[dolni]

I think at least some of the battlefronts talked about by this blog post were started by the ultra-wealthy in the US to draw the peasants attention away from Occupy Wall Street. That was the last "big thing" before identity politics took center stage. It pits us all against each other instead of pitting us against the rich.

China and Russia are likely responsible for some of these battlefronts, too.

[inglor_cz]

While this is a plausible idea, I wouldn't underestimate other explanations.

Since about forever, some people became preachers or prophets who attracted crowds and destabilized entire empires. That was true even in the days when most people were poor and illiterate.

Current social networks give a lot of platform to such preachers, and find them an ample audience, because controversy drives attention and attention sells ads.

Quite logically, we get a lot more commotion and political radicalism than before such systems came to be.

[ajkjk]

I think they predate that by a lot, and I don't think it was anything to do with the ultra wealthy.

IMO people talking about political correctness often miss an important point though: that what's believed to be acceptable is largely derived from an actual philosophy that is changing over time, which develops and evolved as society processes new ideas in the background. That processing happens online and in communities, in books and essays, in art, etc... and then everyone becomes aware of its new conclusions over time.

All of the philosophical work underpinning the 2010s was very much around in the preceding decades in a less crystallized form, but it rose to prominence on the back of various crises and scandals. I can attest, for instance, that the underlying philosophy of social justice predates Occupy, because I first heard it in college in 2009-2010ish, and it wasn't new then. By that point it had a life of its own already, as people people subscribed to it (because it gave them a framework to feel like they were being a moral person).

Aside, I think people overpredict manipulation of culture by organizations and elites because they aren't sufficiently imaginative to see how it could happen organically. Ideas have lives of their own, largely based on the problems they solve for people: how to feel moral in their life, how to put into words their moral intuitions about justice and duty, etc, and (rarely, much less than people think, but definitely sometimes) how to have social power over other people.

[dolni]

Respectfully, I think your take that this "has nothing to do with the ultra wealthy" is exceptionally naive.

We know with absolute certainty that much worse atrocities happen in places like Russia and China. What makes you think that the US is immune to that kind of thing?

We don't have quite the same problems and they aren't so obvious.

But every once in a while, the curtain comes down and you get to see how things really are.

Wide-scale domestic surveillance. The US government chasing so hard after people like Snowden and Assange. Bernie Sanders being completely ignored by the Democratic Party in 2016. Epstein being mysteriously killed.

The US does not openly speak about its corruption, but there is plenty of it anyway.

While we are a democratic country don't forget that democracy is something you fight for every day. And if you look around, when is the last time there was a serious fight put up for democracy?

[ajkjk]

I'm not saying there aren't, like, various propaganda machines meddling with society. Just that people underestimate the power of dynamical systems to do things without coordinated action. Ideas coordinate on their own with requiring some sort of agent to be "pulling the strings".

> don't forget that democracy is something you fight for every day.

No it's not? Democracy is a steady state that we mostly ignore every day. Over time it tends off course and when it gets too astray we correct it.