Comment by sublinear
3 hours ago
Those "distractions" would be brought up regardless of any wealth inequality. They're entirely unrelated.
Depending on who you ask, those same topics are considered distractions from any other topic including each other.
What you're really describing is the attention bottleneck in a western democratic society where everybody wants the world to see things their way. That's the wrong mindset for democracy to work. If you want people to believe something it's simple: don't be wrong. Don't be vague and don't be misleading. Stop assuming the opposing side is stupid. Just speak clearly.
We really should blame ourselves for coming to every discussion with trivially incorrect arguments. People are so lazy these days. Slacktivism and terrorism used to be the extremes reserved for the ignorant. We used to shame and mock those people.
(1) The relationship between economic and cultural issues has been the more controversial topic on the left since the 1970s. If you take Marxism seriously, for instance, cultural issues are very much a distraction from class conflict. In the 1980s many of us thought Reagan had pulled off a major gambit by prioritizing cultural issues like abortion to turn voters against social democracy. (Look at Thatcher in the UK for something that problematizes that opinion)
Today writers like Catherine Liu and Joan Williams will tell you all about how movements grounded in the “professional managerial class” fall flat with the working class.
In general viable political movements need something that appeals to people with money and something that appeals more broadly.
(2) These conflicts can be seen as often being zero sum conflicts over irreconcilable values and whether or not rational thought applies is beyond the point. E.g. if you think abortion is wrong you think abortion is wrong.
(3) The basic mistake people I think is that people look at causes through the same framework when in reality these are all different and if you try to treat them as the same… you lose people and in the end you lose.