While there is no denying that a culture war is in effect, the laughable deflection of “They started it by hitting us back” exposes the culprits.

To start, let’s play out a scenario: You invite some friends to your home and they bring their dog. While welcome to do so, when the hound jumps on your sofa you go over and coax the animal off your furniture, but then your friend admonishes you for doing so. Accusations of intolerance come forth and you even are charged with hating animals. This would likely lead to you either questioning your friend selection or at the very least preventing the dog from being invited back.

This is the same ludicrous scenario we are currently seeing played out repeatedly in our nation these days. Those who are pushing radical agenda items are then accusing those who resist their efforts of engaging in a culture war, engaging in as lame an attempt at deflection as it gets. The odd reality is that while these efforts fail, they only lead to the ploy being trotted out more often.

One of the main battlefields is in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis is continuously accused of staging the culture war when the reality is he is pushing back at the incursion. His school reforms are a central focus — a reaction to the attempt to inject content into schools that deviates from the norm. It is not a battle he has created but one he is choosing to engage in.

Critical Race Theory is not a standard of curriculums, it is a new enterprise. The desire to push more lurid and graphic content in books is being met with the expulsion of those works from libraries. Last year’s marathon battle over the parental rights in education law was due to seeing more of this inappropriate content becoming normalized – and at younger ages. Yet opponents – especially in the press – constantly cite DeSantis as creating these conflicts when the truth is it is a reaction. The lack of investigation into the specifics shows how the fix is in play.

On a national level, we are seeing the conflict over the trans community being waged on a near daily basis. Consider for just a moment how small of a segment of our society this group populates; less than one percent of our population identifies as transexual. But somehow, the trans agenda is perpetually in the news cycle and social media feeds. This is an all-out promotional campaign, and yet despite this onslaught of PR, it is those on the right not buying into the hype who become accused of making trans rights an issue.

One thing we hear on the regular is how trans activists claim to be “marginalized.” They comprise roughly 0.7 percent of our society, yet they are receiving vastly more coverage than that metric deserves, and most of it is of a favorable bent. From the media, corporate America, and up to the White House you can find those backing the trans agenda. Their claim to not being represented fairly is certainly not rooted in reality.

But this effort provokes all manner of pragmatic pushback. We are told to ignore that biological males are dominating females in athletics. We have to rewrite the dictionary to accommodate the emotional fervor of activists. We get lectures from “the party of science” that we need to ignore biology in order to reclassify genders. And if you resist any of this by resorting to common sense and basic facts you become accused of waging a culture war.

This effort is clearly part of the new playbook from the left, as we see with increasing frequency this accusation is made with the introduction of any new agenda item. They propose, we reject, and then we are the ones accused of creating a conflict as a result, with the expectation being that we get placed on the defensive as the policies move forward. It is playing in a wider swath of issues, and it shows how intent they are in this mob mentality push.

Earlier this year, gas stoves became a contentious story; it was entirely generated on the left. Richard Trumpka Jr. gave an interview suggesting propane ovens were a threat and needed to be phased out. News outlets flooded the market with reports repeating his words. Then, when Republicans and conservatives mocked and resisted this, they were accused of creating a controversy out of nothing. Dozens of news reports were made on a Monday, and by Tuesday many of these same outlets were acting dismayed with “Where are these conservative conspiracy nutters getting these ideas?!”

Here is how you can tell this is becoming an entrenched narrative. This past weekend a new “study” came out about the environment. Instead of mankind or livestock being blamed for creating too many greenhouse gas emissions, one of the forced solutions is now said to be a culprit. After years of telling us we need to move our diets away from meat to sustainable vegetarian diets, now we are told rice farming is creating far more methane than ever imagined.

In response to this, the deputy press secretary for Ron DeSantis, Jeremy Redfern, put out a tweet that scorned this new finding. His post led to MSNBC blowhard Mehdi Hasan coming out to deliver condescending contempt towards Redfern, implying he had better things to do than engage in – you got it – culture war politics.

This is how a taxpayer-funded DeSantis press aide spends his time online, while residents of Florida try and recover from historic floods, and his boss’s presidential campaign craters as donors flee. It’s all culture wars, all the time. https://t.co/qzj32KOP93

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) April 17, 2023

Again, we have a new agenda item being introduced but when others react to the newly-arrived information, they are accused of creating a controversy. Making Hasan’s sanctimonious preening less annoying and instead laughable, he completely shows off his ignorance on the subject. Florida is actually one of the few states beyond the Mississippi River locations that grows rice crops, so this is, in fact, a valid concern for state offices.

Jeff Charles covered how the New York Times attempted this bit of reframing, regarding the Bud Light backlash and the broader trans community controversies. The writers try to say that conservatives have been seeking out a major wedge issue to motivate voters ever since gay marriage was legalized, and suddenly they have found it in the trans activism movement. Of course, they have to ignore that Republicans managed to win the White House and make gains in Congress and state houses since the gay marriage issue, but then they manage to completely unravel their own argument.

“With gender norms shifting and a sharp rise in the number of young people identifying as transgender, conservative groups spotted an opening in a debate that was gaining attention.”

This passage should alert a journalist to their own flawed thinking, were they not so caught up convincing themselves they had hit upon a new discovery. If it is the “norms” that are being shifted that should tell them that this is not something conservatives have created out of whole cloth. It is a series of issues they are facing because the standards of society are being forced to shift. It is the rewriting of societal norms that is the creation of a culture war.

This exposes the game seen in the media. When societal norms are being contorted, it is not looked at as an issue, it is those people adhering to standards who are the problem. Sticking to facts is a threat, and adhering to accepted science is now an attack. Resist radical, nonsensical change and you are the one causing a problem, in their twisted worldview.

Reinterpreting history in schools, placing sexualized content in libraries, tossing out biological standards, rewriting the dictionary, and all other revolutionary cultural acts are not looked at critically. Those who call out the idiocy of these forced alterations are the ones charged with antagonism. Daring to stand in a position of declaring firmly what constitutes a woman is called engaging in the culture wares.

The very people attacking common sense are accusing others of aggression. Do not be made to feel off-balance because they hope to redefine their actions. They can accuse others of “starting it” – so long as they do not get to finish it.  

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