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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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But did the Red Tribe do something to obstruct the path to Utopia? I'm not talking about Ronald Reagan- I mean did cousin Merle on his camo 4-wheeler do something?

He's "clinging to guns and religion" and stopping progressives from solving the gun crime problem.

And that was Obama trying to be charitable.

Factually: no, they did not, and the utopia envisioned doesn’t look much like Denmark or indeed anything else that exists

However, it’s important to look at the theory and interests here- cousin Merle not having any incentive to support public transportation is pretty obvious, for example. He already owns a pickup truck and doesn’t go into the downtown areas where it’s less useful all that often. He’s an easy scapegoat for things like that. There’s other examples, too, of course, that’s just an easy one. But ‘preference for rural-coded lifestyle choices’ has been a progressive scapegoat for not having the same nice things they think Europe has for quite a while. There’s something to hlynka’s point that the Twitter DR are more progressive than conventionally conservative because a lot of them are the same, they just blame blacks instead(and factually blacks and rednecks get along much better than commonly believed).

The red tribe still has significant political power. Especially in state legislatures where they are not afraid to flex their power to do things like ban abortion.