Archive for the ‘Culture Wars’ Category

American Catholics, Joe Biden and the bishops – TheArticle

Some 70 million US citizens are Roman Catholics, about 22 per cent of the total population. In the 2020 elections the Catholic vote was split half and half between Trump and Biden, but only 44 per cent of white Catholics voted for Biden. Some 20 million Americans identify as Latino Catholics (about 55 per cent of the overall Hispanic population) and of these Hispanic Catholics the vote was 67 per cent for Biden, 26 per cent for Trump. Thanks to voter registration activists such as Stacey Abrams and Black Lives Matter, the black vote, especially in states like Georgia, came out in force. It was even more pro-Biden than the Hispanic (polls indicated that in some states 90 per cent of black female votes were going to Biden). American voters are racially split and the Biden presidency relies on minority voter turnout.

These figures alone illustrate the problem for a white Catholic President who asserts his Catholic identity. Ethnicity and origins play an important role in determining voting behaviour, but three other features of the contemporary USA give Biden cause for concern. The first is that as a Catholic President he must position himself in relation to national politics riven by culture wars, turbo-charged by the Republican Party. The Tea Party movement, with its mixture of Right-wing populism, shrink-the-federal state, anti-Washington activism plus anti-immigrant policies, emerged in 2009. Trumps drive for white supremacy, support for racist voter suppression, and rhetorical championing of favourite evangelical Christian themes, particularly opposition to abortion laws and same-sex marriage, made these goals seem politically achievable, but only by the Republican Party.

The second concern for a Catholic President is that the culture wars have seeped into the US Catholic Conference of Bishops. The American Church was already polarised between a strict traditionalist social conservatism with an in-built bias towards Republican politics, even in its Trump extremes, and a liberalism committed to social justice, at ease in the Democratic Party. Biden faces, and has always faced, strictures from a minority of conservative bishops about his political position on abortion and to a lesser degree his attitude towards gay and divorced people receiving the Eucharist. Obviously the President doesnt believe what we believe about the sacredness of human life, Archbishop Joseph Naumann, head of the Catholic bishops Pro-Life Committee told The Atlantic. We can safely assume that he was not referring to President Trumps acceleration of the use of the death penalty during his last days in office.

The Democratic Party does not pick radicals for their presidential candidates; that is why they rejected Bernie Sanders and chose the centrist Biden. Anyone who read Pope Franciss encyclical Fratelli Tutti would see that the pontiff is politically a prophetic radical thinker, who has more in common with Bernie Sanders than the President. But the Republicans perceive Biden as an ally of Pope Francis, who is himself under fire, and they have succeeded in placing the President firmly on the enemy side of the culture wars in a Church that is herself divided, nationally and racially as well as globally.

As Massimo Faggioli points out in his recent book Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, Bidens own Catholicism pious, un-intellectual, and compassionate reflects the openness to the world of Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. The Council document Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope), issued on 7 December 1965, the day the Council ended, begins thus: The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. The problem for Biden, who would endorse these words, is that since the 1970s the Council and its documents have been subtly, and not so subtly, undermined, re-interpreted and politicised by conservative Catholics. When the social conservatives in the American Church looked outwards, they saw Obama as the leader of a militant secular modernisation and an overweening federal state, with Biden as his misguided Catholic apprentice. And for many, their enemies enemy, Donald Trump, became, at least electorally, their friend.

The third concern for Biden is that this polarisation within the American Church has contributed significantly to division within the global Church that came of age with the appointment of an Argentinian, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as the first non-European Pope. The cardinals chose a Pope from the global South, further shifting the centre-periphery model of a Eurocentric Church towards a more networked, less command and control Church, a process described in my Global Catholicism: towards a networked Church (Hurst, 2012). Rome remained pre-eminent but the Curial bureaucracy surrounding the Pope found itself downgraded and under serious pressure to reform. The large American Church, traditionally punching well below its weight, assumed more significance, especially when Archbishop Carlo Mario Vigan, Vatican ambassador to the US from 2011 to 2016, led a virulent attack in 2018 on Pope Francis, alleging homosexual conspiracies and Vatican cover-ups of sexual abuse. Vigan, a former chief of Vatican Curial personnel, was able to draw on his wide range of personal contacts in his attempts to create a movement to marginalise and smear the Pope. He failed, but the tension within the divided American Church remains.

