In order to believe that the “culture war” is somehow obfuscating class in a way that tricks workers into superfluous concerns you have to believe that the “culture war” is outside of the class interests of most Americans. IT IS NOT.
The “culture war” is a manifestation of tensions within the class structure of the US. Colonized peoples are making their voices heard and so the ruling classes along with the metropolitan and white working classes, are responding by arguing amongst themselves, once again, what is to be done with the colonized? Should they be silenced? Assimilated? Enfranchised? These are questions as old as settler-colonialism and are natural to class structures with global stratifications.
The cultural questions are emergent from structure and superstructure of capitalist and colonial relations. They were not invented by the fucking boogyman at Chase Manhattan who then forces the helpless poor to be racist or woke. Routinely the voices of the colonized are co-opted by working people on either side of the “culture war” for their own ends, to protect their class status. The subsequent contradictions then fuel the development of colonial political discourse.
The “culture war” and its vulgarity absolutely doesn’t just protect the rich, it protects white people and metropolitan workers from having to reckon with their own class character for the benifit of their class, which is stratified fundamentally differently from that of colonized nations within their own apparent borders, or the “4th world,” or from the rest of the world beyond their borders.
Not everything is about the dastardly rich people tricking the stupid workers into working against their own interests. What reductive thinking! Working people in the core are fine to argue with their uncle at thanksgiving, and ultimately advance colonial discourse, to assert an identity that can distract from the fact that THEY HAVE MORE TO LOSE THAN THEIR CHAINS.
By participating in the “culture war” they can ultimately engage in class struggle AGAINST the global proletariat, AGAINST the 4th world, and uphold the stratification that they enjoy. The “culture war,” therefore, is not a distraction, it is the redirection and co-optation of colonized class antagonisms by the American colonial project for its own purposes, including for its lesser classes.