I'm not sure how new it is, but there's definitely a very visible swathe of the viewing/reading public whose main way of engaging with the art they consume is by determining what they want it to mean about them in the context of the culture war. The amusing bit is that, once works of art are emptied out and reworked as signifiers, that very emptiness makes it so they can signify pretty much anything. It's probably fun for a while to figure out how to demonstrate that everything I consider good evinces my politics and things that I don't like evince the politics of my enemies, and also somehow that popularity and financial success are positively correlated with both aesthetic quality and the extent to which a work evinces my politics, but it seems like a pretty boring way to enjoy art to me.
Fortunately I enjoy art in a virtuous way, unlike my philistine adversaries.
But of course, a walk around a red-blooded American town in the Heartland, the type of place coastal elites scoff at and hope dies through decay when they're not actively destroying it with their fiscal mismanagement, the type of place where people cant sit on their own stoops without fear of the crime rampant in Democrat-run cities, where we grow and build the things the laptop class depend upon while they craft their posts decrying us -- I have a feeling that the Claremont guys could be persuaded of the virtue in that. Could they be persuaded to shut off the part of their brain that turns everything into a signal in the culture war, to enjoy it for the thing itself, not ideas about the thing? I'm not so sure, though I suppose I'd be more hopeful if I thought that they could.
This is all good analysis. The funny part about your final paragraph is that I do indeed live in a deep-red state--but in the state's only college town, a place the extreme reactionaries in Wyoming are always condemning as a hive of villainy, not really part of the polity, etc. And for all that, it's still very much recognizably a small Heartland town. I think growing up in this exact kind of place is a major reason why I'm so skeptical of culture war dichotomies coming from either/any side.
It was clarifying, as somebody who (largely) grew up in Western NY listening to people vilify NYC, to sit in a bar in, say, Challis or Crouch in Idaho and hear Boise described in the same terms, as the mighty metropolis wielding its political power to override the desires of the 'real' polity. Every state replicates this dynamic to some degree, but it's hard to imagine a more absurd instance than Laramie. Fortunately, while every state has its own NYC, we also have a regional NYCs (yours would I assume be Denver), and even a national NYC (New York City), so a reactionary hoping to enjoy himself walking around Laramie would have options.
Places like Missoula and Laramie definitely have their red-coded side. Tho I guess I'm playing into the absurdities of all-encompassing culture war just by typing that sentence. When I was growing up here, the town itself still broke GOP in presidential elections. That may never be true again, at least at the town (versus county) level. It's going to be interesting to see what the future holds for Laramie, as it hasn't yet had its moment of growth as a hot mountain town, which I suspect is coming, and also the state legislature increasingly hates the town for obvious reasons, even as they continue to lean on the state's only university for all kinds of utility.
I'm not sure how new it is, but there's definitely a very visible swathe of the viewing/reading public whose main way of engaging with the art they consume is by determining what they want it to mean about them in the context of the culture war. The amusing bit is that, once works of art are emptied out and reworked as signifiers, that very emptiness makes it so they can signify pretty much anything. It's probably fun for a while to figure out how to demonstrate that everything I consider good evinces my politics and things that I don't like evince the politics of my enemies, and also somehow that popularity and financial success are positively correlated with both aesthetic quality and the extent to which a work evinces my politics, but it seems like a pretty boring way to enjoy art to me.
Fortunately I enjoy art in a virtuous way, unlike my philistine adversaries.
But of course, a walk around a red-blooded American town in the Heartland, the type of place coastal elites scoff at and hope dies through decay when they're not actively destroying it with their fiscal mismanagement, the type of place where people cant sit on their own stoops without fear of the crime rampant in Democrat-run cities, where we grow and build the things the laptop class depend upon while they craft their posts decrying us -- I have a feeling that the Claremont guys could be persuaded of the virtue in that. Could they be persuaded to shut off the part of their brain that turns everything into a signal in the culture war, to enjoy it for the thing itself, not ideas about the thing? I'm not so sure, though I suppose I'd be more hopeful if I thought that they could.
This is all good analysis. The funny part about your final paragraph is that I do indeed live in a deep-red state--but in the state's only college town, a place the extreme reactionaries in Wyoming are always condemning as a hive of villainy, not really part of the polity, etc. And for all that, it's still very much recognizably a small Heartland town. I think growing up in this exact kind of place is a major reason why I'm so skeptical of culture war dichotomies coming from either/any side.
It was clarifying, as somebody who (largely) grew up in Western NY listening to people vilify NYC, to sit in a bar in, say, Challis or Crouch in Idaho and hear Boise described in the same terms, as the mighty metropolis wielding its political power to override the desires of the 'real' polity. Every state replicates this dynamic to some degree, but it's hard to imagine a more absurd instance than Laramie. Fortunately, while every state has its own NYC, we also have a regional NYCs (yours would I assume be Denver), and even a national NYC (New York City), so a reactionary hoping to enjoy himself walking around Laramie would have options.
Places like Missoula and Laramie definitely have their red-coded side. Tho I guess I'm playing into the absurdities of all-encompassing culture war just by typing that sentence. When I was growing up here, the town itself still broke GOP in presidential elections. That may never be true again, at least at the town (versus county) level. It's going to be interesting to see what the future holds for Laramie, as it hasn't yet had its moment of growth as a hot mountain town, which I suspect is coming, and also the state legislature increasingly hates the town for obvious reasons, even as they continue to lean on the state's only university for all kinds of utility.
Hey, good stuff buddy
Thanks man! Good to hear from you, hope things are going well. And congrats to the Nittany Lions of Penn State on that schedule