Looking for a succinct primer for those politically disengaged folks who are tuning out because "both sides have gotten so mean". Obviously the contradictions are heightening but how do you ease in a materialist perspective when someone is already so exhausted by "bias"
I mean things aren't that polarized. There's the sphere of nonmaterial symbolic shit which is hotter than ever, drag queen story hour etc, but tax policy for example is just a boring bell curve. Foreign policy. Most things people are just on a bell curve about them.
I'd say that nonono we're actually an incredibly homogenous conformist country. Even the stores all look the same. As things become homogenized we exaggerate the remaining difference a la narcissism of small differences.
Yep American politicians all pretty much agree on our underlying fascist/neoliberal ideology (they are functionally the same thing to different degrees). What we are seeing is simply the recriminations of losers. When an elite class sees its power slipping away they start to turn on each other and eat each other for the shrinking scraps. The exact division lines among that elite class aren’t particularly relevant, it’s just how the recriminations happened to play out when there’s not enough abundant wealth to paper over all disagreements