Culture Wars and the Right: Why Conservatives Keep Pushing Ridiculous Causes

I've often wondered why it seems that the conservative elite are so attached to such pointless exercises as the Drug War, when evidence piles up year after year that it is a miserable failure. Another question is why everything is framed as a "war" in the first place. Besides the fact that the US knows war better than anyone else, the answer might be that each of the US' failed "wars" are actually "culture wars" at their core. The Drug War isn't a war on drugs, it's a war against minorities and the poor. The War on Poverty was the same thing, but its name was a little too obvious, which is why you don't hear much about it anymore. It wasn't about eliminating poverty as much as it was about making sure that the poor didn't rise up against the rich. The War on Terrorism is not about terrorist activity so much as it is about broadcasting the superiority of American values which are clearly under attack. Like the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty, the War on Terrorism cannot possibly be won, but its proponents keeping pushing it anyway.

Culture war as the basis for all these types of activities is more apparent now than ever before, now that we have a few examples of when the right-wing American elite have pushed US policy into losing causes. And the causes are getting more and more bizarre. The truth is that the powerful conservative elite don't need to win these causes, because losing them repeatedly is what keeps them in power. Having perpetual war ensures their profits, and ensures they always have a cause, and allows them to continually demonize the other side for not participating in their war, which can only be good, after all it is a War on DRUGS!/TERROR!/POVERTY! (all of which are clearly bad). Despite the fact that the premise of the war is absurd to begin with, Democrat politicians support the various culture wars for fear of being seen as "soft" on drugs/crime/terror.

It's a sick game they play, these political types. They know the public is ill-informed, and they play with their emotions using fear and raising controversy. But who knew they would waste so much time on such losing causes as fighting against same-sex marriages, when so much else is going on in the world? Here's an opinion piece that suggests why losing causes are the Right's bread and butter in these interesting times.