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What does the light at the end of the tunnel look like?
Look, every now and then I stop watching my footfalls and get pensive. And one of the things I've gotten pensive about the past few days is this: the Western culture war is not going to last forever, which means it's going to end. And when it does, how will we look back on this mad time?
Two of the answers are obvious:
But what I can't really put together is the third option, the narrative that will be told if SJ is indeed just a passing phase, either because Red/Grey defeated it or because it wins and then turns out to be unsustainable. Frankly, the Blue Tribe's been writing all the history books since before I was born, so it's hard for me to even picture it. And that troubles me; it's the scenario I think is most likely, and the one I'm to at least some extent trying to bring about, so if I don't have a good idea of what it even looks like that's kind of an HCF. "It is not enough to say that you do not like the way things are. You must say how you will change them, and to what."
So, how will the people in that scenario think of this time? What story will they tell?
(To the SJers here: feel free to answer, if you think you understand your opposition, or feel free to correct me if you think my #2 is uncharitable.)
The narrative will be: "why did anyone ever care about this shit?"
Think about the big protestant/Catholic culture war that waged in Europe in the 1600s, which was extremely bloody and widely agreed by its participants to be a big deal and today people (even devout Catholics and protestants) largely look back with bewilderment on that time period and have a hard time understanding what the big deal was. People were getting burned for saying the consecrated host is just a cracker. Today, Catholics still believe in transubstantiation but most have a hard time understanding why anyone would be punished (let alone killed) for holding a contrary view.
When talking about current culture war issues, it's hard for us to imagine how they could become irrelevant to the point that future generations would be baffled that anyone ever cared. But that's how people would have felt in the 1600s; it was a literal battle for immortal souls, how could this battle ever become irrelevant? Yet it did. I think our current battles will eventually suffer the same fate.
I had a history teacher in 8th grade that flat out told our class that if someone even dares to mention to her that WWI was about Archduke assassination she would fail them for the year. [1]
So I am willing to bet that even today Catholics and protestants know that it was mostly political strife. As were the other major Christian schisms and fights. If you look it is very often some inter elite fight.
[1]It was directly post communist time, the educational system had the outdated view that functioning brain in the pupils was not optional, so she expected to actually know what were the political tensions in Europe.
A while back I read this book about the Catholic/Protestant strife in Sweden in late 1500s which eventually culminated into a Game of Thrones -like civil war between two claimants of the house of Vasa, the Catholic Sigismund and the Protestant Charles, to the crown of Sweden, the latter eventually usurping the former and confirming Sweden's status as a Lutheran nation. The book concentrates on the Finnish side of it (Finland having been a part of Sweden) but covers the entire realm.
One of the things the book shows is that there was both a political and a religious side of it. Obviously when you have a war between two kings like this there's going to be politics beyond religion involved and Lappalainen portrays, for instance, Klaus Fleming (the chief Finnish noble of the time, a chief supporter of Sigismund's claim) as a person who didn't really give a rip about any of this religious stuff and just supported his King out of bullheaded loyalty. At the time, it is also made clear that the two royal claimants, for instance, genuinely believed that their side was correct, even if this didn't stop them from engaging in all manner of scheming and occasionally portraying their intentions otherwise than they believed.
The culture war aspect is also in there; even though the county initially was quite favorable to retaining Catholicism or at least much of it, the Lutherans worked hard to convince the city folk of Stockholm that the Pope was the Antichrist, and this crucially limited Sigismund's field of action at the times when he should have been able to work to stabilize his rule. And the economic side; there was a localized civil war in Finland, the Cudgel War, technically about the kings but really about Fleming (the implicit viceroy of Finland at this time) taxing the peasants in order support King Sigismund so much they eventually rose up against him.
Likewise, the strength of Lutheranism meant that Charles had to acquisce to Lutheranism becoming the specific flavor of Protestantism Sweden would adopt for good, even though his personal sympathies were towards Calvinism. And, of course, trying to be a centrist won one no favors; king John (Sigismund's father, Charles's brother) had tried to create a middle-ground version between Catholicism and Lutheranism, and it just meant that everyone assumed he was secretly supporting the other side.
Of course, the eventual victory of Charles and Protestantism in Sweden would have huge consequences for Europe and the world, since Sweden would go on to fight 200 years of unrelenting Protestant holy war and operate as the sword of Protestantism. If Sweden had fallen into the Catholic camp, it might have meant that at least the Lutheran side of reformation would have been eventually quashed. And there were more immediate consequences; Sigismund also ruled Poland-Lithuania (as king Zygmunt III Waza) and, after losing in Sweden, concentrated on ruling that country, leading to a host of consequences for that country.
Henry IV of France spent years waging war against Catholic lords before giving up and converting. This secured him the crown, which he used to instill religious tolerance and wind down the French wars of religion. It also drew the ire of everyone from betrayed Huguenots to the English monarchy. Catholic radicals weren’t impressed, either, and one of their assassins would eventually succeed. These intrigues spanned decades, and I have no reason to believe they were unusual for the period.
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At the same time in France, you’ve got the aptly named Politiques, elite supporters of the french monarchy who didn’t care that much about religion. It appears they were in the minority though, because King Henry III was involved in the ‘War of the three henrys’ with Henry, Duke of guise, chief of the catholic party, and Henry, King of navarre, chief of the protestant party(future french King Henry IV). It did not go well for Henry III, even though he had the easy central position. He lost control of most regions and paris, while the other two would just go at it, while ignoring him.
Fun fact : all of the henrys were assassinated, the second by order of the first, and the two kings by catholic zealots.
Fun connection: Henry III was actually King of Poland-lithuania for 2 years, 13 years before your guy Sigismund III Vasa. When he inherited the french throne he just up and left.
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