2022.05.02 迪斯尼对德桑蒂斯是政治的未来

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Disney vs. DeSantis Is the Future of Politics
This is how a culture war death spirals.

By Derek Thompson
A spliced flag of yellow and red stripes, centering the faces of Mickey Mouse and Governor Ron DeSantis
Adam Maida / The Atlantic; Arturo Holmes/Paul Hennessy/Getty
MAY 2, 2022, 6 AM ET
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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.

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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. Organizations such as the NBA respond to conservative laws they dislike by pulling their business out of a state. Major tech companies hail causes such as Black Lives Matter, whose positions—on policing, for example—are far to the left of the typical American’s. Of course we’ve turned against America’s institutions, a conservative might say. They’ve turned against us!

Right-wing distrust of big companies is awkwardly embedded in a party whose leadership outwardly loves big companies. The most important economic legislative achievement under President Donald Trump was a multitrillion-dollar tax cut for the same corporate class that the rank and file dislikes.


But regardless, right-wing antipathy to just about every American establishment that doesn’t employ cops, priests, or soldiers is real and growing. That’s how you wind up with DeSantis, a pro-business conservative, beating up on Disney, the largest business in his state. He is acting out the anti-institutional impulses of his base.

2. Democrats fear political disempowerment.

If you’re a conservative wondering where all this Millennial corporate activism is coming from, try to see things from the liberal perspective. Trump is a wannabe authoritarian who desperately tried to overturn a democratic election. He failed, but his clownish followers still stormed the seat of government, apparently thinking they could accomplish by force what the president couldn’t accomplish by law. State-level Republicans are purging bureaucrats who refused to go along with Trump’s attempted cancellation of the election. Meanwhile, Republicans have moved ever further to the right on LGBTQ issues; they are empowering citizens to enforce severe anti-abortion laws in Texas and many other states; and the Supreme Court’s conservative majority may soon overturn Roe v. Wade.

If Republicans have reasons to feel paranoid about liberal companies stomping on their values, Democrats certainly have reasons to feel paranoid about conservative lawmakers flirting with authoritarianism as revenge. Looking around at their political leadership, Democrats are bereft. The president is feckless, the Senate is pathetic, the House of Representatives is powerless, and the courts are strewn with Republican appointees. What lever of power is left? The cultural lever. This is the context in which LGBTQ Disney employees find it necessary to urge their executive team to act as their proxy army in Florida politics.


3. Bipartisan paranoia is creating a war of words about words.

To review, today’s culture-war death spiral is being accelerated by reactive polarization on both sides. Republicans, freaked out by what they see as cultural disempowerment, are yanking politics right; Democrats, freaked out by what they see as political disempowerment, are pulling institutions left.

I know that by typing the words both sides in the previous paragraph, I have summoned the ancient curse of a thousand tweeted screenshots by media watchers. So let me state something as clearly as possible. As a liberal Millennial, I don’t think liberal Millennials urging companies to take political stands is remotely as bad as Republican activists urging politicians to, say, ban math books on the grounds that cartoons of gay parents amount to sexualized “grooming.” Personally, I find the former defensible and the latter detestable. But as a political observer, I ought to note plainly that both of these things are extraordinary appeals to power, that these appeals to power are effective, and that liberals’ effectiveness moving companies left and conservatives’ effectiveness moving state politics right are two forces turning in a gyre of unyielding grievance. The possibility that the right is polarizing harder and for worse reasons than the left doesn’t change the fact that both sides are polarizing.


America right now is not exactly devoid of problems: We have a housing crisis and an energy crisis; climate change is becoming more severe; the pandemic is not yet over. When historians look back on this period in a few decades, they may be a touch surprised to discover what we argued about. Huh, so they spent 2022 fighting about sex-ed policies? And the treatment of Reconstruction in history classes? My point isn’t that these things don’t matter, but rather that some weeks, they appear to be the only things we talk about. Wokeness, anti-wokeness, cancel culture, safe spaces, free speech, corporate speech—that’s politics now. Words about words about words.

***

The political scientist Ronald Inglehart famously wrote that as societies get richer, voters care less about economic (material) issues and more about social and cultural (post-material) issues. With rising material well-being, we climb Maslow’s hierarchy to the top of the pyramid, get woozy with altitude sickness, and start ranting at each other about language. This is how we get Florida setting its economic and tax policy by first looking at which companies are saying the right words.

Who is allowed to say what? In the post-material future coming into focus, this is the only political question that matters. It is certainly the question that matters in the Disney-DeSantis showdown. “I am the most free-market person on the right … I think more freedoms for businesses are good,” the conservative personality Ben Shapiro said recently on his popular podcast, about the Florida fracas. “However,” he said to Disney, “if you decide to just become a woke corporation that does the bidding of your Democratic taskmasters, don’t be surprised if you get clocked by a legislative two-by-four. Eff around and find out.”


What a refreshingly blunt statement: Freedom of speech is good, but my political enemy’s speech is punishable by law. This is right-wing economic policy for a post-material age: Conservative companies are allowed to talk, and leftist employees are invited to listen.

