The American people are in a state of profoundly divisiveconfusion. (How long before massive violence breaks out between the hatefultribes’?) Most ALL of us passionately believe many things that are easilydemonstrable, through the presentation of evidence, and its evaluation throughobjective reason, as completely untrue.

That process, the presentation and objective evaluation ofevidence, was once, (theoretically), the province of what we called the FourthEstate, the free press.

Journalism was once regarded as among the scientific‘disciplines’. To practice it, one was expected to discipline herself orhimself to scientific skepticism and scientific objectivity.

We are all now surely aware that all our mass media havecome under highly centralized ownership. This centralization of ownership andcontrol has clearly brought about the eradication of ‘journalism’ as adignified ‘discipline’. Those who now own and control ALL our mass media usethis immensely powerful lever of social control to maintain their Elite Class rulingcontrol over our nation, in order to better enrich themselves at the expense ofthe Common People. 

Just look around us, folks…..We can ALL see that The Few,the Elite Class, the same Elite Class that owns ALL our mass media, own most ofthe nation’s wealth, and have effective control over our government, which wecan ALL surely see has been transformed into a giant stinking cesspool of  legalized  bribery, (aka: “corruption”). 

Most all of us are in a state of mind in which many of ourmost passionate beliefs are based on false information that has beendeliberately propagated by the owners of our mass media, who use their power tomanipulate our beliefs to reduce us, the entire citizenry, across the entirepolitical spectrum, to a state of bitterly and hatefully divisive strife.

Our beliefs have been skillfully manipulated to bring us toa state of aroused tribal passions, every ‘tribe’, every ‘identity group’,seething in hatred of other tribes.

This is a VERY old, (VERY, VERY old), strategy that The Fewhave used to rule over The Many, since human tribes first amalgamated into‘civilizations’, many thousands of years ago.

Divide and rule. It has ALWAYS worked ‘like a charm’.  

With the advent of the immense social engineering power ofmodern electronic mass media, which is being used with absolutely consummateskill by its current Elite Class owners, the age-old ‘divide and rule’ strategyfor Elite Rule is more effective today than it has ever been in all the dustycenturies and millennia of Human History.

Our Ruling Elites are not a monolithic power. They are aclassic ‘syndicate’ of mutually cooperating, but still rival, independentpowers. They are organized among themselves very much like the Five Families of‘the Mafia’ of our nation’s lore. The Syndicate of the Elites is made up ofindependent cutthroat powers that cooperate to maintain their syndicated power,but will cut each other’s throats without conscience if an opportunitypresents.

After Vito Corleone was shot, recall Clemenza tellingMichael, (as he made spaghetti) “these wars happen every ten years or so”. Newpower alignments are created, and then The Syndicate returns to a more unifiedstate of more ‘peaceful’ rule over ‘the mean streets’.  

We are now witnessing such a ‘war’ among the Syndicate ofthe Elites. Trump is leading a renegade faction of The Syndicate. The other‘Families’ are trying to cut him down to size. That is why most of the elite-ownedmass media is bitterly anti-Trump. (Clinton was their ‘girl’).

The Elite Powers are now ‘playing’ Trump as best they can,(which is pretty darn good). He is trying hard to placate them. The TRILLIONdollar tax cut, most of it going to the wealthiest Elites, is already a donedeal, so The Syndicate are already assured that their wealth and politicalpower will increase.

Trump is unwittingly ‘serving’ the Elites with one crucialcapacity. He is providing them a ‘scapegoat opportunity’. They now have achance to ‘clean house’ through brutal measures and policies, (like thedraconian ‘plan’ being offered for Palestine), and then they can blame Trumpfor everything when they take back the White House, (while striking their best‘white knight’ pose).

The Syndicate will use ALL their power to prevent a ‘progressive’from being elected in ’20. (And Pelosi is ‘their girl’ riding herd over theDems, including over The Squad).

Should a Warren or Sanders somehow prevail, The Syndicate will thendo to a ‘progressive’ president what they are now doing to Trump. They will usethe full power of their control of mass media to whip the population into afrenzy of cascading mob hysterias, to effectively prevent the progressive frombeing able to govern at all.

