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Friday, September 13, 2013

It's Time To Fight Some More Culture Wars: Abortion, Guns, Climate Change

A few years back I pointed out that liberals had already won the culture wars and proposed that we should start acting like it. I still think that this is true -- changing attitudes about racial diversity and marriage equality and secular culture are obvious cases in point -- but in this moment of a de facto rollback of Roe v Wade, of modest gun safety regulation prompting recall elections, of paralysis on climate change in the face of greenhouse storms and fires, I want to say a bit more about what "acting like it" might look like.

In a word, since the left wins Culture Wars we need to start more of them.

The liberal left has spent over a generation apologizing about how ooky the life-saving abortions we want to ensure access to really are. The liberal left has spent over a generation insisting how we don't mean to be disrespectful to sociopathic patriarchal white-racist gun-nuts when we try to ensure basic commonsense gun safety regulations. The liberal left has spent over a generation promising how we really are going to try to make sure nobody has to pay anything or change their stupid unsatisfying wasteful mindless consumer behavior in any way to survive catastrophic climate change.

Time and time again liberals propose formulations presumably intended to entice members of the elite-incumbent plutocratic and know-nothing-populist right wing coalition into fact-based harm-reduction policy outcomes. And in case after case, the Right has circumvented appeals to factual consensus and pragmatic interest through the transformation of these policy questions into matters of the defensive tribal identification with a threatened American "way of life" mobilizing a host of inchoate resentments and fears in the service of the irrational demands of one side or the other of that right-wing coalition. It is high time to grasp this reality as it is: Not only can the liberal left not win Culture Wars through factual and pragmatic circumlocutions, but it is also true that the liberal left should not even try to do so, since the liberal left has not only the facts BUT ALSO the culture on our side. The left wins Culture Wars, and we should win them already and get on with solving our shared problems.

Progressive efforts to provide women access to healthcare for the good of all, to make our streets safe from gun violence for the good of all, to provide sustainable alternatives to meet the needs of an overpopulated planet for the good of all are cultural issues as much as they are factual ones. Let me say this even more clearly: these are cultural issues because they are factual ones. Understand, I am not proposing the politicization of questions of fact, I am begging the liberal left to grasp that facts are always already ineradicably politicized, that facts are discovered, published, taught, acted upon through political means by situated human beings in the midst of historical struggle.

The problem with the Republican Right's politicization of the facts about the lethality of back alley abortions and the lowering of overall abortion rates where abortion is safe and freely available is not that this is politicized as such but that their politics are reactionary and their politicization of policy is bad. The liberal left should politicize abortion as freedom against the Right's politicization of abortion as murder. Liberals should relentlessly expose (or "out") forced pregnancy zealots as the anti-American butchers they are, and it should reveal the members of their families who have or readily could access the services they would deny majorities through their political and monetary privilege. "Liberal Media" should post a thousand images of an embryo looking like a chewed up wad of gum and the face of a murdered woman denied access to available healthcare for every image of an aborted fetus looking like a broken bloody doll anti-choice zealots wave in the air. Women need to come out about their abortions and publicly and unapologetically celebrate the freedom access to birth control, abortion services, and healthcare makes possible for them. Families, friends, neighbors, coworkers, people need to face the everyday reality and ubiquity and normality of reproductive health choices in our lives. That some might choose not to avail themselves of abortions and birth control is perfectly acceptable to Americans, but make no mistake that American culture is a culture of freedom, it is a culture celebrating health and care and choice for all.

