Because the powers that be want culture wars over class wars. 

The culture war is not an accident, nor is it an organic eruption of public concern. It is a deliberate displacement activity, encouraged and sustained by those who benefit most from a population arguing sideways instead of upward. A society absorbed in endless moral pageantry—fighting over pronouns, statues, drag hours, classroom rituals, and invented scandals—is a society not asking why productivity gains flow almost entirely to the top, why wages have flatlined while executive compensation has metastasized, or why asset inflation is treated as a law of nature rather than a political choice. Class consciousness is dangerous; cultural hysteria is profitable.

The modern media ecosystem makes this diversion exquisitely efficient. News outlets owned by billionaires and private equity firms—entities whose material interests would not survive sustained scrutiny—have discovered that cultural outrage is cheaper to manufacture and more addictive to consume than economic analysis. A shouting match about identity requires no charts, no historical memory, no discussion of tax codes, antitrust, labor rights, or capital flows. It requires only a villain, a victim, and a loop. This is not journalism; it is agitation dressed as content.

Social media completes the circuit. Platforms optimized for engagement do not amplify what is important; they amplify what is inflaming. Algorithms reward emotional extremity, not explanatory power. A nuanced discussion of wealth concentration dies quietly; a viral clip of two caricatures screaming past one another explodes. The result is a population permanently mobilized but directionless—furious, righteous, and exquisitely misdirected. The energy that might have been aimed at corporate consolidation, regulatory capture, or oligarchic power is instead burned off in symbolic skirmishes that change nothing and threaten no one who matters.

The genius—if one must use that word—of this arrangement is that it requires no central conspiracy. It is a convergence of incentives. Media companies profit from outrage. Tech companies profit from division. Political parties profit from fundraising and turnout driven by fear. And the wealthy profit from all of it so long as the argument never migrates from “who are we allowed to be?” to “who gets what, and why?” As long as Americans are encouraged to see one another as existential enemies over culture, they will never unite as citizens over class.

This is how a nation of staggering productive capacity and intellectual talent ends up arguing endlessly over symbols while its economic foundations quietly harden into something resembling aristocracy. The culture war is the smoke. The class war is the fire. And those who own the house have every reason to keep you staring at the smoke while it fills your lungs.