Biden can expect more moral support from the current Pope than from his two papal predecessors, but it is support that may come with a political cost. The President finds himself at the intersection of an unholy set of inter-related and interlocking pressures notably the tens of millions of Catholics who voted for Trump, ignoring his four years of attempted destruction of democracy. President and Pope are singing from the same hymn sheet over the climate crisis, sharing a compassionate openness towards gay sexuality, and a commitment to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, notably to Mass in the vernacular. In America the Latin Mass had become something of a Right-wing cause, supported by several bishops, among whom Cardinal Raymond Burke, formerly Archbishop of St. Louis, is the most prominent. These divisions within Catholicism mirror the divisions within the nation which President Biden has the enormous task of healing. He cannot look to the American Church to be part of the solution.

Bidens leadership as Commander-in-Chief during the tragedies of defeat and hasty evacuation in Afghanistan has done nothing to heal divisions in a shamed nation. Even though his new thinking about US military intervention will have found approval in Rome, he has received no accolades and derived little inspiration from the American Catholic hierarchy. It is high time they ended censorious and curmudgeonly criticism. They should show more concern for the future of democracy and the task of national healing that awaits Joe Biden, who is only the second Catholic to become President.

We are the only publication thats committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one thats needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation.

View post:
American Catholics, Joe Biden and the bishops - TheArticle

The summer of cricket proved mixed crowds can improve the fan experience – The Guardian

Crickets culture wars can call a truce. There is something traditionalists and progressives agree on, and rather surprisingly its about the Hundred. Now the all-important final scores are in and were talking bums-on-seats and eyes-on-screen, not who hit most sixes or which weird-named franchise triumphed there is consensus on a single, indisputable fact. The tournament was A Good Thing for womens cricket.

For the hardcore sceptics, the grudging concession that the Hundred has been a gamechanger for women will not outweigh the collective trauma the competition has cost them. The undeniable benefits the womens game has derived from the format the increase in viewership, prestige, standards of pay and quality of play are all very well, but theyve still come at the cost of the future doom of the real game. What matters for the men matters most, because theirs is the Test arena, and theirs are the broadcasting millions, and theirs is the glory, for ever and ever, amen.

Still, back to the Good Thing: the womens side of the Hundred saw record attendances, unprecedented ticket sales and viewing figures in the millions. And one of its most successful elements, the double-header format, was simply a happy accident: a shrinking of logistics and ambitions caused by Covid protocols and shortfalls.

The Spin: sign up and get our weekly cricket email.

Had a global pandemic not intervened, the womens and mens matches would have been staged separately, rather than played one after the other with a single ticket buying a seat to both. We cant be sure that the womens tournament would have enjoyed the same popularity if their matches had been relegated to other lets face it, smaller grounds. But we can be pretty certain there would have been a different atmosphere at the mens games.

There were clear indications of that in the first mens match at the Oval, the only one staged as a stand-alone. Far from being a family-friendly environment, that game was played against a beery, blokey backdrop recognisable to anyone whos been to a T20 finals day: the kind that numerous fans have shied from taking their kids to; the kind that the Hundred was, indeed, created to combat.

As it was, one of the most revealing outcomes as the tournament progressed was that the increased female presence at matches had a real and pleasurable impact on the fans experience. It would come up repeatedly in peoples conversations, an encouraging thing to hear: encouraging, moving and a little amusing, the kind of mix you feel when your friend finally discovers Parks and Recreation on Netflix and messages you how awesome it is a decade after you first told them to give it a try.

It turns out that transforming a sports stadium from a mostly male environment into a genuinely mixed one really can improve your day. That lowering the average testosterone level of a crowd will lessen its tendency towards antisocial behaviour, will reduce its inclination to drink too much and get a bit lairy and yell stupid, off-colour things that seem hilariously funny at the time. That it keeps at bay primal bursts of tribalistic aggression that we wouldnt allow anywhere else but find acceptable and even faintly praiseworthy when theyre construed as sporting passion or team loyalty.

