Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. Im Sarah Longwell, Publisher of The Bulwark and this week, were talking about the great war of western civilization, the woke culture war. The general of the culture war soon to be presidential candidate, Rhonda Santos, will probably run under the slogan America, where woke goes to die. And woke this is such a catchall villain that when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last week, DeSantis, Josh Holly, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page inexplicably blamed it on vokeness. Now, we wanted to get a sense of how voters across the political spectrum think about a lot of the big culture war buzzwords of our time.
And unsurprisingly, we found that people are talking past each other a lot. Now, Im very excited. My guest today is Jane Coastin, opinion writer at The New York Times and one of the most concise of commentators on our political discourse today. Jane, thanks so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me.
So, correct me if Im wrong, but your thesis on the culture wars is that they made great political sense because they are unwinnable and unlusable. Can you tease that out for us, especially in light of all the legislation were seeing around the country that do notch real wins and losses in some of these Culture War battles.
They do notch real actual wins and losses think its important to note that a forever war has casualties. If theres anything that we have learned from our own actual forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that have killed hundreds of thousands of people. But what I mean by not having winners or losers, I mean that they can be fought forever because What would it mean to win the culture war? What would it mean if for Republicans to make a reference scripture if every knee bend it and every tongue confessed that Adam and Eve, if not Adam and Steve Right. that people smell might be doing that somewhere.
But there is no means by which you could tell that you were winning and youre always losing, but youre also always winning. Ive referenced this before, but theres this understanding, and Im going to use the f word here, but I dont mean it in this way. Theres an understanding in the study of fascism. That fascisms enemies are always portrayed as being simultaneously overwhelmingly powerful, but also really stupid. That they are just fumbling idiots, but also theyre gonna kill all of you.
And I feel as if sometimes thats how culture wars are performed. That the enemy in the culture war is evil, but stupid. They will beat you but you could easily beat them if you just try it a little bit harder. And so when I talk about how they are unwinnable and unreasonable, I mean that theres no marker at which you could say We won. We did it.
I cannot think of the number of national review pieces that are ex indicates that we are winning the culture war. I I remember there was a poll I think in two thousand nine in which support for marriage equality ticked down slightly. And this is before marriage equality had reached, like, seventy five percent approval, which is what it has now. But it was like, oh, you know, were winning this war. Well, I mean, how did that go?
But I think it its interesting to me that the culture war has become everything is wrapped up into it. Every decision, even decisions that have nothing to do with culture, even decisions that seem completely untethered to the culture war, become part of the culture war. And ideas that were once believed to be on one side of the culture war could easily switch sides. I wrote a piece that came out this week about horny broach conservatism. This idea that theres the so called barstool conservative who just doesnt wanna be told what to do.
Its fascinating to me that some on the right have claimed those peoples being on their side in the culture war when this is a particular side thats pretty much like pornography is fine, having sex out of marriage is fine, abortion is fine, just dont tell anyone what to do. And so, the culture war can take on new applicants. The culture war can
take on new topics. It is always growing and changing, but it never has to end. And isnt that because culture is not a fixed thing? Right? So if culture is always changing, then theres always a new front in the war.
Exactly. And theres always something. Im reminded of when I was in high school. I was in high school in the early two thousand Oh. My freshman year, the second week of my freshman year of high school was nine eleven.
And so the culture war I remember was people being very mad at sixty six over their opposition to the Iraq War Sure. and over being mean to George Jebi Bush. But also the culture war was about the over sexualization of teen girls, which has had been an ongoing concern for pretty much forever. You you had kind of the last vestiges of the moral majority. I was very upset about this.
But I have been track now by how culture has shifted in a sense. And now you see some on the right complaining that teen girls arent hot enough anymore. And that people arent sexy enough anymore. For instance, certain celebrities arent hot enough to be a celebrity as or models arent thin enough to be models. And its interesting how as the culture shifts, people find new things to be mad about.
