Given the impressive article by David Brooks that has laid the issue of social conflict at the foot of the Democratic Party, there are several issues that lend themselves to why there is class conflict in the United States today. Colleges, for example, have increased tuition costs at a rate close to three times the inflation rate thereby assuring that individuals from lower income families cannot participate in the college requirement for entry into the ‘creative’ class.
Other examples are private schools and charter schools which cull students with talents that may not be academic in nature or even worse, may be racist or are denied attendance because of jurisdictional limitations. Last but not least, is the grading system in the U.S. which focuses on individual scoring but ignores group scoring. (Much of mariner’s work in his career required team-building before progress could be made). Education, it seems, is the defense mechanism to keep mainstream culture from joining the one class that feels it can claim success.
The reader may recall from an earlier post the Trump election victory map that showed 2,547 of America’s 3,056 counties voted Republican but the popular vote was the opposite, showing 81,268,924 for Biden versus 74,216,154 for Donald. Apparently, being successful means living in a city and having a non-agrarian career.
This post could run on and on about cultural structures that have caused conflict in the United States today. For example, one could dig into a sociological argument claiming that the nuclear family emerged because so many children moved from the countryside so they could be a ‘success’ in the city; one could say the image of success began with the GI bill in the 1950s; one could say that not resizing Congressional representation and political gerrymandering has caused a false representation of cultural ideology in government.
It’s all about polarity. Everything on the planet has polarity. Polarity works fine from atoms to stars but when one pole has a lot more of something than the other pole, that’s when sparks fly. If the United States wants to avoid sparks, it must balance social polarity.
Ancient Mariner