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Culture wars aretraditionallya middle-classpreoccupation, though,aftera month ofviolence, high emotion,and iconoclasm bookended by the sequel toTrumpsAmerican Carnageinauguraladdress,the national conversation has shiftedagainfor the worse.In spite of Bidens best Obama-esquecallsfor unity, the dystopian vision Trump conjured in 2016ismoremanifestthan everand the culture wars are raging.

In his Mt. Rushmore speech, the President declared, Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children, making thoughtful Americans everywhere wonder, whose nation,whose history, whose heroes, whose values, and whose childrenare actually being referenced.Hes certainly not speaking to any permutation of the left, to the vast majority that didnt vote for him four years ago,or even tomuch of his own party.

Now fully in failure mode,Trump appears to be giving up allpretenseof trying toleadthe nation as a whole.AsRobert Costa and Philip RuckernoteinThe WashingtonPost, Although amplifying racism and stoking culture wars have been mainstays of Trumps public identity for decades, they have been particularly pronounced this summer as the presidenthas reacted to the national reckoning over systemic discrimination by seeking to weaponize the anger and resentment of some white Americans for his own political gain.Unfortunately for Trump,the allegiance ofsome white Americanswill not be enough to guarantee hisre-electionand he knows it.

One gets a very strong impression that the President wants nothing more than to go out ina blaze of glory.With a mismanagedpandemic, the lingeringspecterof impeachment, and highly visibleprotests everywhere,Trumps taken out his fiddle, since hes decided theres no stopping the flames.Afterhis divisive 4thof July speech, theanswer to Whose nation? comes across as mine,not yours.

The Washington PostviewshisMt. Rushmore addressas one of the most horrible speeches ever written, with Jennifer Rubincalling itthe worst Independence Day speech in American history andMax Boot describing it as by turns deranged and disingenuous.Rubinfurther suggests,When all a president has to offer is paranoiadirected at the hard-core cultists who buy into his blood-and-soil nationalism and his contempt for anything that sounds like social justice, you have to wonder if he even knows how to win the general election. This surely was not designed to win back voters he desperately needs in November.

It's not hard to agree with these characterizations of the President and his talking points, even if Rubin and Bootironically come acrossas partisan and hyperbolicasTrump. Still,if weconsiderthe Presidentsnarrowly definedtarget audience, its a very crafty speech, one that updates his inaugural address, taking into account the carnage that the country has suffered since Trump entered office.It has an odd, latent awareness to it, as if Trump wereadmitting his failure andasking his base for forgiveness, for a little more love along with all therequisitehate.

Nothing the President says everseemsuseful or productive. But the nature of presidential utterance is such thatwefind ourselves having to evaluatewhether theresa shred of reasonablenessin his claims.After his Mr. Rushmore speech, werein the difficult position of questioningwhethertheprotesting,monument destruction,and cancel culturethat hasfigured so prominently in the news isnowpart of an ongoingwave of destruction andupheavalthat hasextended to every corner ofAmericansociety.

Or is Trump just race-baiting again? Has the recent uptick in violence,dissent,andunrest become a permanent fixture or is this simply another opportunistic ploy by the President to increase division and keep his base activated?We know the American culture wars are real, but how realare theyand whoactuallybenefitsfrom them?

Ideas of race and class are inextricably linked in the United States.What might be termed class warfare in Englandis informed in America bythepoignantlegacy ofslavery;the Civil War (which historians have alwaysbeen at pains to pointout was not just about race butalsoabout the conflicting economic concerns of North and South and theircontrastingvalue systems);a perpetual struggle for civil rights;and, not surprisingly,a history of demonstrations and race riots.The U.S. is only about 244 years old, which is notveryold at all. Itspast is fresh, highlyrelevantto the present,and infused with violence.

Kellie Carter Jackson, in The Double Standard of the American Riot,describes such violence as an indispensable formof American political expression: Since the beginning of this country, riots and violent rhetoric have been markers of patriotism.When our Founding Fathers fought for independence, violence was the clarion call. Phrases such asLive free or die,Give me liberty or give me death,andRebellion to tyrants is obedience to Godechoed throughout the nation, and continue today.

But Jackson carefully points out that the language of violent political expression has always been spoken differentlyaccording totheskin colorof whos talking: Seminal moments in U.S. history that historians have defined as patriotic were also moments that denied patriotism to black people.If violence is a political language, white Americans are native speakers. But black people are also fluent in the act of resistance.

