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Culture war used to be a term inextricably linked with the maelstrom of US politics. Popularised by American sociologist James Davison Hunter in his 1991 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, it described how socially progressive and conservative coalitions were locked in a seemingly eternal conflict. It could make for surprising alliances, he noted, citing Protestant, Catholic and Jewish clergy joining forces in anti-abortion movements during the late 1980s.

The battlegrounds of the US culture war are familiar ones, long regarded with bafflement by patronising and complacent European eyes: God, guns, abortion, gay rights and, of course, race. In a moment that threatened to temporarily derail his 2008 presidential bid, Barack Obama said of working-class rust-belt Americans: They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who arent like them. As the Tea Party movements backlash against his Medicare proposals underlined, culture wars became a highly effective means to mobilise low-income white Americans to vote against their economic interests.

Brexit proved the detonator for the British culture war, which became not so much about our relationship with a trading bloc but about identity: we were no longer Labour or Tory, or working class or middle class, but remainers and leavers. As polling by Lord Ashcroft after the referendum showed, pro- and anti-EU were equally divided about whether capitalism was a force for good or ill. But while leave voters overwhelmingly believed multiculturalism, social liberalism, feminism and the green movement were forces for ill, remain supporters believed the opposite.

This set the basis for a clash of values that proved electorally fatal for Jeremy Corbyn: after all, the basis of any authentic leftwing project is class politics for the many, not the few, as his Labour party put it. Culture wars are the toxic reaction to class politics.

Yet culture wars continue not simply to shape politics on both sides of the Atlantic, but to define it. According to the Financial Times, just as Joe Biden swept the rust-belt states, Keir Starmer believes he can win back Labours lost red wall by copying the US presidents emphasis on family, community and security and avoiding endless arguments about culture war issues such as trans rights and the destruction of historic statues.

Video: 'Perfectly legitimate to make a counter-argument' (Sky News)

'Perfectly legitimate to make a counter-argument'

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Yet this is a curious lesson to draw from the US. It is true that Bidens past record can hardly be described as a beacon of progressive social norms: he backed crime legislation that led to the mass incarceration of Black people; his chosen vice president, Kamala Harris, was among those who assailed him for once working with segregationists, and said she believed the women who had accused him of inappropriate sexual behaviour. But progressive movements have succeeded in shifting the centre of gravity within the Democrats to an extent no nominee can ignore.

Take trans rights, which has become one of todays totemic culture war issues. Harris has her pronouns in her Twitter bio; Biden campaigned promising trans people, We see you, we support you, and we will continue to do everything we can to ensure you are affirmed and accepted just as you are. He became the first president-elect to thank trans people in his victory speech, issued an order expanding LGBTQ protections and repealed the ban on trans military personnel.

There were, of course, howls of outrage: one Republican senator questioned Another unifying move by the new Administration? But according to the polling, it was indeed unifying: more than seven in 10 Americans support trans people serving in the military. Here is an instructive example. Rightwingers often push back at moves to secure rights for minorities on the grounds that they are divisive: yet, though noisy and obsessed, they are also unrepresentative.

As it does in the US, polling in Britain consistently shows women and younger people are most supportive of trans rights, with older men least supportive. There is a complication here: while support for trans rights is a given in US feminist, centrist and progressive circles, transphobia is a permissible prejudice across the political spectrum in Britain. This week the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, condemned transphobia in her partys ranks after it had led to an exodus of younger members. But while anti-trans activists are vocal, for the majority of people its not an issue on their radar. As the Democrats underlined, what is needed is leadership or a vacuum will be filled by increasingly emboldened bigotry.

But there are other lessons too. Rather than treating claims for racial justice as risking the support of white floating voters, the Democrats embraced Black Lives Matter. After the killing of George Floyd this spurred a surge in Black voter registration, and the relationship between grassroots Black organisers and the Democrats played a pivotal role in flipping several states in the presidential race.

As well as working with movements representing the struggles of minorities rather than treating them as unhelpful a progressive political project needs policies that unify working-class people, regardless of background. Take the New Labour period: policies such as tax credits and investment in public services made a considerable difference to millions of lives; yet in its final years, wages began to stagnate or decline for the bottom half, and an escalating housing crisis hit living standards.

