I remember back in the 1990s not understanding what the phrase "culture war" meant. I always felt kind of stupid about that.
Well, it turns out I wasn't so wrong about my confusion. As I found even earlier in life when it came to the phrase "Manifest Destiny," my confusion is an indication that the term is not so great because it's premised on a set of assumptions or, as the lawyers say, facts not in evidence.
Cartoonist Jen Sorensen made this clear to me with her latest, which arrived in my inbox a few days ago:
She accompanied it with some cogent analysis, part of which are on her website. This paragraph is not on there:
A "culture war" ... implies a degree of abstraction in the realm of ideas instead of lived experiences. It's a polite way of putting things on the plane of debate. But would we refer to the segregated South of the 1950s as a mere clash of cultures? Or does that obfuscate reality?
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