Select date

May 2024
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

We’ve Reached the End of White Christian America

9-5-2020 < Attack the System 37 373 words
 

This is from 2016 before Trump was elected. Trump might be considered “WASP America’s Last Stand” and he was only elected by rhetorically moving leftward on foreign policy and economic issues.


A problem with our anarcho-progressive friends, and the general left, is that they have not updated their analysis to reflect the changes that have taken place in US society (and the West generally) in the past half-century. The racial/cultural/sexual revolution of the postwar period is now mainstream, normalized, and conventional, even if some recalcitrant folks remain. The traditional WASP ruling class and dominant WASP culture are receding and the new Techno-Oligarch/New Clerisy ruling class and Rainbow culture are rising. At the same time, the US empire is as expansive as ever (though cracks are appearing), class relations have gone way backward in the past decades (a process that has dramatically accelerated during the current crisis), and the state is just as authoritarian as ever. The only difference is that the left-wing of the middle to upper classes have become increasingly ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse, and even the right-wing of the affluent classes has become less monolithically WASPish and increasing Catholic, Jewish, “white ethnic,” Latino, Asian, etc.  For example, Trump took 1/3 of the Latino vote in 2016. Regrettably, many “radicals” from the Left continue to wage the permanent war against the culture of the 1950s.



The United States is no longer a majority white, Christian country, and that is already beginning to have profound social and political implications. At 45 percent of the population, white Christians are a shrinking demographic—and the backlash from many members of the group against the increasing diversification of America has been swift and bitter. “People fight like that when they are losing a sense of place, a sense of belonging, and a sense of the country that they understand and love,” says Robert P. Jones, the author of ‘The End of White Christian America,’ in this animated interview. “How do they reengage in public life when they can’t be the majority?”



Print