I’m from East Tennessee. As you can imagine, watching this year’s election cycle play out from one of the most conservative areas of an overwhelmingly conservative state has been interesting, to say the least. The sea of signs, flags, shirts, bumper stickers, and other memorabilia plastered with the name “TRUMP” starts to enter high tide at the beginning of election season, although it never really goes away during periods of political calm. A favorite memory of mine is entering a self-designated Donald Trump store in mid-2021 and hearing a group of children chant, “Trump! Trump! Trump!” I could not make that up if I tried — mainly because it sounds too absurd to be true.

Donald Trump is ubiquitous in my hometown. Conservatism is the default. Even though I vote in my state elections, I know that whatever progressive (or, at least, nonconservative) candidate I choose will suffer a terrible defeat when the results come in. It can be disheartening at times, but I genuinely believe in the importance of voting as a civic duty, so I let my voice be heard through the polling booth.

This election cycle, I voted for Democratic State Representative Gloria Johnson to represent Tennessee in Washington, D.C. When I searched Johnson’s name online to find out more about her and her policies, I saw an unwelcome result pop up at the top of the page: a website paid for by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn’s campaign fund — the Blackburn Tennessee Victory Fund — calling her opponent a “dangerous Socialist” who is “in favor of the woke Socialist agenda.”

Admittedly, I’m no expert on Johnson’s policies, but her campaign website listed her top priorities as protecting abortion rights, establishing gun safety laws, lowering rising costs of living, expanding affordable health care, and increasing funding for public schools. It hardly sounds like she wants to seize the means of production for the working class.

But that doesn’t matter anymore. The term “socialist,” much like “woke” or “critical race theory,” has ceased to mean anything substantive. It has been transformed into little more than a label that conservatives and Republicans attach to an abstract notion that is vaguely unAmerican, elitist, slightly progressive, and, above all, irredeemably bad in an undefined but always well understood manner. 

Those terms are aimed like bait at the constituency whose votes Blackburn was looking to win. What I see when I read her claim about Johnson being part of the woke left agenda is a simplistic attempt at fear mongering, using phrases that her campaign knew would elicit immediate negative reactions in order to cement voters’ opinions before they got a chance to decide for themselves. It is, in my mind, the political equivalent of jingling keys in front of a baby’s face. It does not treat voters as individuals concerned with policy, who work real jobs and care about their communities. Instead, Blackburn’s messaging assumes the worst of her constituents, tapping into what she must view as an irrational hatred of the “other.”

While that messaging ended up proving effective — Blackburn won the race by nearly 30 points —, it misses the nuances and diversity of a state that over seven million people call home. Politics for figures like Blackburn has become theater, a transition that can be convincingly attributed to the rise of Donald Trump. It has turned into a “culture war,” where a Democrat lies in wait around every corner, ready to turn your child gay or trans, take your guns, and make you poor. In this war, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, any member of the LGBTQ+ community, public schools, universities, leftists, Democrats, and so many others are the enemy.

I want to be clear that my fellow Tennesseeans, and the majority of conservative voters, are not stupid. I don’t think they’re entirely fooled by the over-the-top campaigns Republicans have run in recent election cycles or the neo-fascist culture war rhetoric prominent voices on the right are spewing. And that is exactly why such rhetoric is so insulting. Most American voters, on the right and the left, are primarily concerned with living day to day as comfortably as possible. The fact that progressive policies can help people accomplish that is threatening, and so Republicans today have effectively resorted to a distinct type of name calling that paints their rivals as a threat to American values.

These are exhausting times. In June, Louisiana mandated the display of the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms. That same month, Oklahoma’s state superintendent ordered school districts to incorporate the Bible into curriculum from fifth to 12th grades. Project 2025, a genuine policy agenda for whichever Republican wins the White House next, uses the word “woke” at least 30 times to describe American institutions in their current form. I remember the journey that word took in the latter half of the previous decade. “Woke” has changed from a term in African American English denoting social awareness, particularly an understanding of systemic racial injustice, to internet slang, and finally to a conservative buzzword used to categorize and belittle progressives.

Because of that, I can’t take it seriously when conservatives use it. It’s the same feeling I get when someone above the age of 30 calls something “lit.” But, again, that doesn’t matter anymore. Conservatives have forced us all to accept their bizarre politics as normal and to cement them as the new status quo. I dissent. I don’t want to fight a culture war. I don’t want to spend my precious time arguing over whether queer people deserve rights or whether women’s bodily autonomy should be upheld. And, more than anything, I want to be able to research a candidate’s political positions without my intelligence being insulted. I feel like that isn’t so much to ask.