CULTURE WAR POLICE STATE

HOW THE CULTURE WAR FEEDS THE POLICE STATE

- C.J. CIARAMELLA

The Hood County constable was in the middle of a nearly two-year investigation of several school librarians for distributing allegedly obscene books. Local news outlet KXAS obtained the body camera footage and the nearly 800-page case file of the officer's investigation last year, which concluded after the district attorney declined to file the charges that the constable had taken the liberty of drafting up.

No librarian has been arrested in such a case yet, in Texas or elsewhere, but the incident illustrated a larger trend: On issues such as library books, abortion, gender, and even food, the culture war is now feeding the police state.

This phenomenon started in the states, and none have pursued it with more intensity than Florida and Texas, where governors and legislatures have competed to show that they’re fighting the hardest against what they call “woke” excess and leftist hegemony. Now this style of governance—using criminal law, mass surveillance, tip lines, and the threat of police violence to wage the culture war—is going national.

This doesn’t just implicate the freedom of trans people or high schoolers who want to read Toni Morrison; it’s a danger to every American who wants to live, work, and travel without being monitored and menaced by the state.

THE ‘BLUEPRINT STATE’

IF YOU TRACE the origins of President Donald Trump's numerous executive orders this year on any culture war issue, it will often take you to Florida or Texas.

When the second Trump administration issued an order threatening to strip federal funding from K-12 schools that teach children “anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies” related to gender and race, it was lifting from Florida's playbook.