in the children by means of histories describing their own people as the best of all peoples and always in the right. Among adults they kindle it by spectacles, jubilees, monuments, and by a lying patriotic press.'" (Tolstoy, Government is Violence - Essays on Anarchism and Pacifism, Phoenix Press, 1990, p.82)

Banning ideas and authors is not a ‘culture war’ – it’s fascism (2/14/2023) Jason Stanley in the Guardian

The Coming MAGA Cultural Revolution? (2/10/2022)

The Republican party is embracing violence in the name of Trump (12/3/2021)

Republicans are increasingly ready for violence: We look away at our peril (8/3/2021)

The culture war is a war on the Truth, editing history to make slavery look beneficial, forgetting indigenous genocides, calling racial discrimination CRT, gun culture no big deal, January 6 insurrection just a tourist event.

Race, religion, nationalism, class, sexism, are components of culture war. When deemed exceptional they motivate discrimination, atrocities, wars, and authoritarian movements like the GOP that suppress democracy, media, liberty, to gain power.

The Culture War is an effort to erase history of racism, genocide, that includes attacks on higher education, book bans, censorship, and propaganda like Fox News. Noam Chomsky, our most penetrating media critic, is not allowed on any major media including PBS. Trump has taken over the news.

Culture wars incite real wars. Christians vs Muslims (the Crusades), Arabs vs Jews (Hamas vs Israel), fascism vs democracy (the Civil War, WWII), democracy vs communism (the Cold war), left vs right, and so on.

Does media determine culture or does culture determine media ? It works both ways.

Murdoch, in a courtroom, claimed it is the latter. That Tucker and the others had to broadcast Trump lies because that’s what the audience wanted. At other times, he said he wanted Trump to win. His other media engaged in climate denial.

US media is concentrated into a few corporations that decide what to broadcast. Leading the right wing noise machine is Fox News Propaganda from the right wing noise machine such as Fox News, OAN, NewsMax and others reinforce it. that determines or supports Republican culture.

Polarization is a product of media. People choose their bubble depending on their media choices: Talk radio, Fox News, OAN, and other right wing outlets take direction and money from the well funded right as does the GOP. The church is media also: evangelicals, Catholics, and fundamentalists naturally ally with authoritarians.

Religion was the earliest media. It supports art, music, architecture. Art work told stories, and grand cathedrals took resources of entire communities. Gutenberg brought the message to the literate privileged. Belief was enforced by the confessional (the first mass surveillance), the inquisition, or in the Middle East by Sharia law. Religious war occurred throughout history. Violence is persuasive. Genocide effectively silences those with different views. The poorest countries are the most religious and most backward.

Super heroes, strong man politicians, or gods are propaganda for authoritarianism. When they say that they alone can solve problems, that they know better than the experts, they are rejecting democracy in favor of dictatorship. They demand loyalty (see the first commandment) and punish deviance. When ideology suppresses truth, science is irrelevant, creativity is discouraged, progress slows. Disasters loom when real challenges are not recognized. The choice comes down to dictatorship or democracy.

Religion distracts from the reality that humanity is visibly destroying the ecology and will inevitably cause collapse, probably within the lifetime of the next generation. Religion enables a politics that will pay no attention to that, but will continue big military that can destroy us all. History repeats itself, but gets much more expensive.

In right wing and Republican States book bans, censorship, curriculum and academic interference, are on-going Teachers, OBGYNs, minorities, women are leaving them if they can.

Miserable poor people become religious and Republican, a vicious cycle, good for the GOP. Could be that is why their opposition to Social Security, Medicare, and other social supports.

Growing polarization, has culminated in attempted armed overthrow of the government. Some of the 1/6 mob even flying the Confederate flag or swastikas.

Former and soon to be President Trump incited the January 6 mob after numerous attempts to overturn the election failed in the States, in the Courts, and even in the Supreme Court. He even appointed loyalists to the DOJ and the Pentagon to stand down response to the attack. Bill Maher and others warned that he would not leave office peacefully.

