Fault Line Displacement
The real trick isn't dividing people. It's choosing where to divide them.
On most issues that actually matter — corporate accountability, fair wages, clean water, not poisoning children — public opinion sits around 90/10 or even 99/1. Almost everyone agrees. And that's a problem for the people who profit from the other side of that consensus. You can't win a 99/1 fight. So you don't fight it. You move the fight somewhere else.
The mechanism is simple: take an issue where unity would be dangerous to power, and replace it with one where the population splits roughly 50/50. Instead of "should corporations be held accountable for harm?" (99/1), you get "left vs right on regulation" (50/50). Instead of "should governments serve citizens?" (99/1), you get "which cultural tribe do you belong to?" (50/50). The substance disappears. The heat remains.
This is what makes wedge issues so effective — they're not chosen for importance but for their ability to split. And it's why culture wars feel so intense. The emotional energy that should be directed at a 99/1 consensus gets rerouted into a 50/50 trench war where neither side can win, neither side can stop fighting, and the people who benefit from the deadlock never have to answer for anything.
The tell: if a debate has raged for decades without resolution, and the people in power seem comfortable with that — the fault line was probably moved on purpose.
References
- Thomas Frank — What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)
- Noam Chomsky — Manufacturing Consent (1988)
- Finkel et al. — Political Sectarianism in America (2020)