Race has always been used by the ruling classes to divide us

[InvisibleBallots]

It's a long standing tradition in the US, especially pronounced in the South. How can you maintain your position of privilege in society when you are a tiny minority? How can you prevent the majority of people from taking away your power?

Divide and conquer. Race worked well - you rile up the poor whites to hate the poor blacks. The tactic is to focus their attention on something else - anything else - but you and what you are doing with your power.

There's an even more effective tactic for today - religion. The vast majority of people in the US are religious to one degree or another, mostly Christian. So, what better way to divide the people than by religion?

The Christians have taken the bait and run with it. Instead of focusing on what the ruling class is doing to them - offshoring their jobs, stealing their retirement, privatizing Social Security - they have convinced many Christians that their real enemies are LGBTs, "liberals" and Democrats. How did they do this? By putting billions of dollars into a widespread propaganda campaign - on TV, in films, direct mail, magazines.

Thomas Frank in "What's the matter with Kansas" noted how many of these Christians feel they are fighting "the elite", but have been convinced the elite aren't the CEOs and the corporations, but urban liberals and middle class secular people.

How do Democrats and the left respond to this? By calling working class Whites stupid, ignorant, hicks, and mocking their culture and their religion. The result, obviously, is to strengthen their feelings of being attacked by "the elites". It seems many gladly take on their role as the "enemy elite" and get great pleasure in asserting their superiority over the working class Christians.

This may make us feel righteous. Does it help win elections? Does it unify the majority against the privileged? Does it in fact assist the propaganda campaign?

How can you expect to get the majority of people in this country to vote for you by insulting them? How can you win the support of the majority of Americans when you say things like "most Americans are stupid and ignorant?"

We can complain about the Republicans, how they lie, and how they cheat. In the end, what good does it do? They aren't going to change, and complaining about them won't win elections.

It's up to us. We can't make the Republicans change, we can only change ourselves - our strategies, our language, our marketing, our propaganda. Since Democrats are now a minority party - the Republicans run the White House, the Hosue of Representatives, the Senate, the Supreme Court, most Governors and most state Legislatures - obviously, our current tactics are not working. We can scream until we are blue in the face about how we are right, but it won't do us any good until we win elections again.

Personally, I don't think we can or should back off from our support for reproductive rights, our support for LGBT rights, nor our insistence on a separation of church and state. Maybe we don't need too - maybe we simply need to stop playing our part in the Culture War. It takes two to tango. What if they threw a Culture War and no one came?