Culture wars happen when ruling elites go into decline

In our analysis of how politics is playing out these days we've been underestimating how important the culture wars are. We've been talking about the "containment theory' approach to social change: wait until the incumbent system begins to collapse and be ready with a well worked out Plan!; or we've been talking about the grass roots approach to social change: redesign institutions that deliver social services so that they operate from the bottom up as well as from the top down. We've been presuming that when the time comes we'll be able to frame a new vision of national purpose for the Jewish people and for the people of Israel and that they will be hungry to hear such a message.

The political landscape both in the US and in Israel might well reveal the operation of a different dynamic. The Tea Party Republicans in the US represent the vestiges of what used to be the governing, center/right, ideological coalition in America. The Peace Now Laborites in Israel represent the vestiges of what used to be the governing, center/left, ideological coalition in Zion. The Tea Baggers, for example, deny the looming danger of climate change; Peace Now denies the looming danger of the Arab death-cult. Both would deny that the international monetary and banking systems have become unworkable. Each deal with their denial by insisting things are more complicated than they seem, by insisting there are two sides to an argument to which any reasonable person would agree there is only one side. Each has stopped seeking the truth and has begun dealing with the facts only in terms of preserving what remains of their waning power. Each is a ruling elite in decline which is insulating itself from their own particular political collapse at the expense of dealing judiciously with the more dangerous general collapse that looms behind them and around them. The Haredi leadership has been insulating itself with respect to the Jewish people for two centuries now. They are a ruling elite in decline and they have been more worried about their own hold on power than they have been worried about the general welfare of the Jewish people who had entrusted in them the management of the people's interests. The Haredi leadership believes their own loss of power represents a greater danger to the people's general welfare than does the danger of any external threat you can name, even Nazi genocide.

We typically get culture wars developing as a symptom of the general decline of the incumbent political power infra-structure. Culture wars are harbingers of a more general collapse. We need to understand better the mechanisms and the logic of culture warfare because that warfare will necessarily define the general climate of ideological discourse in everything we do. An effective hasbara has to know how to deal both with the problems of an internal culture war as well as how to deal with the challenges of an external extraction distraction. General imprudence can take hold of an era and can cast the entire world into a Dark Ages, when the face of God is everywhere eclipsed, and superstition and fear rule the affairs of men.