Cultural Disunity and the Triune God, Part 4–Societal Events

Read Part 1-Introduction, and Part 2-Racism, Hegemony, Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality, and Part 3-The Influences of Hegemony, Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality.

In American views of ethnicity, politics, and entertainment, worldviews underpinned by hegemony, critical race theory, and intersectionality, dominate the landscape of American culture.  But the disunity goes far beyond the measurements of ideology.  The disunity includes societal events which are either a result of or used in the cause of the worldviews and movements shaped by these ideologies.  It may be thought that this is a cynical way to think about the world. To use events, however, in this way is not actually unnatural, but is in fact human nature and historically accurate. 

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Humanity can learn a lot from history about themselves, if they have the courage and wisdom to do so.  For it teaches individuals about human nature, and therefore about their own nature and that of those they live with.  And it can be observed throughout history that the crises that touched the majority of people equally were used as weapons to touch the majority of people equally for a particular cause.  For example, both Hitler and the Nazi Party, as well as the New Deal and social security rose out of the crisis which was the Great Depression.  What both examples have in common is that the people who saved the world out of the Great Depression transformed the world into what they desired.  This is a crucial observation to be made from history when understanding the present age.  For however much the times and the crises humanity faces change, human nature remains consistent.  The people who hold to these ideologies have done everything in their power to further their worldview through the effort to impeach the President, in their response to Covid-19, and through the cultural movements which have risen out of and promoted cultural disunity. 

The [first] impeachment trial of President Trump began on January 16, 2020.  On February 5, 2020, he was acquitted (History Central).  This event highlights the extreme efforts on both sides to shape America.  Rush Limbaugh said on air July 9, 2020, that Americans are living in the era of “get rid of Trump.”  He is clearly [clearly] right.  One side of the political sphere is defined by the effort to overhaul the whole system of hegemonic power.  That goal cannot be achieved with a white, male, heterosexual, cisgendered, American first, billionaire living in the White House.  Therefore, everything and anything that can be used to further the cause of removing him from office must be used to do so and is being used to do so.  The failed impeachment trial tethered to the entire effort to oust the President only highlights the division in the cultural, not because of one man, but because of the ideologies that undergird the struggle to get rid of him.  And when Covid-19 hit, it was used just as everything else has been, in the service of those ideologies. 

“On December 31, 2019, the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China” (WHO).   Over 4.1 million cases were reported by July 26, 2020, and nearly 145 thousand deaths were credited to the virus.  As the data changes rapidly, and as conflicting data on the virus and its impact is coming from many diverse sources as some people have addressed (MacArthur), it would be untenable to argue any cultural worldview point from these data except that the culture is spiraling in fear and confusion.  Solid facts are required, therefore, to argue any cultural point concerning the response to Covid-19, and those solid facts are the political policies being enacted in response to the virus.  A $3 trillion relief bill has been proposed by Democrats and passed by the House of Representatives in recent days (NPR).  While the motivations behind the bill, and others like it, might remain unclear, the inflation that will result from such a monstrous amount of printed money being injected into the economy is undeniable (Limbaugh).  There is no better way to tear down the hegemonic power than through forms of communism, and no better way to promote socialism than through the necessity of a mortal threat (M4BL).  And from the political establishment and organized cultural and political movements, the effort to forward these ideologies is clearly stated. 

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd died on the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest by police officers (Timeline: Key events in the month since George Floyd’s death).  A video was released the day of the incident with the title “I can’t breathe.”  Today, those words can be heard, not only across the States, but around the world.  The unrest over that event has propelled another phrase, “Black Lives Matter,” into the mainstream of American culture.  This phrase now stands inseparably for an organization which rose out of the carnage of the riots over the shooting of Michael Brown in this essay’s writer’s hometown of St. Louis, Missouri (“Black Lives Matter began as a call to action in response to state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism” (BLM)).  This organization not only holds to but is founded on the ideologies of intersectionality (“…actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status, or location” (BLM)), hegemony, and critical race theory (We… do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence” (BLM)).  The Movement for Black Lives, or M4BL (a sister organization of Black Lives Matter (Mohler, The Briefing)), expands on the Black Lives Matter movement to explain institutionally what their objectives are.  They state emphatically that they are abolitionist (“We believe that prisons, police and all other institutions that inflict violence on Black people must be abolished and replaced by institutions that value and affirm the flourishing of Black lives” (M4BL)) and anti-capitalist (“The current systems we live inside of need to be radically transformed, which includes a realignment of global power. . . . We believe and understand that Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system” (M4BL)).  These movements act as the embodiment of these cultural ideologies.  And today these movements are affirmed throughout American society.  Major League Baseball, for example, is officially supporting Black Lives Matter in their policies, stamping it on pitching mounds, and tying it around their players’ arms (Murphy).  No matter how much a person might agree with the statement Black Lives Matter and want to uphold that, they cannot separate that phrase from the organization which claims it, making the issues of reunification very complicated.  For these movements have no stated “goal of forgiveness or reconciliation” on any of their sites (Bomberger).  They have goals, not of unity, but of overhauling the hegemonic power no matter how much disunity or hostility that effort incites. 

These ongoing events, and the political and social movements that use them to further their worldviews, demonstrate and contribute to the disunity in American culture. The diagnosis, then, is extremely complicated. The disunity itself goes far beyond hatred and disgust based on outward appearance of the individual. The disunity embodies every classification for a human being imaginable based on the ideologies discussed above, labeling individuals as being oppressed or as being oppressors based on the groups they are said to belong to as determined by the ideologies discussed above. The diagnosis for this extreme disunity has led many to the conclusion that “unity is no longer possible in natural terms” (Strachan, Reenchanting Humanity 214). However, of the many solutions that are proposed today to address such extreme disunity, there is one solution that seems to answer the disunity and the ideologies underlying it. That solution is found in a Triune God who is graciously giving, profoundly relational, and radically reconciling.