If a suitable Syndicate lackey does not emerge from theclown-pack of Democratic candidates, (they seem to be trying to promote KamalaHarris, but her mass appeal just isn’t ‘there’), The Syndicate will likelystrike some kind of top-secret backroom ‘deal’ with Trump over what they thinkthey can accomplish together in a second Trump term.

The threat of a ‘trip to Dallas’ will be their negotiating leverage against theBig Orange Clown. (And, of course, the crazed ‘lone gunman’ would likely be a‘progressive’, an antifa-type looney).

While these Elite ‘plots’ play out, The Syndicate willdouble-down on their efforts to use their centralized control over our massmedia keep the Common Citizens divided into hateful and perpetually hystericalmobs constantly at each other’s throats.

I personally believe that young Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez maybe destined for ‘greatness’. History is offering her an opportunity to take upand carry a ‘mantle’. But she is very young, and there are many pitfalls tonegotiate, and in her first major ‘test’, she’s not really doing too well…

Her behavior right now does not suggest that she willsuccessfully negotiate her way past those pitfalls. She is “re-acting”. She isallowing her adversaries to control her behavior.

Immigration is the perfect wedge, and it is being used with absolutelyconsummate skill by those who exercise centralized control over our mass media.

It is the “perfect wedge” because there is ample tragedy onEVERY side. The migrants are suffering untold miseries, but the lives of ourcitizens on the lower rungs of our economic ladder are suffering every bit asmuch as the migrants.  

Massive immigration, such as we’ve seen since the passage ofNAFTA, (with between 12 and 20 million desperate people flooding into ournation to take any jobs they can get, at any wages offered), sets off a “raceto the bottom” among our native born working people, and as these powerlesscitizens watch their lives crumble into devastation, as their hope-deprivedchildren become opioid addicts, they quite naturally re-act with bitterlyhateful feelings against the migrants.

Yea….we wish they were more ‘enlightened’, to understandthat the migrants are hapless victims just as they are, but folks are justfolks. Those people, among our least sophisticated, most poorly informed citizens,are easy prey for any reasonably skilled right-wing populist. (Surely we allknow that it was from exactly such ‘social detritus’, so widely created inGermany by the punitive measures of the Treaty of Versailles, that Hitlercreated his Thousand Year Reich)

The rise of populism on the Right points directly at the abject failure of the Left.

The always thoughtful Ms. Vennochi is, of course, exactlycorrect. If The Squad had genuine leadership skills, they would be trying toovercome our nation’s bitter tribal divisions. They would, for example,undertake to 'win over' the American working class, thereby eroding Trump’sbase.

They would begin the arduous and protracted process of 'consciousness raising', instead of just blowing their own tribe's 'call to action'. They would begin explaining that migrants and workers must BOTH realize that they arethe victims of the SAME Elite Syndicate. (Identify the Enemy is always a 'basic principle' of both warfare and politics).

But, at least so far, The Squad clearly lack such skills, (and that lack may verywell derail the young AOC’s opportunities for ‘greatness’).

All that The Squad has to say, at this critical historicalmoment of our nation’s crucial need, is “hooray for OUR tribe!”, a tribefashioned from ‘people of color’, disaffected females who stew in hatred of‘the patriarchy’, and people who deviate from gender ‘norms’. (CongresswomanPressley defines, right out loud, her ‘tribal’ identity requirements: brownskin, female genitals, and “queers”).

Quite the opposite from Ms. Vennochi’s wise suggestion thatwe need to find our way back to some semblance of national ‘unity’, (andidentifying our common enemy is the most effective way to do so), The Squadseems to think that ‘race/gender war’ will be the perfect solution to ournation’s problems.

Gee……The Squad could not POSSIBLY do more to advance Trump’schances to galvanize his ‘base’ among the suffering American (native born) workingclass, and thus be re-elected.

If The Squad were taking orders directly from Trump, hewould have them do and say EXACTLY what they are doing and saying.

And ‘Sandy from the block’, (Sandy was the name the youngAlexandria went by before she was elected), does not appear to yet have thewisdom to ‘act’, rather than ‘re-act’.

And thus, it appears as if History will have to look foranother to whom to offer ‘greatness’

Ahh....Where is Aragorn? She or he yet remains in hiding?....Who will raise that torch?...

See Us vs. Them: On the Meaning of Fascism, by the Editor