"Happy Holidays." Those are fighting words.
The war is over the place of Christianity in America.
Is it the default, regular, real American holiday tradition, or is it one of many in a diverse America?
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| Hallmark sentiment. Cultural nostalgia |
Fox says "Merry Christmas, heck yeah."
Democrats are the "Happy Holidays" Party.
Democrats are the "Happy Holidays" Party.
The modern Democratic Party is a coalition of led by cultural sophisticates. Ivy League types.
The coalition pulls together liberal educated professionals; urban dwellers; college towns; working people who find appealing the Democratic message on health care, education, and minimum wage; reproduction rights advocates; plus racial and religious minorities of various kinds.
The leadership of this coalition is not anti-elite; they are elite themselves and have wealthy friends and donors. They are urbane and tolerant. They understand racism and prejudice to be immoral. The Obama-Clinton-Democratic Party coalition includes Christians, Jews, agnostics, atheists, Muslims. It is built around respect for diversity.
They are OK with saying "Happy Holidays." Why not?
The coalition pulls together liberal educated professionals; urban dwellers; college towns; working people who find appealing the Democratic message on health care, education, and minimum wage; reproduction rights advocates; plus racial and religious minorities of various kinds.
The leadership of this coalition is not anti-elite; they are elite themselves and have wealthy friends and donors. They are urbane and tolerant. They understand racism and prejudice to be immoral. The Obama-Clinton-Democratic Party coalition includes Christians, Jews, agnostics, atheists, Muslims. It is built around respect for diversity.
They are OK with saying "Happy Holidays." Why not?
Bernie Sanders is attempting to construct a different coalition, one that unifies working people against the financial elites, but it does not attack those urbane elites for their acceptance of diversity, only for their economic hegemony. Left populism in America has traditionally included nativist, racist, and anti-semitic elements, but left populism today cannot be the party of Jeremy Corbyn of Britain with overt anti-Semitism, nor the party of southern populists like George Wallace. Democrats, however the Democratic primary shakes out, are committed, morally and politically, to be the diversity-tolerance party.
The GOP and Trump are the current voice of nativism and pushback against that diversity. It brings them working class votes from people who value cultural issues over economic ones.
Tucker Carlson on Fox expresses the grievance of "Happy Holidays." Diversity is not passive live-and-let-live. He says liberals despise Christians. He calls it an assault, motivated by hate.
"If you are wondering why so many Christians are willing to support this president, despite his personal life, this is why: because whatever his flaws he has made it clear he is not the enemy of Christians. In fact, under certain circumstances, he will protect Christians. For people whose values are under assault every day by powerful forces in America, and that’s not overstating it, and if you are one of them, you know that means everything.
The left presumes the right to lecture the people it despises for the sin of not voting for them. This may shock some Democrats but most Christians don’t feel they have a duty to be destroyed by people who hate them."
The battle is over the identity of Americans. It is about primacy and who is on top. The first Commandment, from Exodus: "I am Yehweh, your God. Thou shall have no other gods before me. I am a jealous God."
Happy Holidays implies there is no place for jealousy in modern diverse America.
Cultural conservatives say that Christianity and the cultural traditions of Christmas, in all its Hallmark Card and movie sentimental associations, are the real America. It is at risk of being diluted or turned into just another holiday, and traditional Christmas is American cultural unity.
Democrats consider cultural unity to consist of our acceptance of diversity. We are unified by tolerance and respect, not by singularity. Can't we all get along?
I don't consider this to be a war, but there is political advantage to Trump and Fox and the GOP to calling it such. Nothing unifies like having an enemy.
Change is happening. Young people are far more familiar with diversity than are their parents and grandparents. Young people are more likely to say they are agnostic or atheist. Young people are much more likely to disapprove of Trump. They don't vote in large numbers, but as they get older, they most likely will.
Meanwhile, a Lifetime Network Christmas movie had an interracial couple. Change.
