My wife and I went to see an excellent local production of “Cabaret” last week. I had never seen it on stage before; it struck me as being more raw, powerful, and directly political than the movie. It’s timely, too; you can’t avoid thinking about American culture wars when you watch the interactions between the characters in the cabaret and the Nazis.
A large part of the problem with our culture wars is that both sides identify themselves as victims. How can that be overcome?
With some humility and honesty. The blue side has prevailed in the culture wars. They need to understand that the righteousness of their cause is not as self-evident as they think, to show more tolerance of traditional culture, and to avoid pressing their advantage to the limit. The red side, for their part, needs to understand that their lost ability to impose their values on others is not “oppression,” that they are not the victims in this story, and that any hope of using the political system to bring back the golden age of white Christian patriarchy is going to backfire spectacularly with the American public in the long run.
In other words, demography tells us that tomorrow does not belong to them.