In a Culture War, Art Is the Front Line

They killed the NEA. We knew it was coming.

But this is bigger than party lines. A culture war doesn’t care about red or blue. It’s about whether we stay awake with work and works of substance, or hand ourselves over to mass‑produced formulas built to distract and pacify.

The arts have always lived outside those borders. They are one of the few places that can hold complexity, contradiction, and actual humanity. They are one of the last big, unruly tents we have left. Which is exactly why they are under attack.

Art is one of our oldest ways of talking to each other. It is how we shared dreams, made meaning, and reached for something bigger than ourselves. Then came the hijacking. For a long time, the powerful claimed the arts through money, control, and violence. Artists were pushed into patronage. Some worked under threat of death. Even then, the work did not stay quiet.

Artists packed their work with symbols and messages their patrons were too arrogant to notice. They hid critique in plain sight. They whispered truths to the people who needed to hear them. Over time, the arts became something else: a place for the unheard, a home for the uninvited, a system that amplifies the rest of us.

The arts are where we say the things no one else will print or air. They are how we grieve, protest, rejoice, and survive. You do not write a policy memo when you need someone to actually feel something. You write a song. A song can move the world without a single bullet.

So when they defund the arts, what they are really doing is choking off the voices that threaten their grip on power.

We are not helpless. We can go to the gallery. Buy the local theater ticket. Catch the open mic. Support the artist making weird, beautiful work in a borrowed space. Show up, and bring someone with you.

And if you are an artist, that comes with responsibility. Be honest. Be reachable. Not by dumbing down the work, but by opening the door to conversation. Do not blame people for not understanding. Teach them the language. Make work that wants to be understood.

I cannot imagine a life without the arts. My family and I have learned so much by leaning into our own creativity and soaking up the strange, beautiful work of others. They would like to erase that and replace it with a single ideology. One voice. One idol.

I am not going quietly into that good night. In a culture war, I will take our side every time. They mostly just have Kid Rock.