The resulting grievances among struggling people can be exploited by savvy rightwing populists claiming progressive politicians only care about minorities rather than people like me.

The answer, then, isnt to swerve the culture war, or stick fingers in our ears and pretend it isnt there. It is to offer political leadership, work closely with minorities to expand the electorate, and stand on a policy platform that uplifts the living standards of the majority, irrespective of their identity. To throw minorities under a bus is not only immoral: its a recipe for electoral defeat.

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Don't swerve the culture war that's the lesson from Joe Biden to UK progressives - MSN UK

Once at the centre of the left turn that began sweeping the region two decade ago, Latin Americas largest country, Brazil, has for the past two years been governed by a far-right president.

Under Jair Bolsonaro, the country has seen many of the gains made during 14 years of Workers Party rule wound back, while social movements have come under increasing attack.

Brazil on Fire is a forthcoming investigative podcast that seeks to explain Brazils authoritarian turn. The 11-part series hosted, recorded and produced by Brazil-based journalist Michael Fox takes a deep look at Bolsonaros rise to power, what drives his support and the communities that are fighting back.

Fox recently launched a new documentary Dismantling Brazil, produced with Brasil Wire co-editor Brian Meir. He spoke to Green Lefts Federico Fuentes about the podcast and the significance of events in Brazil for the left internationally.

***

What is it about the events in Brazil over the past few years that make them of such importance for left and progressive activists around the world?

Brazil was a country where the left-wing Workers Party (PT) had won four consecutive elections between 2002 and 2014. While in government, the PT implemented progressive policies that lifted millions out of poverty and projected the country onto the global stage, swapping dependency on the United States for greater South-South relations. Domestically and internationally, Brazil had begun to chart a different path.

But in just a few years, all of this has been completely gutted and undone as a result of the [2016] congressional coup against PT president Dilma Rousseff. The combination of an anti-corruption investigation led by the biased judge Sergio Moro [later a minister in Bolsonaros cabinet], fake news, culture wars, a parliamentary coup and a media campaign against the left and PT, led to a complete rollback of the tremendous social gains that had been achieved and opened the door to a fascist president: Jair Bolsonaro.

My forthcoming podcast series focuses on the rise of Bolsonaros far-right government that is setting the country ablaze and how the US helped him do it. In the podcast, I try to show the reality of two worlds those of his supporters and the resistance to his government. I try to take the listener on a journey, switching from outside Bolsonaros house the night he wins as I stand alongside his supporters to understand where they're coming from, to the world of the Rural Landless Workers Movement (MST), indigenous communities in the Amazon, traditional Black communities in the countrys north east, and urban movements fighting evictions.

I think one big takeaway from all this is how culture wars have been used to take down the left and, in Brazils case, help lift Bolsonaro to power. That, and the connection between Bolsonaro and the US as we walk through these different worlds, the details of the connection and parallels with the US become clear.

Take for example Bolsonaros philosophical guru, Olavo de Carvalho. Very few people in the US know him, but he lives in Virginia. In the mid-2000s, he started his own online school through which he trained up far-right activists in Brazil. Many of those same people were or are top members in Bolsonaro government. He played a critical role in training up a far-right movement and helping to spread far-right ideology in Brazil.

Then there is the connection between Steve Bannon, Donald Trumps former aide, and Eduardo Bolsonaro, the presidents son, who is now the leader of the Brazil section of Bannon's organisation, The Movement. This is where fake news and culture wars come into it: Bolsonaro was in many ways inspired by Trump some call him the Trump of the Tropics.

There is also the growth of the libertarian movement in Brazil that helped push Dilma from power in 2016; many libertarian student groups were funded by the Atlas Foundation and libertarian groups in the US.

We need to understand these linkages and how the Bolsonaro presidency aligns with fascism and fascist movements abroad. This is really key because we need to understand where these movements come from and how these fascist movements can take off in moments of political crisis that the left is blamed for, which is what we saw here.

