The two cultures in US America are "ethos culture" and "morality culture." Ethos culture is organized around the pursuit of the good life in the body. Morality culture is organized around the fulfillment of abstracted imperatives.
Thomas Jefferson is the exemplar of ethos culture. John Brown is the exemplar of morality culture.
The US Civil War was brought about by northern grey-wool-wearing morality culture's fulfillment of the abstract imperative for universal political emancipation.
The long struggle for racial equality basically broke the two coalitions.
Ethos culture can rationalize enslavement as a means to the good life for elites, but it has no internal rationale to justify making life vaguely shittier for a minority.
The forces of morality culture struggled to organize around more subtle, _embodied_ sense of racism as experienced by African Americans. Morality culture is always ready for a death-struggle over a principle, but not over patterns of medium unfairness.
In the face of this, ethos culture resorts to irrationalism and morality culture resorts to hyperbole.
The current political coalitions in the US don't line up with these anymore. In the Red Team coalition, evangelicals represent morality culture. And in the Blue Team coalition, emancipatory interests represent ethos culture.
Evangelicals bring a stiff spine of morality culture to the largely ethos-based Red Team coalition that is largely willing to sacrifice the law, state capacity, for the sake of the comfort of a lucky few.
Emancipatory interests bring a caution and circumspection about law and state capacity to the largely morality-based Blue Team coalition that is largely willing to sacrifice comfort and enjoyment for the sake of fulfilling universal laws of fairness.
Ethos culture exclusively lays claim to "honor," and is more or less the only shop in town for related concepts like virtue or character.
Morality culture exclusively lays claim to "fairness," and is more or less the only shop in town for related concepts like social fabric or right.
Gun politics are impossible in the USA because they do not fall cleanly along these lines.
Pro-gun-types have recourse to the highest law, but they appreciate guns as part of the good life and not as a means to fulfill an abstract principle of morality. Thus they are largely on the side of ethos culture, using the resource of morality culture against it.
Anti-gun-types have recourse to lived experience--such as the terror of being in a world of stochastic shootings--but they want the high law.
Part of the reason why the pro-gun-types have stuck so strongly to the highest law (as opposed to making other pro-gun arguments based on, say, pleasure) is because they know that the whole contest is over as soon as anti-gun-types seize the highest law. Once empowered by law, morality culture can't countenance things like stochastic gun violence and in those cases, morality culture uses state capacity to crush it into the dust. This is precisely what the pro-gun-types are prepared for.
should read:
>break the law in *service to their personal lifestyle
Prohibition was the last political drama in which these two cultures were intact.
Ethos culture was "wet," and Morality culture was "dry." Ethos culture was content to break the law in spite of their personal lifestyle, and morality culture was content to use state power to enforce prohibition with machine guns.