How to curb the culture war

Our politicians, like so many other professionals, have let the spirit of some other endeavour distract them from their proper work. But what is that endeavour? Whose job is everyone doing instead of their own?

The answer is no one’s. What we’re witnessing is the crossing of boundaries between distinct spheres of action yielding a new mode of action that really has no proper place. The brew of culture-war animosities that increasingly dominates many arenas of American life is a mix of entertainment and politics that combines the worst of both. It is a chimerical ethos of performative conflict.

In biology, a chimera is an organism that contains a mixture of different species, formed by fusing genes or tissues. But the term has its roots in Greek mythology, where it describes a fire-breathing monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent. The ethos of our culture war is such a monstrous creature born of an unholy fusion—it’s not just out of its proper context, it is a wicked blend of attitudes that has no proper context…

The same is true in reverse: People whose energy would have once been focused on the most important issues of the day now comport themselves as though they are engaged in pro wrestling. The spirit of our political culture and the spirit of a perversely confrontational entertainment culture have become blended. And the resulting mixture—which is perfectly adapted to dissolve all boundaries—has permeated every realm of our common life and begun displacing the particular character and mode of integrity of nearly every major institution. In the absence of distinct vocabularies for distinct parts of our lives and our society—different professions, institutions, circumstances, and times—we are left with an overarching vocabulary of conflict, and end up playing out that conflict in every realm of our experience.