What Wars Are Americans Fighting Today?
American Butterfly 2: America’s Culture War
I grew up in the South with a father who believed that we Americans were fighting a culture war amongst ourselves, an ongoing civil war.
“They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand…”
— James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 1963
Dad saw active battles in the schools, in the churches, in the news media, in our businesses, and certainly in politics. To him, they were over the fair treatment of people and the fair allocation of resources.
Someone reading that last sentence in 2020 might think my Dad a social justice warrior. He certainly was a rebel. It took me years to understand how very different good people’s ideas of fairness can be.
Dad was most focused on the unfair treatment of his fellow Southerners. He believed the federal government in Washington, D.C. just couldn’t stop taking away rights. Mom was more interested in the broader assault on the individual. If only society could keep its hands off, each person could achieve great things.
My sister, brother, and I quickly came to understand how different our world was from the one our parents had grown up in. During our early childhoods, we saw AT&T’s rotary phone replaced by a touch-tone device. Despite that advancement, almost every time we called Grandma in Lake Wales, Florida, we had to wait on her party line, a phone line shared with other families.
It was not uncommon to hear a foreign voice jump into our conversation. Grandma would patiently respond to that visitor, “Lilly, these are my grandchildren from Memphis. Can I speak with them for ten more minutes?” I’d hazard a guess that Lilly, Greg, Edith, Matthew, Mary Lou, Ezekiel, and their children knew more about one another’s real lives than a lot of Facebook friends do today. I suspect it brought them all together in some ways.
Grandma always said goodbye to us by announcing, “I know this long-distance call is costing you a ton of money. I better get off now. Love you!” Connecting in those times could be expensive, but it meant a lot to family and friends.
As a young adult I came to think my Dad wrong about most things. He clearly did not bridge the gap very well with people he saw as different. The three of us kids worked to span those gaps in college and mid-life. Over more recent years, though, I have come to understand some of Dad’s assertions a lot better, things my elite college education had pushed me away from.
I like to imagine I’m a lot more balanced today than I was during any of my school years. I’m comfortable with a middle ground and willing to try different tactics to see what works in the real world.
After all these years, there may be only one thing I agree completely with the Dad I knew as a child: America is fighting a culture war. Covid-19 and the killing of George Floyd have shown us how people won’t just try to solve problems. Instead they’d rather fight about the philosophies behind the solutions. Before we take care of people, we have to argue over the politics. This American Culture War has seeped into almost everything we do and all of our organizations, even the ways we interact with friends.
The tricky thing about wars is that they cloud our judgement and blur our values. Yes, war can bring out the best in people. But more often war brings out the worst. We begin acting as if the outcome will determine the very life or death of those we love the most.
Quite true.
Better connections are one of the secret recipes for a better tomorrow. Please follow J. Andrew Shelley.
The above is a modified excerpt from the novel, American Butterfly. The story is told through the eyes of a man raised in the South, living in the North, and struggling to understand love and life in the modern world.
It directly engages recent decades. It embraces the events that have shaped today’s world. And it draws upon the past to help us understand the many sides fighting America’s Culture War.
All through the arc of a family story — different and similar to yours and to mine.
