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Let’s be clear about what this bill is and isn’t.
What it is is an outgrowth of blue tribe hysteria which is not sufficiently well founded to justify taking actions which generate any externalities, let alone ones as major as it is generating, and with externalities that ‘don’t count’ because they rest on red tribe adjacent groups. Yes, this is a pattern with blue tribers, and they should cut it out. Yes, it makes it very difficult to share political power with them and this propensity to hysteria is a legitimate cause for concern to those who dwell in a democracy with large numbers of blue tribers.
No, this is not an attempt to go after red tribers or red tribe adjacent groups like conservative Christians. This is an outgrowth of hysteria that’s pretty clearly precipitated by the Youngkin policy that schools can’t treat kids as trans without telling the parents. Having the parents involved at all is pretty clearly plan b; the preference is to trans kids without their parents knowing(and this legislation is probably aimed at light blue tribers in wealthy suburbs, not red tribers). Will it have terrible externalities if it passes(which I doubt)? Probably. But they won’t be only or even mostly on the heads of red tribers or red tribe adjacent groups, and they won’t be aimed that way either.
I highly doubt this. Given the fervent hatred of conservatives I see espoused by educators, and to a lesser degree bureaucrats, even in deep red counties, it is beyond any doubt in my mind they will target the children of conservatives. If not exclusively, then disproportionately. Anything to hurt the enemy, and snuff out their line forever more. The rhetoric coming out of even mainstream Democrats is increasingly that The Republican Party is "the party of treason", and conservative voters are not a legitimate constituency. The raucous celebration by the left when the last census showed white people/conservatives are becoming a demographic minority much faster than anticipated, and specifically celebrating the death of older white people hastening this transformation told me everything I need to know.
They hate me, they want my children sterilized, and they want me dead. They say so, openly, repeatedly. I don't know why I wouldn't expect them to act on these openly expressed beliefs.
I invite my fellow academics to backyard barbecues with my (self-proclaimed) gun nut Red Tribe neighbours regularly. They don't hate each other and neither side wants the other dead. If you think the majority of normal Blue Tribe Americans want you (as a stand in for the Red Tribe) dead, I think you are entirely incorrect. I am a part time academic who works in a very Blue city and lives in a very Red rural town.
If they did they wouldn't turn up at bbqs and make polite small talk while passing the potato salad with each other. Do not confuse signals boosted by the Toxoplasma of Rage for the views of the majority of ordinary Americans.
If they hated you, if they wanted you dead, then they would be taking direct actual concrete steps towards doing so. Small Red towns like my own would have a rash of car bombings and the like. It's not as if it is difficult to find Red Tribers. Trans issues overwhelmingly affect Blue tribe kids not Red Tribe ones for instance.
Humans can be ugly and people often indulge in schadenfreude when people they disagree with suffer yes. But that isn't the same thing as actively wanting them dead. People often say things they do not mean and do not act on. That's why the saying is "actions speak louder than words". If Arugula eating Prius driving death squads start rolling out into my town then your rhetoric may match reality. But you're not even at Troubles level hate let alone that.
Maybe it's an American thing. You have been the greatest at almost everything for so long that you think you are at hating your own countrymen. When to an outsider you're barely at lukewarm dislike at a population level. You're not even kneecapping people who marry across tribes let alone killing them! You're not even in the hatred game, let alone pros.
If this is what you think of as hate, then you are very lucky. You're pretty much just LARPing as far as I can tell. Performative hate is not real hate. It's what you do when you don't actually have someone to hate properly. You're the greatest most powerful nation on earth. No-one can challenge you. No-one is a real threat. You can neuter one of your biggest historical enemies by throwing a few dollars at a proxy and watch as they learn all over again that you can buy their humiliation with your pocket change, like Yeltsin in an American supermarket.
