- Victor C. Bolles
Chaos in the Culture Wars
The midterm elections of 2022 are shaping up into a mindboggling chaotic war between various factions that leaves most voters anxious and confused. Not only are the MAGA Republicans waging a cultural war with woke Democrats, the MAGA Republicans and the woke Democrats are also waging a war for control of their respective parties naming people with differing opinions as traitors (or even worse - race traitors) and purging those lacking ideological purity or cult-like loyalty. Meanwhile both groups are attacking American democratic institutions that stand in the way of the ideological purity they strive to achieve. Between the Proud Boys, Jane’s Revenge, Oath Keepers and antifa it is no wonder the culture wars are a mess. The majority of the American people, who just want to live their lives in peace and take care of their families, are the pawns to be sacrificed in these great cultural wars.
It is difficult to understand what is going on because there are so many different levels of conflict. Within the Republican party, Trump’s MAGA Republicans are accusing moderates of being RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) when, in fact, they are the ones that are RINOs. Loyalty to der Fuhrer, I mean Donald Trump, was never a part of the Republican platform in the past. Long-time Republicans like Senator John Cornyn are booed at the Texas Republican Convention because he is trying to work with Democrats to produce a reasonable reform to gun laws, a compromise that is being demanded by the American people.
Far right extremists attacked Congressman Dan Crenshaw and his staff at the same convention shouting Tucker Carlson’s epithet of “eyepatch McCain” because of Crenshaw’s war wound that took his eye, for having the temerity to have an opinion other than the one favored by Carlson who the attackers echoed unthinkingly. As if, longtime Republican Senator and war-hero McCain was somehow now worthy of the contempt of lesser folk.
If the Republican Party of Trump cannot accommodate a steadfast Republican like Cornyn, and true heroes like McCain and Crenshaw, then it is no longer the Republican Party. The Proud Boys would probably call Abraham Lincoln, who emancipated black slaves, and Ulysses S. Grant, who led the push for Reconstruction after the Civil War, traitors as well. Trump Republicans are an embarrassment.
The woke Democrats are little better. The Squad, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and five other far-left progressives, are the most prominent and vocal proponents of the woke agenda but the House Progressive Caucus is made up of 100 members of the Democratic Party. And they have little tolerance for Democrats who hold more moderate positions. Despite a razor thin majority, they insist on passing a far-left progressive agenda that includes all of President Biden’s proposals plus a few more dreamed up by Nancy Pelosi, such as the For the People Act, a voting “reform” that is intended to entrench the Democrats in power for the foreseeable future.
Progressive protestors have kayaked around moderate Senator Joe Manchin’s houseboat on the Potomac because he opposed trillions of dollars of excessive spending, and accosted fellow moderate Kirsten Sinema in the Ladies’ bathroom for not voting to end the filibuster. The Justice Democrats, who backed AOC, are now pushing progressive challengers to moderate Democrat incumbents. Nearly 30 moderate Democratic incumbents are retiring ahead of the 2022 elections with at least one stating that Democratic leadership is beating moderates into submission.
These internecine bloodbaths are just a prelude to the coming attack on America and its long-standing institutions. Whether the attack is from the left or the right (or more likely both), these radicals want to uproot the foundations of American greatness; limited government, checks and balances, the rule of law, economic freedom and personal liberty. These founding principles are what kept America steady as it sailed through the troubled waters of civil war, depression and two world wars. We abandon these principles only at great peril.
In addition to fighting ideological impurity within the ranks of their nominal political parties, the MAGA Republicans and the woke Democrats are also waging a cultural war for the soul of America. But they are waging very different wars with very different strategies. Trump’s MAGA Republicans want to clean out the swamp, purge the elements of the deep state from government, and enfeeble democratic institutions to empower a Trump dynasty that will make America great again, at least to Mr. Trump’s idea of what greatness is. The January 6th attack on the Capitol is a clear indication of the contempt they have for America’s democratic institutions and traditions.
Democrats want to infiltrate government and democratic institutions (in essence become the deep state) and to redirect the goals of such institutions toward their woke socialist ideology. Implementation of this strategy began decades ago. The movement began with the break-up of the Students for a Democratic Society not long after the riots of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, with the radicals gravitating toward the Weathermen terrorist organization and the intellectuals gravitating back to academia to become graduate assistants, associate professors and ultimately tenured professors that not only embraced Marxism, Critical Race Theory and the other elements of the progressive left, but indoctrinated their students and shifted their institutions to this philosophy. There it festered and grew almost unnoticed by most of America. Now woke ideology and anti-racist training is taking over the American Bar Association, various medical and psychiatric associations including the American Medical Association, the Human Resource departments of many public companies (see the ads for SHRM on TV) and even the training of our future military officers at West Point.
Neither the MAGA Republicans nor the woke progressive left represent the view of the majority of American citizens. They are the revolutionary vanguard of a new order. They are the Bolsheviks of the 21st century. They are the storm troopers of the new order. And they want to lead America back to the politics of the first half of the twentieth century that resulted in two devastating world wars, wars based on ideology and great power politics.
We must keep in mind the fact that at the time of the Russian Revolution there were only about 30,000 Bolsheviks. But that small core of radicals was able to take over a country of about 125 million people. And also keep in mind the fact that the Nazi party had only about 20 thousand members (in a country of around 60 million people) at the time of the Beer Hall Putsch. Do not sneer at the relatively small numbers of fanatical Maga Republicans and radical woke Democrats. These are the revolutionary vanguards that hope to subject the entire country to their un-American ideologies. And they have more in common with each other than they do with the majority of the American people. They are both driven by raw emotion and adhere to unproven and unprovable theories and ideologies that lack any empirical support and cannot stand up to reasoned debate. Thus, their reversion to violence.
And don’t be fooled into believing that their current political infighting will stall their efforts to take over the country. You must know your history to remember the Night of the Long Knives when Hitler purged the Nazi party of Ernst Rohm and his SA stormtroopers in 1934. And Stalin’s purges of the “Old Bolsheviks” and others from the Communist Party beginning in 1937 that resulted in seven hundred thousand deaths.
We do not want to relive the 1930s. It was not a good time and it led to even worse times. People around the world are turning their backs on democracy and the United States is not immune. We cannot allow the radicals and extremists to define what patriotism means or what America stands for.
