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I think Tennessee Williams accidentally wrote a love letter to the year 2020, says director Brenna Geffers of Williamss The Demolition Downtown, the short play shes staging outdoors at the Bas Relief in the towns center. Geffers, founder of the Philadelphia-based Die-Cast ensemble, has directed four festival productions over the years, including Pericles in 2017.

The Demolition Downtown is about a fascist takeover and the way many might sort of comfortably slide into that, Geffers says. David [Kaplan] chose the play before the pandemic. But its about a couple afraid to leave their house and talking about what food they have left in the freezer, so it became spooky and, after Jan. 6, it seemed even more relevant.

The rarely staged play was published in Esquire magazine in June 1971 as the escalating war in Vietnam divided the nation. As a companion piece, Kaplan directs an outdoor staging of Williamss dark satire The Municipal Abattoir, a short play that Williams worked on through the 1960s. It centers on a government clerk and a state-run slaughterhouse where good citizens, when summoned, go willingly to be killed.

In both plays, the audience has a voyeuristic experience, says Geffers. They are both funny pieces [about] a world that is absurd yet so familiar that we can do nothing else but laugh at it. Its too terrifying to do anything else.

Williamss plays and their popular screen adaptations were often censored, including his first produced play, Battle of Angels. In its pre-Broadway tryout in Boston in 1940, the Boston City Council took umbrage at the story of a charismatic drifter, Val Xavier, whose arrival upends a Mississippi Delta small town and exposes its racism and religious intolerance. According to the festival program, when Margaret Webster, the plays original director, returned to Boston to watch a performance of the censored version, she wrote that she found a castrated and largely incomprehensible edition of the play dying an inevitable death at the Wilbur Theatre.

Not just that, but a conflagration at the end of the play went so awry on opening night they almost burned down the entire theater. The first two rows of the audience had to flee, says Jessica Burr, founder and artistic director of the New York City ensemble Blessed Unrest, which will stage the Battle of Angels, sans pyrotechnics, at Provincetowns Town Hall.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Battle of Angels never made it to Broadway, although 17 years later a different version with a new title, Orpheus Descending, did open in New York. A third retelling was the 1960 film The Fugitive Kind, starring Williams mainstays Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani.

Burr sees contemporary parallels in the 1939-set Battle of Angels.

We generally think of community as a good thing but in this case theres a dangerous groupthink that can destroy the individual. Its also an impossible love story between people who refuse to compromise. They are surrounded by these terrified, frightened people who have to destroy it to keep the status quo.

Unlike the original production, Burrs Battle of Angels has a multiracial cast led by Michael Gene Jacobs, a Black actor. Burr says her research indicates that Williams likely wanted Val to be played by a Black man. But in 1940 Williams was 23 years old and a nobody. He could not tell the producers what to do.

Williams was obsessed with the Othello story, says Burr. He studied Shakespeare really closely and he studied his Greeks. [Battle of Angels] is a collision between these very Christian ideals of right and wrong and the Greeks sensibility. Before completing the play, Williams wrote a short story called Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor? Its a strange piece but it led directly into Battle of Angels, she says.

Audiences can see the connection for themselves as the festival will also present a staged reading of Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor? at Fishermen Hall. Adapted by Thomas Owen Mitchell, it is about a Black screenwriter who has a secret affair with a white movie goddess. Williams abandoned the project after writing 75 manuscript pages, likely because he realized that, in 1940, the subject matter would prevent it from being produced as either a play or a film.

PROVINCETOWN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS FESTIVAL

At various locations in Provincetown, Sept. 23-26. Schedule and ticket information at http://www.twptown.org

Originally posted here:
Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival returns to celebrate works that made the censors sweat - The Boston Globe

You probably saw all the photos of the weekends Met Gala, in which the elites attending the event showed their beautiful faces while the workers serving them were forced to wear masks.

Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal reported another similar two-tiered structure for the privileged and those who are beneath them. This one had to do with Facebook and its now-renowned censorship policies.

Simply explained: The underclass are muzzled while the elites speak (or type) freely.

From the WSJ report:

Mark Zuckerberg has publicly said Facebook Inc. allows its more than three billion users to speak on equal footing with the elites of politics, culture and journalism, and that its standards of behavior apply to everyone, no matter their status or fame.