The happiest countries, the Nordic Countries, are mostly secular, inclusive democracys.

The RIGHT wants to control @MarshaBlackburn:
- what books kids can read
- what curriculum is taught in schools
- what women do with their bodies
- whether, or not, women can travel across state lines
- the voting age — even though it's already in the Constitution
- what rights…

— Gene Trevino (@GenoVeno73) September 14, 2023

"U.S. movies, tv shows, video games, music, news, and schools are uniquely and increasingly violent. Primates’ chief form of behavior is imitation. Humans are no exception to that rule. Human cultures that have not known stories of mass-murder have also not known mass-murder. Anthropologists have studied cultures in which people have had an absolute taboo on taking human life." David Swanson

...pitting market values against human values, is the real culture war of our time. James Gustave Speth: America the Possible

The corporatization of just about every aspect of American life, including the publishing industry, is at its core an assault on culture. Chris Hedges, The Progressive, August 2011.

If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of to musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation that with truth or beauty. If content is worthless, then people will start to become empty-headed and content-less. The combination of hive mind and advertising has resulted in a new kind of social contract. The basic idea of this contract is that authors, journalists, musicians, and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising. Jaron Lanier, from You Are Not a Gadget excerpt January. Harper's Magazine.

Celebrity culture--with its very limited room at the top -- is another cause and effect of the winner-take-all society. Karen Sternheimer

Those species that do not live in compliance with the law become extinct. In the scale of biological time, they become extinct very rapidly. And this is going to be very bad news for the people of your culture - the worst they've ever heard. (From a novel: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn)

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." --Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals, p. 58

"The infrastructure of suburbia can be described as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world." -- JH Kunstler

"A ... paradox is evident in America's workaholic marketplace, where leisure time and playful spectatorship are anything but leisurely or playful, and where people actually work longer hours than their compatriots anywhere else in the industrialized world, not for the glory of work but for the supposed rewards of play. No people work harder at play or expend more energy on leisure than American consumers. Leisure means anything but lazy here. No French-style, thirty-five-hour work week in the United States, the abbreviated Gallic workweek mandated by law now being ridiculed in those parts of Europe anxious to imitate the United States. No six-week summer vacations where business literally comes to a nearly summer-long halt in world cities like Berlin or Madrid. No original slow food in the manner of the charming Italian movement that affects to put a roadblock in the way of McDonald.

In the postmodern capitalist economy it's hard work creating the easy life. A full-service shopping society needs consumers with a lot of leisure, but in fact leaves them little time for anything but consumption and the hard work that pays for consumption, so that they rarely feel leisurely or free. Vacation destinations and the travel to reach them are anything but vacations from shopping. There is shopping underway at airport malls and train-station malls, shopping at theme-park and casino facilities, shopping all along the highways leading to and at the tourist destinations to which they lead, shopping at every grand hotel lobby, and shopping on television and the internet when you get to your room." From Consumed by Benjamin R. Barber

"In the pointy-headed northeastern America of my experience there were no legends of wandering prophets, no dinner-table discussions about personal salvation. But in the rest of the country you had this weird dichotomy, and advanced industrial economy confidently riding the superconductor and the microchip into the space age while most of its population hurtled backward away from the Enlightenment, living out a Canterbury Tales-type quest for revelation in a culture dominated by superstition and mystery." Matt Taibbi: The Great Derangement