This isnt news, of course, not really. Plenty of us knew that gender-balanced crowds dont ruin a sporting atmosphere by making it generally, you know, nicer. Anyone whos been to the tennis, or scored tickets to the London Olympics. All those whove attended womens football matches, or womens rugby games, or professional netball. The 24,000 people who went to the 2017 Womens World Cup final at Lords, and came away saying it was the best atmosphere they had encountered at a cricket match.

And yet its fair to say that until recently the presence of more women in cricket grounds or indeed any stadiums has rarely been a priority. On the sporting hierarchy of needs, its always been up at the esoteric top end, along with self-actualisation and human transcendence. Even we women who followed sport long before the men who ran it bothered to add us to the Venn diagrams in their marketing presentations accepted that we were entering a mans world. And if we didnt like the way some men behaved, we knew where we could go.

Macho posturing and a faintly edgy atmosphere have been endemic to the stadium experience for decades. Fans have kidded themselves that it simply goes with the territory. Most accept it as the price they pay for following the teams they love. Some those who like the idea of war minus the shooting will argue that its part of the purpose of spectator sport, an outlet for men and women (but primarily men) to express the full range of their emotions and work out their anger issues.

I know a number of devoted football fans male and female who gave up going to games because they couldnt bear the oppressive and often hostile environment of the walk to the station afterwards, the train rides home. The thought of that used to make me sad and furious but I could not see it changing.

Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the more fans experience what its like to watch sport in a more gender-equal environment, the higher it will appear on their wishlist. Perhaps well learn that a positive outcome for women players, supporters, or newcomers can be the best thing for everyone in the long run. Perhaps well allow that it might even be worth some momentary rearrangement and experimentation in the mens game. After all, weve long put up with our own discomfort.

More:
The summer of cricket proved mixed crowds can improve the fan experience - The Guardian

Links: Critical race theory, culture wars and dog cuddling – National Catholic Reporter

Who is that on Fox Channel 32 in Chicago, doing such a great job explaining the controversy about religious exemptions to vaccine mandates? I think its our own Heidi Schlumpf.

Yesterday, I called attention to an article in Politico that looked at the future of organized labor. Here is a second one that is more finely tuned: Noam Scheiber at The New York Times captures the fact that the choices facing labor do not break down neatly into opposing camps, one aiming to stay the course and the other seeking reform. Liz Shuler, who was elected president of the AFL-CIO on Friday, and Fred Redmond, who was elected secretary-treasurer, are as committed to organizing as anyone but also recognize the need to win legislative victories in Congress.

NASA has a new sea level change interactive map that allows you to see what the agency predicts will be sea level rise caused by climate change. Most East Coast cities will see just shy of one meter rise, enough to radically change the landscape in Miami, New York, Boston and cities in between.

If thinking about the devastating effects of climate change depresses you, and it is hard not to be depressed by it, researchers at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan conducted studies that show cuddling your dog will cheer you up. Dog owners everywhere are saying Well, duh! But, it is good to know that science backs up our intuitions. The Hill has the story.

At The Conversation, Ryan Gilfeather argues that we might not be as divided by the culture wars as it seems, and points to the fourth century as an example. I admit that, at first blush, I thought the argument was a stretch, but as I read on, I found myself at least hoping Gilfeather is right.

Relatedly, in The Washington Post, E.J. Dionne recalls James Davison Hunters early description of the culture wars, and Alan Wolfes argument that the different sides in the culture wars really exist within each of us. I wish I had E.J.s eternal optimism, but I dont. I think it is as likely that we cant put the centripetal Humpty Dumpty forces in our culture back together again as that we can. I hope I am wrong and E.J. is right.

If Democrats want to recognize how unpopular some of their cultural ideas are, they have only to look to school board races around the country. The push against all kinds of diversity education is wrong-headed, of course, but it is happening. Elites in media and politics have no idea how badly their ideas play outside their own circles, especially when Fox News and other conservative media are a thousand times better than the left at reducing complicated issues to nasty sound bites designed to drive voters in a particular direction. The New Republic takes a look at the school board fights going on right now.

On the other hand, in California, we may be seeing the first wave of the pro-choice tsunami that is coming to our nation. Politico reports that in the states gubernatorial recall contest, incumbent Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is emphasizing the ways a Republican could restrict access to abortion in an effort to retain his job. Normally, in off-year special elections, all of the energy has been with pro-life voters, but as the prospect of Roe v. Wade getting overturned comes into focus, look for that energy to equalize and, later, to shift.