The GOP and Trump are the current voice of nativism and pushback against that diversity. It brings them working class votes from people who value cultural issues over economic ones.
Tucker Carlson on Fox expresses the grievance of "Happy Holidays." Diversity is not passive live-and-let-live. He says liberals despise Christians. He calls it an assault, motivated by hate.
"If you are wondering why so many Christians are willing to support this president, despite his personal life, this is why: because whatever his flaws he has made it clear he is not the enemy of Christians. In fact, under certain circumstances, he will protect Christians. For people whose values are under assault every day by powerful forces in America, and that’s not overstating it, and if you are one of them, you know that means everything.The left presumes the right to lecture the people it despises for the sin of not voting for them. This may shock some Democrats but most Christians don’t feel they have a duty to be destroyed by people who hate them."
The battle is over the identity of Americans. It is about primacy and who is on top. The first Commandment, from Exodus: "I am Yehweh, your God. Thou shall have no other gods before me. I am a jealous God."
Happy Holidays implies there is no place for jealousy in modern diverse America.
Cultural conservatives say that Christianity and the cultural traditions of Christmas, in all its Hallmark Card and movie sentimental associations, are the real America. It is at risk of being diluted or turned into just another holiday, and traditional Christmas is American cultural unity.
Democrats consider cultural unity to consist of our acceptance of diversity. We are unified by tolerance and respect, not by singularity. Can't we all get along?
I don't consider this to be a war, but there is political advantage to Trump and Fox and the GOP to calling it such. Nothing unifies like having an enemy.
Change is happening. Young people are far more familiar with diversity than are their parents and grandparents. Young people are more likely to say they are agnostic or atheist. Young people are much more likely to disapprove of Trump. They don't vote in large numbers, but as they get older, they most likely will.
Meanwhile, a Lifetime Network Christmas movie had an interracial couple. Change.
4 comments:
You may not know that the "war" was started in the '50s by the John Birch Society as an anti-communist trope and percolated in American society all through the Cold War. It gained traction in the '90s on right wing radio, and more recently got a big boost from O'Reilly and FOX. It's also associated with anti-Semitism, though that part is downplayed at present.
Most secularists could care less and educated people understand the holiday as a complicated mix of myth, tradition and marketing that has overtaking Western economies to the extent that the gift-giving, celebrations, and associated media is vital to maintaining GDP. In my childhood "Christmas" started around the first week in December. Now you start to see signs as early as the essentially Pagan holiday of Halloween, an indication of the growing necessity of the consumerist aspect, something most people find annoying.
At any rate, as wars go it's pretty one-sided, like those going on in most Regressive minds.
ENTERED BY PETER SAGE, ON BEHALF OF AN ELDERLY, WHITE MALE READER;
..... responding in detail to today's "Up Close"....
..... reconsidered ......
...... grand American experiment founded by white Christian heterosexual men .....
..... "Merry Christmas" entirely appropriate in a nation whose embrace of all ethnicities and faiths is too well established to brook any cavils from a newly-minted bunch of narrow-minded scolds intent on writing their own versions of this country's majestic history.
Ayla has left a new comment on your post "War on Christmas":
ENTERED ON BEHALF OF 'AYLA' BY PETER SAGE. COMMENTGS APPEAR NOT TO BE POSTED, EVEN WHEN APPROVED.
The 'tolerance and diversity' crowd is currently trying to 'cancel' JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, on Twitter. Rowling supports trans people living their best life in peace and security, but doesn't believe humans can actually change sex. Heresy!
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2019/12/19/jk-rowling-spoke-out-in-defense-of-maya-forstater-and-the-truth-heres-how-twitter-responded/
You ask 'Can't we all get along?' The evidence seems to indicate 'No.' Liberals 'acceptance of diversity' only extends to people who believe everything they believe, 100%. Those people who disagree with liberal orthodoxy must be rolled over and buried.
Get ready for "moderate" and "centrist" liberals and their media to vilify Sanders (who is Jewish) as anti-Semitic, simply because he supports a two state solution.
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