Years ago, Republicans were critical of college-campus Democrats for their embrace of “safe spaces.” But maybe the right wasn’t contemptuous of safe spaces, just envious. Why merely a safe room, or a safe campus? Mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bit bigger, darling. Why not an ideologically safety-proofed corporation? Or state? Why not fire the entire federal bureaucracy, as Ohio’s Senate candidate J. D. Vance proposed, and make the government a safe space for right-wing populism?

You might think I’ve strayed from the crux of the Disney-DeSantis mess. But I think we’re at the heart of it. The specific events of this political crisis are less important than the moral of the story. Who is allowed to say what? Disney effed around and found out for itself: Post-materialism rules everything around us.

Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the Work in Progress newsletter.



迪斯尼对德桑蒂斯是政治的未来
这就是文化战争的死亡漩涡。

作者：德里克-汤普森
一面由黄色和红色条纹拼接的旗帜，中间是米老鼠和州长罗恩-德桑蒂斯的脸。
亚当-迈达/《大西洋》；阿图罗-霍姆斯/保罗-亨尼西/盖蒂
2022年5月2日，美国东部时间上午6点



佛罗里达州州长罗恩-德桑蒂斯(Ron DeSantis)和华特-迪士尼公司之间的闹剧在如此短的时间内发生了许多不寻常的变化，要想对所发生的事情作出真正直接的说明并不容易。但这里是我能给出的最简单的总结。

佛罗里达州通过了一项法律。佛罗里达州提出了1557号众议院法案--又称 "家长教育权法案"，或 "不要说同性恋 "法案--该法案禁止在四年级之前或在任何课堂上对性取向和性别认同进行 "不适合学生年龄或发展的方式 "的教育。这种模糊的语言使LGBTQ活动家，以及更普遍的自由主义者和自由主义者感到不安，他们从其他州试图阻止在学校讨论LGBTQ问题和生活方式的角度来看待这一法案。


迪斯尼说他们不喜欢这项法律。佛罗里达州最大的私营部门雇主迪斯尼公司的高管最初拒绝对该法案发表具体评论。但在员工们的强烈抗议下，他们将注意力集中在迪斯尼在屏幕上表现同性关系的可疑记录上，首席执行官鲍勃-查皮克最终向相反的方向猛烈摇摆。他批评了这项法律，甚至公开指责德桑提斯。

佛罗里达州通过了另一项法律，对迪士尼说它不喜欢第一项法律进行惩罚。作为报复，以德桑蒂斯为首的佛罗里达州共和党人制定了一项新法律，取消了迪士尼在迪士尼世界的特殊税收和监管自主权。从技术上讲，他们解散了一个 "特别改进区"，该区允许迪斯尼按其认为合适的方式建造东西，并对自己征税以提供服务，如在游乐设施爆燃时提供消防员。

停在这里，我们已经可以看出一些有点不寻常的细节了。佛罗里达州的原始法案模糊得令人震惊，使所有的性教育和性别认同教育都有可能被爱打官司的父母起诉。迪斯尼的改变是对自由主义专业阶层力量的提醒，它将该公司不情愿的首席执行官推到了政治舞台上，违背了他最初的判断。还有就是德桑蒂斯的道德伪装，他喜欢谈论他对言论自由的支持，但也因为自由发言的罪过而惩罚了迪士尼。


但对事件的回顾只能让你走到这里。作家汤姆-沃尔夫(Tom Wolfe)曾对前卫艺术说过，在你对它所要表达的东西有一个理论之前，你无法真正看到它。佛罗里达州的这场灾难可能不是艺术，但它肯定是前卫的。而且我认为，在我们确定表面以下的文化叙事之前，我们无法看到这里真正发生的事情。

1. 共和党人害怕文化失权。

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在过去的十年中，右派的机构信任完全崩溃了。大多数共和党人说，他们不仅不赞成大学，也不赞成大公司、整个娱乐业和科技公司。虽然超过60%的民主党人说他们信任各种主流新闻来源（如《纽约时报》和CNN），但没有一个媒体公司是超过60%的共和党人说他们信任的（不，甚至福克斯新闻也没有）。

这里发生了什么？一个对保守派不慷慨的解释是，右派被仇恨的怨恨政治所驱使。一种对保守派宽容的解释是，职业经理人阶层确实已经变得反保守。像NBA这样的组织对他们不喜欢的保守法律的反应是将他们的业务从一个州撤走。主要的科技公司为 "黑人的生命 "等事业欢呼，而这些公司在警务方面的立场与一般美国人的立场相去甚远。保守派人士可能会说，我们当然已经反对美国的机构了。他们已经背叛了我们。

右翼对大公司的不信任被尴尬地嵌入到一个领导层对外喜欢大公司的政党中。唐纳德-特朗普总统领导下的最重要的经济立法成就是为官兵们不喜欢的那个企业阶层减税数百万美元。


但无论如何，右翼对几乎所有不雇用警察、牧师或士兵的美国机构的反感是真实的，而且在不断增加。这就是为什么德桑蒂斯这个亲商业的保守派会对他所在州的最大企业迪斯尼大打出手。他正在表现出他的基础的反体制的冲动。

