[an0malous]

Wealth inequality is the primary issue in society. No one would care about immigrants, LGBTQ rights, trans athletes, or any of the other culture war issues if food, housing, transportation, and healthcare were affordable. The elites have done a fantastic job distracting everyone from the core problem afflicting society. As Piketty has shown, their increasing concentration of wealth is mathematically guaranteed and they continue to accumulate wealth while the labor class fights amongst themselves over relatively trivial matters.

[gruez]

>No one would care about immigrants, LGBTQ rights, trans athletes, or any of the other culture war issues if food, housing, transportation, and healthcare were affordable.

Seriously? I get why people would care less about immigration if they didn't think immigrants were stealing their jobs, but the culture war over LGBTQ rights and trans athletes hardly can be tied to some economic basis. If you spent any time interacting with conservatives you'd realize nobody is worried about LGBTQ people and trans athletes are stealing their jobs or whatever. They are worried about how LGBTQ/trans athletes are destroying the moral fabric of their society. Those concerns aren't going to evaporate just because everyone is fed and housed. If anything if they're more economically secure they'd be able to spend even more time on culture war issues.

[kaibee]

> They are worried about how LGBTQ/trans athletes are destroying the moral fabric of their society. Those concerns aren't going to evaporate just because everyone is fed and housed. If anything if they're more economically secure they'd be able to spend even more time on culture war issues.

The mistake is assuming that these issues rise into public debate entirely through grassroots, when really its more of a consequence of the incentive structures around politics in the US. The Democratic party doesn't want to upset their donors, but they need some issue to campaign on, rally support etc. And equal rights and such is all well and good, has been successful in the past, and played well with the base. The Republican party, also doesn't want to upset their donors, and opposing the Democrats on equal rights is easy to sell to their base.

As long as the game is about moving the ball of cultural/rights issues around, the wealthy win.

[tumnus]

I suspect the person you are responding to is suggesting that these culture war issues are merely meant to distract from the real problem, which is wealth inequality. Many of the people worried about 'moral fabric' are fine with divorce and sexual assault (and will vote for politicians with these compromised moral values) but are also concerned about trans athletes who by most metrics comprise less that .01% of all athletes.

[hn_acc1]

Had a family member who has said he cares NOTHING for sports - they bore him to tears - make several posts on FBook about the "horrible injustice" being perpetrated on female athletes. It's clear where he got his talking points from (Fox, etc)

[gruez]

>but are also concerned about trans athletes who by most metrics comprise less that .01% of all athletes.

What about all the recent drama over the Epstein list, which comprise less than 0.01% of Americans?

[hn_acc1]

There's a difference between "I don't like this thing that you're legally allowed to do and I think it should be illegal" and "these people possibly participated in illegal activities with trafficked minors".

[bigbadfeline]

> What about all the recent drama over the Epstein list, which comprise less than 0.01% of Americans?

Your math is way off. Epstein's list contains compromised people on positions of power who decide policy affecting 99% of Americans plus a lot of people around the world.

Compromised politicians, scientists and media figures can be used against the interests of more than 100% of Americans if we include wars and the damage done to foreigners.

[heavyset_go]

> They are worried about how LGBTQ/trans athletes are destroying the moral fabric of their society.

It's weird how they didn't seem to give one single shit about trans people until politicians and conservative media needed new boogeymen in 2015 after SCOTUS threw us a bone and couldn't use gay marriage/gay people as effective scapegoats any more.

It's almost if they where whipped up into yet another moral panic by people who have the platform and vested interest to distract them so they can be even more efficiently robbed blind economically, politically and socially.

[blargey]

The idea is more that there wouldn't be as much fertile ground to sow fears about the "moral fabric of society" if everyone felt economically/socially secure in the first place. And that the nexus of "culture war" issues is sold as a package deal, a singular unified explanation for people's existing, vague economic anxieties (in an unabashedly conspiracy theory way).

[hn_acc1]

Exactly - "God's judgment on America - bad economy, less jobs, natural disasters, etc" because they are allowing the "sinners" to "sin".

Tony Perkins (IIRC) was famous for preaching that God sends floods due to gay people specifically, until his own house flooded...

[an0malous]

The majority of conservatives believe the democrats are wasting trillions of dollars on wars, inflating debt to give trillions to their corporate and banker friends, spending billions on foreign aid, "woke" education, and fraudulent welfare. This majority gets lumped together with the anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant people because they believe that a lot of this wasteful spending is going towards these communities and their needs. If you removed their concerns about this spending, the remaining people who are still against LGBTQ/immigrant/welfare policies would be a small fringe group. The vast majority of conservatives do not intrinsically hate the LGBTQ/immigrant/welfare community, it's only to the extent that the former believes the latter is taking resources from them. All of this hatred stems from fear, the fear that you won't have food, shelter, or healthcare causes people to lash out at others that they perceive are causing these deficiencies.

The spin job that the elite class does is to argue that the bankers and CEOs are actually creating jobs and wealth, and the fault rests with those low-life poors/immigrants/socialists that are consuming more than they've earned. At its core, this is all about wealth and resource disparity.

[bigbadfeline]

> The vast majority of conservatives do not intrinsically hate the LGBTQ/immigrant/welfare community, it's only to the extent that the former believes the latter is taking resources from them.

Politics is a complicated game that is easily lost over misjudged nuances. LGBTQ is different from immigrant/welfare and that's not even a nuance, the difference is fundamental.

It's the Democratic party that made LGBTQ a core and sore issue, knowing full well that it will undermine the rest of the left agenda and mislead their base to the point of blindness.

[happytoexplain]

Yes, you're describing a real trend that occurs in all political identities (over-perception of more extreme opinions). However, in terms of degrees:

>The vast majority of conservatives do not intrinsically hate the LGBTQ/immigrant/welfare

I consider myself anti-immigration (in some contexts). I have wonderful conservative friends. And yet, that said: It's plainly incorrect to use the term "vast majority" here. It's a believable opinion if you leave it at just immigrants, perhaps.

[sterlind]

I still don't get billionaire populism. like just fundamentally, I do not understand how Musk and Trump built this image that they're men of the people.

there are weak spots, though. Luigi Mangione became a folk hero for murdering a CEO, with a lot of support across the political spectrum. likewise, the Epstein files getting suppressed seemed to agitate just about everyone. those fault lines weren't on the woke/anti-woke axis, they were on an elite/common axis. they were also harder to safely polarize the public on.

[heavyset_go]

> I do not understand how Musk and Trump built this image that they're men of the people.

They say the quiet part out loud and make enemies out of the people their followers already don't like.

One of them had a media machine that painted them as Literally Tony Stark™ for two decades, with literal Iron Man cameos, and the other promises to hurt people with blue hair a lot.

[gruez]

>One of them had a media machine that painted them as Literally Tony Stark™ for two decades

What "media machine"? He only bought twitter in 2022, and even if he had a PR person or two, it can hardly be considered a "media machine" any more than some SMB with one or two social media interns has a "media machine".

[heavyset_go]

Did you live under a rock until 2022? I don't care who was formally on his payroll or not, the media tripped over itself to ingratiate Musk and portray him as Literally Iron Man™ to the world since the millennium.

[hn_acc1]

There are still many tech people who think he's a techno-genius and fully approve of everything he does, including grokAI's hitler episodes, etc..