It’s the Culture, Stupid!

National political campaigns, generally, feature slogans designed to mobilize public sentiment in favor of a party or its candidates.

Over the years, memorable catchphrases have successfully captured imaginations and energized the voting public.

For example, “Morning in America,” a phrase taken from an ad for President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign, promoted the national renaissance during Reagan’s first term. In 2016, candidate Donald Trump coined “Make America Great Again” to contrast the malaise of Barack Obama’s two terms with his plan for the nation.

And, in 1992, a senior advisor to then-candidate Bill Clinton encouraged his staff to focus on the theme, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

The state of the economy is an important issue in every national campaign, so a stagnating economy, brutal inflation, and massive national debt will factor into voters’ collective 2024 calculus.

But another major issue will resonate next year in ways that, due to its intrinsic tone-deafness, the American left may not see coming.

Simply stated, “It’s the culture, stupid!”

A 2022 Heritage Foundation study entitled, “How Cultural Marxism Threatens the United States—and How Americans Can Fight It,” is premised:

“American Marxists…[cloak] their goals under the pretense of social justice…to dismantle the foundations of the American republic by rewriting history; reintroducing racism; creating privileged classes; and determining what can be said in public discourse, the military, and houses of worship. Unless Marxist thought is defeated…, today’s cultural Marxists will achieve what the Soviet Union never could: the subjugation of the United States to a totalitarian, soul-destroying ideology.”

The left is waging a cultural war designed to destroy and replace traditional American values with a hodgepodge of alternative “values” for which normal American voters, including minority voters have little or no taste.

The “cultures” surrounding climate change hysteria, expanding the welfare state, “white privilege/supremacy,” ideological/racial indoctrination in public schools, (only) Black Lives Matter, antifa anarchy, defunding the police, late term abortion, gun control, domestic surveillance, and media/Big Tech censorship are among those advocated and/or imposed by authoritarian left-liberals in government, media, education, entertainment, and even large corporations.

Healthy American majorities disapprove of every one of those sideshows.

Arguably, the worst and most insidious of the left’s cultural anomalies are the excessive, irrational demands of the militantly evangelical “T” – or transgender – faction of the “LGBTQIA+” alphabet communities who have manufactured the ridiculous, anti-scientific notion that biological sex simply no longer exists.

The once-rare occurrence of changing one’s gender has metastasized into a dangerous, highly-visible Mengelian narrative, a deranged foolishness that threatens America’s social fabric.

Frankly, virtually no one cared how transgendered adults lived their lives until they involved children.

Now, with the left’s full-throated approval, certain transgendered people are targeting kids, toddlers included, with sexually explicit reading/teaching material and public venue drag shows.

Worse, they’re recruiting them.

The term “gender-affirming care” for children may be today’s most despicable euphemism.

“Gender-affirming care” means administering chemical puberty blockers for and radical surgeries to remove birth gender body parts of immature, impressionable, easily-influenced kids who are too young to drive, drink, marry, serve or vote. Advocates make the loathsome claim that “gender-affirming care improves the mental health and overall well-being of gender diverse children and adolescents.”

In fact, President(ish) Joe Biden has called denying children gender affirming care “sinful,” “outrageous” and “immoral.” How culturally – morally – defective must one be to speak of “sin” or “morality” in this context?

Powerline’s John Hinderaker wrote: “For reasons I can’t explain, the Left, including the Democratic Party, has made sex change operations on minors its signature issue. It has become a litmus test: in order to be considered progressive, one must now advocate the mutilation of children’s genitals.

“If there is a Democratic Party politician who dissents from this orthodoxy, I am not aware of it.”

Can anyone identify just one prominent elected Democrat who disagrees publicly with this abomination?

Normal Americans are inclined to agree that truly “marginalized” people deserve sympathy, but the in-your-face, deliberately provocative behavior of trans radicals, and the dictatorial support they receive from left-liberal officeholders have overwhelmed decent people’s instincts to just live and let live.

The American left has overstepped too many voters’ cultural “don’t care” line.

Now, it’s game on.

If Democrats choose reshaping traditional American culture as a hill to die on, die they will – at least metaphorically – in 2024.

https://www.pottsmerc.com/2023/06/12/jerry-shenk-its-the-culture-stupid/