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Dispatches From the Culture Wars – December 3, 2024

The Great Purge and Resistance 2.0

Demonstrators protest outside of the Supreme Court on May 4, 2022, in Washington. Credit, Alex Brandon/AP Photo
  1. GOP: MAGA Control is Irreversible
  2. Resistance 2.0
  3. Preparing For the Great Purge
  4. The Youth Vote
  5. Christian Nationalism Wants to Repeal Women's Vote
  6. Queering Trump’s Deal
  7. Book Bans and Authors of Color
  8. ‘Wicked’ Politics
  9. Reproductive Wrongs
  10. Diet in the Culture Wars

 

MAGA Control of the GOP is Irreversible

By Carl Gibson
Alternet

Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), who was elected in the 2010 Tea Party wave and ousted two years later, says any hope of reforming the Republican Party to go back to traditional conservative philosophy is now “off the table... It’s down to two options,” Walsh told Politico. “Productively throw rocks at the administration, or become Democrats.”

Resistance 2.0

By David Smith
The Guardian

Trump is heading back to the White House and a People’s March on Washington is scheduled for 18 January, two days before the inauguration. But there are fears that it will be a pale imitation of the historic first protest. The mood feels more muted this time. Some people speak of feeling jaded and disillusioned and turning off the news because they are simply Trumped out.

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Preparing For the Great Purge

By Wendy Fry
CalMatters

In the first Trump administration, California passed a “Sanctuary State” law that, with some exceptions, prohibited local law enforcement from automatically transferring people to federal immigration authorities. Now the state is readying legal challenges to thwart a second Trump administration’s mass deportation plans.

The Youth Vote

 • D’Zs   By Amber A’Lee Frost, Jacobin

 • No, the Kids Aren’t Alt-Right   By Keir Milburn, Novara Media

 • Allegiance to Dems Wasn’t Earned   By Delaney Vandergrift, Scalawag
 

Christian Nationalism Wants to Repeal Women's Vote

By Emma Cieslik
Ms.

Christian nationalists’ argument against women’s suffrage is part of a broader picture of how Christian nationalism uses Christian theology to change the entire election process itself. With Christian nationalists in his circle, women’s suffrage may be the canary in the coal mine for further drastic changes to the electoral system. 

Queering Trump’s Deal

By Michael Bronski
The Guardian

The lessons that queer activists need today to fight Trump’s influence are brilliantly manifest in late 70s and 80s organizing and ready for revising, repurposing and reactivation. Direct action and confrontation works. Queer citizens have to be out and vocal. We can’t afford to worry about being “respectable” or “playing nice”. Educating other Americans about who we really are is vital.

Book Bans and Authors of Color

By Katherine Spoon and Isabelle Langrock
The Conversation

Fifty-nine percent of banned books were children’s books featuring diverse characters or nonfiction books about historical figures and social movements. Authors of color wrote 39% of the banned books in our study. Women of color penned almost a quarter of them. That’s even though authors of color make up just 10% of U.S. authors and write less than 5% of the most popular books in the U.S.

‘Wicked’ Politics

By Constance Grady
Vox

Wicked the musical is based on a 1995 novel of the same title by Gregory Maguire, an anti-fascist treatise in which the Wizard becomes a Hitler-like despot.  For a silly, spectacular show about friendship and talking animals, Wicked actually does invite political interpretations. Its allegory can both elicit eye rolls and still feel eerily prescient more than 20 years after its stage debut.

Reproductive Wrongs

By Laura Ungar
Associated Press

Requests for long-term birth control and permanent sterilizations have surged across the nation since the election. And companies that sell emergency contraception and abortion pills say they’re seeing significant spikes in requests from people who are stockpiling the medications — one saw a 966% increase in sales of emergency contraception from the week before in the 60 hours after the election.

Diet in the Culture Wars

By Iñigo López Palacios
EL PAÍS

Which foods are leftist and which are right-wing? Modern wars do not distinguish between the front line and the rearguard. As the battlefield stretches from Ukraine to Twitter, food has become susceptible to ideologization.