Genuinely speaking this is part of the ruling classes "divide and conquer" strategy.
Ensuring that people think that some "other" body of people are against them (right, left, woke, trumpists etc) is a strong tactic to keep people putting there energy into fighting each other and not making a big deal about the people in control of things like the media or government- which we're all too tired to fight and sort of quietly accept.
It sounds like a conspiracy theory, except it's basically well known and nobody really cares it seems, we're too easily baited. (including myself here).
I saw it really obviously recently when the overtone window shifted in the UK and the majority of people became pretty poor pretty quickly; and how the media started going crazy trying to stoke a culture war where people were simply too poor and too tired to put blame anywhere else than the ruling political party.
Which lead to the ruling political party trying to stoke the culture war and a milquetoast response from the audience. Here's the reaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQsGRwNzs-o
> It sounds like a conspiracy theory, except it's basically well known and nobody really cares it seems, we're too easily baited. (including myself here).
No, it sounds like a conspiracy theory because it is. It has nothing to do with some shady cabal of elites ("the ruling class"). It's just American culture.
Sorry, as much as you believe this it's just not true.
Sure, some people are radicalised, but a large part of that radicalisation is a reaction to a perceived equal radicalisation on the $otherSide.
You'll notice that people get divided on things that just "become political" out of nowhere.
Wearing a mask for a really recent example, there was a very small window of time before any politician or media outlet said anything other than "we don't know everything" about the pandemic. In that time window it was pretty clear that most people just do what is needed.
You don't need a formal conspiracy when incentives align though, so as much as you paint it as a "shadowy elite" it's probably just a few people who know that they need to stoke a culture war and a lot of people who will get rich off of outrage bait and creating a cultural moat that makes them the voice of a cultural "side" are more opportunistic and don't particularly care all that much about furthering a particular agenda.
If you actually have time to have a conversation with someone you deeply disagree with you tend to find out pretty quickly that there's a seriously large amount in common and it's the distance to each other culturally that causes a larger rift than anything innate.
Ensuring that people think that some "other" body of people are against them (right, left, woke, trumpists etc) is a strong tactic to keep people putting there energy into fighting each other and not making a big deal about the people in control of things like the media or government- which we're all too tired to fight and sort of quietly accept.
It sounds like a conspiracy theory, except it's basically well known and nobody really cares it seems, we're too easily baited. (including myself here).
I saw it really obviously recently when the overtone window shifted in the UK and the majority of people became pretty poor pretty quickly; and how the media started going crazy trying to stoke a culture war where people were simply too poor and too tired to put blame anywhere else than the ruling political party.
Which lead to the ruling political party trying to stoke the culture war and a milquetoast response from the audience. Here's the reaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQsGRwNzs-o