Culture Friday: Political pushback

MYRNA BROWN, HOST:It’s Friday the 15th of November, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST:And I’m Nick Eicher.

It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Good morning!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John, I read a smart sort-of moderate take on where the political culture is right now and there will be two words that I think will really jump out at you … you’ve used them before. But let me run through it. It’s by George Yancey. He’s a sociology professor at Baylor … and he’s talking to the Democrats and giving some advice in a lengthy thread on the social media platform X. Yancey argues that despite significant financial resources and influence over major cultural institutions, Democrats failed to connect with working-class voters. He says that the party’s reliance on celebrity endorsements and promotion of “luxury beliefs” … there it is … that reliance alienates those concerned with, for example, economic issues. By luxury beliefs he meant specifically debates over gender-transitions for minors, defunding the police, and so forth. What do you think?

STONESTREET: I think George Yancey is absolutely right about the massive amount of money that was spent by the Democratic Party—and the Harris campaign is all the proof you need, especially when you contrast it. I mean, a big development in this election—and, you know, I’m not a political commentator per se—but when Elon Musk got involved, he brought his PAC and spent an awful lot of money, specifically in Pennsylvania. He put all that money into knocking on doors instead of paying, you know, Oprah, Cardi B, and some others to show up. And that campaign, apparently, is still seriously in debt after spending all that cash. That kind of tells you everything—it reflects the difference between a top-down celebrity-ism and, I think, a populism.

But we saw something else. We saw something across the board. Yancey touches on it, and he really nails it when he talks about “luxury beliefs.” I think critical theory has really clouded the ability of those on the progressive left to recognize just how elitist some of these beliefs are. And then, of course, in the trans part of this issue, you’ve got men talking down to women in a way that, until yesterday, would have been called “mansplaining” and everything else. In other words, it’s pretty clear who the oppressors are now, and they’re not the ones who fit the usual narrative. It’s completely upside down.

I do think the easiest way to interpret these election results is really through the old line, “It’s the economy, stupid.” You had a sitting vice president connected to a time when things were economically rough and people really struggled. But the other side of it was the number of times that mainstream media outlets and those on the political left talked down to the American people. I saw half a dozen headlines the week before the election along the lines of, “The economy’s fine. Why is everyone unhappy?”—like people don’t know what they’re doing when they go buy eggs, for heaven’s sake. That kind of elite talk-down-ism has really come to characterize the party, and I think there was a real pushback against that and you can see it.

BROWN: Pushback is certainly the key word for where we're going next, John. Maybe you heard about the fierce exchange between two CNN guests, part of a panel discussion on the show News Night with Abby Phillip. Author Jay Michaelson called conservative political commentator Shermichael Singleton transphobic. Here’s why:

SINGLETON: I think there are a lot of families out there who don't believe boys should play girls sports.

MICHAELSON: They're not boys. I'm not going to listen to transphobia at this table, I am—

This would go on for a solid 20 seconds before the host could regain control of the conversation.

PHILLIP: I think out of respect for Jay, like, let's try to talk about this in a way that is respectful.

SINGLETON: Okay, so let me rephrase this. Since I'm being targeted here—

PHILLIP: You are not being targeted—I’m specifically saying I know you are not intending—

And then this goes on for another 25 seconds—an eternity in TV!

PHILLIP: Hold on. Just get to your point.

SINGLETON: My point in terms of its effectiveness, regular people with children look at these things and they say, You know what? This is a bit too far. I do not agree with this. I don't like this. I think Democrats are going way too much to the left on social issues. They're uncomfortable with it. A lot of people believe that. A lot of families believe that. You may disagree with that reality, but that's why Republicans kept running those ads over and over and over again …

Your thoughts John …

STONESTREET: This was a really remarkable exchange. I watched this, and I thought of Chuck Colson. Now, I know that sounds strange, but here’s why. In the last year of Chuck’s life, he spent a lot of time talking about this social phenomenon that explained what we’d seen in the Second World War and other totalitarian situations. It’s called the “spiral of silence.” The idea is that social pressure is very effective at silencing dissent: when one person is silent, it becomes harder for the next person to speak up, and harder for the next person, and so on. This theory was used by a German sociologist to explain how, even though a whole lot of people opposed Hitler, they didn’t speak up; they just went along because the social costs were too high.

The other part of that theory is the incredible courage it takes to speak the truth in this culture. The trans movement has largely advanced through this “spiral of silence.” In this clip, you basically have a Republican consultant saying it’s clear the American people pushed back on the aggressiveness, especially against kids and men in women’s sports. That’s all he’s saying.

But then, you have this activist who now thinks that all he needs to do is pretend to have hurt feelings and act like it’s just unthinkable to say boys are boys and girls are girls, and that’ll silence the conversation. And what’s equally fascinating is the rest of the CNN panel, including the host, going, “Uh, I know we really need to talk about this… but I’m not sure I should,” like they don’t know what the new rules are.

The rules were really clear, by the way, just a year and a half ago. This was like a runaway train with no brakes, and now you have people on CNN saying, “I know what I want to say, but I’m not sure I can say it out loud.” I thought it was fascinating, and it took me right back to this explanation of social pressure and how ideas often don’t advance by argument; they advance by social pressure. So look, I think we need to put this on the calendar, come back on this date in 2025, and see what’s changed. Because politics is very often downstream from culture, but sometimes it’s upstream. Watching this panel was like an instruction in cultural hermeneutics—it explains so much. I just, like, have this image in my mind. Sorry to go on about this.

The host of this show—clearly progressive—going, “I want to defend him, but am I going to get canceled?” No one knows what the new rules are anymore, which is great, because everyone knew what they were 18 months ago.

EICHER: John, I am hesitant even to bring up the pro-life takeaways from Election Day, but, honestly, there’s so much sort of euphoria on the right, even among pro-lifers and it’s understandable—but, what do you think, have we exhausted this issue?

STONESTREET: We cannot over-exhaust what we have to learn as a pro-life movement from this election …

EICHER: Alright, well, then let’s talk about it. Do we have new information as a result of the elections?

STONESTREET: I don’t know if we have new information, but it’s worse than we thought. And by “worse than we thought,” I mean we’re going into the next X number of months without any real political alliances. Now, one might say it wasn’t a legitimate alliance because of this, that, or the other. But it’s pretty clear that the Republican Party ran the Democratic Party on life from the 1990s. Now look, no question: it’s way better than the Democratic platform of 2024, which is, you know, flat-out evil and the most pro-death platform we’ve ever seen. But we also saw what happened at the ballot. And the ballot, of course, tells you an awful lot about where culture is.

We have to go back and figure out how to communicate from the ground up. It’s serious. The realities, I think, are that Americans are way more morally relativistic than we thought a decade ago when we talked about polling and pro-life generations and all that. Number two, we now have a lot of pro-lifers who live in aggressively pro-abortion states. In Colorado, for example, not only are taxpayer dollars now directly funding abortions, but they’re laying the groundwork to frame abortion as a fundamental constitutional right. They’re moving to attack pro-lifers, pro-life Pregnancy Care Centers, and restrict pro-life doctors from following their conscience on things like abortion pill reversal.

So, the divide between pro-life and pro-abortion states and what it means to be a citizen in each is more dramatic than ever. And we haven’t figured out messaging—we don’t know how to push back against this with moral relativism and expressive individualism on the rise. There’s a lot of work ahead, and I say that being grateful that we at least got three out of ten. I mean, hey, three out of ten? If you’re a professional baseball player, that’s Hall of Fame material. But for an unborn child? That’s not a good situation.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thank you, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both!

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.