In a May 2026 summit between China and the US, Chinese leader Xi Jinping asked US president Donald Trump if they will avoid the Thucydides Trap, which was a new term to me. Coined by Herman Wouk in 1980, it refers to the idea that when a rising power threatens to displace an established power, the result is often war. A subsequent study evaluating 16 such power displacements found that 12 ended in war.

But rather than write about dynamics between China and the US, I realize that this also explains much of what’s happening now in the US. Many groups that have historically held significant power feel threatened by historically oppressed groups that are rising. The current result is a “culture war”, with some hoping for an actual civil war.

What about the “entitlement” that I mention in the title? Of the groups I will discuss, their membership is mostly inherited. The members did nothing to earn membership – no feat was accomplished, no wisdom gained – it’s just their birthright. They hold power for no reason of their own, but they will defend that power with their dying breath, because “might makes right” when power is the only attribute that you possess.

These are some of the changing power dynamics that are driving our “culture war”.

Men vs. Women

Women were second class citizens for a long time. White women were not allowed to vote until 1920 and they didn’t receive employment protections and credit protections until the 1970s.

Growing up in the 1970s, men were the bread winners and women either stayed at home or they worked much lower paying jobs. Men were the kings and the wives were subservient. The idea of the wife being more successful was so ridiculous that it was the entire premise of the 1983 comedy Mr. Mom (don’t worry, Michael Keaton became the “man” again by the end of the movie). Women entered bad relationships and stayed in bad relationships because often they didn’t have much of a choice.

As society moved further away from physical labor and more towards cognitive labor, women became better educated and are now routinely in positions of power. Many women discovered new options, and many chose not to be in inequitable relationships.

To be clear:

• Women are not trying to overtake and to rule over men – they just want freedom to live their lives the way that they want.
• Most men handle this change just fine. They still find loving partners, but they need to take equality more seriously.

But some men feel threatened by this change, and they go to war over it. They feel like society has taken away the good old days where men could do whatever they want and the women just had to deal with it. Some estimates have 50% of young men having engaged with at least one manosphere influencer. While influencers like Andrew Tate teach hyper-masculinity and how to manipulate women, for some reason (that nobody can figure out) this doesn’t seem to help men find happiness.

The incel movement is a subsection of the manosphere where guys love to wine about a fictitious guy named Chad (that they all feel inferior to).

The sad part is that this hurts both men and women.

It hurts women because it increases real-world domestic abuse, stalking, and sexual assaults. It also promotes online and offline harassment. These groups also push back hard on women’s rights and were a major component in Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential win.

Men within the movement are also harmed. It promotes rigid rules that can lead to depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide. It socially isolates men and teaches them to distrust others and to treat women as enemies.

Immigration and the racial divide

White people have generally had it good (at least compared to their non-white counterparts). As a white man myself, I’m not saying that we all had it easy or that nobody worked for what they received – I’m merely saying that our non-white counterparts had all of these same issues, with several additional obstacles attached.

The two main concerns among white people seem to be:

• The non-white population is growing faster than the white population, and the country is projected to be majority non-white in 2045. I’m not sure what people think will happen when this occurs, but apparently, they are scared of it.

• Many Americans are seeing their buying power fall. In some cases, they also see that some non-white people are doing better than they are. Somebody once said (I forget who): “Some people would be happy roasting a rat on a stick over a burning barrel as long as the guy at the next burning barrel had an empty stick.”

As the economy is moving from physical labor to cognitive labor, smart, educated people have the upper hand. In my experience, no race holds a monopoly on smart people – a small percentage of the population is truly smart and they are scattered across the population. I’ve worked with some truly gifted people over the course of my career, but relatively few of those people were white, US natives.

As an anti-education trend is taking place within some white communities (led by Donald Trump, JD Vance, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Elise Stefanik, and the late Charlie Kirk), US tech companies and research centers need to recruit globally. The quickest way to lose the US tech sector is to stop all HB1 visas. If US companies cannot import the best candidates, they will export the jobs instead. This seems consistent with the American desire for a meritocracy.

The war caused by this Thucydides trap currently bears the anti-immigration banner (although most are more accepting of immigrants if they are from a European country). But unlike the other wars mentioned here, this is an an actual shooting war, with federal agents taking over cities, abusing power, murdering US citizens, etc.

The shape of this war will change many times over the next decades (as it has for the past two centuries).

Christian vs. non-Christian

I use the term “Christian” in this case as a social identity rather than a system based on the teachings of the biblical Jesus. While the US is in no danger of becoming a non-Christian nation (within the next century), many people have become more skeptical of religion and some religious leaders have seen their overall power reduced because of it. So unlike the other scenarios, there really isn’t a new religion rising to supplant Christianity – it’s mostly just a fear that their leaders will becoming less relevant.

But you can’t fight a war without giving the enemy a face, so that face is Islam.

But while the enemy isn’t real (Islam is real, but they aren’t going to take over), the war is especially scary because politicians see this as a jihad. For example, Ted Cruz stated that he backs the war with Iran based on his biblical beliefs.

While the constitution bans a state promoted religion, many want to see the US officially become a “Christian nation” (but probably not YOUR brand of Christianity, heretic!). Of course, the leaders that bow deepest to the president get to define how this looks, but it certainly won’t look like more freedom.

What this all means

I often hear it pointed out that many Republicans (e.g. farmers) have voted against their best interests, and this is true from any objective measurement (e.g. many farmers are literally losing their farms). But the US has become post-rational.

Chances are that they latch on to one or more of the shifting dynamics described above, and they care more passionately about fighting that dynamic than they literally care about anything else. The broader picture and consequences are much less important. They must protect the white Christian male at all costs!