2. 2.民主党人担心政治权力被剥夺。

如果你是一个保守派，想知道这些千禧年的企业行动主义是从哪里来的，请试着从自由派的角度看问题。特朗普是一个想当独裁者的人，他拼命地想推翻民主选举。他失败了，但他的小丑般的追随者仍然冲进政府所在地，显然认为他们可以通过武力完成总统无法通过法律完成的事情。州一级的共和党人正在清除那些拒绝配合特朗普试图取消选举的官僚。与此同时，共和党人在LGBTQ问题上越走越右；他们正在授权公民在德克萨斯州和其他许多州执行严厉的反堕胎法；最高法院的保守派多数可能很快会推翻罗伊诉韦德案。

如果共和党人有理由对自由派公司践踏他们的价值观感到偏执，那么民主党人当然也有理由对保守派立法者为报复而与专制主义调情感到偏执。环顾他们的政治领导层，民主党人感到很无奈。总统是无能的，参议院是可悲的，众议院是无力的，法院里到处都是共和党任命的人。还剩下什么权力杠杆？文化杠杆。这就是LGBTQ迪士尼员工认为有必要敦促他们的执行团队作为他们在佛罗里达州政治的代理军队的背景。


3. 两党的偏执狂正在制造一场关于文字的战争。

回顾一下，今天的文化战争死亡漩涡正在被双方的反应性极化所加速。共和党人被他们认为的文化失权吓坏了，正在向右拉动政治；民主党人被他们认为的政治失权吓坏了，正在向左拉动机构。

我知道，我在上一段打出双方的字样，就召唤出了媒体观察家们在推特上截图的千古魔咒。因此，让我尽可能清楚地陈述一些事情。作为一个自由派的千禧一代，我不认为自由派的千禧一代敦促公司采取政治立场与共和党活动家敦促政治家禁止数学书一样糟糕，比如说，以同性恋父母的漫画相当于性化的 "疏导 "为理由。就个人而言，我认为前者是可以辩护的，后者是可恶的。但作为一个政治观察家，我应该明确指出，这两件事都是对权力的非凡诉求，这些对权力的诉求是有效的，自由派将公司向左移动的效力和保守派将国家政治向右移动的效力是在不屈的怨气的旋涡中转动的两种力量。右派可能比左派更努力、更有理由地分化，但这并不改变双方都在分化的事实。


美国现在并非完全没有问题。我们有住房危机和能源危机；气候变化正变得越来越严重；大流行病尚未结束。当历史学家在几十年后回顾这段时期时，他们可能会对发现我们争论的内容感到一丝惊讶。嗯，所以他们花了2022年的时间来争论性教育政策？还有历史课上对重建时期的处理？我的观点不是说这些事情不重要，而是说在某些星期，它们似乎是我们唯一谈论的事情。觉醒、反觉醒、取消文化、安全空间、自由言论、企业言论--这就是现在的政治。关于文字的文字。

***

政治学家罗纳德-英格哈特(Ronald Inglehart)曾写道，随着社会越来越富裕，选民对经济（物质）问题的关注度越来越低，对社会和文化（后物质）问题的关注度越来越高。随着物质生活水平的提高，我们爬上了马斯洛的金字塔顶端，被高原反应搞得晕头转向，并开始就语言问题相互咆哮。这就是我们如何让佛罗里达州制定其经济和税收政策，首先看哪些公司在说正确的话。

谁可以说什么？在即将成为焦点的后物质的未来，这是唯一重要的政治问题。这当然也是迪士尼-德桑蒂斯对决中的重要问题。"我是右派中最自由的人......我认为企业有更多的自由是好事，"保守派人士本-夏皮罗(Ben Shapiro)最近在其流行的播客节目中谈到佛罗里达州的争吵时说。"然而，"他对迪斯尼说，"如果你决定成为一个醒目的公司，听从你的民主党任务负责人的吩咐，如果你被一个立法机构的人打了一拳，不要惊讶。努力一下就知道了。"


多么令人耳目一新的直言不讳的声明。言论自由是好的，但我的政敌的言论是要受到法律惩罚的。这是后物质时代的右翼经济政策。保守派公司被允许说话，而左派员工则被邀请倾听。

几年前，共和党人批评大学校园里的民主党人对 "安全空间 "的拥护。但也许右派并不蔑视安全空间，只是羡慕。为什么仅仅是安全的房间，或安全的校园？不要害怕做大一点的梦，亲爱的。为什么不是一个有意识形态安全保护的公司？或国家？为什么不像俄亥俄州参议院候选人J-D-万斯提议的那样，解雇整个联邦官僚机构，让政府成为右翼民粹主义的安全空间？

你可能认为我已经偏离了迪斯尼-德桑蒂斯乱局的症结所在。但我认为我们正处于它的核心位置。这场政治危机的具体事件不如故事的寓意重要。谁可以说什么？迪斯尼搞了半天，自己也发现了。后物质主义统治着我们周围的一切。

德里克-汤普森是《大西洋》杂志的工作人员，也是《工作进展》通讯的作者。