In private, the company has built a system that has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules, according to company documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

The program, known as cross check or XCheck, was initially intended as a quality-control measure for actions taken against high-profile accounts, including celebrities, politicians and journalists. Today, it shields millions of VIP users from the companys normal enforcement process, the documents show. Some users are whitelistedrendered immune from enforcement actionswhile others are allowed to post rule-violating material pending Facebook employee reviews that often never come.

The XCheck policy literally says, Facebook routinely makes exceptions for powerful actors when enforcing content policy.

Reclaim the Net adds:

This is in marked contrast to how billions of deplorables are being treated on the platform, often falling victim to Facebooks inadequate to say the least automatic moderation, as well as deliberate censorship.

In seeking to illustrate how VIP users are abusing this privilege, the [Wall Street Journal] for some reason chose only examples harmful to one side of the political divide in the US, citing posts containing anti-Clinton, anti-Covid vaccination, etc., content, and even one from former President Trump that are viewed as harmful and would, in any case, be censored had they been posted by regular people.

Facebooks response to the article was that the policy is outdated.

Go here to see the original:
Facebook Censorship Limited to the Internet Underclass National Legal And Policy Center - National Legal and Policy Center

An unfortunate recent article by Aaron Gordon for Vice is titled, Walking Places Is Part of the Culture Wars Now. Its centered around a discussion of recent survey results from Pew Research, which appear to show that a majority of Americans prefer a neighborhood with larger homes and yards, but where driving is a must to get to schools, stores, and restaurants, versus a neighborhood where amenities are in walking distance, but the homes are smaller and closer together.

The survey also suggests that the strongest predictor of preferring an auto-oriented neighborhood (larger homes, farther apart) is not age, education, or even urban versus rural location, but rather political identification. Self-identified conservatives are more likely to favor the spread-out, auto-oriented community: 77% to 22%, versus 42% to 57% in favor of the walkable community for self-proclaimed liberals. Hence Gordons Culture Wars title and assertion.

The article is at points smug and condescending, not just toward conservatives but also toward the 42% of liberals whom one would think [are] most concerned about climate change, yet favor less walkable places. The piece and the widespread sharing of it are emblematic of an unfortunate trend I see in my social media circles of jumping on results like this to shore up ones political priors, instead of building bridges and figuring out how to make a better world that all kinds of communities will buy into.

But also, the factual premise of the Vice piece is just wrong. The truth is that surveys like this dont give us much accurate insight into the reasons people choose a home or a neighborhood, or how they might respond if presented with a different set of options. And that is good news for those of us who see an urgent need to change the prevailing auto-oriented pattern of developmentin all kinds of communities.

Image via Unsplash.

The kind of survey that Pew did here is fundamentally flawed, because it attempts to identify preferences in a vacuum, detached from the real-world contexts in which people develop and hold those preferences.

What are you buying when you buy a house (or rent one)? The answer is a bundle of housing and neighborhood attributes. These include the location, nearby amenities, and transportation options; the features of the home itself; the (perceived or real) quality of the school district; the local tax rate; the crime rate and your own subjective feelings of safety or comfort; and a community of people you might find like-minded and agreeable or otherwise.

You dont get to pick these characteristics la carte: they only come bundled. And its nearly impossible for a survey to neatly separate the pieces of that bundle for us, to the point where most respondents would make a dispassionate judgment about something like walkability separate from any other cultural, class, or lifestyle associations they carry in their minds.

The question of price also dramatically influences the relative appeal of different bundles. As Chuck Marohn memorably observes in Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution, If the government were willing to subsidize lobster to be cheaper than hamburger, Id continuously dine on lobster. More to the point, Id express a strong personal preference for lobster. The longer this subsidy went on, the more entitled my expectations for lobster would become.

Nearly every American alive today has only ever lived in a time when the suburban development pattern was deeply subsidized, while traditional urban fabric has been actively destroyed and disinvested in wherever it hasnt been regulated into scarcity. Its commonunder these conditions of subsidyfor people to casually express sentiments like, In suburbia, you can get more house for your money. Such a belief will absolutely influence a question about where you would live, given the choice.

Image via Unsplash.

