Kulturkampf
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
~ Yeats
…we cannot speak of the future of humanity with much confidence. ~ Nietzsche
Here is what is really going on in the soon-to-be former United States of America: it is a Kulturkampf that will end in either civil war or secession of several states or both. God knows which will come first. And if you don’t get the double-entendre of that last sentence or the title then we already know that you are going to disagree with my argument and will believe that I am an ignorant heathen who is going to hell. Feel free to leave it in the comments along with the usual anti-semitic comments that trolls leave.
For the rest of you, let’s call a spade a shovel: The culture war is between the white Christian patriarchal hegemony that is trying to CONSERVE (hence the word ‘conservative’) their rich way of life, mores, paradigm, yacht clubs and belief system, and us progressives who are trying to peacefully have humanity evolve into its next more inclusive, more compassionate iteration.
It’s not going well. For either side.
Conservatives believes that all good Christians procreate and make more good Christians while progressives believe that our writings, paintings, films, plays, and music — artworks — may be the only things we need to create in order to lead fulfilling lives.
In “The greatest danger” (see full text below), Nietzsche frames the problem perfectly and poetically albeit with his usual irony: half of our society has agreed to the paradigm of Christian values; the other half has no unifying paradigm other than the fact that we want to lead our lives unencumbered, earn a livable wage, and be free to express ourselves creatively as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
Nietzsche commends the Christians for agreeing on SOMETHING; he just wishes that the shit in which they believed was not so patently FALSE.
100 years ago Brancusi’s “Bird in Space (1923)” was not recognized as a work of art by a U.S. Customs Official and was instead taxed as if it were a kitchen utensil or appliance. Brancusi had to sue to get it recognized as art and obviously he won.
Think of J.D. Vance as the customs official and the Taylor Swift as Brancusi. Vance thinks that we are anarchistic, amoral cat ladies; progressives think that J.D. Vance’s Christian definition and proselytization of the idea of “family” is antiquated and atavistic.
This is the Kulturkampf.
Here is the deeper problem and why we progressives get our asses walloped by conservatives — even power-hungry sociopaths masquerading as conservatives: Conservatives are DOGMATIC and believe that everyone would be Christian if they weren’t ignorant to the fact the Christian way of life is vastly superior and that Jesus is coming back; Progressives are RELATIVISTIC and believe “Live and let live.” Thus, as we saw in France last month, until it comes down to the barbed wire and the Nazis and Fascists are actually taking over (again), LIBERALS FAIL TO ORGANIZE!
We are actually quite a lazy bunch.
Unless threatened with Armageddon.
AND, UNFORTUNATELY, WE’RE NOT THE ONES WITH THE GUNS!
Again, what’s happening now — the exception and the rule currently polling equally — was stated in 1882 by Herr Nietzsche much more eloquently than I could ever say it:
The greatest danger. — If the majority of men had not always considered the discipline of their minds-their “rationality”- a matter of pride, an obligation and a virtue, feeling insulted or embarrassed by all fantasies and debaucheries of thought because they saw themselves as friends of “healthy common sense,” humanity would have perished long ago. The greatest danger that always hovered over humanity and still hovers over it is the eruption of madness-which means the eruption of arbitrariness in feeling, seeing, and hearing, the enjoyment of the mind’s lack of discipline, the joy in human unreason. Not truth and certainty are the opposite of the world of the madman, but the universality and the universal binding force of a faith; in sum, the non-arbitrary character of judgments. And man’s greatest labor so far has been to reach agreement about very many things and to submit to a law of agreement — regardless of whether these things are true or false. This is the discipline of the mind that mankind has received; but the contrary impulses are still so powerful that at bottom we cannot speak of the future of mankind with much confidence. The image of things still shifts and shuffles continually, and perhaps even more so and faster from now on than ever before. Continually, precisely the most select spirits bristle at this universal binding force — the explorers of truth above all. Continually this faith, as everybody’s faith, arouses nausea and a new lust in subtler minds; and the slow tempo that is here demanded for all spiritual processes, this imitation of the tortoise, which is here recognized as the norm, would be quite enough to tum artists and thinkers into apostates: It is in these impatient spirits that a veritable delight in madness erupts because madness has such a cheerful tempo. Thus the virtuous intellects are needed — oh, let me use the most unambiguous word-what is needed is virtuous stupidity, stolid metronomes for the slow spirit, to make sure that the faithful of the great shared faith stay together and continue their dance. It is a first-rate need that commands and demands this. We others are the exception and the danger — and we need eternally to be defended. — Well, there actually are things to be said in favor of the exception, provided that it never wants to become the rule.
