The Forever Culture War
The future of American politics is taking shape, and it is frightening. I, along with many others, thought—or at least hoped—that Joe Biden’s tenure in the White House would allow enough Americans to unspool themselves from the daily efforts of outrage and apocalyptic thinking. Biden was bland enough that politics could revert to something more measured than it had been under his predecessor, Donald Trump. This was wishful thinking.
Politics seems more existential, not less. Pundits and partisans cast everything as a culture war, even those things that have little to do with culture. Policy debates that might have otherwise been boring—over COVID-testing protocols or the cost of the Build Back Better bill, for example—have become part of an apocalyptic battle between the forces of good and evil. As the conservative writer Jack Butler the growing unease: “We’re in the battle at the end of time, and the prince of darkness is already at the door, and