Most people dont think deeply, if ever, about development pattern or urbanism or even about the possibility of other ways of getting around. And we simply dont know what we dont know. Many Americans have never experienced living in a walkable urban place. (Data point: I know multiple 30-somethings who have never learned to parallel park.) Even more have never experienced living in a rural place or small town. Most of us have at least some experience with auto-oriented suburbia, because of its inescapability, but we may not have lived in it for long stretches of our lives. Its hard for people who live and breathe urbanism to grasp, but most people, thus, will answer questions like Pews based on gut reactions or emotional associations, not firm opinions grounded in true experience of what its actually like to live in different kinds of places.

Most people do, however, like their own neighborhood. And most people also like the kind of place they grew up. They have fond associations with what is familiar to them.

That factfamiliarityis whats driving these results, and the reason you see them map to political alignment is that there is a divergence in what is familiar that increasingly tracks with partisanship. The prevailing geographic factor that explains partisan alignment is whether a location is urban versus rural. It used to be more about region: North vs. South in particular, with the Midwest playing a swing role. Now its population density. The cities and suburbs go blue, the exurbs and rural areas go red, with few exceptions.

Where there is partisan polarization, its not surprising to see a corresponding increase in polarization around the cultural signifiers of that dividethe things that make you think, These are my kind of people. But its a tall order to claim that cultural hostility to walking places is whats causing conservatives to live in low-density areas. The reality is much more complex and multi-factor. A survey that says that conservatives prefer spread-out environments might simply be reflecting the reality of more conservatives having grown up and lived in such environments.

But this doesnt really tell us, in a constraining sense, what kinds of places people actually would enjoy living, or could enjoy if their lives put them in a context where a different set of choices made sense.

Image via Unsplash.

Even if you do take this studys results at face value, its a stretch to interpret its major takeaway as, Most Americans dont want walkable places.

Most Americans, as I said, have only ever lived in a time in which the suburban development pattern was the subsidized, heavily incentivized, all but mandated default. More Americans than not grew up in single-use residential communities, where trips to work, school, shopping or dining out were almost always made by car.

Despite that, a whopping 39% of respondents to this survey across the board said they would rather live in a walkable neighborhood, even if their home and yard were smaller.

Think about that. What percent of Americans actually live in places where schools, stores, and restaurants are in comfortable walking distance? It is far, far less than 39%. Simply achieving 39% would be a dramatic transformation of this continent.

We could stop building single-family detached homes on large lots tomorrow, and wed still have enough to meet years of demand from the people who strongly prefer them. We could only build walkable infill, and it might still take decades to satisfy the 39% that say they want it.

And by the time we did, I suspect that 39% would have risen, because a lot more Americans would have experienced the option of living in a place where youre not tethered to a car. Maybe its arrogant or too affirming of my own biases to say so. But I dont think so.

Im basing that belief not just on the financial and regulatory deck stacked in favor of auto-centricity, but also on the fact that the actual walkable places that Americans today are most likely to experience have a remarkably unifying appeal. Liberals and conservatives alike have a great time living on college campuses; visiting not just Paris and Rome but also New Orleans and Savannah; hanging out at state fairs and in theme parks literally modeled on traditional Midwestern main streets.

The popularity (and high price tag) of New Urbanist communities that emulate traditional forms and attempt to resurrect the principles of traditional neighborhood development also transcends party or region. Many of these are in fact built in deep red areas, from the Florida Panhandle to Alabama to Oklahoma.

And, of course, the real deal traditional pattern of development that New Urbanism is copying can be found both on thousands of small-town main streets and in neighborhood commercial districts in big urban areas. It has an appeal that transcends political and other cultural divides. Those two kinds of places, I should add, have far more in common with each other than either has with a suburban subdivision or power center.

These may not be the places many of us think are being pushed on us when we hear people talk about urbanism or sustainability or, god forbid, density in a culture-war sense. (Many rural conservatives hear Everywhere should be Manhattan; too many liberal urbanists are eager to confirm the stereotype.)

But thats just the thing. Where Americans have experience with traditional development, they tend to respond positively. Where they dont, they fall back on cultural signifiers and familiar reference points.

The bottom line is if you want people to like a certain style of development or neighborhood, build it. Make it awesome. Show them that they love it. Thats the only way youre going to change minds.

And if youre a local policy maker, please just work to make it legal to do so.

See the rest here:
Walkability and the culture wars - Resilience

A new school year is underway in the United States, highlighted by dueling images of students heading to class in masks and angry parents debating whether those face coverings are necessary.

