The Culture War Is the Class War. We Need To Win Both

posted by Pedro L. Gonzalez at Newsweek 

There is a perennial claim that the culture war distracts from the economic issues that drive American politics. It's a point where Democrats and Republicans often find themselves in rare agreement. Many Democrats feel a cultural leftward drift helps their political prospects in the long run, while too many Republican leaders don't have the stomach for the fight.

But the class and culture wars are not mutually exclusive; they are twins joined in utero. Culture war issues often and at once reflect both the class interest and sincerely held beliefs of liberal elites. As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult to disentangle these battles.

The rumble in Florida between Governor Ron DeSantis and Disney is illustrative because it pits one of the most powerful corporations in the world against a state government.

The row began when Disney first denounced and then made it its mission to overturn Florida's HB 1557, also known as the Parental Rights in Education Act, which prohibited teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity to children third grade or younger.

"Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that," the company said in a statement. "We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country."

But Disney's problem is that the legislation enjoyed broad support. The company wasn't standing with Floridians but against them.

A poll by Public Opinion Strategies found 70 percent of registered Republicans, 58 percent of independents, and 55 percent of Democrats agreed with this critical part of the bill: "Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through third grade or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards."

The act has since been expanded to include all grades.

Disney put itself on the wrong side of everyday Americans. And when the company did not get its way, it resorted to economic warfare against the state, threatening to withhold donations to political campaigns in retaliation and portraying supporters of the legislation as bigots. Disney owes much of its success to the generosity of Floridians, who have been willing to grant the entertainment giant numerous privileges and perks. But at that moment, the corporation effectively declared itself suzerain, and a supposedly frivolous culture war fight became a question of who rules: Disney or the people of Florida?

The governor came down on the side of the latter. That should have been a political death sentence, according to the naysayers. Instead, DeSantis defeated his Democratic opponent in the Florida gubernatorial race by a 15 point margin.

That might be because many Americans, certainly most Republican voters, instinctively understand that the culture war is ultimately a struggle for power between competing visions of America, directly impacting everything from education to economics, foreign policy to the environment.

Recall that last year, West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore barred several banks from doing business with the state because they had stopped financing the coal industry. Coal is West Virginia's top export. The green policies promoted by these institutions, which are part of the culture war, directly threaten the livelihoods of blue-collar workers.

But it is not enough to lazily declare things "woke." Leaders must fight these battles with prudence and effectively articulate and frame the issues, as DeSantis has done in Florida and others have done elsewhere.