The problem with the Republican Right's politicization of the facts about the lethality of military style weapons and the skyrocketing rates of gun deaths where there is ready access to and even accumulation of weapons caches by zealots, criminals, and irresponsible people for no legitimate reason is not that this is politicized as such but that their politics are reactionary and their politicization of policy is bad. The liberal left should politicize guns as dangerous and anti-social against the Right's politicization of gun ownership as individualist. Liberals should relentlessly expose (or "out") corporate sponsorship and subsidization of "grassroots" gun advocacy and legislation, just as it publicizes the ease with which hunters and everyday citizens can safely and legally purchase rifles and handguns that are licensed, registered, insured, and made inaccessible to inappropriate users. "Liberal Media" should post splashy images of weapons caches by white racist militias and criminal gangs for every image of Ma's handgun in a purse and Pa's rifle on a porch-rail the anarcho gun-zealots and corporate gun profiteers wave in the air. Being able to attend grammar school or buy coffee in a cafe without having some sociopath blow your brains out seems like a fairly plausible candidate description for an American way of life worth becoming a high-intensity voter defending, should the Beltway PR sooper-geniuses casting haplessly about for ways to counter NRA spin on the tee vee want to take that out for a spin. The Founding Fathers put phrases like "domestic tranquility" and "pursuit of happiness" on that old parchment paper too, you know. Survivors of gun violence need to come out about their pain and their losses and their fears for their safety on streets echoing with gunshots. Families, friends, neighbors, coworkers, people need to face the everyday reality and ubiquity and normality of life and commerce without guns in our faces. (More so than with abortion politics, at least so far, a few encouraging exceptions notwithstanding, I do think some of these strategies are actually happening now in gun politics, and one senses that this is a tide that may be turning as a result, even if I am not sure that liberals quite grasp that their initial limited successes are arising from a shifting of the politics of gun safety onto a cultural terrain that takes on gun-nuttery on its actual terms.) That some hunters or hobbyists might choose to avail themselves of legal, licensed, registered, insured, and circumscribed gun purchases is perfectly acceptable to Americans, but make no mistake that American culture is a culture of freedom, it is a culture celebrating public security and safety and nonviolent cooperation for all.

The problem with the Republican Right's politicization of the relevant scientific consensus about catastrophic anthropocentric climate change, carbon pollution, freshwater depletion, toxic waste as well as the availability of sustainable energy, transportation, agriculture, urban policy alternatives is not that they are politicized as such but that their politics are reactionary and their politicization of policy is bad. The facilitation, funding, oversight, publication, education of sound science as well as the equitable distribution of the costs, risks, and benefits of scientific knowledge and technological developments are inescapably political matters and good scientific and equitable developmental practices must be supported on these political terms as well as on their factual and commercial grounds. This general point simply cannot be made enough. But more specifically, the liberal left should politicize the opportunistic and contradictory recourse to the charge of "junk science" on the part of plutocrats who stand to profit from ignoring the consensus of climate scientists: Why do people who trust medical experts suddenly distrust climate experts when the life and death stakes are the same? Why do pundits accept the verdict of expert UN reports about war crimes but not expert UN reports about climate impacts? The liberal left should politicize climate change as mass death and unprecedented property damage and radical social instability in a brutally palpable and ongoing way in the world today, especially in over-exploited regions of the world but increasingly so in our own cities and neighborhoods, as against the Right's politicization of climate change as a hoax or a problem for future foreigners. Liberals should relentlessly expose (or "out") climate change denialists as the petrochemical shills they are. "Liberal Media" should post a thousand images of wildfires and floods and hurricanes and disease-bearing insect swarms and climate change refugee camps, as well as smug petrochemical billionaires in gold-plated hotel lobbies for every Republican decrying eco-conspiracy in Congress and every bow-tied corporate shill downplaying environmental threats and promoting "engineering" solutions on the tee vee. Families, friends, neighbors, coworkers, people need to testify to the reality that their wastefulness is not making them happy and their denialism is not making them safe. That some might choose to go off-grid or live like ascetic priests or afford zero-carbon footprint McMansions and boutique green lifestyles is perfectly acceptable to Americans, but make no mistake that the American way of life as a general matter is made possible by an equitable, responsible, democratic investment in public goods like energy, transportation, agriculture, and urban infrastructure (which can be sustainable as easily as it is now unsustainable) and an equitable, responsible, democratic administration of common goods that really do include (and must be seen to include) aquifers, watersheds, fertile topsoil, breathable air, walkable neighborhoods, access to wholesome food, and an atmosphere with under 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in it, a culture of survival and flourishing for all and for coming generations.

Liberals win Culture Wars. Gays and DREAMers stopped listening to the hand-wringers and the pearl clutchers and what we got is change. We should fight these Culture Wars over abortion, guns, and environmentalism as the Culture Wars they are so that we can win them. Sure, the facts are on our side -- and let's just assume that those who know the facts will thank us for fighting on their side on the cultural terrain where these battles are actually being fought. Liberals and moderates and science literate policy wonks (not to mention more radically democratic feminists, pacifists, socialists, and greens as well) must stop ceding the ground to reactionary killer clowns whomping up tribal freak-outs. Pre-emptive surrender in the face of urgently necessary and blatantly winnable cultural wars is not the way to win them, the way to win them is the way we always win them: by fighting them for everybody.

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