There's a very clear media bias that seeks to blame the left, blame the PT for all of Brazil's problems. This was intentional; its aim was to taint the publics opinion of the PT and the left. That's not to say there wasn't corruption, of course there was. But the PT was one of many parties involved in corruption. The Bolsonaro government, which came in with the goal of eliminating corruption, has shown itself to be just as corrupt.

Brazil is one of the largest countries in the world, so it's important to understand the power that Brazil potentially has and its deep connection with the US. This is why it had to be a podcast developed over a long period of time, because there are so many layers to this story.

Could you tell us a bit more about the kind of voices of resistance that we will be able to hear from in the podcast?

The podcast series is an attempt to understand how a fascist could win the presidency and quickly move to sell off the country to multinational corporations and roll back social and even constitutional rights that the country set in place in 1988. It is important to understand how this happened, to understand Bolsonaros supporters and where they're coming from.

But it is equally important to understand the grassroots resistance to his government, whether we are talking about the PT or those involved in land occupations, indigenous communities, traditional Black communities, human rights defenders, the LGBTI community, the Black Lives Matter movement.

There are so many different layers, that is why it needed to be a podcast series to tell the stories of how people are being attacked, how they are having their rights rolled back by the Bolsonaro government, how in many cases they have been left in fear for their lives, but also how they are responding to all this and continuing to resist.

Even in the lead up to the 2018 elections, it was clear that Bolsonaro wanted to launch a war on the left and its base. That is why labour rights have been rolled back and pension reforms have been enacted to attack unions. The idea is to attack unions as much as possible because they formed a major base of left activism and political organising in the country.

We have seen a similar thing with the rollback of the social right to land, whether that's to do with housing in the city or land in the countryside. In Brazil, there has always existed a strong tension over the right to land, over whether land should be viewed as private property or as a social right. These two concepts are delicately balanced in the constitution.

But Bolsonaro has clearly come out in defence of the right to private property, rolling back as much as possible the idea of social property through actions such as evictions. Even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, eviction numbers have continued to rise. The podcast takes a look at housing occupation movements, focusing on how the state has attacked them and how they have been able to organise.

Based on your discussions and interviews, what do you believe are some lessons we can learn from Brazil?

There are many lessons to be learnt from the way grassroots activists have resisted the Bolsonaro government, though many of these lessons are still being developed. I think one lesson is how to remain in resistance, how to remain active, in the face of violent attacks against the left.

In the weeks leading up to Bolsonaros election, grassroots movements made it clear they would resist his government. This did not necessarily mean that they were going to go out onto the streets to protest, because of the danger that entailed, though, of course, they have taken to the streets when necessary. But they made it clear they were going to continue resisting in their housing settlements, encampments, land occupations, to hold onto what they had achieved and continue to organise.

There's a lot of layers to this and I try to peel them back, to understand how organising continues to happen by taking the listener to the events as they unfold. That's what is beautiful about a podcast like this, that you are able to hear the protagonists speak, to be there in the moment when things are happening and really grasp the intensity of what is occurring in Brazil, but also the hope that still exists.

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'Brazil on Fire': How fake news, culture wars and the United States put a fascist in power - Green Left

Unity, unity and more unity thats what Joe Biden said he wanted and would deliver. Now he gets a great chance to prove it.

All he has to do is say yes to the 10 Republican senators who came to the White House bearing gifts.

By offering to work with the president on a new, slimmed-down COVID-stimulus package, the visitors simultaneously created a pathway for a 60-vote bipartisan deal and an incentive for Biden to push back against Democrats who want one-party rule.

The gifts are real, however, only if the president accepts them. So far, his response has been predictably muddled.

Press secretary Jen Psaki said her boss wants bipartisanship but is also ready to use a maneuver known as reconciliation that requires only 51 votes, all from Dems.

Even presidents cant have it both ways. Sooner or later, Bidens got to make a choice.

If he is sincere about wanting to try to unite the nation, theres only one option. Take the GOP gifts, Joe.