Its not that theyre wrong to be mad or right to be mad. Its that there is always something to be mad about. Culture shifts. Do you remember when people were extremely mad after the Taliban massacre, which it turns out had nothing to do with bullying or tranche coat mafia but had to do with the fact that these two kids were evil assholes. Thats okay to say.
Mhmm. But there was a lot of people who were like, Marilyn Manson did it. In violent video games. Like, some of these culture wars, you know, Im a world war two nerd. And so the way that I think about, like, ah, remember the battle of market garden.
I sometimes wonder if culture war veterans are like, remember the battle over video games. Like, when Grand Theft Auto came out, and people were convinced that that was going to cause Oh, yeah. undue suffering. And then we all moved on from whether caused undue suffering. So theres always a new front in the war.
A
new front in the Bulwark. And then also, I mean, one of the things we we wanted to do with these focus groups is get them to sort of define woke and talk about what that means. But it always has struck me that the conversation around wokeness is very old wine, new bottle. So theres both this idea that culture is always shifting, so theres always a new front in the war. But also, like, I grew up fighting a political correctness while you were still in high school and I was a young conservative working at a conservative think tank, political correctness was very much a thing that sort of consumed people.
And Donald Trump ran on political correctness.
Like, like,
people are acting like around the scientists, like, invented this woke culture war. But what he did was he put a new word around a phenomenon that the right has been mad about for
Right. As long as Ive been around. But a challenge, as I wrote this week, is that the right is always divided between whether or not they want to protect you from being told what to do by these evil PC people or whether they want to tell you what to do. Its also interesting how political correctness really was this moment. Because it became so all encompassing that how we talk about speech and how we talk about speech that we find impermissible it became very in vogue to rail against political correctness.
And then thered be the moment where the person on behalf you are railing says something thats one step over the line. And then you realize, hang on a second. Actually, I have something that I also object to. And I think that thats the challenge we have now with and well get into whatever woke means because Ive been struck by how some people think that woke has a very specific meaning, and I need those people to talk about how, why does woke mean theres a black person in a movie. Right?
I remember when the trailer for, I think, whatever the most recent Jurassic World movie came out, and someone was like, a a woke picture. And it was literally an image of Chris Pratt, the star of the film, with an African American actress. And everyone was like, whats whats broke about that? And I do think that thats one of the the fascinating things about the terminology is that now it seems it is a catchall term. Which I think only benefits some of the worst people in society because you can decry wokeness and people will think that you mean their woke up.
Totally. Like, you know, you mean something that you dont want your kids to see in school. But for some other people, it means black people appearing in a place that they shouldnt be? Yeah. So we were eager
to ask people to define this term. So we asked a couple of Republican groups the ways in which the country is becoming too, quote unquote, and we got a laundry list of complaints. Lets listen.
Wonkyism is treating people as members of groups. Were not treating people as individuals. Were defining people by the groups there in a slight gender politics. Its like identity politics. And I was just thinking about this the other day.
I was watching a TV show. I was watching survivor, actually. And survivor has a new rule where you have to have so many blacks, so many Asians, you have to have so many, what they call, minorities. Rather than the best candidates for the show. And we see this in movies all the time.
Youre not picking the best actors. Youre picking the black or the Asian or the gay person. So its this identity politics of forcing people to be thought of as members of groups rather than treating them as individuals. And thats what aggravates me the most. Is were getting away from thinking of normal and as people, and were just classifying them according to the group there.
And thats just I know, aggravates the heck out of me.
It seems like everybodys leaning more towards what you call the Hollywood Liberals and, you know, what they think is okay. And if you dare speak out and say you dont believe in something that they do, then theyre trashing you and It almost seems to me like, I still think that those Hollywood Liberal types are in the minority, but thats what you hear about ninety other time in the news or social media and sort of to make you believe, you know, I dont really know what Im trying to say. I dont know if that makes sense or not. But, yeah, that everybody has to believe this one way that that the very liberal believes or youre just really shouldnt have any beliefs at all? It means
the way theyre cramming the racism, homosexuality, transgender, and critical race stereotypes that way, you know, all of those things and they want everybody to believe because Im white. They want me, you know, oh, I racist because I was born white. And, you know, Im not Im not racist, but I dont like that cramp down my throat through every movie that you watch anymore, they gotta throw in all of their oh, I gotta try not to say these bad words. Homosexuals, mixed families. It has to be a white man, black woman, or black man, white woman.
