'Apocalyptic headlines' of Trump era make 'war on Christmas' seem quaint: analysis

Barbed Wire senior editor Brian Gaar says he misses the good old days of the ‘War on Christmas,’ when Fox News ran segments arguing that “’Happy Holidays’ was basically Sharia law in a festive font.”

“Honestly? I miss that absurd little era,” said Gaar, even if it was the “soft-launching … of ‘bathroom safety’ panics and anti-DEI crusades and whatever fresh authoritarian nonsense they’re road-testing this week.”

“Back then, the culture-war machine at least had the courtesy to be stupid on a small scale,” said Gaar. “You could roll your eyes at the guy in Walmart shouting about how the cashier’s ‘Enjoy your holiday’ was proof America was circling the drain, and then go about your day.”

“Now? We’re drowning in apocalyptic headlines,” Gaar said, referring to abortion becoming illegal “in basically half the country” and “diversity programs dismantled.” He also notes that today trans people are “targeted by bathroom bills designed to unleash vigilantes,” and Fox pundits “bend over backwards to avoid criticizing white nationalists.”

“It makes the old holiday hysteria look like a Hallmark movie compared to the political Mad Max franchise we’re currently living in,” said Gaar. “What I wouldn’t give for Tucker Carlson to come out of retirement and yell at me about a snowflake pattern on a coffee cup instead of whatever democracy-eroding nightmare he’s promoting with Nick Fuentes this week. … Let’s return to a flavor of stupid that doesn’t overtly threaten the structural integrity of the nation.”

The War on Christmas was a manufactured myth, said Gaar, but it was also “one of the last moments when a culture-war freak-out could still feel like a sitcom subplot instead of a constitutional crisis.”

“It was America’s final sweet, delusional, low-stakes meltdown” compared to “these bleak, turbocharged, democracy-optional times.”

“God help me, I miss it. Even if in hindsight, it’s like a frog missing the times when the water was only lukewarm,” Gaar said.

Read Gaar's full Barbed Wire column at this link.