The Culture War
Did Trump’s campaign benefit from the Culture Wars? The term culture wars can be traced back to Nixon’s appeal to the silent majority or Pat Buchanan’s call to arms in the 1992 Republican Convention[46]. While the Republican party’s journey towards conservatism became more apparent with Barry Goldwater’s presidential bid and Ronald Reagan’s election many scholars point to the impact of Roe v Wade 1974 which made abortion a political totem for social conservatism and the Christian right in a way it hadn’t been before.[47] The reaction to Roe began the politicisation of the evangelical Christian right and the transformation of the Republican party from its historically libertarian outlook to social conservatism.
For the origins of the Culture Wars others looked to demographics which was labelled the big sort.[48] Increasingly Americans were divided by zip code as people chose to live in neighbourhoods populated with people just like themselves which produced geographic political polarization. Although some commentators have noted that rural and urban setting have always been aligned with different attitudes to politics A study by Ron Johnston, David Manley, and Kelvyn Jones in Annals of American Association of Geographers concluded that not only do like-minded people cluster together with other like-minded people, such clustering together makes people more like-minded. Their analysis suggests ‘Polarization has increased in most U.S. states. Just three had less political polarization in 2012 than in 1992. And polarization is increasing within states as well’[49].
Whether the origins of culture wars are found in spatial polarisation or the politicisation of religion the conflict has intensified. The initial hot button issues of abortion, feminism, and privacy, described by James Davison Hunter, a sociologist at the University of Virginia in his 1991 book, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America has broadened in this century to include education and gender, and reached a polarising intensity during the debate over Obamacare which gave rise to the Tea Party and during the pandemic, where mask wearing and vaccines stoked a toxic crescendo of fear, threats and paranoia. The enemy was at the gates in the guise of antifa, immigrants and the radical left or the World Bank whose plots were as subtle as they were ambitious in the form of the great reset or the great replacement. Millions of Americans who did not subscribe to the most florid of these fears still perceived a way of life and its values under siege. It is in this febrile atmosphere that Trump has prospered.
During the re-election campaign, the themes of the culture war were presented by Trump in the form of simple graphic images ‘ immigrants eating dogs and cats’ symbolised a decent into barbarity. ‘Children having gender reassignment surgery while at school without their parents’ consent’ played on a theme of defending the young from the malign influence of woke teachers who were also teaching children to be ashamed. Schools were seen as great betrayers since they were “the institution most counted on to ensure the reproduction of American norms”.[50] Forcing children to wear masks was a synonym for wokeism, secularism and crucial race theory. Trump responded by promising to abolish the Department of Education and end“ wokeness ” and “left-wing indoctrination.” Trump repeatedly said he will cut money to “any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children.” On the campaign trail, Trump said he would “not give one penny” to schools with vaccine or mask requirements. It wasn’t that the culture wars agenda appealed widely to Americans, fewer than 42% said they generally agreed with Trump’s views, instead it was the impact it had on Republicans. 80% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they agreed with Trump on many or nearly all important issues facing the country.[51] Trump was articulating their concerns, the imagery may have been hyperbolic but nonetheless the sentiment struck a chord.
Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, Pippa Norris looks at two causes of the rise in populism, namely economic changes (globalization, loss of manufacturing blue collar work, loss of economic prosperity seen in parent's generation) and cultural changes (backlash against progressive changes, particularly from the older generations).
Another reason those who may not be devoted supporters voted Trump is that resentment and a sense that many millions of Americans see themselves as having been left behind and belittled goes far beyond the Maga core. This is a resentment fuelled by a perceived attack on the values and certainties of middle America which according to this narrative are the common sense values that prevailed in the era when America was great, a mythical yesteryear of big cars, lifelong blue-collar jobs and apple pie. This mythic America was also white. The worm which infected this halcyon age is the ‘woke agenda’ of critical race theory and gender fluidity and of course, immigrants who are not white. These new Americans are from places described by Trump as the ‘shit hole’ countries[82]. For some Americans, this adds to the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy but for far more, it’s simply a feeling of being ‘as mad as hell and not going to take this anymore’.
Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild conducted research in Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, which she described as within the ‘whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation’. In this area she found the kind if left behind communities which had suffered from the loss of coal jobs with resulting high levels of poverty and drug addiction. Pikeville had become a Trump heartland. In 2016, 80 percent of the district’s population voted for Donald Trump. What she found was, rather than material deprivation, the index of Trumpian support was cultural outrage. “Those most enthralled with Donald Trump were not at the very bottom — the illiterate, the hungry’’ instead Trump’s most committed supporters were “the elite of the left-behind,” those people “who were doing well within a region that was not.” While the poorest were more ambivalent about Trump the locally wealthier saw the liberal elites as instigators of an attack on their way of life.From a sociological point of view this differentiation between economic strata in the poorest regions of the US is surprising in the sense that it seems to run counter to the idea that Trump appeals most strongly to those most damaged by globalisation and deindustrialisation, but from an anthropological perspective it's hardly surprising since the village elders, wealthy kulaks and middle class in rural societies have always been the guardians of social propriety. While Hochschild sees Trump’s appeal to rural voters in terms of emotions of pride and shame it may also be understood as the ‘vanity of small differences’. The elites of the poorest regions sit precariously in their communities where their gains in status and wealth are small compared to metropolitan elites and more vulnerable to shifting values, which may undermine their parochial authority. Hochschild quotes local business leader Roger Ford who conflates external economic threats to his community with cultural resentment.. “With all we’re coping with here, we’re having a hard enough time. Then you make it fashionable to choose your gender? Where are we going?” His opposition to transgender rights is seamlessly entangled with the economic hardships that emanate from the liberal elites. (Stolen Pride Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right Arlie Russell Hochschild)
However, there remains a baffling question. How did Trump win the presidential election with overwhelming Christian evangelical support when he scorns traditional Christian values, has affairs, divorces, and alleged sexual assaults and harassment? In 2016 there was deep antipathy to Hilary Clinton which went back to 1992 and her perceived insult to traditional stay-at-home women (“Well, I guess I could have stayed home and baked cookies …”) The social scientist Marie Griffith wrote for many evangelical Christians, ‘Women coming to power upend the way the world is supposed to work, at least in the conservative churches where they are not allowed to occupy positions of highest leadership[52].’ White working-class men in many communities have also adopted a narrative of victimization[53]. This augment proposes that resentment of liberals was greater than dislike of Trump’s persona. ‘He may be an ally cat, but he’s our ally cat’ In this sense Trump’s behaviour could be distanced from his rhetoric. He may not live their values but said the right things and made the right promises.
Historian Laura Gifford author of The Centre Cannot Hold wrote, 'Pro-Trump evangelicals are willing to forgive behaviour that would get one kicked out of Sunday School if the leader of their party will articulate their policy priorities—and nominate conservative candidates to the Supreme Court’. This was not without some difficulty Following Jerry Falwell Jr.’s support of Trump and suggestion that white evangelicals do the same, Mark DeMoss, a former aide to Falwell and the chairman of the Board of Trustees at the evangelical institution, Liberty University, resigned stating that the Trump campaign and Falwell Jr.’s support of the same were antithetical to the values for which Falwell Sr. and Liberty stood.[54] While many Christians saw in Trump a way back to a lost, white Christian past and others admired his entrepreneurial skill and low-tax pro-business agenda, there was however one Trumpian value evangelicals were united on and that was his claim to have been responsible for overturning Roe v Wade. Democrats hoped that abortion rights might mobilise women against Trump and the more they pinned their hopes on the prochoice vote, the more those who were anti-abortion saw in Trump a bulwark against backsliding on the gains they had made. Trump positioned himself, as much as possible as moderate on abortion, arguing the issue should be left to states, pledged to veto a national abortion ban should it reach his desk and stated his support for in-vitro fertilization and other reproductive health services, and promised to be a champion for women. This aimed to neutralise the abortion issue but Kamala needed to bring it front and centre which position Trump as the pro-life candidate. In the end the Dobbs[55] backlash did not happen and evangelical Christians turned out for Trump[56].