Some way we’re living in a post-truth society, but I think it’s more like a post-values society. Values can transcend truths. Everything is flipped backwards: facts come before values, instead of decades ago when it was the other way around. Far-left liberalism is much more about a single-minded ideological conformity/purity than any sort of pursuit of truth. The rise of internet conservatism parallels the decline of talk-radio conservatism. The style embodied by Roger Stone, in which facts and accuracy may be secondary to hype, is dying. Although the far-left, which is heavily value-oriented, has power, such power has stagnated. What precipitated this was the ‘left’ losing the economic wars (as in the demise of Marxism) and the ‘right’ losing the culture wars. The left still fights the losing economic war, and is running victory laps in the culture wars. The right, however, has given up on the culture wars. Because the left is still fighting, and the right has given up, it means the country will continue to move leftwards culturally, unimpeded, except economically (which is one of the reasons I am bullish on stocks). The left keeps fighting because they know that while they have power, it is still limited.
So why did the right call it quits on the culture wars? The left is materialistic; the right is transcendental and metaphysical; this is the way it has always been, until recently. Then , starting around the mid-2000’s or so, the right decided to play the left’s game. [1] But then that meant that there could be no materialistic antecedent for waging these culture wars, which are based more on scripture and decree than science. [2] But also, if values are downstream from facts, if existing facts are revised and or new facts are introduced, then so too must the values be amended, and the result is that society, culturally, becomes unmoored, and this could explain the relentless leftward progression of society but also the general rise of social alienation arising from the absence of an unmovable, shared value system. If the science of a ‘gay gene’ is as sound as the economics of why Marxism is a failed system, then it’s hard to be logically consistent in opposing both, as they are both grounded in the same epistemological framework. The way to reconcile this is to just accept both, being indifferent towards homosexuality as something that is always going to exist and not worth resisting, but at the same time taking a stand against Marxism. After the Cold War, the right, which has always opposed Marxism on metaphysical grounds (Marxists tend to have antipathy towards religion), needed to to understand why it failed, but such a quest lead to an materialistic explanation, not a metaphysical one. The Soviet Union failed not because of the absence or persecution of religion, but because its economic system sucked. This sorta lead to a disillusionment.
[1] Although the evangelicals are a powerful voting bloc, their influence on government policy and culture has diminished in recent years. And that many evangelicals support Trump is perhaps further evidence of how the culture wars are becoming less important (but also many supported Trump because he was better than Hillary, not because he is an ideal conservative candidate).
Evangelical Christians wonder where the hell their power went
For decades, they say, they have been steadily pushed to the sidelines of American life and have come under attack for their most deeply held beliefs, born of their reading of Scripture and their religious mandate to evangelize. The 1960s ban on prayer in public schools is still a fresh wound. Every legal challenge to a public Nativity scene or Ten Commandments display is another marginalization. They’ve been “steamrolled,” they say, and “misunderstood.”
[2] A recent excellent podcast by Social Matter The Golden Age – Episode 1: Anti-Buggery And The Epistemology Of Tradition (which also inspired this post), tries to reconcile this.