This is how a culture war death spirals.
Sign up for Derek’s newsletter here. The drama in Florida between Governor Ron DeSantis and the Walt Disney Company has taken so many unusual turns in so little time that providing a truly straightforward account of what’s transpired is not easy. But here is the simplest summary I can give. Florida passed a law: Florida introduced House Bill 1557—a.k.a. the Parental Rights in Education Act, or the “Don’t Say Gay” bill—which prohibited classroom instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity before fourth grade or in any classroom “in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” This vague language upset LGBTQ activists and, more generally, liberals and libertarians who viewed it in the context of other states’ attempts to discourage the discussion of LGBTQ issues and lifestyles in schools. Disney said they didn’t like the law: Executives at Disney, Florida’s largest private-sector employer, initially declined to comment specifically on the bill. But following an outcry among staffers, which concentrated attention on Disney’s iffy record with representing same-sex relationships on-screen, CEO Bob Chapek finally swung hard in the opposite direction. He criticized the law and even publicly called out DeSantis. Florida passed another law, punishing Disney for saying it didn’t like the first law: In retaliation, Florida Republicans, led by DeSantis, whipped up a new law that removed Disney’s special tax and regulatory autonomy in Disney World. Technically speaking, they dissolved a “special improvement district,” which had allowed Disney to build stuff as it saw fit and tax itself to provide services, like firefighters if the rides burst into flames. Pausing here, we can already make out a few details that are somewhat unusual. Florida’s original bill was alarmingly vague, leaving all sex-ed and gender-identity instruction open to potential lawsuits from litigious parents. Disney’s about-face was a reminder of the power of the liberal professional class, which pushed the company’s reluctant CEO into the political arena against his initial judgment. And then there’s the ethical pretzel of DeSantis, who enjoys talking about his support for free speech, but also punished Disney for the sin of speaking freely. But a review of events only gets you so far. The author Tom Wolfe once said of avant-garde art that you can’t truly see it until you have a theory of what it’s trying to say. This Florida debacle might not be art, but it’s certainly avant-garde. And I don’t think we can see what’s really happening here until we identify the cultural narratives simmering below the surface. 1. Republicans fear cultural disempowerment. The past decade has seen a total collapse of institutional trust on the right. A majority of Republicans say they disapprove not only of colleges but also of big companies, the entire entertainment industry, and tech firms. While more than 60 percent of Democrats say they trust various mainstream news sources (such as The New York Times and CNN), there is no media company that more than 60 percent of Republicans say they trust (no, not even Fox News). What’s happening here? An explanation that’s not generous to conservatives is that the right is animated by hateful grievance politics. An explanation that’s generous to conservatives is that the professional managerial class really has become anti-conservative.
