What about building a society on what we can agree on in our common interest rather than what we can't Rush?Rush Limbaugh wrote: ... There cannot be a peaceful coexistence of two completely different theories of life, theories of government, theories of how we manage our affairs. We can’t be in this dire a conflict without something giving somewhere along the way.
The sentiment here is emblematic of the 'culture war', and despite the impotent, and downright misleading pleadings to the contrary coming from the Right and others aligned with Power, the instigation of this war is almost exclusively coming from those with Power and is being prosecuted against those without it.
I can't think of a better encapsulation of this phoney war than the words quoted above: it tells us that Power is intolerant of any idea, body, or person which challenges its self-assumed authority; it tells us that Power has no interest in compromise, no interest in 'peaceful coexistence' with perspectives or experiences different from its own; it tells us that Power has no impulse to reflect on the minority of its own perspectives or experience; it tells us that Power is prepared to act in extreme ways to secure its interests regardless of the consequences for the vast majority, and; it tells us that its justification for doing so is not merely the existence of intolerance towards its own intolerances but because it just wants to and can.
The founder of PayPal Peter Thiel recently told a symposium that he believes democracy is incompatible with the requirements of 'The Market' and that 'the Administrative State' is a fundamental barrier to competition. This is ironic because it is the peace and stability that democracy has brought to the West in the last 100 years or so, the laws and regulations which not only maintain a peaceful civil society but also protect persons and property, secures contracts, and allow generally impartial judicial systems to balance interests where conflict arises etc, that guarantees the functioning of 'The Market' in the first place.
Power seeks to undermine democracy for the sake of what? Acquiring more money, power and control over society. And yet without democracy there is no society and money devolves into status and power and control devolves into the the violence deemed necessary by Power to maintain that status.
This places the 'culture war' squarely in the historical arena of the 1000 years of religious wars before the Enlightenment. The Market is the new monotheism: people like Peter Thiel are its warlords, people like Limbaugh are its clerics, and "We, the people" are its chosen foe.
