During my youth, I played the polemicist. Here’s what I learned about true righteousness.
If you haven’t heard, the 1990s are back. Hair scrunchies, oversized blazers, earth tones, and chunky-soled shoes. Also, apparently, Disney boycotts and conspiracy theories about liberal pedophile sex cults.
I was in middle school and high school during the ’90s and enjoyed my fair share of both fashion blunders and culture wars. As a conservative coming of age during the Clinton presidency, I remember the feeling of constant siege while we fought to save America from the godless Left.
So as debates about critical race theory, “wokism,” and changing sexual mores ramp up again, I’m experiencing a bit of a time warp. I wonder, “Why do we love the culture wars so much? Why can’t we quit them?”
To be fair, Western culture was undergoing a radical shift in the ’90s, much as it is today. The former Soviet bloc collapsed, initiating a global realignment. An Oval Office scandal made “oral sex” such a common phrase that even I, sheltered as I was, knew what it meant (after looking it up in the dictionary).
It was understandably a time of increased political polarization, especially with the rise of conservative talk radio. Folks like Rush Limbaugh brought a kind of joyful exuberance to the fight—a confidence and swagger that somehow felt true and freeing. He warned against the “feminazis” while selling Snapple and Sleep Number beds. And even when he mocked the president’s daughter—a girl my own age—it felt legitimate in light of her parents’ obvious corruption.
So when the GOP recaptured Congress in 1994, it was like hope being restored. When Kenneth Starr led an investigation that eventually resulted in Clinton’s …