You know, and, you know, the kids are really, you know, theres a black one, a white one, and something in between. You know, I Im just tired. As
a millennial, I feel like I see, like, what culture, like, all the time. I dont know. I feel like, you know, I Im, like, forced to accept other peoples beliefs no matter what, whether I agree with them or not, like, theyre just, like, the democrats seem to be just hammering it down her throat all the time, then, you know, you constantly have to agree with everything. I would say, like, oh, man. Like, transgender.
Nah. Like, you know, I dont know if Im supposed to be PC and youre not, but, like, its, like, its a random way through it. Im, like, I dont care if you are, but, like, I dont have to agree with them. Dont get mad at me if, like, I dont, you know. Its its my I use
I
work at a very local company, Starbucks. And I just try and do my job. Theyre all the time trying to push everything. And, you know, when they wanna
they
will, you know, give us a prize shirt to wear, you know, during pride week or month or whatever. And that is one shirt I chose not to wear. Nobody says anything to me. I just make that decision. Im not gonna preach to anybody.
I work with people that think differently than I, but we dont go there and, you know, just like with the vaccine thing, you know, you just I I was just gonna write it out I didnt lose my job. I think that was a question. But just those things that I think if I had my brothers, I probably wouldnt even get in the conversation. But if somebody asked, I probably would tell them my opinion. But
Again, I feel like were being silent. Okay. So theres some not great stuff in there, but theres a lot there. But, yeah, let me get into it. Yeah.
Let me Lets start with really the most important point. Do you watch survivor? I do not watch survivor. Okay. Alright.
I watch survivor religiously. I love survivor. And I gotta tell you, theres a lot of stuff thrown back in there, a lot of stuff that I dont agree with. Theres a couple of things where I think people have a point. And Im gonna take the most charitable view with folks and and and say, I was so I was watching survivor, and they have absolutely made an effort to make the casts more diverse.
Like, one of the things about survivor so writers like this comforting show where even though it sort of has evolved over time, its like very much the same in a lot of ways. And so Jeff Brooks is always the host is always saying, certain phrases all the time. And one of the things he does whenever people come in for challenges, he says, come on in guys. A few seasons back, he stops everybody. Lisa, does anybody object to me using the term, dies?
And a bunch of people say, no, and everybody is sort of shaking their head and then one person, one gentleman whos gay and I think had a trans partner fire call, trans husband objected, said I do object to the term, guys. And Jeff Probst said, okay, Im not gonna use this anymore. And he, like, changed that phrase that he used. And I rolled my eyes at this so hard and was like, are you serious? We cant say guys anymore.
And so theres a part of me. Theres a part of me that identifies with the annoyance that people feel over some of the evolving language that has been here too far harmless and suddenly they are being told that it is actually harmful. Because theyre a part of you that sort of understands like that piece of it or do you think these people are being very unreasonable.
I think I understand when people have a thing that they didnt even realize that they were kind of just used to. And then the thing changes in some way, and they are annoyed by it. I used to write about college football and the NFL. And it is interesting to me whenever there is a rule change, how youre like, oh, that sounds reasonable, and then you see it executed for the first time and youre like, well, thats the stupidest thing Ive ever seen in my entire life. For instance, there have been rule changes that are supposed to protect the quarterback.
Which, you know, weve learned so much about CTE and youve seen horrifying injuries happen. And youre like, that sounds great. Dont need another Trent Green situation in my life. And then you see some of the penalties people get for what looks like just gently brushing the quarterback. And youre like, well, this is ridiculous.
