The most successful magicians are able to convince people to momentarily believe that their ability is supernatural instead of an act of deception through sleight of hand, leading them to profit from misdirecting the audience.
They’re specifically trained to manipulate the audience’s eyes to see what the magician wants them to see, distracting them from recognizing the mechanics of their trickery.
The political realm features similar ambitions to utilize misdirection and provide an illusion for the audience to focus on rather than notice the political magician’s corrupt behavior or ineptitude in accomplishing what he or she promised the public.
The days of debating over mostly substantive policy positions revolving around the economy, foreign conflicts and relationships, and health care have been suffocated by the constant conjuring up of culture war social issues.
Despite many of these social issues having a relatively minuscule impact on American society, the illusion of their being ever-present and moments away from impacting you and your family is enough to train your eyes to focus on what politicians want.
Instead of tackling difficult political problems, many of the Democrat and Republican politicians have actively involved themselves in what I call “lazy politics.” By constantly verbalizing their social ambitions for the country, they try to distract the public from noticing their legislative inactivity and create an emotional plea for fundraising.
With increased racial tension in 2020, mainstream Democratic politicians sucked up airtime to talk about racial injustice, performatively took a knee while wearing African Kente cloths, and rambled on about superficial diversity. Actions such as these take little to no effort but are effective in giving the impression that our political leaders are providing value.
Meanwhile, when politicians in the federal government told you that your job wasn’t essential and closed down your business while keeping multinational corporate conglomerates fully operational, they used this manufactured economic strife to give you a $600 sleight-of-hand stimulus check while funneling tens of millions of dollars to special interest groups; hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid to nations such as Sudan, Burma, and Nepal; and even $10 million to Pakistan for gender programs.
Much like how Democrats distract with topics of identity, Republicans have taken this same strategy from the opposing end. Republican politicians have dived head-on into mostly useless identity-oriented and culturally niche topics but often have little to no strategy to remedy real-world problems affecting the poor and working class.
Congressional Republican politicians have no problem telling you that there are only two genders but stutter when pressed to give their positions on the military-industrial complex’s influence and avoid taking a stance in preventing their colleagues from insider trading based on information obtained in their committees.
There’s a fundamental problem with our politicians from both parties when they exert more energy talking about transgender people, positively or negatively, than the state of our economy.
President Joe Biden can’t make time to go to the surrounding area of East Palestine, Ohio, after the train derailment that led to one of the largest environmental catastrophes in American history, forcing citizens into an immediate desperate situation, but he’ll prioritize giving sit-down interviews with social media influencers and participate in symbolic gestures such as walking across a bridge in Selma, Alabama.
As obvious as this has become, the problem is that this strategy works on many people because they value the entertainment factor of the illusion. Conservatives laugh in amusement when Republicans perform their “own the libs” card tricks, and liberals stare in amazement when Democrats cause conservatives to get angry after making their Statue of Liberty disappear.
With every trick performed, we clap like seals, believing that something has actually been accomplished, and often nothing has changed. The status quo of incompetence, public corruption, and favorability for our American oligarchs remains intact.
The trick of the culture war is that our government can’t legislate away many of our cultural issues. These are problems we must, in many cases, solve ourselves.
We’re holding the Ace of Spades, not our politicians.
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