The High Cost of "Victory"

 

We talk about "winning" the Culture War

as if it’s a scoreboard.

A tally of points.

A shift in the polls.

But we need to call it what it actually is:

An Identity War.

And victory in an Identity War

requires a body count

of a different kind.

To "win,"

millions of identities must die.

Someone’s sense of self must be dismantled.

Destroyed.

Remade in the victor's image.

That is a psychic surgery no one volunteers for.

We are all eager to be the surgeon,

holding the scalpel of "the truth,"

but no one wants to be the patient

lying on the table.

It’s always easier to demand the "other guy"

remake his map

while we insist our own territory is sacred.

If we want to "Bridge the Divide,"

perhaps we have to stop trying to win.

Maybe we need to stop seeing identity as a noun—

a fixed, immovable monument.

What if identity is a verb?

Fluidity over fixation.

Something we do

rather than something we are.

Imagine a world where the bridge isn't a destination,

but the way we walk.