The United States, in the fourth year of the Trump presidency, is in near anarchy.
On April 29, 2020, a 600-car caravan, mostly trucks, from the ‘suburbs’ of Portland, Oregon, drove through town on what was ostensibly a Trump political rally.
Demonstrating in town, and at this time no one is sure exactly what is being demonstrated for or against, were a few hundred “stragglers.” The real demonstrations had ended some time ago, moved on elsewhere.
Activists fighting racism had been superseded by others, the bored, the unemployed and those with broader issues against America’s love affair with fascism, under the guise of neoconservatism.
Those driving through town were not really what one would consider suburban. One typically thinks of suburbs as affluent, educated, mostly “white” middle management, small business owners and skilled factory labor.
What came into town was not so much suburban but rural. Rural America is largely the permanently unemployed, those suffering from substance abuse issues, the uneducated but, as with typical inner cities, rural Americans are “white.”
Rural America is, in fact, the ghetto for white people.
In Portland, one person was killed, no one yet knows who or why, as those out on the streets, the car caravan, the stragglers, all pretty much marginalized members of society, and if one would check, an equal smattering of felony convictions, weapons charges and failed lives.
But what constitutes a failed life in the United States? Depending on the standard and one’s values and sense of clarity, everyone but Donald Trump is a failure, which Donald Trump reminds all of us of every single day.
Not everyone can be a “super genius,” who (according to Trump’s own sister) hired someone to take his college entrance exams and, most probably, do all his work as well.
America is about privilege, not so obvious as Britain where the scoundrels of yesteryear leave titles and properties and the inherent privileges therein ensconced to their miserable progeny.
To be a success in the US, it is necessary for one to adhere one’s self to privilege, giving up any and all pretense of individuality or conscience. One must become ruthlessly aggressive, on behalf of overlords initially and as one gains the skill and trust of the Deep State, use position to move others aside.
Success in America is based on psychopathy, wile, and deceit. With it comes military rank, seats in congress, seats in boardrooms, and the other perks, private golf memberships, large boats, and membership in other organizations.
The scandals that have rocked America over recent months have made one thing clear above all, that sexual immaturity and envy, often racially driven, lack of moral center and physical prowess now defines America’s elites.
The “self-made” men and women are few and far between.
Thus, to understand what a civil war in America is like and why it could only be fake, one must understand who Americans are. This will also explain why America has become so irrelevant in today’s world, why America is known for its fat people, for its ignorance and for its national policies that do nothing for America and yet victimize the world on behalf of some unseen force.
This explains the addiction, seemingly coming to an end, for using the term Deep State, a form of intellectual laziness and, moreover deflection-disinformation as well. I think we all know who we are really talking about when we use that very convenient term that the mainstream media has told us is allowable.
Nothing anti-Semitic about “Deep State.” It is not an attack on “elites” or the “Perfumed Princes of the Pentagon” or the “Banksters.” In fact, any real group culpable of bringing the world to its knees can and does stand up and cheer at the use of “Deep State.”
The real enemy has now become a phantom from a graphic novel.
Truth is a dangerous thing. People are weak, easily influenced and, at heart, lost and fearful. Not all people are equal with many, too many, incapable of the level of discernment required to live in a state where a psychological war scripted by Nobel Prize winners was declared, decades ago, against the American people, among others.
Sewing fear, distrust and hate is their product and total control of institutions, once few in number, now all, is their power and majesty.
Google and Facebook, this is where the civil war starts. The two names, Brin, and Zuckerberg, look to them above all. These are the real centers of power.
It is for Brin and Zuckerberg to deflect and disinform, to send the blind masses after George Soros and Bill Gates. Soros, known for his fanatic hatred of all things Bolshevik is an easy target, a huge critic of Israel’s policies against the Palestinians.
Opposing Israel’s policies is dangerous in the US. Few in the US are aware that Israel itself is near civil war as demonstrations go on week after week in that country against the dictatorial rule of Netanyahu who faces prison for corruption and holds onto power through orchestrating political unrest in the region.
This is why Israel is under investigation related to what Donald Trump has coined the “attack” on Beirut. Trump says it was a bomb, quoting experts at the Pentagon.
The media says everything but that and investigations will say nothing or make something up. Truth no longer exists, not for the general public but then why should the general public care when, in the US at least 40 percent of them are unemployed with half that number facing homelessness and nearly 200,000 of them dead already from COVID?
So, who is going to fight this civil war?
First of all, you need the disaffected. Those are people who hate themselves and, thus, feel envy toward others and are likely to look to violence and populism. Hitler was good at managing this kind of person as the world very well knows.
Were one to look at the realignment of wealth inside the US since Reagan took office, perhaps before, it might become clear. In 1970, a family with an income of $20,000 per year was considered lower income, just above the poverty level depending on how many children in the family.
Today, that figure, unadjusted for inflation, is $28,000.