I mean, the challenge that we seem to have, whether its about survivor, which every time I am reminded that it is still going on, you cannot kill you cannot kill a CBS series. They will be airing blue bloods until the day after I die. But I I think that one of the challenges here, I mean, I I say this all the time about how to borrow what used to be on Pute MYRIDE, on MTV, If its like exhibit asked us, like, I heard you want a criminal justice reform. So I got you this weird survivor challenge language change. I feel as if a lot of this is because people and corporations specifically witnessed what has been happening over the last five to ten years.
And decided to react to it in the most small, ball way possible and didnt make anyone happy. No one has been bettered by changes to how people talk unsurvival. Well, and I think thats one of the things where I keep thinking about how we are asking culture to solve political problems. But no one wants to actually solve those political problems because its really hard and people make it mad at you. And then we ask culture to respond to them.
Or cultural entities to respond to them. And they are doing so in a way that feels to everyone overbearing and simultaneously insufficient. And so I I understand the annoyance, but at the same time, Im thinking like, this seems like something that happened because something else bigger didnt happen somewhere else. Well, maybe but, like, take the woman who theyre the last clipper. Shes talking
about the pride shirt. I totally am on her side. Like, I think it is would be so weird for an employer. I think it is weird. The way these companies are saying to people And you know what?
I got me, one of those gay marriages. I like the gay marriage. I like the gay. Its great. Its great.
But I am Its weird to ask people, like, the pride month, like, my Uber suddenly has, like, a rainbow tail on it. Like, for an entire Im, like, this feels like a strange way for our culture to
resign is just let us be married and exist. Yeah. Thats the thing. Is that, like, I think, again, it is an indication of corporations specifically attempting to respond with a cultural action when theyre not responding to, say, a political action, like Starbucks, for example, attempting to discourage people from unionizing or for folks, you know, youre working eighty hour weeks and working all in the weekend, but you got a pride shirt. Thats great.
And so it reminds me after the murders of George Floyd and Ahmed Arbery and Breonna Taylor, people on Instagram started doing this thing of, like, Im posting a black box that means Im listening on racial justice. And I was like, thats not doing anything. Civil asset forfeiture is not being stymied by your black box. Were not getting the elimination of qualified immunity because of your black box. Were Im just annoyed with you.
I was struck because you havent mentioned this yet, and I understand why. But I was struck by the woman who and this is always a fascinating tell to me. I am the product of a interracial couple. And I am always struck by how there is a way in which people talk about mixed race couples Im also in a mixed race relationship that they are a sort of plant by the media, that they arent real. That this isnt a real thing that happens, that no one is in an actual interracial relationship.
Despite the fact that the number of people in interracial relationships has been skyrocketing dramatically over the last thirty years. But its a fascinating tell that somehow that woman listed homosexuality, trans people, and mixed race relationships. I was like, oh, oh, I see. Oh, I see. There is something about how our culture works that we cannot tell in which direction our cultural mowers move, whether they go from the bottom up or from the top down.
And I think that one of our worst inclinations as people is to assume that the only reason people are gay or trans or in a mixed race relationship is because they saw it in a movie or because the cultural overlords made it look like it was okay. You know, I I think that the lovings who had to go to court in nineteen sixty seven and go to the Supreme Court to challenge the state of Virginia for their marriage, I am pretty sure they did not do so because they saw it in the movie. And Im always struck by this idea that you are having mixed race relationship shoved you down your throat. What? Im like, what?
So the jammed My parents are just like hanging
out. So the jammed down your throat piece is is its always that I know it is. So obviously, I view myself. Im at the perfect place in the culture. Like, I have the perfect position.
On culture. And I think everybody would agree that Sarah Longwell position is the perfect position on culture. I was in the bank yesterday, and there is a picture of a gay couple. Doing banking Yeah. there.
