Framing Funnies: “Culture Wars”

The term “culture wars” is used by many well-meaning people, including many progressive writers and activists I admire. It’s a convenient way to refer to a number of issues. But in this current political moment, I think it’s a highly misleading euphemism. What we are experiencing in America right now is an asymmetrical attack on basic freedoms — a fascist movement that thrives on targeting certain groups, erasing history, and spreading dangerous falsehoods through a vast media apparatus. To call this a “culture war” is to legitimize the contemporary GOP and its extremist counterparts as a coherent and authentic “culture” worthy of respect. This is a misuse of the concept of culture, creating a false equivalence between marginalized groups and those who would harm or eliminate them in a quest for ever more power. 

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Train Wreck

This is about the right’s race-baiting response to the East Palestine train disaster, which you can read more about here. It’s clear that one party was trying to prevent such disasters, and the other was doing the industry’s bidding without concern for human health or safety. The narrative being put forth on the right, however, is that because East Palestine residents are mostly white and conservative, they have been “forgotten” by the Biden administration, unlike the “favored” (read Black) populations of Detroit and other cities that supposedly garner more sympathy. Given the high levels of environmental pollution many minority communities are exposed to, this assertion is asinine. It’s also incredibly dangerous.

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Missing the Story

A few relevant links:

Jessica Valenti on the proposed SC abortion bill

DeSantis takeover of high school athletics board and other official boards

New Idaho bill would criminalize administering mRNA vaccines

Nieman Reports on the open letter to the NYT on trans issues

The sheer volume of hand-wringing about trans kids would suggest this is a national emergency on par with climate change. It seems the mainstream pundit class has fallen for the GOP strategy of making transgender care a political wedge issue while largely ignoring the growing extremism of red state governments.

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Mail Fail

For more tales of postal dysfunction, I recommend this article in the Colorado Sun, which describes a breakdown of the system in several small towns around the Rockies. Part of the problem is high housing costs leading to a worker shortage, as we are seeing in other industries. But a huge factor is the “Amazon effect” — of post offices being absolutely overwhelmed with packages they are forced to deliver the last mile. Things have gotten so bad in Crested Butte that the town is looking into taking legal action to stop the post office from prioritizing Amazon over regular mail.

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E-commerce Chaos

I’m not necessarily opposed to online shopping — I find it necessary for certain items, although I shop locally when I can. Reviews seem especially inconsistent these days, with different people apparently receiving different products in some cases. 

There have been a few articles recently on the deteriorating quality and overall weirdness of Amazon’s website — this one delves into the highly competitive third-party seller market, increasingly dominated by factory-direct products from China.

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Beaten Down

To be clear, I am not saying protest and activism are worthless — they are more necessary than ever. Like many people, I’m frustrated by the inertia of our institutions, and profoundly alarmed about what DeSantis is doing in Florida (such as blocking AP African American studies classes, subjecting teacher to felonies for disallowed books, and installing right-wing extremists on the board of the progressive New College).

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Gas De-Rangement

For a decent summary on the risks of gas stoves, this Scientific American article is worth checking out. One recent study estimated that some 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases were attributable to emissions from gas stoves. 

While bans on new construction are being considered in many places, and already exist in a few cities like Berkeley, no one is actually confiscating stoves. The right-wing freakout over “stove bans” is mostly hot air, serving the purpose of demonizing liberals and whipping up panic over imaginary “government overreach” when what we have here is a clear case of government underreach.

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Man of the House

I actually find “Alpha influencers” to be morbidly fascinating, because they embody so much of the rising fascist movement — the obsession with gender, the fixation on performative masculinity, the notion that you are escaping “the Matrix” by adopting far-right extremist beliefs, the rejection of climate science and COVID as conspiracies. In this worldview, the true villains of late capitalism aren’t rapacious CEOs and Republicans who do their bidding in Congress, but feminists and anyone who would emasculate men. Ultimately these perverse ideologies serve the very corporate hegemony they claim to be freeing people from.

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You Get What You Pay For

I’m back after using a few reruns over the holidays.

If you’re going to hoard the wealth of the nation and refuse to pay wages that allow people to afford housing, then you at least have to support subsidized worker housing and health care. You can’t have it both ways — denying people both a living wage and public programs to compensate for a lack of the former. Of course people are going to end up on the streets! While it’s true that actual pay is higher than the federal minimum wage in many places, the fact that it’s still stuck at $7.25 in 2023 is utterly shameful.

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Unionless

The current abuses and indignities so many workers must endure seem like they belong in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, published in 1906, instead of America in 2022. But things can always get worse!

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Height of Folly

According to Consumer Reports, 526 people died in “frontover” accidents in 2020, many of them children. Often these deadly events occur in driveways or parking lots. You can watch an NBC News report on the issue here (below the petition) that shows kids lined up in front of various trucks and SUVs. Or if that link expires, you can watch it here. 

Senator Richard Blumenthal has introduced a bill make front-end cameras and detection sensors standard technology in new trucks. While I’m sure this would help, it also strikes me as a Rube Goldbergian solution. Americans are using machines so tall and massive to move their bodies through space that elaborate systems of video feeds and alarms are necessary so they can see what’s directly in front of them? THIS IS COMPLETELY ABSURD.

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