Like supporters of a football club whose deadly rivals are now three divisions below you, you have to turn that emotion somewhere. But it isn't real. It's a mirage. You're fighting over whether you would win the league by more points if you bought a new goalkeeper or subbed on that teen prodigy for more of the game. Blowing up tiny irrelevancies into fights so you can at least get a scrap in after the match. Your culture war is entertainment. You can root for your side against the other, wear the flag and the shirt and the hat. You yell and scream and jeer like Eagles fans at the Cowboys. Yet you're not even pelting Santa Claus with bottles!
You're not Eagles fans or Millwall fans, you're the country equivalent of Manchester United in the Ferguson era. The only enemy strong enough to be a challenge are yourselves. Fighting over whether you eat prawn sandwiches or a pie. The question is whether Man City or Liverpool will rebound enough for you to have to turn your gaze outward again.
Your internal hatred is but a pale shadow of what it used to be. Barely even worth the name in my opinion. If this is your nations hatred, then everything is going to be just fine. You're just not good at it. You're far too hopeful as a nation. It's one of your most endearing qualities as a foreigner. I've seen real population level hate. I've seen it in Northern Ireland and I've seen it in the Balkans and I've seen it in Rwanda. But not here. And hopefully I never will.
I've been in the room with professors after they were forced to interact with filthy hick townies, and heard what they're comfortable saying about them to students. You seem to be under this weird impression everyone is just imagining this stuff.
And my experience is different.
I am not saying your experiences do not exist. I am saying that at a population level they are not representative of most Blue Tribe Americans. We can tell this because if there was the virulent hatred then they would not be tweaking laws on trans issues and so on. You wouldn't be in a culture war, you would be in a civil war.
I am saying these things you mistake for hatred are pale imitations compared to actual population level hatred. It is by and large performative.
Tweaking laws on trans issues is one of the intermediate steps to a civil war. Civil war arrives when the intermediate steps are exhausted. Attempting to weaponize CPS is not one of the earlier steps. By the time the level of evidence you're demanding arrives, it will be too late for everyone involved.
I entirely disagree. otherwise you have been on a route to a new civil war since the last one. If Northern Ireland can step back from the Troubles the US at a much much lower stage can and probably will. What it means to be Democrat and Republican has changed, and indeed almost entirely flipped previously. Switches to political coalitions are easy compared to religious division. White rural working class used to be a Democratic demographic, now that has changed. Coalitions rise and fall and the parties will change with them.
If I'm understanding you correctly, you think the culture war will resolve itself as people organically change their opinions and values?
Well people (in general) do change their values under social pressure, that is one of our most stable social technologies. But I am more talking about representation, consider the Conservatives in the UK. They won a bunch of non traditional seats in Labour strongholds due to Brexit. The influx of MPs representing those people (very similar to the working class inversion in the US) means that there is now a faction of MPs who don't want to lose their seats representing them. That faction is part of the reasons for the Conservatives budget climbdown recently. Voters in Stoke may have voted Conservative but that doesn't mean they suddenly became fiscal conservatives.
The Democrats have to change what they can accomplish based on what they can persuade Joe Manchin to vote for. The Republicans similarly for Sinema. And that is because of the people they represent.
When the UK government backtracked on its initial fairly lukewarm response to Covid to introduce lockdowns it was because MPs were under pressure from constituents to Do Something. The people in my experience are much more the drivers for "elite" decisions than I think even they realize.
Wokeness started as a backlash against cultural hegemony that had a number of groups considered as outcasts. When those groups got large and numerous enough they were able to form a coalition. The opposite will happen when people consider wokeness to be too oppressive. It's a see-saw that never stops moving. I think we can see some early signs of that. There will be a lag as things coalesce and as groups on the "outside" have to find and develop new alliances and get large enough to tip the scales once more. When that happens politicians will go with the current.
Which is not to say each tip doesn't leave some lasting changes. It usually does. Nothing can ever go back to the exact way it was before.
Edit: To clarify a bit, we will never be free of the culture war itself I don't think. It's an intrinsic part of human desire to form groups and then impose our values on those groups. But which side is winning, or what side represents what, is malleable and will change over time. It is an infinite war that cannot be won, but luckily it isn't an actual war.
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