Backlash?

logodaedaly pointed out to me what the culture wars are, and in my happiness over a new-found word I googled for it. I found something interesting: an article that argues that the divide is over modernity, not politics per se. This made much more sense to me than the culture wars as apparently usually thought of. The author, David Brin, mentions enlightenment ideals and how they are in decline here. This is very in keeping with my last post from yesterday. I really should re-read Distant Proximities again. If this is backlash to globalization, I think I and many, many others have vastly underestimated just how threatened the masses can be.

What's more, this could explain why on Earth the US uses old technology when the rest of the Earth is moving on. How many Americans even know what 3G is? Or know what NTSC and PAL are? (Not the people at my local Best Buy, apparently. That was weird.)

And it could explain the depth of emotion and the lack of rationale and the urgency which which arguments are made.

And why shirou got yelled at for speaking French. It was a reminder that the world is moving too fast.

This also fits in with something I read recently - that the world's only hyperpower has a sense of hyper-vulnerability of its people. You could see some of that after September 11 - of course it was a shock and it was unimaginable, but... the world has seen much worse. It's a cliche, but it really seems like Americans don't quite know how to react to trouble physically located in their country and seem to have trouble assessing the risk and the danger.

And it also explains why I am completely not understanding what is going on - I think globalization is ultimately a good thing and I'm counting on it. A mass emotional reaction against globalization wouldn't register on my radar other than by critical mass - which could well be what just happened, and here I am, dazed and confused like a drugged cat wondering what happened.

And it's reasonable in the sense that it doesn't require millions of people to be stupid or ignorant.

This fits. I should do some more reading and write something more rigorous to check if this really could be the explanation. Others have clearly tangented on the same ideas, I should find out what they've already said.

Update: Already reading stimulated new thoughts. I am reading What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank, and a line stood out at me. He argues that the neocons have successfully shifted focus from economics to authenticity. He writes, "What divides America is authenticity, not something hard and ugly like economics." In other words, an essentialist identity construction. And that explains where all this un-American business came from. This is all coming together - this is what Maalouf was talking about in some of his examples in In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong. You can see it - the admonishment of moderation, the exclusion of multiple allegiances, everything.

Addenum (01/14/05): What's the Matter with Kansas just gave me another part of the puzzle. One of the reasons that I do not remember this ideological fighting and general craziness, in addition to being a kid and as such relatively politically unaware, is that these phenomena apparently started popping up after we left or right around the time we were leaving. I just ran across an account of how things shifted - and all key events are after 1989. That's why it doesn't feel familiar at all - it wasn't there last time I was living here.