Culture Warriors category archive

In a lengthy article at The American Scholar, physician and journalist David Brown explores the genesis and state of the prescription opioid* problem in the United States. He traces the history of it in terms of evolving attitudes towards the treatment of pain and patients’ perception of pain in the medical profession and in society and ends with some recommendations.

I’m not sure how much I buy the recommendations, but, given the growing problem, I commend the article to your attention. Here’s a bit:

If the use of opioids for chronic pain were just making the practice of medicine less rewarding, the problem would be tolerable. But it’s changing the country, creating a new underclass in the United States, no less real (or less fraught with the potential for controversy) than the black underclass whose existence has been so central to American history of the past half century. The new underclass, mostly white, is distributed widely, with hot spots—Appalachia, rural New England, and surprisingly, far-northern California. Like those in the black underclass, members of the new underclass usually have no more than a high school education and suffer high unemployment. Unlike the black underclass, whose chief impediments are discrimination, social dysfunction, and the trauma of imprisonment, the new underclass is stymied by economic obsolescence, a sense of victimhood, and an exaggerated view of its own physical damage.

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*Remember, when Not White people do it, it’s simply “drug addiction” and get them off the streets.

Several advisory boards to the President have recently resigned en mass as a result of Trump’s embrace of Neo-Nazis and his mealy-mouthed refusal to condemn the Confederate insurgency in Charlottesville, Virginia. Admittedly these groups are largely symbolic, but there is a larger symbolism in their resignations.

At the Washington Monthly, Nancy LeTourneau considers the implications of corporate CEOs’ jump off the Trump ship. A snippet (follow the link for the complete article:

Our current president is now getting the same kind of treatment from corporate CEOs over his racist remarks that Republican governors and state legislators have been getting over other so-called “cultural issues.” But that exacerbates a collision with what we’ve called “nostalgia voters,” or the “confederate insurgency” that has been ignited to defend against the very racial/sexual/religious changes that threaten their world view.

This move brings into focus a growing fissure within the Republican Party. Historically, corporate leaders have been one of the key members of the Republican coalition—along with military hawks and white evangelicals. But some of the cultural issues that define the attachment of evangelicals to the party are the very ones that are driving the corporate world away.

The conventional wisdom is that the Republican Party’s corporate masters have been willing to tolerate the Republican Party’s bigots and culture warriors so long as the corporations get the tax cuts and other breaks they want. It will be curious to see whether Trumpery leads to the dissolution of that uneasy partnership.

Warning: Language.

Aside:

Paul said, “Faith is the evidence of things unseen.”

He did not say that it is the disproof of things seen.

Timothy Egan marvels at the unwavering support that evangelical they-call-themselves-Christians have for Donald Trump, a venal vulgarian who makes Bob Guccione look like a choir boy, and concludes

Patriotism is supposed to be the last refuge of scoundrels, but religion surely is a close second.

Follow the link to learn why he says that.