The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are both parties that work for the one percent. The one percent are not divided, they only need two parties to ensure WE are divided. The two parties work in tandem whenever it is an issue on which the one percent agree, and only differ on issues that are of no interest to the ruling elite. On social issues, the two parties rage like tigers, or more precisely, like two chihuahuas with a gate between them. Social issues never concern the one percent. They will be able to have abortions even if they have to take their private jet overseas to get one. And that includes the wealthy among the “moral majority” as well.
The laws made by Democrats or Republicans don’t apply to our ruling elite. They never did and never will. This is why they don’t care about social issues, because social issues only apply to the poors. However bigoted or homophobic some of the obscenely rich appear to be, such issues ultimately matter little compared to the class issues which unite them. Even Nazis tolerated Jews, homosexuals, and people of “lesser” races when it suited them to do so.
After all, the ruling elite are used to tolerating the eccentricities of others members of the ruling elite. Those who have such power and wealth can and do live their lives the way they want to, unrestrained by what other people think of them. They have a sexual freedom that few of us could imagine, and I suspect they pursue their sexual predilections as freely as they do the acquisition of unnecessary luxuries. In short, the rich have learned not to be judgmental of how other rich people pursue their freedom but rather concentrate on shared economic interests. The social issues which the political parties use to divide us do not divide the ruling elite in any meaningful way, whereas economic issues are of central importance to them. They divide US on social issues so that WE are not united on our own economic interests, which are in direct opposition to theirs.
The obscenely rich are privately decadent and yet pay handsomely to keep their appearances up as morally respectable. They are made out to be philanthropists and role models. It is safe to say that their behavior would be equally deplorable to liberals AND conservatives should the truth of their behavior leak out. And yet the average working person looks to the one percent for leadership. They hang on the words of celebrities and oligarchs. They may despise the ones who do not cleave to their own personal biases, but they worship those who mouth the proper buzzwords of their clan.
This is not to say that social issues are unimportant to the average American, it is only to point out that social issues are the ONLY issues in which the average American is permitted to have a say. Like children, we are placed in the sandbox of social issues and are willing to do there whatever we like, so long as we do not reach some suitable compromise with those whom we disagree. We can raise our voices as loudly as we like about social issues. But should we raise our voices to speak about economic issues, the self-proclaimed adults in this situation will quickly put us in our places. And should we speak up about war and imperialism — which after all are just our ruling elite’s tools for extending their power and increasing their wealth abroad — we will feel the full force of the ruling elite’s goon squads pushing down upon us.
Go ahead, scream “Free Palestine!” in the most liberal of universities and see what happens to you. You will be hit with batons, arrested, and have the degree you worked so hard for and paid so dearly for yanked from you, as though your money, effort, and achievements earned you nothing. This is because Palestine is beyond merely a social issue and affects our ruling elite’s wealth and power. Palestine is currently where our ruling elite’s true face is being exposed, where the violence required to sustain a system for the ruling elite is most undeniable. Israel must not be held accountable to anyone, and all the freedoms you purportedly have as an American citizen will not permit you to speak out against what many experts deem to be a genocide.
In the end, it only matters to the ruling elite that you go to fight their wars of profit, or at minimum refuse to speak out against them. And so both parties must always in the end convince you that THIS war, whichever war of the endless wars they are now pushing, is just.
For a while, it was useful to push inclusion in the military, and to make the targets of our military appear guilty of not being inclusive. The accusation of inclusivity has been a justification for overthrowing other people’s governments or starving their children. But our ruling elite are coming to realize that inclusion is not an ideology that meshes well with our military’s objectives. Militaries require more typically masculine traits, such as an uncritical obedience to a hierarchy and the desire to commit great violence as a way of proving one’s value to society.
So expect a swing back toward conservative values for the time being. Not because those are the values held by our ruling class but because those values are most useful to meet the economic needs of the ruling elite in this moment.
It is in such moments that we should finally realize that we have no seat at the table even in social matters. That all of the arguing we have been engaged in our entire lives has only distracted us from the economic issues that should have been enough to unite us in the first place. That even if we should continue our fight for the social issues we most strongly believe in, the issues will ultimately be decided by what currently serves the interests of the very richest and most powerful among us.
