Culture-Vultures Versus Culture-War Whores

by ROSS
DOUTHAT

The culture war continues apace, and by that I mean that right-wing fear-mongering business is as solid as ever.  Journalists might be having a rough time of it but have has anyone heard about Rushboy having to sell a kidney or even some extra skin and adipose tissue to an organ bank?



Some might say we are culture vultures, inventing phantom demons that don't exist whilst ignoring the real, underlying causes of unpleasant phenomena--all the while snatching bites of decaying flesh from a corpse felled by infection of fear that we carry in our veins.

But I prefer to think of our very un-merry little band less as plague carriers feeding off the victims of our latent infection, and more like something a bit more pleasant.  Maybe gangrene or leprosy.

Perhaps Bill O'Reilly should have titled his book Culture War Whore--or even better,  Culture Whorrior.  


Let's face it: Business is business; the business of America is Business; and when Business and Religion walk together, arm in arm, then America is a land of content and happy people.  And wouldn't you know that there is something new to be afraid of? (Amazing how that never fails to happen.)

Divorce was once the province of hippies, bohemians, beatniks, anarchists, Marxists, and cartoonists. (What I refer to as 'the disposables'.) But now this menace of people who can't stand each other has has infected real Americans--assembly line workers, typists, type II diabetics...in other words, people who can be relied upon to hit the panic button at election time and vote Republican.

The National Institute For The Study And Preservation Of Full On Legal Heterosexuality, Contractually Obligated Child-Rearing And Heaven-Approved Coitus [NISPFOLHCOCRHA] (under the auspices of the Who Is Groping Whom Foundation Of America, an arm of the Society of the International Nosy Fuckwits) released a shocking, terrifying and therefore (to me) highly gratifying new report. My beloved working class is divorcing and church-not-attending at higher rates than ever, even higher than the brain-washed college-educated dupes.

Why is this happening? Could it be due to shifting demographics in the college-bound? Economic instability that harms the working class more than the middle class? Erosion of middle-class stability? Or perhaps unreliable data from an unreliable source? Something else? Please, those would be obvious to a scientist who wasn't paid to investigate why divorce is ruining our country.

But as anyone who's read my recent column on the 'partisan mind', my cognitive filters won't even let those considerations in. Besides, to question science, you must understand science--and this is business.  The business of opinion.

No, America, the truth is one we cannot avoid: There is a moral rot: A stinking rot that makes us avoid churches, sign up for sophisticated corporate confidence schemes that offer us things that are too good to be true; a rot that even forces us not want to spend our lives with someone who makes us utterly miserable (in defiance of the Lord's Will).

Because to think otherwise, I'd be shunned faster than you can whisper "David Frum" three times to your bathroom mirror--and kissing Rush Limbaugh's shoes is not the reason you want to take a trip to Florida. Because God only knows what's on them. And He ain't sayin'.
Ross Douthat