Forgetting the foundation over the wedge

When you find that you can use a wedge to dig into a foundation, does it mean that you can use the wedge to split the foundation or could it be that you're only able to chip off the crust?

Because, when we speak about political wedge issues, a similar thing occurs. The foundation in that case is society's toolkit to resolve arguments and when a wedge issue cannot be resolved, it would seem that the wedge splits the foundation, but in reality the dissent might be rather superficial in terms of practical importance.

Wedge issues plague politics for two reasons:

1. they are not resolved and hence accumulate,
2. they tend to be superficial in practical importance, since otherwise they would be fatal, and unimportant issues are welcome distractions from important ones.
   

For instance, both the chances to be killed, because there was no gun control, and the chances to be killed, because there was gun control, are that of winning the lottery. And when I travel from Germany, with gun control, to Switzerland, without gun control, I don't feel any atmospheric change. So, as far as that goes, both sides of the divide can easily exist under the other side's thumb. Questions of protecting the form of government are another matter, however irrelevant the question of gun ownership in it may be, after all, guns didn't help the British keep India, but I do respect a person's wish to be on the safe side just as much as I respect a person's wish not to take a tool for the taking of human life into his hand and, consequently, his heart.

Or, for another example: abortion. If they forbid it in your state, you have to cross state lines at some times in your life to seek help from your enlightened siblings, and if they allow it in some other state, it is only a bother to you, when you feel that you're the hand of God and have to drive the wicked from the land. Hence, again, it is easy to co-exist, no matter how heartfelt the divide.

Kind of in line with this sort of reasoning is the fact that recently very marginal harm has become a matter of grave concern, and there are so many examples for this that I will name none, as if someone wanted to distract all attention from what's important to what's not, to skip the fact that we, because we have to, are able to resolve all important matters, and emphasise our inability to resolve the unimportant ones.

And I already wrote about the outcome of this, namely that we give up on our foundation, our toolkit to resolve arguments, and sink onto a lower cultural level on which disagreements can only be solved by revolutions, that is replacing the staff of all government agencies, and that this is not a level we want to live on. Of course, the beast and its horns must come to power somehow, and likewise there must be a reason, why we would want to get rid of them. At least, I reckon, that this is a lesson we will be able to understand.