they lived through Johnson, and planned.
you lived through Nixon, and survived.
they lived through Carter, and prepared.
you lived through Reagan and GHW, and survived.
they lived through Clinton, and built.
you lived through W, and survived.
they lived through Obama, and staged.
you lived through Trump, and survived.
they lived through Biden, and arose.
The “Culture War” in the United States is not that.
The clash of cultures in the United States has been between people who see the world as a zero-sum game, where in order for anyone else to prosper or progress they must suffer or regress, versus anyone and everyone who can be put into an “other” category and be blamed for the suffering and regression experienced by these people at the hands of their own leaders, heroes, and icons.
The third set of people are the people who don’t see the world as zero-sum and cannot be put into an “other category”. They used to be the majority.
So, the fundamental task of power-seeking by the zero-summers requires the manufacture and promotion of groups to take the blame, which is why they attract and embrace extremists so they can co-opt their preexisting grievance frameworks. It also requires that they find ways to pull members of the third set of people into their group, or push them into an “other category” where they can be the target of blame. This is why they single out groups on the margins and attack them for being different from average; scientists are untrustworthy because they change their minds, trans people are only transitioning because they are cheaters and sexual deviants, immigrants are only here to take what is rightfully yours, etc.
When they have power, they use it. They engage in what I’ll call “Cultural Nervous System Over-ride”, which when they do so many egregious things so aggressively that the rest of the society goes into self-preservation mode and is too paralyzed with shock and fear to respond, thus putting the opposition on the defensive so they are unable to prepare to return to power. And when they are out of power, they stay on the offensive, pushing their objectives through the courts and the media, while also cultivating the grievances that are used to fuel the next election; even when things are going well, they will manufacture scandal or injustice or inequity because without grievance they are nothing. They can do this because the opposition failed to prepare to be in power, and thus has no strategy to seize the initiative and play offense effectively enough to put them on defense.