Continued here:
Links: Critical race theory, culture wars and dog cuddling - National Catholic Reporter

Science quietly wins one of the right’s longstanding culture wars – Salon

The bitter culture wars over the teaching of evolution in public schools dominated headlines throughout the 2000s, in large part because ofthe Bush administration's coziness with evangelicals who rejected the science on evolution. Yet flash forward to 2021 when the acrimonious battle over science has shifted from evolution to pandemic public health and few youngsters are apt to have any ideawhat "intelligent design" even means.Curiously, despite the right seizing on face mask science and immunologyas new battlegrounds in the culture war, the fight over evolutionis all but forgotten. In fact, for many Americans, it is completely forgotten.

Though it might seem hard to believe,Americans are more scientifically literate than ever in 2021 so much so thatcreationism has become a minority opinion. And Americans are likewise been able to identify intelligent design and other forms of creationism as the inherently religious theoriesthat they are.

We know this thanks to anew study published in the journal Public Understanding of Science, one which analyzed surveys of public opinion since 1985 and noticed a trend in attitudes about evolution. As more Americans became highly educated obtaining university degrees, taking college science courses, displaying rising levels of civi science literacy acceptance of evolution grew accordingly.

From 1985 until 2010, there had been a statistical dead heat among Americans who wereasked if they agreedthat "human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." Acceptance then began to increase, becoming a majority position in 2016 and reaching54 percent in 2019. Even 32 percent of religious fundamentalists accepted evolution as of 2019, a stark contrast from the mere 8 percent who did so in 1988. Eighty-three percent of liberal Democrats said they accept evolution, compared to only 34 percent of conservative Republicans.

"Almost twice as many Americans held a college degree in 2018 as in 1988," Dr. Mark Ackerman, a researcher atthe University of Michigan,said in a statement."It's hard to earn a college degree without acquiring at least a little respect for the success of science."

The shift in attitudes towards evolution is particularly surprising given that the teaching of evolution was a major aspect of the culture wars of the late from the 1980s through the 2000s, particularly during the Bush Era in which the evangelical right was ascendant.Back in 2005, the then-raging culture war involved the so-called theory of "intelligent design," and, specifically, a textbook called "Of Pandas and People."

In a defining moment for the 1990s and 2000sculture wars, the board forPennsylvania's Dover Area School District hadinstructed its ninth grade biology teachers to refer their students to "Of Pandas and People"because it promotedintelligent design. By 1997, the strategy of using intelligent design as a Trojan horse for creationism had picked up enough steam towind up at theUnited States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Once there,however, theschool district was told that their philosophywas indeed a form of "creation science" and just as scientifically invalid. When the Dover case was heard bytheU.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in 2005, a judge appointed by President George W. Bush sided with the plaintiffs and noted the irony of people who claim to be religious dishonestly claiming that they did not admit to having a religious agenda.

"It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID [intelligent design]Policy," the judge noted in his decision.

Even though the Supreme Court had banned teaching creationism in the 1968 caseEpperson v. Arkansas,nine other prominent legal cases occurred between 1981 and 2005 (including the ones in Louisiana and Pennsylvania that were mentioned earlier).Legal setbacks notwithstanding, the teaching of evolution remaineda hot button issue bythe time of the 2000 presidential election.In 2005,Bush even legitimized the intelligent design movement by telling reporters that"both sides ought to be properly taught" and that "part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought." Hisscientific adviser later added, although he did not want evolution taught as an alternative to evolution, "I think to ignore [ID] in the classroom is a mistake." As recently as 2014, popular science entertainer Bill Nye held a high-profiledebate with young-earth creationist Ken Ham.

There is a long history of evolution being rejected in the United States, although a generation of Americansdid not even know they had a theory to be potentially scandalized about.While Charles Darwin's classic book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" made waves in his native Great Britain upon its release in 1859, the book did not arouse widespread ire in the United States until the late 19th century. The issue was particularly contentious among American Protestants, who at that time were splitting into modernist and evangelical camps. By the 1920s, the theory of evolution had been tied in the public mind to other "modern" intellectual trends that they found distasteful, from Marxism to psychology. Fundamentalists pushed to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools since as former Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan put it the theory would convince future generations that the Bible was simply "a collection of myths."