And make it clear to the public why you are doing it, even if it infuriates some in your own party, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Thats not to suggest Biden has to accept all the GOPs terms. Rather, he should simply signal to Schumer that he wants to negotiate a package that will get at least 10 GOP votes in the Senate, and also some in the House.

At this stage, the details are less important than the principle. Although there is a huge gap between the Dems $1.9 trillion plan and the $618 billion the GOP is offering, most economists believe jobs and growth already are poised to surge in the second half of the year after the COVID vaccine becomes widespread and businesses and schools fully reopen.

Surprisingly, the Congressional Budget Office said it expects the nations GDP to reach the pre-pandemic level within six months and that the unemployment rate would fall from 6.8 percent to 5.3 percent by December.

The agency credited the $900 billion relief bill Washington passed in December with boosting growth by 1.5 percent, illustrating that there isnt justification for the $1.9 trillion whopper most Dems favor now.

If the growth projections are even close to accurate, the coming boom would go a long way toward filling empty coffers in households and state capitals. And it would do so without Washington giving away more borrowed money that wont yield any discernible benefit.

For Biden, a deal with the GOP would provide enormous benefits to his presidency that transcend the economy. He will have shown he meant what he said during the campaign and his inauguration about working for all Americans, including those who voted for Donald Trump.

Partnering with the GOP would create a broad sense of national goodwill at a time when most Americans are frightened by the overheated and increasingly violent polarization. Moreover, one deal with the GOP would likely lead to others.

The impact could be dramatic. In the early days of his administration, before everyone starts drawing battle lines around the 2022 midterms, Biden would have branded his administration as successful in bridging the left-right chasm.

The alternative is actually worse than the status quo. The Dems ascendant far left wants to use its power for more than just radical programs and policies. It wants all-out war with the GOP.

It is the far left, for instance, that calls Republicans traitors and Nazis and wants them thrown out of Congress and silenced in the media and tech platforms. It is the far left that is leading the charge against the First Amendment and waging culture wars that leave no room for common sense on everything from fossil fuels to race to transgender rights.

Increasingly, its getting harder to tell the left from the far left. Schumer clearly wants to poison the GOP effort on the COVID relief bill, saying Tuesday, we are not going to dilute, dither or delay because the needs of the American people are just too great.

Thats an odd approach for someone who spent the last four years resisting Trump and spending more time on impeaching the president than negotiating with him. Now he wont even negotiate with Trump gone and a Democrat in the White House.

Schumer used to proudly describe himself as a centrist and moderate. Whatever the reasons for his hard-left lurch, its certain that one of them is the possibility that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will mount a primary campaign against him next year. Its hard to go further left than she is, but Schumer is trying.

To be sure, Biden himself also has been a disappointment coming out of the gate. His scores of far-reaching executive orders and directives on big-ticket items contradict his appeals for unity and read as if Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote them.

Killing thousands of jobs with the stroke of a pen before your policies created a single one is the same approach that fueled middle-Americas anger at Washington and led to Trumps 2016 election. The president also supports the second impeachment trial of Trump, a foolish process that begins next week and is doomed to end in acquittal.

The upshot is that the Biden administration is already defining itself as the most radical ever. With each passing day, that impression gets harder to change.

All the more reason why the president should say yes to working with the GOP 10. Its the best offer hes going to get and he can either take it or surrender his presidency to the left-wing warmongers hellbent on further dividing America.

This weeks gigantic snowfall put a beautiful hush on the city, but enjoy it now because the bill will be hard to swallow. Even the snow in New York is unaffordable.

Years ago, City Hall calculated it cost taxpayers $1 million an inch to prepare and clean up after significant snowfalls. But as The Post reported in December, the per-inch cost hit $4 million in 2012 and then $12 million in 2020.

One reason for the big swing in prices is that, with much of the Sanitation Department costs fixed, the per-inch cost rises in years when there isnt much snow. Fuel and salt prices also vary.

Yet, with up to two feet falling in parts of the city Monday and Tuesday, it would be a mistake to assume that taxpayers will get a bargain. When it comes to government prices, there are rarely any bargains, and there are never any under Mayor Putz.