And there is kind of like a montage. Theres like a picture of a gay couple. And theres like a a black guy whos like a carpenter, I think. And its like a collection of people who do banking. And I think Yeah.
well, this would qualify to some of the people in this group by shoving it down their throats. Whereas Im like Right. these are people who bank and the bank would like to show that many different people bank here, lest you be one of those people, and wed like to see you reflected in it because we would like you to bank here. And so to me, that is a normal thing to do. Right.
Whereas I think forcing people to wear a pride shirt or the bank having a pride month I think that is like on the other side of things where Im like, I think that some of the things they identified as shoving down their throat are just hey, these people exist and were gonna like show you that they exist. Yeah. Whereas there are things that I might agree, feel like kind of shoving things down somebodys throat. And whats
hard to its hard to tease that out? Right. I remember that there was a Wells Fargo out a couple of years ago. Now keep in mind, Wells Fargo was one of the companies that really screwed over people during the great recession and signed people up for credit cards and then signed up for took a ton of peoples money, but they also had this ad that was about, like, a lesbian couple adopting a deaf child. And I was, like, dont dont bring no.
No. No. No. Dont bring this into this. And so I dont like using that kind of cultural swordsmanship.
The argument that you arent going to do real things to benefit people, but youll do this kind of performative action. I dont like that being included with theres a biracial person on my television and I dont like it because I dont think its real. I dont like the fact that that can all be called a Wokeness. And you could have someone who campaigned against quote unquote Wokeness, and someone would interpret that to mean I wont have to see by racial people on television.
Right. We played, like, a pretty long section there of of those groups, and I think its very accurate of what we hear all the time, but you also hear, like, its sort of inconsistent. Right? People have different ideas very much of what woke means to them. And I had a reporter ask me one time.
They were like, just do people use the word woke in focus groups? And I was like, not really. Like, we had to ask them sort of for the purposes of this, like, what does woke mean to you? For people to say it and they and they all had a variety of different opinions and theyre all sort of its some like substructure of a culture war thing that particularly annoys them. This is allowed to exist under this umbrella phrase rug for them.
Actually, Im gonna get into that a little more, but before you do, I wanna listen to the dams. Yeah. You know, and youll hear, I think, the disconnect between the way that the Republicans
were talking about, what woke is and what dem say woke is. The term woke means stay educated. And thats all it means. Stay educated. But when you hear and its typically used by white Republicans, when you hear dumb sand, the woke generation theyre talking about black people and no one wants to address it.
I believe we have to talk first of all We need to talk. We need to understand one another. And I say this because of my foundation. We have a sand. It says in order for humanity to survive.
We must care for one enough. So we have to take the time to listen to each other and under stand each other. Dont take a term that you know nothing about and run with it and use it in a way thats demoralizing or condescending to the next person.
Governor DeSantis is the governor of Florida, then he loves throwing that term out when he wants to disparage something, and it really angers me to hear it, have a negative connotation. I dont look at a negative way at all. I think awareness is important for change. So I dont like how he uses that term and has made it negative. I dont look at it as a negative thing.
Anytime you want to have a change, Its like to mock you, oh, youre so woke. Its like to cut that dialogue out because its done a very condescending way.
Yeah. Like, a staff is coming from, like, you know, like a Caucasian type person. Like, you need to be more woke. Like, I guess, its in their delivery, their tone of how theyre saying this. So if its, I guess, just depending on the situation, you know, and and how theyre just presenting it to you.
You know, it can come off as rude. You know? It can come off as kind of like a theyre kinda trying to be kinda controlling. Theyre trying to make you aware of something, but its kinda
like a privilege type thing. I would be proud to be called, whoa. Yeah. Do you think it would come out by the way? So the funny thing about this word is that the definitions vary widely.
And I think you know, for the Democratic group, they they didnt so much wanna define, Woke is define, like, the way it is hurled
at them. Right? Right. And I I think that this also goes to the thing about how a culture war cannot be won or lost is that, like, now you hear some of those Democrats being like, hell yeah. Whoa.
