USA According to Coronavirus
Making sense of American culture wars and their role in times of viral politicization
In the West, the saying goes, common sense emerges not from divine guidance, but from culture wars disguised as popular entertainment. This is why, while Xi Jinping is struggling to merge capitalism with Confucian traditions, Donald Trump is alternating between a commander-in-chief and an anti-establishment rebel.
Western culture wars affect every aspect of life. Immediately after Covid-19 booked a flight from Wuhan to New York in early 2020, the last apolitical human act—the venerable sneeze—joined an endless list of politicized mundane things. Soon enough, the tiny droplets of rapidly expelled saliva replaced sexual assault as the main focus of partisan propaganda.
Some of us fondly remembered the days of old, when we pondered why veganism got bundled with gay rights or why, despite the best efforts of Caitlyn Jenner to prove that gender hardware and cerebral software are not intrinsically linked, the phrase conservative transgender knocked off exact estimate from the top of the oxymoron charts. In hindsight, that world seemed much simpler.
Alas, my job is not to fuel your anxiety, for that is a task best performed by the media. I am in the business of humor, which thrives when culture wars reach their apex. That’s because wars are fueled by passion, and passion is always funny. Just think of your best orgasm and then try to picture the ridiculous faces you make while you climax—the rift between illusion and reality would be unsurmountable.
Same goes for political fights. Caught up in them, a sneeze is elevated to a statement, but to a disengaged onlooker, it’s just a secondary bodily function. Acknowledging such dualities in human experience is at the fundament of Western civilization. In the East people derive societal norms from harmony and order, imitating an idealized Universe. That’s why you won’t see many maps making fun China’s handling of the pandemic. In the West, we derive them from chaos. Hence, this.
So, stay calm! Things are exactly as they are supposed to be.
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An international bestseller, the Atlas of Prejudice has been published in English, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Italian. Its various hardcover, paperback, and electronic editions have sold more than 100.000 copies worldwide!
