We need to cut through the haze and get to the heart of the issue.  While I'm not fond of oversimplification sometimes it's the only tool you have.

We are all crazy apes.  Maddened by the loss of individual identity in an complex impersonal social structure.  The hole left by lost individuality is filled by troop identity as all relationships become transitory.  Like Chimpanzees you go to war with whatever troop is not your troop.  Like all instincts group selection doesn't rise to the level of consciousness so you pretend to have reasons for your inexplicable hatred of the other troops.
Humans rise one level above Chimpanzees in that control is more appealing for the most part than murder.   The current war like all wars is about who will be the slaves and who will be the masters.  The level of slavery and level of control is an unlimited scale and hierarchical in nature.  Some people are both slaves and masters and the masters are slaves to their own hubris.

We have two main cultures existing simultaneously in the same environment.  Ignoring that there are a multitude of subcultures we have divided into what is a very imprecise categorization of left and right.   For clarity we can call them troop l and troop r.  Since they are cultural and not genetic groups there is a lot of gene or meme flow back and forth and allegiances are not fixed.  Troop l at the moment is gaining cultural ascendancy.  Troop r is in a desperate struggle to keep their memes alive.  Since troop r has a longer cultural history counter intuitively they have retained a greater degree of individual identity.  Troop l having a shorter history feel they are still the underdogs forcing them to adopt the fanaticism of a cult and demand orthodoxy.  They are desperate to protect their new memes.
What troop l and troop r have in common is that the individuals that make them up did not evolve until recently under strong group selection and certainly are not evolved for the pseudo eusocialality that civilization demands.  They have not evolved to be slaves to culture.

While the culture war rages their are counter intuitive coalitions of masters that has emerged.  While the culture war itself is centuries old coalitions come and go.  This in part explains many contradictions.  This current coalition centers around enslavement of the masses.  Keep in mind that enslavement is as much about control as productivity, that is what most of evolutionary history has induced.  
The clear disconnect between wealth and productivity in the modern world while counter intuitive fits nicely with a species evolved for an environment where productivity does not exist.  What determined hierarchy for our ancestors was networking skill and physical appeal.  Certainly intelligence and physical strength play a role as well but that adds an unnecessary level of complexity in trying to sort out why people go to war.

To understand history you have to forget right and wrong.  It's about power.  The Marxists and post modernists got this part right.  What they didn't understand is the power of abstractions that make civilized life possible.  Abstractions that turn apes into eusocial creatures.  Like ants turn aphids into slaves dominate cultures are inclined to do the same with others.  The key to understanding the dynamics is that civilization is about productivity but instincts are about "fairness".  Our instincts drive us to justify power.  It's why we are obsessed with distribution but ignore productivity.
Who in the dominant culture is concerned with productivity and the hierarchies of competence that productivity requires.  This an important but confusing question.  The problem is that culture has become so complex it's no longer clear what productive means.  Certainly the relationship between compensation and productivity is disconnected.  Even if you ignore the indecipherable question of value the question of management's role remains. 

Many people in troop l want a technocracy.  One look at the management of the European Union and California should give them pause.  As it turns out knowing is a lot is simpler than doing.  It's worth noting that very few of the leaders of troop l are actually technically competent.  Having the technocrats on their side just gives them a false air of competency.  The above is just one example of how people justify power they are not competent to wield.  For the most part people choose leaders not on their competency but on their physical appearance and networking skills the way other apes do.
It's this disconnect between competence, productivity, the power of the abstract and hierarchy that has driven many people mad.   This applies to both troop l and troop r.   Nothing however is cut and dry when dealing with a complex, chaotic, system such as a culture.  All we can do is make generalizations.  The first generalization we can make is that the troop l culture is now dominant.  The "smart" people recognize this and that explains some of the otherwise confusing coalitions.  Bucking the establishment is not a good way to maintain your place in the hierarchy. 

If one culture is dominant and by definition "master" who are the slaves.  First the transformation of the culture is not complete so we can only speculate.  What we can say is who is losing control.  It is not surprising that troop r is increasingly inclusive of those at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.  The larger share of working poor minorities that voted for Trump is one example.  Bread and circus accounts for a large share of the marginally employed minorities and whites that have not shifted completely to troop r.   Troop r also includes the deplorables and the irredeemables, those that were unable or unwilling to take advantage of  shifting economic opportunities  It also includes those that are vested in tradition such as the religious and otherwise conservative.  It is important to remember that neither troop r nor troop l has a complete hold on their members, for example the rejection of same sex marriage in California by minorities.  What should be of considerable interest is that troop l by personality type is generally open but not particularly good managers because of a lack of conscientiousness.  That means that there must be a large number of management types who are only members of troop l for pragmatic reasons.  As to who the slaves are it is clear that under the new cultural norms the working class has gotten poorer, a new class of imported migrants without legal status are doing a lot of the dirty work troop l would not do, that trade practices have made slaves of foreign workers such as the Chinese, that the middle class is shrinking and that there is a higher percentage of poor where troop l has gained power such as in California.  

Instead of progress what we are seeing is a return to historical norms.  We have a new petite nobility based not on heredity but branding.  A huge percentage of the college educated are now essentially unproductive.  They have been absorbed into the culture as human resource workers, pointless planners, questionable academics, researchers that are essential paid to pursue their hobbies, entertainers, sports figures, financial manipulators, activists, government employees, incompetent teachers, so on and so forth. There are also large numbers of feminists that are essentially promoting a form of gynocentrism in which productivity is irrelevant to social status.  Lifetime politicians and political dynasties.  A banking and investment sector filled with manipulators instead of investors or controllers.   In other words we are returning to our jungle instinctual preference for appearances over productivity.  As productivity continues to decline a civilizational crisis will follow.
Keep in mind that I'm morally neutral on the culture war but that the perfect is the enemy of the good and that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  As general intelligence will undoubtedly continue to decline and as AI takes over more and more it's not clear that any good solutions exist.  The arguments however are starting to sound a lot like those in the 19th century where slavery was justified as a humanitarian approach to dealing with inferior people.  The kind of authoritarianism that troop l is proposing such as social credit scores or punishment for wrong think is extremely dangerous.  I would put a break on such thoughts until we fully consider the ramifications.  The failure of the intellectual class to understand such issues as freewill and agency makes me think they are not fit for purpose.