Culture.
No one is exceptional, but the culture war defends that idea and thus preserves hierarchies, and expands power.
Tribalism motivates conservatives and the myth that it is exceptional, making religion, nationalism, immigration, race, gender, language, class,sports divisive wedge issues. It is the basis of conservativism.
Religion is media that includes large amounts of misinformation.
Gender discrimination keeps women down. Religion wants them fertile forbids abortions, and demonizes gays.
“The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends,” Einstein
Class or extreme wealth disparity leads to oligarchy and imposes hierarchy.
Race discrimination is an ugly artifact of slavery which keeps wages down, a lower class in poverty.
Nationalism has a symbiotic relation with religion, necessitates massive defense, nuclear weaponry for countries large enough to ' develop them, border fortifications to keep 'them' out. The most powerful nations are most likely to develop and use nuclear weapons, and are the most dangerous when ruled by authoritarians.
Each of these divisions can incite human rights abuse, violence, or even war. It becomes most threatening when there is extreme wealth disparity, complete polarization, those with power vs those without, people vs autocrats, Democrats vs Republican, Left vs Right, a pervasive feature of human experience.
The culture war is an effort to hide all that.