Bryan had a chance to test his views in court during the Scopes Trial, when he squared off as an expert witness on the Bible against legendary attorney Clarence Darrow.American journalist H. L. Mencken famously wrote with contempt about the inevitability of Darrow's defeat and the massive support for anti-scientific theories,howlingthat"such obscenities as the forthcoming trial of the Tennessee evolutionist, if they serve no other purpose, at least call attention dramatically to the fact that enlightenment, among mankind, is very narrowly dispersed."

That exchange, dramatized in the play "Inherit the Wind," turned public opinion against Bryan, but ultimately did not curb the anti-evolution movements, which won further successes after it was bannedin Arkansas and Mississippi. A turning point did not occur until the 1940s, when scientists in the United States had reached a consensus that natural selection drove evolution and explained the rise of human beings.

By1947, the Supreme Court had ruled inEverson v. Board of Educationthat the First Amendment's clause banning the establishment of religion applied to state governments, not just the federal government. As Justice Hugo Black wrote, teaching an explicitly theological doctrine like creationism meant citizens were being taxed to back a religious point of view.

"No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion," Black said.

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.

The 1947 decision, which was reinforced in a series of other cases over subsequent decades, made it clear to opponents of evolution that they had to adopt a different tactic. By the 1980s a University of California, Berkeley law professor named Phillip E. Johnsoncame up with a concept known as "intelligent design." It holds that the complexity of life on this planet is so precise that strictly naturalistic explanations cannot rationally account for them, and that scientists need to acknowledge possible religious or supernatural causes. This movement, though rejected by most scientists as merely a spruced upattempt to teach creationism, gathered enough steam that by the 21st century many states were pushing for laws to allow intelligent design to be taught in public school.

While it is welcome to scientists that acceptance of evolution continues to spread, fundamentalists still pose a threat to America's overall scientific literacy.

"Such beliefs are not only tenacious but also, increasingly, politicized,"lead researcher Jon D. Miller of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan said in a statement, pointing to the widening gap between Democrats and Republicans on basic science literacy.

Originally posted here:
Science quietly wins one of the right's longstanding culture wars - Salon

To move beyond the culture wars we must end the loneliness of capitalism – bellacaledonia.org.uk

Whatever stage of life it hit you at, the pandemic has accentuated the process of ageing. Whether youre seventeen or seventy-one, there is a sense that irretrievable time has been snatched. Blank pages have been inserted at an essentially random point in billions of biographies.

Youd think that sympathy towards the youngest, for whom time passes more slowly and novelty recurs daily, would be well established (at thirty-four, I think of the careless freedom of my own seventeenth year and it remains fundamental to all that I am). But there is also a virulent strain of thought that responds to any crisis by relentlessly othering the young just at the moment when demographics has squeezed what little voice they might have had to the margins of public life.

Despair at youthful decadence might reach back to antiquity, but there is a strange variation on this tendency today. We are blessed with unprecedented life-spans and the great gift of more people living longer, but we have yet to seriously think about how we might adapt to the cultural implications of this trend.

Because the elderly today are also the first generation to experience mass popular culture, and the youth subcultures that arrived with it, this entirely unique moment in human history is doubly confusing.

The first cohort to embrace youth as a meaningful identity, rather than a fleeting phase, are now moving into their seventies and eighties. This means that they act as both patrician elders and the original radical non-conformists: careering around social media with largely fictional claims about storming the Normandy beaches and embracing free love in Haight-Ashbury.

This glut of popular memory will only grow in the coming decades. Already, punk is a term deployed by crabbit auld gits around bar room tables. They still ponder their own generations battle cry: is it better to burn out than to fade away? Theyllnever know now.

These attitudes remind us that thekids are often held to an impossibly high and contradictory set of standards both too disobedient and too compliant, too square and too rebellious, too skittish and too rigid, snowflakes and social justice warriors.

This has profound consequences for politics. As David Runciman argues in How Democracy Ends, twentieth-century radicalism, particularly on the far right, emerged in societies that are far younger than our own, amongst generations that had lived through the trauma of total wars and demobilisations.

