Hey, great post at 13 Sep 08 - 10:43 AM , GfS. You summed it up quite well. Divide and Conquer is the name of the game that the $ySStem plays so effectively on the American people to rule them. Divide them on the basis of...

race
gender
party affiliation
phony "liberal/conservative" dichotomy (which is mostly illusory)
sexual choices
abortion and birth control choices
religion and atheism
evolution and creationism
culture (Anglo/Black/Hispanic/Muslim/Christian)
age
financial status
dirty presidential campaign tactics and innuendo

Really, anything will do. The main thing is that the people be incited to fear one another and to divide up into mutually competitive groups constantly jockeying against each other and heightening each other's paranoia and fortress mentality. If this leads to some domestic violence, so much the better. That will allow a greater extension of police and military powers on the domestic front, and that suits the $ySStem to a "T".

What do you get? Illegal wars abroad. The gradual establishment of a police state at home (much aided by the bogus creation wrongfully called "Homeland Security").

There is going to be even more good business for mercenary soldiers in the future, I'm thinking, both at home and abroad. Outfits like Blackwater must view the situation with much optimism.

To me it very much resembles the rise of militaristic fascism in Italy and Germany in the 30's...only with this difference: the American version of fascism is built around a phony 2-party Duopoly rather than a single official party that dominates the scene.

That's clever. It creates the illusion of always providing a democratic "choice" to the mesmerized masses who are ruled by the Duopoly.

At the same time, the masses are kept sedated, distracted, and entertained by the most all-pervasive consumer marketing and advertising systems in the history of the world. You have to go somewhere where it isn't happening (or just not watch TV for a year or two) to realize just how insane it is. The public's behavioural physical and mental addictions are constantly fed on a daily basis by providing...

fast food plus total and absolute junk food
a flood of consumer products (made in China)
lots of easily available porno, plus soft sex messages in ads
sports events
an election frenzy that lasts almost forever
drugs, drugs, drugs...legal or illegal, who cares?
frequent celebrity scandals
dumb TV shows, the final limit of which is the "reality" TV show
dumb radio shows (chock to the brim with inane advertising)
dumb youth crazes, mostly marketed through MTV and other TV shows

And it all makes MONEY! (which is the central axle around which the entire damn wheel rotates)

Therefore it's unstoppable within its own closed loop of reality, because nothing else talks as loudly inside that loop as money does.

The only thing that can defeat this kind of $ySStem is its own corruption and irrationality eventually bringing it to destruction. That takes awhile. It took quite a while, for example, for Rome to fall...not so long for Mussolini or the Nazis.