"I'd seen poverty before, of course, even incomprehensible poverty, as in the slums outside Maputo, in Mozambique. But I'd never seen anything like this. If what I had seen tonight--house after house after house abandoned, deserted, decaying as if there had been disaster--if this was poverty, then it must be a new kind poverty, maybe in the same way that the wealth that had amassed here in the 20th century had been a new kind of wealth. I had never really understood how a nation that so celebrated the individual could obliterate all differences the way this country did. In a system of mass production, the individual workers are replaceable and the products are identical. The identical cars are followed by identical gas stations, identical restaurants, identical motels and, as an extension of these, by identical TV screens, which hang everywhere in this country, broadcasting identical entertainment and identical dreams. Not even the Soviet Union at the height of its power had succeeded in creating such a unified, collective identity as the one Americans lived their lives within. When times got rough, a person could abandon one town in favor of another, and that new town would still represent the same thing. Was that what home was here? Not the place, not the local, but the culture, the general?" Karl Ove Knausgaard: Saga

Two surprising conclusions emerge when America's culture wars — from Jefferson's heresies to same-sex marriage — are stacked up and weighed together. Conservatives typically start the battles, and liberals almost always win them." Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars, Even When They Lose Elections: Stephen Prothero.

“Major ways of thinking about the world constitute just-world theories...The Catholic Church is a just world theory. If the Inquisition burned heretics, they only got what they deserved. Bolshevism was a just-world theory. If Kulaks were starved and exiled, They got what they deserved. Fascism was a just-world theory. If Jews died in the concentration camps, they got what they deserved. The point is not that the good people get the good things, but the bad people get the bad things. Neoclassical economics, our principal source of policy norms, is a just-world theory.” Avner Offer, author of the Challenge of Affluence , Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain Since 1950 quoted in Wages of Rebellion, the Moral Imperative of Revolt: Chris Hedges pg 77.

...Hypothesis for why the Islamic Golden Age came to an end is that there was a rise in a particular antiscientific religious ideology that helped political elites to entrench their power. Such forces could result in a society opposed to technological innovation. (158)

The Shrinking of the American Mind (10/23/2020)

we need to stop using "culture wars" which is morally neutral. It is the GOP's war to impose Christian Nationalism.

— Jennifer 'I stand with Ukraine' Rubin 🇺🇦🇺🇦 (@JRubinBlogger) April 26, 2022

Are We All Authoritarians? What are the sources of authoritarianism, an anti-difference orientation? (8/15/2020)

What the Happiest Places Have in Common (6/23/2018)

Violence as a Way of Life: An Anarchist Analysis of Gun Control and State Power in the US (4/17/2018))

Why Aren't Leaders Held Accountable for War as They Are Beginning to Be for Sexual Abuse? (12/11/2017)

Donald Trump’s Biggest Mistake Might Have Been Getting Elected (Vanity Fair Summer 2017)

The Collapse of American Identity (5/2/2017)

'Horrifying' Trump Budget Plan Would Privatize PBS and Destroy National Arts Endowment (1/19/2017)

Frank Zappa on American culture pic.twitter.com/ABU2Ac8ibK

— Arash (@Arash1314lk) October 16, 2021

House G.O.P. Votes to Gut Independent Congressional Ethics Office (1/3/2017)

"those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" Voltaire

This Christmas, Tune it all out (12/24/2015)

Republicans prefer to have celebrities in office, not career politicians (9/7/2015)

The 15 Members of Congress Who Share Cliven Bundy’s Desire to Seize or Sell Off America’s Public Lands (5/22/2014)

Why Aren't We Having a Middle Class Revolt? (1/27/2014)

The Rise of Gladiator TV (10/5/2009)

Jihad vs McWorld (Atlantic 3/1992)

• James Howard Kunstler
• 978-0-8021-2030-4
• Atlantic Monthly Press

Migration Flows In the United States in 2012

Copyright for People, Not For Publishers (1/17/2013)

The Southernization of America

The republican war on everyone (3/4/2012)

Despair Is Not An Option (12/12/2011)

Elizabeth Warren: The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class

How Are the Kids? Unemployed, Underwater, and Sinking Friday 26 November 2010

Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives

Has the American Dream Become Our Nightmare ? (7/3/2010)

A Heaven Sent Rent Boy (5/14/2010)

