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Because we're still operating within the Reagan/Thatcher/Washington Consensus/End of History/Fukuyama paradigm, and we're well past due for at least the outline of a new paradigm but we can't seem to come up with one, and we're trapped in it. There's a theory among historians and political scientists that the American political paradigm shifts whenever a president wins re-election and then gets their chosen successor elected after them. Across the twentieth century we had Teddy, to FDR, to Reagan. And we're stuck on Reagan. Clinton and Obama and Biden have all operated within that Reagan paradigm, within the Washington Consensus. Obama himself said in a debate:
Arguably, Trump did not in some ways, but in other ways he tacked back in that direction from the moderate changes of Obama.
Reagan made a compromise: corporate capitalist economic structure, managed social change. Reagan did not put any serious effort into rolling back racial integration, or turning the tide on the sexual revolution. In exchange for accepting Capitalism, social outliers got grudging and slow but growing acceptance. The right wing defeated Communism, at home and abroad, but accepted the left's social gains to 1980, and further managed change in the future. As much as gay activists might like to whine about AIDs or Black radicals might like to talk about crime bills and crack, Reagan's legacy was leaving any idea of a right-wing built around segregation behind, and any idea of rolling back the sexual revolution was DOA after we elected Reagan.
The culture war becomes the only realm of politics in that paradigm. The old saw about having a Pro Life Corporate Party and a Pro Choice Corporate Party. There's no serious effort to overthrow capitalism, only to reward Red or Blue corporate groups, or to alter the degree to which the less productive are buoyed. Communists are no more relevant than segregationists in today's American politics, a freak show fringe. The parties, and the tribes, are optimized to fight over the frontier, not to strike deep behind enemy lines. Hyper-optimizing for the degree of change.
Yes. It's naive and self-serving. No one hates anyone defensively. The whole idea is silly. Defense vs. offense is just a matter of where you set the date. Ukraine says it is in a defensive war because it sets the date at 2014, Russia says it is in a defensive war because it sets the date earlier, and so on and so forth. Same anywhere. Rome conquered the world in self defense, Hitler framed his wars up to Barbarosa as essentially defensive, redressing German oppression after Versailles.
A variety of reasons. Ressentiment, conservatism, fear, will-to-power. There is no real desire for secession at this point, the winner of the culture war seeks to impose their will from sea to shining sea.
Virtually no Blue Triber perceives themselves as having been born into a Blue Tribe world. They perceive themselves as born into a red tribe world and having to fight their way out of it.
Take gay people as our principal example: Gays aren't born to gays, they are born to straight parents, until recently in a largely straight world. They have to fight their way out, find themselves, find acceptance, gain rights, etc.
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