Our Era of Manufactured Social Strife

Washington Examiner ^ | July 18, 2014 | Melanie Sturm

[Aspenhuskerette]

“Too often … we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought,” President John Kennedy famously asserted before Yale's class of 1962.

Denouncing political debates that “bear little or no relation to the actual problems the United States faces,” Kennedy urged policymakers to think again before engaging in “false dialogues” that “distract our attention and divide our efforts.”

“The very future of freedom depends,” he believed, “upon the sensible and clearheaded management of the domestic affairs of the United States” and a “vigorous economy” -- quaint concerns 52-years hence.

Because today's political discourse is so dishonest and domestic affairs so muddled, we're living in an era of manufactured social strife. Creating policy impasses, politicians pick unnecessary fights over our constitutional system's commitment to individual liberty and the rule of law, transforming dissenters into black-hearted villains with sinister agendas. Sign Up for the Politics Today newsletter!

Faux-hysteria and fear mongering -- especially in an election year -- are potent tools for squeezing money and outrage from voting blocs whose “rights,” they're told, are under assault.

[Aspenhuskerette]

Pull Quotes:

"Forgetting an all-male majority decided Roe v. Wade, Pelosi opined, “we should be afraid of this Court, that five guys should start determining what contraceptions are legal or not” -- rated “false” by Politifact."

"Absent an improving American standard of living, politicians need the faux “war on women” narrative to woo female voters, as they do the Latino vote-winning claim that proponents of immigration law enforcement are racist xenophobes."

[wideawake]

A small vanguard can change things.

Marriage was destroyed for the benefit of 1.6% of the population - of which maybe half was actually militant about it - or less than 1% of the population.

It was a complete revolution in the moral tone and the institutions of society accomplished by a small cabal of wealthy 1.6%ers, academics and judges - bypassing and trumping broad social consensus in a matter of a few years.

This is what Gramsci called cultural hegemony.