When you’re a trans teen from OK getting beaten to death by classmates, the culture war feels a lot more urgent to focus on in the moment. Survival isn’t something you can be passive about.
Some people partake in the culture war as part of manipulation by the rich… Some people are forced into it by defending themselves from the first group. And some people are compelled into it to protect the second group.
While you’re not wrong about how we got here, it feels like it would be too easy for one side of the culture war to spin this as “Ignore my bigotry, Wall St is the real enemy!”
Political parties are part of the culture war too. The rich don’t fit into a party. They like right wing economics because it keeps them rich, sure, but they push left wing culture because it gets people off their backs. As a whole, they play the two parties against each other, and we probably won’t be able to stop that unless we can get more parties into the running.
Political hatred - probably the most prominent form of hatred in the US - is driven by the dichotomy, the “you’re either with me or against me” that’s made so convenient by the fact that everyone has to fit into one of two buckets anyways. Throw more parties into the mix, and it’s harder to make that distinction because any given party works with you sometimes and against you at other times, and if you label them all as enemies, you’re going up against the majority of the country.
It’s easier said than done, though. Duverger’s law states that the maximum number of viable political parties is the number of seats in a given election + 1. So we can’t just will another political party into viability without booting out one that we already have. We have to change the voting structure. Proportional representation in congressional elections sounds good, and with fewer voting districts, it’s also harder to gerrymander. But that’s gonna be hard to push for.
Once we can accomplish that, the hatred will slowly subside (but not entirely,) and people will be able to see more clearly to deal with the class struggle. Plus, with more parties, we might even be able to vote in candidates who support the actual economic changes we want instead of just paying lip service to the lower classes.
“They got you fighting a culture war to stop you fighting a class war”
When you’re a trans teen from OK getting beaten to death by classmates, the culture war feels a lot more urgent to focus on in the moment. Survival isn’t something you can be passive about.
Some people partake in the culture war as part of manipulation by the rich… Some people are forced into it by defending themselves from the first group. And some people are compelled into it to protect the second group.
While you’re not wrong about how we got here, it feels like it would be too easy for one side of the culture war to spin this as “Ignore my bigotry, Wall St is the real enemy!”
Political parties are part of the culture war too. The rich don’t fit into a party. They like right wing economics because it keeps them rich, sure, but they push left wing culture because it gets people off their backs. As a whole, they play the two parties against each other, and we probably won’t be able to stop that unless we can get more parties into the running.
Political hatred - probably the most prominent form of hatred in the US - is driven by the dichotomy, the “you’re either with me or against me” that’s made so convenient by the fact that everyone has to fit into one of two buckets anyways. Throw more parties into the mix, and it’s harder to make that distinction because any given party works with you sometimes and against you at other times, and if you label them all as enemies, you’re going up against the majority of the country.
It’s easier said than done, though. Duverger’s law states that the maximum number of viable political parties is the number of seats in a given election + 1. So we can’t just will another political party into viability without booting out one that we already have. We have to change the voting structure. Proportional representation in congressional elections sounds good, and with fewer voting districts, it’s also harder to gerrymander. But that’s gonna be hard to push for.
Once we can accomplish that, the hatred will slowly subside (but not entirely,) and people will be able to see more clearly to deal with the class struggle. Plus, with more parties, we might even be able to vote in candidates who support the actual economic changes we want instead of just paying lip service to the lower classes.