The latest fights over masks, but also critical race theory and transgender rights are raging in part because they touch on differing views of social values and what it means to be an American, experts say. Such disputes are also driven by a desire to win local victories and to change national narratives. Yet despite the long history of culture wars in U.S. education, the question of whether these wars are really winnable is one thats rarely asked, says Adam Laats, a historian at Binghamton University in New York who studies cultural battles in education. If there is a winner, he says, whoever that is will try and rally the troops under the threat of whatever it is next.

Schools have long been a battle ground for contentious societal ideas. But what does a win look like in todays polarized debates over masks, critical race theory, and gender identity?

In Williamson County, Tennessee, parent and activist Revida Rahman says a win would be coming together to do the work of addressing racism. This is a long process, she says.

Brett Craig, a parent in the same county and a Moms for Liberty volunteer, says,A win to me would be to live and let live. Thats the American bargain.

In a typical back-to-school season, markers and poster board might be on a classroom supply list. This year, theyre also hot items for protesters attending their local school board meetings.

Mask mandates, critical race theory, you name the issue and people want to speak out, says Heath Miller, a high school band directorin Tulsa, Oklahoma, who considers this the most stressful period of his 20 years teaching.

In recent weeks, individuals in Fort Lauderdale, Florida,lit masks on fire outside a school board meeting. Pro-mask protesters in Fort Worth, Texas, staged a mock funeral outside the school board presidents home in August.The critical race theory debate continues to burn after erupting last spring, withnew laws passed ineightstatesbanning teachers from covering divisive topics and multiple other states considering restrictive measures.Loudoun County, Virginia, saw contentious clashes over the districts expansion of transgender student rights.

Schools have long been a battle ground for contentious societal ideas. But what does a win look like in todays polarized debates over masks, critical race theory, and gender identity?

The latest fights are raging in part because they touch on differing views of social values and what it means to be an American, experts say, and are driven by desires to win local victories and to change national narratives. Yet despite the long history of culture wars in education in the United States, the question of whether these wars are really winnable is one thats rarely asked, says Adam Laats, a historian at Binghamton University in New York who studies cultural battles in education.

I think theres a bunch of seeming paradoxes when it comes to winnability, Dr. Laats says. If there is a winner, whoever the winner is will not claim it as a victory but instead try and rally the troops under the threat of whatever it is next.

Conflict over the idea of what America stands for often intensifies during periods of change, says Andrew Hartman, an Illinois State University professor of history who studies culture wars.

It does seem that were in another period of mass reflection on this larger question of what it means to be an American. This stems from the rapid changes in how we think about gender identity, certainly the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, he says. The current culture wars in schools, particularly with regards to race, critical race theory, sex education, and gender, are stemming from these changes that are taking place not just politically, but in peoples consciousness.

Demonstrators gather outside a Williamson County Schools school board meeting in Franklin, Tennessee, to show support for the district's diversity and equity initiatives on May 17, 2021. The event was organized by One WillCo, a racial equity group co-founded by Revida Rahman.

Polling shows some of the divides. In August, a survey by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 58% of American adults favor mask mandates for students attending K-12 schools in person, with about 30% of Republicans supporting mask mandates compared with about 80% of Democrats. (Support rose to 65% of Americans supporting mask mandates for students in an early Septemberpoll by USA Today/Ipsos; results were not broken down by political party.)

A Morning Consult-Politico survey in June found that less than a majority of Americans knew about critical race theory,a decades-old idea targeted by conservative activists that considers the ways race and racism influence American politics, culture, and law.Among those Americans who are aware of it, Republicans are more likely to view it unfavorably.

Cultural wars around education happen in part because of the role schools play in the parent-child relationship, says Dr. Hartman. By sending your kid to a public school youre conceding in part the raising of your kid to the state, at least in theory or principle. You can see why conflicts would develop over schools for that reason.

Disputes over education in America are as common as reading, writing, and arithmetic from the 1920s Scopes Monkey Trial that dealt with the teaching of evolution to the 1962 Engel v. Vitale Supreme Court case that ruled school prayer unconstitutional, to 1990s battles over proposed national history standards.

Long-term trends in culture wars tend to favor progressive causes, says Dr. Laats of Binghamton University. But conservatives can claim victory over the fact that education still follows a traditional format in most places and that local activists have succeeded at changing curricula, he says.

