”Culture wars are like a pendulum..”

    Good news for the Left! Yes, culture wars against progress are usually lost by the instigators. .
    If the move is forward to change, change usually wins… eventually More freedom wins, eventually. Not complete freedom: freedom, like objective journalism, is a pursuit, a goal, not some ultimate destination.
    Think about culture wars that are being won: gay marriage. At the start of this century gay marriage was being used a political weapon to get George W. elected.
    More than 20 years later gay marriage is legal in some states and on the move. That war is over. But always more to win.
    Next forward move presented itself like it was just waiting, and maybe it was. LGBTQ moves forth and, of course, right now it SEEMS to look bad.
    Drag story time is painted as grooming and horrible by people who claim mass shootings are all about mental health, while their fav pols quietly cut funding to mental health. Claim “nothing can be done.” Go back to that old chestnut “no prayer in school.” (It took 60 years? REALLY?)
    I have argued many times, to deaf ears, it’s a matter of context. I no more want transsexuals actually training little kids to be transsexual than I want heterosexuals training little kids to be heterosexuals. If they’re telling stories about the tradition family, or about how different people being abused, bullied, or making a historical point I get it.
    Lesson: context matters and the story told, in this case about story time, is false framing for political gain.
    One culture war from my time as a teen was long hair. It was assumed some guy with long hair was a hippie, a revolutionary. This was a time when crew cuts were more the norm for kids, and even haircuts considered regular cuts these days considered too long, too rebellious, for some parents.
    Can’t count the number of friends who told me they also had to argue with their mothers over being forced to get a crewcut in the 60’s.
    Imagine my in-laws confusion when their future son-in-law came over to their house for the first time with very long hair while spouting William F. Buckley-isms.
    Yes, I have moved forward too, become more progressive. A term really not used back then.
    Mixed race relationships were a culture war thing back then. The Right often raged about it, parents raised hell, and yes there were a few murders. Now they’re all over TV, commonly seen in society, and as they used to say not too long ago, mostly “no big whoop.”
    Where did THAT phrase come from? Click here for an interesting discussion.
    While I find the word too often phrased as a grammatical atrocity, being “woke” is heading in the right direction: knowing history more completely. Knowing why, how things happened: especially if it makes one uncomfortable regarding ones own misperceptions, IS important.
    Hang on! Time is in our favor: keep reaching forward towards the future.
    Culture wars are like a pendulum, only this “clock” moves. And more likely than not favors moving towards more progressive.
   It just takes time.

                          -30-

    “Inspection” is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 50 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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