Noam Chomsky famously talked about manufacturing consent, a propaganda tool of the elites to control people. However, another equally potent way to control people is by manufacturing dissent. This is otherwise known as divide and rule, a strategy usually restricted to foreign policy, but now being directed at the American people by the American elites. Neo-Nazis, Alt Right, Antifa, destruction of statues, and Americans assaulting one another are all signs of a divided nation that’s in the throes of a culture war. Well, the ruling class is laughing and the working class is ensnared in what I would call Societal Autoimmune Disorder (S.A.D.). Between 2008 and now, we have been cleverly steered away from Occupy Wall Street to Occupy One Another.

In a united America, people will be focusing on the economy of reverse Robin Hood that has left 78% of Americans living from paycheck to paycheck the unsustainable debt that shackles college students and the whole nation; the theft by Wall Street, banksters and the Federal Reserve Bank; the endless, maniacal wars that the military-industrial complex demands; the erosion of civil liberty and privacy; the unhealthy, fake food made from GMO and toxic chemicals; the rise in numerous chronic diseases; and the inexorable rise in health care costs, to name a few.

However, Americans are busy fighting each other. Whites against blacks, men against women, straight against gay, citizens against immigrants, Christians against Muslims and so on. There is no logical, mature discussion. Two groups meet to see who can yell louder and nastier. When the police are successful in separating the groups, the mobs are content with cacophony. When the police step away, caveman instincts arise and people beat up each other. What happened to “Love Trumps Hate”?

In Syria, after a city was liberated from jihadists, a person observed, “Syria was the most secular, the most comfortable country in the Arab world. It was embarrassing if someone asked whether you were a Muslim or a Christian.” This was the case before March 2011. Within a year, Sunni extremists were killing Shiite Muslims and Christians. (continue reading my article on Nation of Change)

-Chris Kanthan