If you want to know why conservatives are constantly complaining about losing the “culture war,” look no further than conservatives themselves, many of whom have perfected cringe-posting and caricatures, but not much else.
PragerU, the nonprofit conservative organization founded by Dennis Prager, made its name with helpful explainer videos about issues ranging from voter suppression to the national debt. It should stick to politics, because when the group tries to foray into cultural issues, it only appeals to lazy baby boomers who like to stereotype millennials.
This week, PragerU released a video on “Trying to Date in 2019.” Take a look here:
What is it like to date in 2019?
The struggle is real ?@thewillwitt @theisabelb pic.twitter.com/qj6Oh1qibg
— PragerU (@prageru) December 4, 2019
The idea that all young people are vegan, tree-loving socialists seems more like a comment from your Fox News-watching grandpa than an actual observation about young people today. Sure, there are people like that out there, probably more in PragerU’s home of Los Angeles than elsewhere, but this hyperbolic video is in no way representative of normal dating across the country.
Worse, it’s just unhelpful. Check out the comments under the video on YouTube and you can see numerous men complaining that this is what women are like these days. When the woman in the video says, “Generally speaking, I’m a pretty average young woman in America: I’m a social justice activist, I attend a lot of climate change rallies, and when I’m not working to advance the causes of socialism, I write post-modernist feminist slam poetry,” some people think that’s a true-to-life description, and it skews their perception of the dating scene and people in their 20s.
When conservatives portray the “average young woman in America” as an obnoxious, capitalist-hating vegan, it’s no wonder Republicans can’t get young people to vote for them. Luckily, even conservatives recognized that the video was ridiculous. It’s just too bad that neither of the young people in the video had the sense to dissuade everyone who thought this was a good idea.
You don’t win the culture war by turning the other side into a caricature. But when your sole aim is to make a straw man of your opponent so you easily can knock it down, it doesn’t matter if your strategy has neither truth nor humor. All you have to do is “own the libs.”
