Cultural Warfare between the Two American Nations
Since 2016 I’ve been devoting my posts to articulating the way that America is increasingly becoming two nations, a traditional one on the right, and a progressive one on the left. I’d been writing about this theme since 2009, but in 2016 populism animated our political discourse as Trump mounted his presidential campaign from the right, and Sanders his from the left. So this year I thought I would begin to explain how populism drives the social base of the Republican and Democratic parties and deepens the two nation divide.
My project has also to been to show the centrality of opposing values about race in defining the two American nations.[1] But there are more issues than race defining that divide: women’s rights, gender identity, gun control, deepening economic inequality (houselessness, affordable housing, immigration policy) just to start the list!
I’ll have occasion to allude to many of these issues over time, but today I want to pitch the issue of national identity and specific policy issues in the context of an overarching political strategy. That is the struggle for “hegemony,” or “intellectual and moral leadership” in civil society.[2] The struggle to command the intellectual and moral high ground in America today is intense enough that it has long been called the culture wars. As he was languishing in Mussolini’s prison the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci analyzed the failure of the Italian workers’ movements in similar terms. He characterized the struggle for that moral high ground as a “war of position.” For his day that meant the contestation over what public policy direction best suited an Italy with very new democratic institutions and the attendant civil liberties like free speech and a free press.
The war of position was the debate, the contestation in all of those institutional “sites” of civil society (workplaces, churches, schools, civic and social service associations and even families and the public houses where principally men gathered for drinks after work). “Positionality,” or the moral high ground was determined by which side’s viewpoint held sway at each site.
The contemporary battle between the two American nations, likewise, is fought daily in the same range of social settings. The MAGA base of the Traditional-Republican nation chose “anti-wokeness” as the terrain upon which to contest the war for institutional position. Systemic racism and LGBTQI RIGHTS have fueled their assault. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has led the charge in March signing a “Don’t Say Gay law “that bans public schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade.”
A month later DeSantis signed the “Stop Woke Act.” This law prohibits gender-affirming support for trans/queer students. virtually halts diversity, equity and inclusion training in public agencies and any training involving the theme of structural or systemic racism. The legislation also permits the banning of books on those topics in public libraries.[3]
But the progressive American nation is pushing back! A host of social movements have united against Desantis, filing lawsuits, as activists protested on the steps of the statehouse and students walked out of school across the state.[4] Thus, in Florida and the rest of the country we have already been and continue to be in the midst of a long-term war of position with two nations, traditionalist and progressive in open confrontation.
The traditionalist side is clearly dominated by right-wing MAGA populists. The progressive side, though comprised of legions of moderately liberal folks, is vitalized by the populist left.
As the Latin Americans fighting Yankee imperialism used to say “la lucha continua” (the struggle continues). And so will this line of analysis linking the war of position to populism and American national identity.
[2] Hoare, Q., & Smith, G.N. (Eds.). (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Antonio Gramsci). New York: International Publishers
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