SoResistance may take shaperelative towhoAmericansare,totheirostensible race as well as theirsocialclass.Those trapped in poverty mayengage inpolitical violence and its rhetoricbecause itseems tofragmentthe architecture of misery keeping them in their place.Conversely, theupper classesmayremain relatively silent, havingenough resources to avoid theconflict.They can simplydepart todistant well-fortified propertiesor leave the country.If they choose to get involved,theycanalwaysdecide how much, where, and with whom they interact.

Butneither oftheseextremesappliesto the middle class, whichisforever worriedabout losing everything and entering poverty.At a time of vast unemployment due to COVID-19, the culture warshave exacerbated that worry, at least in those who dontunambiguously agree with theprogressive perspectivesdominatingcorporations andthe media.And this might be oneway to view Trumps rhetoric.Its not just about monuments or cancel culture or values under siege; its about the ever-present tensions integral to American society.In that sense, its about more than just his deplorable base.

Paul Fussell, inClass: A Guide Through the American Status System, calls it prole drift, the middle classpotentiallyslippingdownward in the Howard Johnsonization of America and theinsecurity thatcomes with it.Classis atediousbook,dated and unapologeticallyelitist,obsessed with the kind of trivia thataffordssmall diversions at otherwise dreadful cocktail parties. And itsprimarily a book written for and about white people, which wouldntcommend it to current literary journalism.However, the point it makes about prole drift appliesinterestinglyto the ongoing culture wars weaponizedbothby Trumpand his many opponentson the left.

Whena member ofthe middle class slips, when someonegets deplatformed, hashis or hercareer abruptly cancelled,or is otherwise dispensed with or silenced,theyreeasily identified as casualties of the culture wars.Depending on who we are, we can accept it as an example of prole drift, white privilege getting its due, or social justice.Depending on who we are, this might be good or it might be tragic.

So should we accept Trumps view that this is part of an insidious campaign to destroy Americanlife andculture? Bootsays no, calling it the excesses of a few progressive activists.Cancel culture, he writes, really exists, on both left and right, but it is not nearly the threat that Trump says it is.James Bennetand a variety of other high-profile journalists, entertainers, and managers might disagree. Itsa very bad time to be suddenlycancelled, which is to say,deprived of ones livelihood.

Boot glosses over the anxiety inherent in prole drift in favor of a No True Scotsman claim about white power: Only someone who binge-watches FoxNews,as Trump does, can imagine that violent hordes are marauding through U.S. citiesmost of the demonstrations occurred weeks ago, and they were overwhelmingly peacefulor that millions of political dissidents are being fired for disagreeing with anew far-left fascism.Whether or not Rubin and Boot are more accurate than Trump, its clear that at least a segment of Trumps audience(and perhaps moderates who have also come under fire)feel like they are at warand vulnerable to the slippage of prole drift.

In an incendiaryop-edforQuillette, Eric Kaufmannsuggests this createsan atmosphere where inter-personal trust is as low as humanly possible while discursive power flows to the accuser,implyingtwo competing, socially-constructed narratives.One is Trumps: our nation is under attack from cultural Marxists trying toerase its values and history.Anothercomes from the woke left, wherecritical race theoryssystemic racism, white power, and white fragility have come todefine everything in America.These narratives, like their adherents, seem irreconcilable.

Moderate political speech is an artifact of the past. Now theresonlyfear. Fear of prole drift. Fear of the other. Fear of history.Fear of authorityand those who might usurp it.But very little ofthe fearappears grounded in the lived reality of the majority seeking nothing more than the quiet enjoyment of their lives.IsTrumpjustrace-baiting?Yes, buthesalsoclass-baiting.This is easily missed but its critical for understanding how hes bookended his time as President.

If Trumps Mr. Rushmore speech is delusional and disingenuous, which seems to be the case,it neverthelessartfullyevokes emotions as potent and available as any of the other social constructionsinour atmosphere of inter-personal distrust and accusationand not just for the MAGA crowd. And the left, once again, has underestimated his capacity to strike the most culturally sensitive nerves.

With this in mind, though we may agree Trump is on his way out, we still have to look at his methods and ask, How real is cancel culture?In Trumps America, as in that of the woke left, its as realand as effectiveas any violent politicalexpression.Itsas real as we want it to be.And, like the coronavirus, it will wreak havocon all of usuntil we decide to rein it in.

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How Real Are the Culture Wars? - Splice Today