Therefore, even in a country like Greece which has seen a recent decline in living standards comparable to that of the Great Depression (we could add parts of post-2008 America too) violent overthrow of democratic governments has never been a serious proposition.

Some enthusiasts of fascist militancy may gather to cosplay rebellion from time to time, but they are essentially decrepit, unable to command mass appeal or topple democratic institutions. This is partly because older societies are less prone to political violence there is a relative shortage in the global north of young male cannon fodder the base ingredient of insurrection.

But the angry young men of yesteryear still flock to the frontlines of the culture wars. By some measures rates of violent crime have plummeted in recent decades. However, it often feels like the ambient hostility and aggression of political discourse, enabled by social media, is unprecedented. So much of life is now mediated that abuse too has often become immaterial. Unlike previous zealotries, the cost of entry is minimal and you dont even have to look your opponent in the eye.

Some of our anxietiesabout division are ahistorical. For example, despite its new pervasiveness and intensity, polarisation in the contemporary United States can hardly be said to be any greater than when protestors raised the Vietcong flag in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention. In Britain, we could say the same of the bitterness of the Miners Strike.

But the culture war is more insidious because it is bound up with the way media now operate. Increasingly, legacy media, mindful of their ageing audiences, demonstrate a willingness to channel reactionary currents. Thus the mainstream press can publish op-eds decrying the rise of cultural Marxism a key concept within the manifesto published by the far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, and fear no risk to their reputation.

Increasing sections of the press are dedicated to regurgitating tropes from the culture war genre. Nick Srnicek recently noted that were 2,983 mentions o the word woke in the Daily Telegraph. The Herald ran a front-page story today on an apparent rash of wokeism within the Scottish educational establishment.

The fog of the culture war often makes it difficult to distinguish whether such claims have any coherent point to make in good faith, or whether they are simply written to perpetuate the engagement and discussion that the genre often brings.

Like political correctness, woke is often simply a dog-whistle to console those who feel discomfort about the assimilation of minority identities into mainstream society. Remarkably, this has led some of the least oppressed groups of people on the planet to fantasise that they are excluded by society because language and etiquette has changed; but no one asked their permission.

What separates out this discomfort from a dislike of other changed social habits such as say, wearing hats indoors is its capacity to be weaponised within the attention economy.

This may reach a tipping point. Online culture wars about trans rights, for example, can cross over into real life, red in tooth and claw, because of the emotional pull of certain issues. Some topics have an innate capacity to polarise and are particularly well incubated in the closed systems that are now often used to consume and distribute content.

The knock-on effect as recently shown by both the BBC and Ofcom is to equivocate. The BBC remains true to form in its impossible attempts to achieve impartiality against a mendacious reactionary press, and ending up suggesting that issues related to fundamental human rights are up for debate.

This capacity of emotive content to thrive and expand within networks feeds off social isolation and loneliness issues that can intensify with ageing and retirement. There is no form of loneliness more crippling than the variety defined by paranoia. Based on often legitimate reasons, a generation brought up to trust public institutions have been re-educated to trust no one; whilst many lack the skills to navigate a hazardous digital realm. In the race for attention, we risk creating a desolation devoid of the community of readers, viewers and listeners that could offer some form of continuity and comfort in the face of the confusion and chaos of modernity.

We therefore have a situation where lonely, vulnerable, people, who are often also gifted with wealth, time and knowledge, are increasingly drip-fed narratives that instill a kind of collective trauma about the future. There is nothing inevitable about their journey into the cesspools of online extremism but they are undoubtedly sped along the way by a late-capitalism that sees in the lonely only another market, that deifies youthful beauty to the exclusion of all else, that turns our regrets and nostalgia into revenue streams.

In response to the vast and novel demographic changes we are living through, Runciman impishly suggests that children ought to be allowed to vote in order to re-balance the scales.

Another no less radical approach is to understand that the connective tissue of our complex societies civic institutions like the press and places to grow genuine associational cultures need to be restored, expanded and revived. Perhaps the greatest thief of our time on this earth is not the pandemic, but the keyboard itself: we need a whole new set of cultural norms that frees us to step away from it and become more human again.

View original post here:
To move beyond the culture wars we must end the loneliness of capitalism - bellacaledonia.org.uk