Why Are Americans Passive as Millions Lose Their Homes, Jobs, Families and the American Dream? (2/2/2010)

Earth Charter

The Beauty of What's in front of You (1/7/2009)

The Collapse of the Middle Class: Elizabeth Warren Lecture

The Critical Unraveling of US Society

The Audacity of Depression (4/4/2008)

Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We? By Rick Shenkman, Tomdispatch.com

Hidden Holocaust, USA

Culture Wars

Photos: Worlds Collide Outside Obama Speech: Randall Terry, Code Pink, Militant Gays and the 'God Hates Fags' Folks Commune in DC Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet  (10/ 10/ 2009).

Religion

Race

Corruption

What is corruption? Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. It hurts everyone whose life, livelihood or happiness depends on the integrity of people in a position of authority. Transparency International's corruption perception index.

Violence

Culture of Peace

Guns

Video

Swearing: Steven Pinker (video)

Who Owns Culture ? Lawrence Lessig

Hannah Arendt Reading Group

Links

Conspicuous Consumption

Barbara Ehrenreich

DownTheUpEscalator

Bibliography

A Great Disorder, National Myth and the Battle for America by Richard Slotkin

The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider by Michiko Kakutani

Dark Ages America, the Final Phase of Empire: Morris Berman

We Need New Stories, the Myths That Subvert Freedom by Nesrine Malik

American Whitelash, a Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress by Wesley Lowery

The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: From Stupefied Youth to Dangerous Adults by Mark Bauerlein

The Free World, Louis Menand

To Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism by Rob Riemen

The Ethical Algorithm: Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth

Political Tribes, Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations: Amy Chua

 Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and The Triumph of Spectacle:Chris Hedges

Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (Even When They Lose Elections: Stephen Prothero

The Culture of Fear, Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things: Crime, Drugs, Minorities, Teen Moms, Killer Kids, Mutant Microbes, Plane Crashes, Road Rage, & So Much More: Barry Glassner

Forty Years War: Jim Hinch

Culture Crash, the Killing of the Creative Class: Scott Timberg (formerly of the New London Day)

Idiot Proof, eluded Celebrities, Irrational Power Brokers, Media Morons and the Erosion of Common Sense: Francis Wheen

Celebrity Culture and the American Dream: Karen Sternheimer

The Sound Bite Society, Television and the American Mind: Jeffrey Scheuer

Information Doesn't Want to be Free: Cory Doctorow

Labor's Love Lost: Andrew Cherlin

Corruption in America From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United: Zephyr Teachout

Thieves of State, Why Corruption Threatens Global Security: Sarah Chayes

Freedom For Sale: John Kampfner

The Great Risk Shift, Jacob S. Hacker

The Unwinding: George Packer

Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches From America's Class War: Joe Bageant (an excerpt)

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free By Charles P. Pierce.

The Age of American Unreason: Susan Jacoby

The Art of Community (available for free download.)

Next Stop, Reloville: Peter Kilborn

The Big Sort: Bill Bishop

The Two Income Trap: Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi

The Great Risk Shift: Jacob Hacker

The chalice and the blade : our history, our future / Riane Eisler.

Going Broke: Why Americans Can't Hold On to their Money: Stuart Vyse

Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America's Culture War: James Davison Hunter

A People's History of the United States: Howard Zinn

Culture Matters: Edited by Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington.

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole: Benjamin R. Barber

Repairing The Social Safety Net Demetra Nighingale

The Watchers: Shane Harris

Bowling Alone:Robert Putnam

Everything For Sale: Robert Kuttner

The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future: Juan Enriquez, Crown Publishers.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman

Before the Shooting Begins: James Davison Hunter

The Overspent American: Juliet Schor

The Trap, selling out to stay afloat in winner-take-all America: Daniel Brook

The Irrational in Politics: Maurice Brinton

The Cheating Culture; Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead by David Callahan (2004)