An over-the-transom observation:

Question: What is the difference between Andrew Cuomo and God?

Answer: God doesnt think he is Andrew Cuomo.

Four travelers eat 66 pounds of oranges to avoid extra airline costs. Free is not always free.

Excerpt from:
Take the GOP deal, Mr. Prez: Goodwin - New York Post

Former president George W. Bush criticize's Trump's America, without ever saying his name.Photo: YouTube screenshot

The political fallout continues from the insurrection that was the culmination of the Trump presidency. According to a report from Reuters, dozens of former Bush officials have fled the party in the wake of the deadly Capitol riot.

The flight from the GOP by the former officials echoes that of rank-and-file members. Thousands of voters in such pivotal states as Colorado, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, have decided that theyre fed up with the party and have switched their registration to independent or (gasp!) Democrat.

Related: Heres why were suing the federal government. This is what solidarity looks like.

While the exodus is a sign that at least some Republicans have had enough, the sad part is it took a lethal riot to convince them to go.

Moreover, Trump was not an aberration in the party. While he was different in degree, he was hardly different in kind. Thats especially true of the Bush administration. As much as Trump and his followers like to bury Bush, in several key respects, the Bush presidency was the harbinger of Trumps.

One aspect is Trumps embrace of the culture wars and the religious right. Bush courted some of the worst figures on the religious right, like Jerry Falwell and Lou Sheldon. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention boasted that the Bush administration actively reached out to conservative evangelicals to get their take on policy positions. As much as Trump empowered the religious right as his core base, he was only copying Bush,

In terms of dividing people through a culture war, Bush perfected that approach by using marriage equality as a cudgel in his 2004 re-election campaign. A slew of state ballot initiatives banning same-sex marriages was on the ballot that year, and they certainly boosted Bushs efforts in key states, like Ohio.

The Bush presidency also offered a template on how to politicize science. The Bush administration dragged its heels on approving an HPV vaccine, which prevents the leading cause of cervical cancer because conservatives were afraid it promoted premarital sex. The administration muzzled scientists working on climate change and explicitly worked to undermine the overwhelming evidence that fossil fuels contribute to climate change.

Finally, as much as people argue that cruelty was the point of the Trump presidency, Bush did a fine job of giving it the presidential seal. Nowhere was that truer than the Bush policy of torturing prisoners of war, a violation of the Geneva convention. The fact that it was ostensibly in service against terrorism didnt make the policy any less repugnant. It just made it clear that presidents can toss aside basic principles that the nation had considered sacred.

Trump was certainly more ham-fisted and more extreme in his tactics. Bush would know enough not to recommend mainlining bleach to cure COVID. But just because Bush acted the part of president doesnt mean he wasnt extreme in his own right.

Apparently, a deadly insurrection was the line in the sand that a lot of Republicans couldnt cross. But its not like they didnt cross a lot of other lines already. Donald Trump was not a symptom of sickness in the Republican party. Hes the apotheosis of sickness that the GOP has been cultivating for years.

More here:
Republicans are fleeing the GOP because of Trump but the rot started long before he was president - LGBTQ Nation

One afternoon last week, three things occurred that, to my mind, point the way forward for the church in the United States to begin recovering some semblance of its catholicity, a 21st-century incarnation of the famous James Joyce observation that being Catholic means "here comes everybody."

The first was our editor Heidi Schlumpf's column "Liberal Catholicism: We've been here all along." She is right to point out that while the public face of religion in this country may have become dominated by conservative Christians starting with the founding of the Moral Majority in 1979, liberal Christians did not disappear.

What is more, while John Fitzgerald Kennedy may have garnered a disproportionate share of the Catholic vote because of a kind of tribal pride, he did not garner all of it. Many of the Catholic votes he did get would have remembered Kennedy's unwillingness to vote to censure Sen. Joseph McCarthy as evidence he was not exactly a liberal. In any event, if your starting point for tracking Catholic political views is 1960, there was bound to be a drop-off in the percentage of Catholics voting for the Democratic Party. Then came Roe and the culture wars and all that.

