I’d guess that 99% plus a good percentage of the remaining one percent of people have a strong enough tribal survival instinct to be manipulated by the political elite with effective propaganda. Ideally, there would be one global tribe making control of the population easier. The elites are working on that, with the promotion of highly tribal, global sports (sports are very cultural, therefore, very tribal) like soccer, the olympics, formula one racing, etc and diverse food (also highly cultural and, therefore, highly tribal) among other things.
It may seem like the elites would need more than one tribe to pit one against one another to create division, social distortion and, thereby, the call of the propagandized populations to ask for elite help to fix the problems the elites caused in order to elicit that very response. It’s important to remember, however, that tribalism is about social hierarchy and the instinctive drive humans are genetically programmed with that causes us to try to attain a higher position in that hierarchy. It isn’t really about strengthening tribal bonds by threatening one tribe with a scary Other Tribe. Short term, pitting tribe against tribe can help to advance the power and wealth scams of the elites, but, long term, it would be easier to manipulate a single, global tribe with propaganda designed to exploit the desire for a stronger social position.
What does any of this have to do with liberals vs conservatives? Well, the long-term goal is to achieve a single, global tribe. But there’s a problem and that is the natural divide between rural and urban populations. You may have noticed that virtually all urban areas lean liberal and virtually all rural areas lean conservative. Liberal values tend to be more divorced from reality than conservative values. There are at least two reasons for this: 1) Urbanites are separated from nature and the physical realities of self-reliance because they live in an environment separated from the natural world and in a highly developed division of labor, where any needs or wants are easily provided by others. This will tend to deprive urbanites of the grasp of reality that rural populations are forced to deal with. 2) The urban environment is much more concentrated and therefore generates greater awareness of social hierarchies and one’s place in them. That should stimulate a stronger tribal impulse and discourage diverse ideas and beliefs.
These two conditions give the political elite a population that’s easier to manipulate. Because the urban population’s grasp of reality is more tenuous, the elites are able to produce and promote ideas and beliefs that are more absurd and socially dangerous and the tribal instinct of the population compels them to adopt these dangerous ideas and beliefs.
Those living in rural areas tend to have a stronger connection to nature and restricted access to resources because of a lesser developed division of labor which forces them to be more self-reliant and to work harder to attain the resources they need to achieve their goals. Those conditions give them a closer tie to reality than their urban counterparts. It also makes them more difficult to propagandize and control. That’s the reason the rural citizenry generates so much disdain from the political class. They are not beyond manipulation, however, the elite just have to work harder to do so. One of the ways that’s accomplished is by using the urban liberals as a foil to scare rural conservatives with their before-mentioned dangerous ideas and beliefs. The urbanites have the greater numbers and the absurd ideas and beliefs installed into the psyches of the urbanites are shocking and threatening to the ruralites (?) these conditions provoke a tribal response that results in adoption of the ideas and beliefs of a political elite-installed Conservative Elite. The conservative elite don’t have the option to create and promote the kinds of nonsensical ideas and beliefs used on urbanites; they have to lean into cultural norms like nationalism, religion and race. For younger generations, social media helps to bridge the cultural gap between rural and urban populations by exposing them all to the same types of content.
This is one of the ways that the control system works. A two-tribe divide is about as good as the political elite are going to get to a mono-culture in the United States, for now. There are efforts to overcome this divide, however. As Lenin supposedly said, when questioned about his literacy program for rural russians, “You can’t propagandize people who can’t read”, the US federal government deployed a recent program to install fiber optic cable to all rural areas of the US, ostensibly for the same reason; to make access to propaganda more available and redirect the activities of ruralites away from the natural world and toward internet-borne media consumption made possible by access to high-speed internet services. I think that part of the promise of AI is to simulate or even actually create the kind of division of labor in rural areas that allows the creation of a more easily controlled mono-culture.