Right. Jesus was woke. Jesus was the original wokester. Exactly. And, you know, screw you through these people.
People arent like, oh, oh, Im so sorry about my willingness. I will repent. Like, no. Thats not how people react to things. Like, if you attempt to ban something, everybodys more interested in it.
If you attempt to decry something, in general, people become like very defensive of it. Then you ask more questions and people might be like, oh, well, I dont like this. I dont like that. But using it as a cudgel doesnt do what you think its going to do. It was notable.
Theres a number of people who hear it very
distinctly as a dog whistle. And it whats interesting to me about the term woke, thats what happens when it can mean so many things. On one hand, it is a racial dog. So on the other, for a lot of people its talking about like gender ideology or its talking about whats being taught in schools or its about how they want to be able to say a certain thing and they feel like they cant because its not politically correct. Or its about, you know, CRT or it is about race and its about, you know, a multiracial family on TV.
All of those things when you hear it, do you hear it as a racial dog whistle? Yes and no.
Because it is often used as a racial dog whistle because I think that that again when you use this term as an umbrella term, it becomes I now hear as a woman who doesnt want to see biracial people on television. You might have meant something entirely different, but all Im hearing is there are too many mixed race couples on my television and I dont like it. Because, you know, I remember when I was a kid, woke was what the guys in the barbershop would say about how you needed to be worried about the fluoride in the water because you have to stay woke. Like, they wont tell you about this. And so thats how I heard it.
And then you had to stay woke because, you know, the FBI wanted to kill Martin, which is, okay, sort of actually true. And so this idea, like, wokeness was this conceit that you need to stay aware and stay awake. You need to keep your eyes open to how the powers at Bulwark prepared to mistreat you and mistreat people like you, generally African Americans. And its interesting now to see it become this catch all term when it will always to many African Americans always sound like they were right all along. They should stay aware.
They should stay awake. To the way in which power structures can be wielded against them. So
one of the things that I use the Focus Groups force to help me think about messaging. And on this sort of idea that it is difficult for people to define woke and you learn a lot by sort of throwing out an open ended question about, like, what do you think is woke? You know, they were just saw this prominent anti woke activist Bethany Mandel She was asked on television. She has a book out about how, you know, woke up this is destroying children. And she was asked to define woke up on TV, and she kinda had like this brain free.
Because she couldnt conjure a definition. And the dams rather than getting sort of mad or I think that they should just constantly when people say, like, oh, youre woke. Whats that mean? What Tell me tell me what that means. Because I think that people will betray themselves pretty quickly in terms of what it what it means to them.
Yeah, I I think that asking people what they mean by something is often the best question any journalist can ask. I also think that it if I were doing democratic messaging, I would really focus on how this seems to be a actually from a lot of actual
Like, maybe the actual war that exists. Yeah.
The actual war or actual wars. I mean, many of the same people who decry Wokeness are currently proposing that we bomb targets in Mexico because apparently war is cool when its here. That sounds great. Or you think about so many of the issues people are struggling with in actual life and people attempting to tether that to some sort of wokeness issue, but not actually doing anything about it. Because again, culture wars should not be won and they cannot be lost.
Thats not the point. The point is not to do anything about any of these actual issues. The point is to have something to fight about on the Internet or on television. To the rest of our lives. Yeah.
So I would always say that, like, one, what do you mean? What does wealth just mean? And two, what does this have to do with any actual problem for people who
are on the Internet all the time. Right? Speaking of things that happen on the Internet all the time, I wanna talk about our second culture war buzzword, which is cancel culture. Now I know you hate it, but among our Republican groups, they had a very strong sense that Republicans exist in a world of fear with cancellation by the Liberals in their lives just around the corner at any moment. Lets listen.
The left, they cant really make their point as to why they believe that way. They just wanna scream in your face and tell you they dont believe
in the things that you do. I
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How The Culture Wars Weren't Won (with Jane Coaston) - The Bulwark