Still, Catholics with a liberal disposition, a liberal heart and/or liberal politics remained active in the life of the church, even if the rise of conservative Catholics, aided by gobs of money, have increased their influence throughout the church's many institutions.

The second item was an email from a reader that captured a kind of propositional Catholicism that is uniquely conservative:

Why, when Catholic Teaching is so clear and so contraryto culture, do many remain Catholic? You know what I mean? So many Catholics flat out disagreewith the Church's positions on marriage, life, the devil, Purgatory, mercy, justice, the mass, the Eucharist, ordinations, rights of Catholics to practice their faith because of "discrimination", the death penalty, just warfare, reconciliation, the prioper [sic] role of laity, diaconate, priests in parish life, the role of women in the family, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, the importance of celibacy, religious vocations and orders, abortion, conformity to the world, the cross, natural law, moral theology, penance, abstinence, biological sex, purity, infertility, commandments, Dogmas, sovereignty, even Church history, the list is practically endless.

It amazes me that so many of these Catholics who admittedly differ from Magisterial teaching still call themselves Catholic. Why do they still call themselves Catholic? Why not be Protestant? Why not leave the faith?

To me, Catholicism is most definitely a set of beliefs to which we are called to give assent but it is so much more than that. It is the smudge of ash on the forehead in February and the roast lamb at Easter. It is the Advent wreath and the Christmas hymn. Catholicism is knowing when to stand and when to kneel when attending Mass in a language you do not understand. It is making the sign of the cross when you pass a cemetery and genuflecting before you enter the pew. It is my father standing over my mother in the hospital, praying the "Hail Mary." Being Catholic means not averting your eyes from suffering and never being afraid of knowledge. It is the grievous wrong forgiven and the beggar clothed and fed. It is being a part of a long, long history of sinners and saints. It is "here comes everybody."

My correspondent reduced the rich life of the Catholic faith to a set of propositions, as if Catholicism was an intellectual enterprise. It is such an enterprise, to be sure, but it is also so much more than that. And we are not Protestant, because we believe being Catholic is about belonging to a church, not because we were born in a time and place where the Bible was readily available. "What would I know of Him, but for her," wrote the great French theologian Henri DeLubac.

The final item was found on Twitter. University of Virginia theologian Nichole Flores posted a wonderful thread about hearing a sermon at Mass that made her want to walk out, but she didn't.

She explains her decision, noting, "The disagreement made me pause, listen, and pray instead of needing to assert, fight, and win. Maybe it was because I am so acutely aware of my need for Jesus right now, and how much it exceeds my need to be right."

Then Flores said something I hope all Catholics, left, right or center, will feel in their bones:

Also, I have decided that I am not ceding the Church to anyone. I am a devout, daily mass going, Rosary saying, Guadalupe devotee Catholic, whether secular (or Catholic!) media would recognize that about me or not. I am not giving up my pew or my place.

Amen, amen, I say. No priest, no bishop and no bishops' conference can force us out of this church.

We all need each other as Catholics because the teachings of the church are always developing. Catholics live in real time with real challenges. Liberals must challenge conservatives and vice-versa. Each generation brings with it a new set of questions to ask of the ancient verities. The verities remain, but if they are to remain alive, they will change and develop. Only dead things do not change.

Cue the famous Chesterton quote:

A century or two hence, Spiritualism may be a tradition and Socialism may be a tradition and Christian Science may be a tradition. But Catholicism will not be a tradition. It will still be a nuisance and a new and dangerous thing.

That is why we liberal Catholics never went away and never could go away. The Holy Spirit is at work in every human heart, liberal hearts and conservative hearts, among extroverts and introverts, beckoning the cautious and the carefree. As Massimo Faggioli observed in his latest book, "The challenge, both political and ecclesial, in the present emergency is to rebuild a sense of unity that marginalizes the extremes and treats the sectarian instinct as the epitome of non-Catholic spirit."

Just say no to sectarianism. If liberal Catholics did not exist, God would have to invent them. How do we know this? Because he already did.

More:
Column | Liberal Catholics and the temptation of sectarianism - National Catholic Reporter