Culture war = only issue in 2024 – John Daniel Davidson.

The Culture War: The Only Issue in American Politics

The more obvious it becomes that our domestic political struggles are actually part of a much larger spiritual war over the fate of western civilization, that we are today engaged not so much in a political fight as a religious battle between good and evil, the stronger the urge seems to be among Republican politicians to deny this reality and take refuge in the comforting political narratives of the past.

A perfect case in point was a tweet last week from Kari Lake’s permanent campaign, which managed in one fell swoop to channel the deeply misguided political analysis of the entire neocon Washington establishment: “No one is saying not to fight the culture war. But it’s simply not the most critical issue heading into 2024.”

The Comforting Fiction of the GOP Establishment

“The GOP must show the country how it plans to turn the economy around & prevent World War 3,” she added. “We need to take this country back from @JoeBiden before we can take our culture back from his friends.”

Ah, yes. The comforting fiction that if we can just show voters how we plan to turn the economy around, surely then we’ll regain power, surely then we’ll have a mandate from the people — and then (and only then) we can “take our culture back.”

With apologies to Lake, who before the midterms seemed to have a bright political future in the emerging populist GOP, this is absolute nonsense. On the one hand, it’s a desperate cope, the embodiment of the stale, low-energy politics that have kept conservatives out of power in Washington for most of the last three decades. On the other, it’s a textbook neocon talking point, pretending the culture war is a distraction when in fact it’s the only war whose outcome really will decide the fate of our country.

The Culture War is Everything Now

Put simply, the big mistake in thinking the culture war isn’t the most critical issue heading into 2024 is that all of American politics is now one big culture war. The culture war is the only issue because the cultural war is everything now. When one side stakes its claim to political power on offering abortion up until birth and transgender operations for 8-year-olds, and holds out these policies as proof of its moral authority, we’re way past arguing over how to get the economy back on track. There’s no going back to that kind of politics.

Tucker Carlson hit on this at the end of his big speech at Heritage recently. He compared the values of the political left to the values of the Aztecs, who sacrificed children to their bloodthirsty gods — and he wasn’t wrong. Our politics, he argued, have shifted profoundly in a relatively short period of time. Instead of arguing over the best means to bring about an agreed-upon common good, we no longer agree about what the common good is. Forget about whether Republicans or Democrats are right about the ideal marginal tax rate. We can’t even agree on whether men and women exist as meaningful categories. And if we don’t get that question right, you can forget about economic prosperity, much less anything like a republic or a constitutional system of government. 

The Culture War is a War for Survival

What the neocons and establishment politicians don’t seem to understand is that the culture