How Culture Wars Reflect Deeper Agency Conflicts

American culture wars through the decades have often reflected deeper schisms and power struggles within government agencies themselves—departmental infighting with factions vying for dominance. Since intelligence communities are not monolithic, and shouldn’t be treated as such, their collective behavior frequently requires a second and third scholarly look. Exactly how to do this is in question, but retired agents and officers are sometimes willing to oblige.

Part of the reason seems to be to test the power of their managing mass public opinions and narratives. If they can herd enough people in a given direction through hoaxes, fear, and identity politics; if they can switch and rotate official narratives five times or more, while followers parrot and echo the new narratives, to the point that nearly everything the public believes is false, they can succeed in full narrative management.