What is the culture war?

Considering the unbridled contempt in which I hold it, you'd think I'd be capable of defining the thing I claim to abhor. (I'm really not capable of such a thing, because I can't speak for what's inside the minds of other people, but I should make a stab at it for the benefit of this blog.)

On the road just an hour ago, I saw a young man sporting tattoos.

"Aha!" I thought! "That's a perfect example of the 'Culture War' we spend so much time sceaming about!"

But not so fast. Right there, I felt myself being wrong.

Because, when I was a kid, if you went to the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, you'd see young kids sporting tattoos in order to be cool. And if you went there today, what would you see?

I'd be willing to bet that you'd see young kids sporting tattoos. Why? In order to be cool.

Right wing drunk writes autobiographical novel in which he vents his discontent. People like it, and eventually, those who really like it come to be called "beatniks" by smart-assed San Francisco columnist. Eventually, the man's work is considered to have been some sort of Declaration of Culture War. (All in favor please howl.)

What is going on? The tattoos weren't the issue, any more than Jack Kerouac's discontentedness was the issue.

What happened was that when the children of the American middle class imitated the children of the lower class and tattooed themselves, people saw (or were told to see) this cultural contamination as an attack -- as a form of "war." (Ditto their kids' reading and imitation of "On The Road.")

If the Culture War is in fact a war on anything, I believe it is a very subtle war on American individuality, waged by communitarians of the left (and the right) as well as by their unwitting dupes on either "side."

Those on the left side often disguise this war on the individual as precisely the opposite -- as a war for the individual, and his alleged "rights." What's being missed is that any campaign for the rights of individuals leads to the identification (and classification) of individuals as groups -- ultimately to the detriment of individuality.

People on the right often are led to believe that they are defending some "culture" -- which they misconstrue as consisting of those things which are most important to them (their "values" if you can stand to see that word again). In the process, they forget that no one made their kids tattoo themselves, and that in reality they have themselves raised witless dupes. Naturally they want to blame anyone but themselves, so they blame an "assault" on their "culture." Similar processes occur on the left, and I admit that I am generalizing, but that's an inevitable pitfall of an attempt to define.

Your kid smokes, it must be someone else's fault. Howard Stern made him talk that way and get a tattoo. The Left attacked our culture. Right wing nuts are forcing the militaristic "gun culture" on our kids, and video games are all a part of it.

Thus, the Culture War depends on who defines it, and in whose name.

So, I think that while it's tough to define precisely what the Culture War is, individualism is what it is not.

But I don't want to tell anyone what to think or how to fight the blasted Culture War, which is here to stay.

Why, the Culture War has been around so long now, it has to even be considered part of our "culture."

(Can I just be allowed to say "not in my name," or is that too clichéd? Yeah, it might be another copyright violation. . .)