Maybe the vaccine issue is a good way to understand "the culture war." It's an issue that people have chosen sides on in part out of some sort of sense of group identity. How precisely that started and continued, instead of Team MAGA continuing to praise Dear Leader's amazing vaccine, the best vaccine, is a bit complicated, but at some point it became part of mainstream conservative identity, even though most of their leaders probably took extra vax shots, if anything.
But how I just presented that is misleading. As with many Two Sides things in politics, one is a completely sensible view grounded in known information, and the other is just filled with gibberish conspiracy theories. The most you can say about Team Vax is their support for mandates might have hardened a bit due to the way it played out in politics.
That is to say, group identification might lead people to have stronger views on certain issues than they might have otherwise had - supporting vax mandates to Own the Cons - but that doesn't mean Both Sides are equally deranged by partisan loyalty, and it certainly doesn't mean the the issue of vaccinations is unimportant.
Sigh, the culture war again, nodded a cynical and jaded journalist, as the body count of women unable to get appropriate medical care climbed.