An automobile that cost $3000 in 1970 costs $30,000 today. A home that would cost $25,000 in 1970 costs $175,000 today. A can of soup that cost 10 cents in 1970 costs one dollar today.
In 1970, most Americans had fully paid health insurance. 80%, while today only 4% have fully paid insurance. Most Americans are subject to lowered levels of care, often life threatening, due to public health policies written by insurance company lobbyists.
In fact, under Trump certainly but Reagan and in both Bush presidencies, public policy has raised costs manifold for public utilities, for health and all other insurances while weakening protections against poisoned air, food, water and, most telling of all, predatory business practices.
Creating fear is a way of engineering social unrest. Poverty is a great source of fear.
Let us look at wages. In 1963, a 16-year-old retail worker going to school made around $1.25 per hour while a unionized industrial worker made around $2.00.
The good thing is that industrial workers had fully paid benefits and worked significant overtime and the things they needed to buy cost very little by today’s standards.
Oh, there was also 60 million of them.
Today only 4 percent of workers belong to unions. The minimum wage, then $1.25 is now $7.25. As the minimum wage, then mostly for part time student workers, has increased nearly 600 percent in 60 years, the cost of living has increased 800% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The problem there is that while minimum wage workers 60 years ago were very few, in the then poverty stricken Southern United States and migrant agricultural workers only, today minimum wage jobs or near minimum wage is the “gold standard” and work without benefits is the norm as well.
The result is fear.
The US now has, officially, the highest level of single parent homes, at 23%, according to Pew Research, the highest of any nation in the world.
The US also has the highest level of illegal drug use in the world as well with just under 10% using serious drugs on a regular basis, not counting cannabis, alcohol, or cigarettes.
Other areas are more subjective and though it is always dangerous to generalize, it can safely be said that the quality of public education in the US is poor in relationship to other first and second world nations, with the US now hovering near “second world” status in many key areas.
The US can no longer be compared to Norway or Germany, genuine first world nations.
To look at the framing as to why a population could be turned on itself in a civil war, one needs only to see the level of fear and ignorance and gullibility.
A discussion of politicized religion in suburban and rural areas certainly applies, where traditional Christian values, accepting that the United States is a largely Christian nation or chooses to see itself as such, can easily point to religious leaders who are deeply corrupt yet massively powerful.
We then return to the idea of failure. People who see themselves as failures are potential fodder for extremism, expressed after 9/11 as xenophobic rage against Islam, certainly engineered by criminal elements, something no one doubts or questions anymore.
Today it is American against American, based on race and educational level.
The social lubricant is ignorance, fear, and poverty. The leverage is applied through Google and Facebook, through controlled, even scripted media and serves, whom?
There are other issues but one important one is regional traditions.
The US went through a massive migration at both the end of the Civil War, after 1865 and during the Second World War. The Southern and Border States, the rural South and Appalachia, emptied of both African Americans and whites as well.
African Americans went North, largely, eventually “landing” in cities, defining the struggles we see today.
The rural whites at first moved West, escaping persecution by the Northern victors in the Civil War and then during World War II, the remainder who did not serve in the military, both men and women, sought employment in war plants in the north.
These settled in cities that also were home to rural African American populations as well and decades of social unrest ensued as these two opposing groups from the South came to blows, fighting over the lowest economic sector in the affluent North.
The North settled very differently than the South. With industrialization, waves of immigrants, Norway, Sweden and Finland to the Midwest rural areas, lumber, and farming while Germany, Hungary and Poland became the staple for industrial workers. Irish and Italian settlers were prominent in the Northeast.
Southern immigrants who moved north brought their traditions, religious practices which included “speaking in tongues” and handling poisonous snakes, but those who were less religious, and this differentiation is key to understanding the South, brought a tradition of violence, of race hatred and of extreme ignorance.
Frighteningly, it is this sector that has migrated into such areas as law enforcement, people who were unfit for skilled industrial work. This is, in reality, the explanation for the bizarre and primitive nature of the police violence seen in parts of the US.
As time moved on, the Irish Catholics and poor Italians, the Greeks as well, advanced socially and economically. The Germans and Hungarians prospered as did Southern whites, but to a lesser degree than others.
Similarly African Americans faced the challenges of injustice and racism and a breakdown of social norms, not unlike that of resettled Southern whites, with high degrees of drug use and inherent criminality, mostly in urban African American communities but, as poverty reemerged in post Reagan America, suburban and rural poor began to suffer social degeneration.
These are some of the factors, all that we can easily discuss today, that has led the US to the divisions that make a form of civil war possible, if only one orchestrated by political operatives, social media and blown out of proportion by the mainstream media.
Each region of the US has a different mix and history, each with a narrative that, when exploited, can draw on old feuds to fuel racial and social discord.
This is the new politics of America and will, also frighteningly, decide the 2020 election which may well decide the fate of the world for generations.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
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