By Delilah McSwain | Sunday, April 27, 2025
I grew up thinking “culture” was homemade ice cream, Sunday sermons that ran too long, and the way your neighbor’s radio leaked Hank Williams into the summer dusk. It wasn’t something you fought over. It was just what was there, like honeysuckle or bad perms.
Now “culture” is a weapon, and the war never ends. Somewhere along the way, the whole country traded its good sense for grievance, and bless their hearts — they fumbled the ball so bad it rolled clear out of the stadium, past the parking lot, and into the county fair across town.
Let’s start with a plain truth: Red America doesn’t mind rich folks. It minds the ones who act like they showed up just to grade their manners. A man can forgive you stealing his paycheck. It’s harder to forgive you laughing at his table prayer. Trump’s billionaire buddies get a pass because they say the right words: God, Country, Family, Guts, Guns. They spit when they say “Harvard” and smirk when they say “New York Times,” and that’s enough to pass as kin.
The cruel joke? Behind closed doors, Trump’s circle thinks their base is just as dumb as any coastal elite does. According to Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, Trump called his own supporters “disgusting” and “so stupid.” [source] Michael Cohen testified that Trump frequently mocked his voters as “stupid” and “gullible.” [source]
But Trump’s people knew the trick: wrap the contempt in a flag and a “Merry Christmas,” and most folks won’t notice the sneer under the smile.
Meanwhile, Democrats are busy polishing the silver on the Titanic. They pour gas on boutique battles — like whether biological men should compete against teenage girls in Oregon swim meets — and then act shocked when the stands empty out. Is it fair? Most voters say no. Is it a stupid hill to die on? Lord, yes.
Polling shows it plain: according to Gallup (2023), only 26% of Americans think trans athletes should compete based on gender identity. [source] Pew found 58% say biological sex should determine sports participation. [source] And Washington Post polling puts opposition to trans women in women’s sports at 55%. [source]
Now, this ain’t necessarily my position — I’m just telling you what the numbers say. Don’t shoot the messenger.
And while Democrats were arguing over pronouns, they also managed to blow it with crypto voters. Once upon a time, Democrats were the party of Big Ideas. Moonshots, highways, the internet. Now they treat anything new like it’s a four-alarm fire.
Crypto could’ve been framed as the next frontier of American independence — a messy, risky, beautiful evolution of money and freedom. Instead, they put Gary Gensler in charge of strangling it with red tape. They tried to regulate crypto with the Howey Test — a rule built back when farmers were selling orange groves in Florida. It was never meant to police something as wild and different as digital money. Like trying to license a rocket ship using horse-and-buggy laws.
Gensler spent the last four years treating every crypto startup like a crime scene. Innovation didn’t matter. Only compliance did. And while he was playing whack-a-mole with meme coins, an entire generation of young, swingable voters — many of them socially liberal but economically restless — got the message loud and clear: “If you dream outside the system, we don’t want you.”
A fifth of American adults now own crypto, according to Morning Consult (2024). [source] Among Millennials and Gen Z, it’s closer to one in three. And nearly half of crypto voters identify as independents, according to the Crypto Council for Innovation. [source]
Ignore that many dreamers at your peril.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church finds itself at a crossroads too. The NYT ran a sober little video this week asking whether the Church could ever quit the culture wars. Pope Francis has tried to nudge them back toward mercy — feeding the hungry, tending the sick — but the American bishops are stuck in a 1990s Fox News feedback loop. They think you save souls by winning arguments on cable TV.
But the kids — the ones still showing up at Mass — aren’t interested in fighting about bathrooms and birth control. They want a Church that’s bigger than politics. One that forgives, lifts, heals. One that remembers the “least among us” part and forgets the “talking points” part.
If the Church can’t shift, it’ll end up a niche product — a brand of Christianity for angry old men yelling at the weather.
And the future? It’s not what Fox News or MSNBC is selling.
According to a new poll from the UK, young people aren’t obsessed with the culture wars. They’re worried about rent. Debt. Jobs. Health. Not whether the neighbor’s flag is the “wrong” color or who’s using which locker room. [source]
They want a life — a real one — not a 24/7 grievance performance.
So if Democrats want to save themselves, here’s the plain prescription:
- Stop fighting boutique culture wars nobody asked for.
- Start talking about money, housing, jobs, dignity — every blessed day.
- Court the crypto generation the way Clinton once courted Silicon Valley.
- Reclaim faith and family from the right-wing marketing machines and mega-churches that turned salvation into a sales pitch.
- Laugh a little more, scold a little less.
Trade the scold’s finger for a neighbor’s handshake. Nobody likes a guest who shows up just to rearrange your furniture.
Turns out culture ain’t something you can win. It’s something you live. And Lord save the party that forgets the difference.
Filed from a folding chair under the live oaks, where the sweet tea’s cheap, the jokes are free, and the sins are between you and God.