The sense I get is its more about exerting political influence and illustrating or demonstrating that your group is highly motivated on this issue and therefore a force to be reckoned with, rather than changing others minds, saysNeal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.

The system is working the way its supposed to, with local control of education and mechanisms to voice concerns through school board meetings and elections,says Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow who studies K-12 education at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-of-center think tank in Washington.Education is not above the fray, it is the fray, he says. It should surprise no one that in a diverse and divided country, people are going to bring those divisions to their schools in the forms of these heated debates.

Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/AP

Deputies remove Chris Mink from an emergency meeting of the School Board for Seminole County Public Schools in Sanford, Florida, Sept. 2, 2021. Mr. Mink, the parent of a Bear Lake Elementary School student, opposes a call for mask mandates and was escorted out for shouting.

When Revida Rahman attends school board meetings in Williamson County, Tennessee, shes on the side with people holding posters reading Racism hurts us all. Brett Craig typically sits with people holding up signs like My Child. My Choice.

Both local parents say theyre turning out to urge school leaders to do whats best for kids, but they differ in their ideas about what it means to win.

Winning for us isnt like a football game win, where you make the play and its over. This is a long process, says Ms. Rahman, co-founder of One WillCo, a group that advocates for racial equity in schools.

A win to me would be to live and let live. Thats the American bargain. Youre free to have absolute convictions about whatever you want, but youre not free to impose convictions on me, says Mr. Craig, a public relations volunteer with the local chapter of the conservative group Moms for Liberty. He favors parent choice on masks and removing curricula he sees as politically motivated.

A recent NBC News analysis of school districts where disputes are flaring over critical race theory found that many of the districts are in locations where demographics are diversifying. In Loudoun County, Virginia, the share of students of color in the average white students school has increased by 29.5 percentage points since 1994, above the overall national rise of 11.2 percentage points.

Patti Hidalgo Menders, president of the Loudoun County Republican Womens Club and mother of a high school junior, pushes back on the implication that disputes stem from changing demographics. Shes a daughter of immigrants from Cuba, and she says her parents taught her to assimilate and be proud Americans.

Ms. Mendersorganized recent Education, Not Indoctrination rallies and is involved with an effort to recall six members of the Loudoun County school board. Among other things, shes upset the district has limited what she calls the freedoms of parents and students, such as choices around masks and vaccinations. She feels like her side has not won anything.

Many grassroots activists hope they will win policies advancing their causes, at least on the local level, by attending school board meetings and organizing to elect school board members that represent their values, says Dr. Hartman, the education historian. Some politicians, lobbyists, and members of the media intentionally stir up cultural battles to gain votes, fundraising, or ratings, he says.

Some people profit and benefit and enjoy fighting these culture wars and some see it as more existential and think they can win, says Dr. Hartman.

Ms. Rahman in Tennessee started working to improve her childrens schools after she and her husband chaperoned their sons on field trips to a plantation about five years ago and were dismayed by the lack of information about slavery and the lack of compassion shown by others on the trip.

They were showing empathy for the 12-, 13-year-old [Confederate] soldiers who were fighting, but the same empathy wasnt shown to the slaves that were on the plantation, says Ms. Rahman, who identifies as Black. Ms. Rahman says her two sons and their classmates of color continue to face incidents such as white children using racial slurs on the school bus.

She and other parents went to the district with their concerns and have succeeded in some of their goals, such as having the district start a cultural competency council. She views the latest disputes in Williamson County as less about culture wars and more about long-standing racism in America. She thinks it would be a win for people to continue the reckoning with racism that was started after the death of George Floyd rather than everyone retreating to their corners, as shes seeing now.

Ms. Menders is also trying to get people to come together. She recently gathered friends and acquaintances from a range of political and racial backgrounds to discuss their different positions.

I would love to have more dialogue like that, she says, even though one person in the group decided they didnt want to participate in the future. Our goal was to help each other understand the other peoples point of view.

More:
Can there be a winner in the school culture wars? - The Christian Science Monitor

Populism is never quite as popular as it looks. Or at least, people can only take so much of it before needing a break.

Thats one lesson to draw from the slow-motion car crash of GB News, which had lost much of its audience long before losing its star presenter, Andrew Neil. Being angry round the clock is exhausting, to the point where even the most committed cultural warrior sometimes just wants to relax with a nice episode of Countdown. GB News seemingly failed to recognise that in time. But the Conservative party, judging by the last few weeks, is more alert to the problem.

Remember Chesham and Amersham that brief flicker of hope for progressives back in June, after the Tories lost the byelection to the Liberal Democrats right in their Buckinghamshire heartlands? All the talk of a liberal-left alliance smashing through a blue wall of seats where soft Tory voters had started to feel taken for granted seems a long time ago now. Boris Johnson, however, hasnt forgotten. The Lib Dems are at best stagnating in national polling. But they remain a potential threat to him in relatively prosperous commuter towns whose resident Tories voted remain, dont like picking fights with Marcus Rashford over free school meals, and worry that culture wars are making their party look toxic.

This breed of Tory wouldnt take the knee but rather warmed to Gareth Southgate, especially when England started winning. They grumble about the BBC or political correctness gone mad but theyre not on Twitter (too shouty), they diligently wear their masks in Waitrose, and theyre at least trying to understand why their teenage children think theyre wrong about everything.

On holiday in Cornwall they always buy something from the RNLI shop to support those volunteer crews going out in all weathers, so whatever their views on immigration they thought Nigel Farage was wrong to attack lifeboat crews for rescuing drowning refugees from the Channel.

Their views on the big issues can seem hopelessly inconsistent, even incoherent by standard party measures. They want more money for public services but not the tax rises to pay for it; they worry about their children being unable to get on the property ladder but ferociously resist housebuilding in their own backyards; and they combine surprisingly radical views on some social issues (recent polling shows older people are just as worried as Generation Z about the climate crisis) with conservative views on others. But, over the summer, Downing Street has been fine-tuning its approach towards what are sometimes described as cross-pressured voters, hard to pigeonhole ideologically. And this reshuffle was, at least in part, about delivering for them.

On education, Tory voters biggest worry now is their children and grandchildren missing school again because of Covid; fighting about cancel culture in universities can wait. So Gavin Williamsons replacement as education secretary isnt Kemi Badenoch, the pugnacious equalities minister heavily backed by Downing Streets culture-warrior faction, but Nadhim Zahawi, the former vaccines minister, with a soothing radio manner and reputation for getting things done.

Even the new culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, is a more complex proposition than her views on tearing down statues (which she doesnt like) and bashing the BBC (which she does) suggest. She made unexpected friends in her old Department of Health job by focusing on neglected womens health issues, including menopause. Now she must deal with the planned privatisation of Channel 4, which, instead of delighting the kind of Tory who hates the news presenter Jon Snow, seems to be alarming the kind who loves Kirstie Allsopp, the Location Location Location presenter campaigning vigorously to save the channel. (Three-quarters of Tory voters oppose privatisation, according to a survey commissioned by Channel 4, with many worrying about it falling into foreign hands.) Dorriess predecessor, Oliver Dowden, in turn, becomes chief fixer at the Cabinet Office, with a brief not to pick fights but to make them go away.

Meanwhile, its out with the unsubtle Robert Jenrick, whose plans for a housebuilding free-for-all were just what No 10 thought it wanted (and certainly what frustrated would-be first-time buyers did) until it cost the Tories council seats in Surrey, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Michael Gove, who represents a Surrey seat, is now charged with finding some magic compromise that unites all these conflicting desires.

Its not by any stretch of the imagination a shift back to the centre not with Priti Patel still occupying the Home Office and its barely any clearer what the prime minister actually wants to do with his huge majority, except not lose it. This cabinet is ideologically difficult to read, a mishmash of those personally loyal to Johnson and those who know which side their bread is buttered on. But in that, it may mirror its target voters surprisingly closely.

The Conservative party exists to mutate and evolve, to be both intensely ideological and intensely pragmatic depending on what the situation requires, and shameless about ditching anything that isnt working. What Boris Johnson does unusually successfully and Keir Starmer does not unfortunately for everyone concerned, given its a good strategy for campaigning and a rotten one for governing in situations where real lives are at stake is focus on two or three things that stick in ordinary voters heads enough to blind them to the surrounding mess. More money for the NHS; vaccines will save us; life in commuter-belt England will continue much as it always has. The glaring inconsistencies in all this will start catching up with them eventually, which is why most Tory MPs now expect an early election. But for now, the left shouldnt underestimate how quickly the battleground is shifting beneath its feet.

See the rest here:
Johnson is reshuffling away from culture wars to firm up the commuter belt - The Guardian