THE APE-MASTERS HAD not disappeared, not even in the United States.
They could no longer wear their robes and crowns here, they could no longer hold court here, they could no longer abuse the populace by direct force, but they were still here.
They began to use other tactics.
They realized that money was power.
They invented the idea of Big Business—of large-C Capitalism.
If they could no longer own slaves, they would rent them.
If they couldn't lord it over the populace at large, they would lord it over their employees, and make certain that there were enough unemployed waiting for their jobs to keep them desperate and subservient.
If they could no longer own the government, they would learn how to use their wealth and power to control the government.
They went underground.
For the most part, they vanished from the public view.
Today, the top 1% control 42% of the financial wealth in America.
Could you name those people?
Most of them work behind the scenes, quietly controlling everything.
And seeing to it that the majority of the wealth created by your work ends up in their hands.
When they want to change public policy, they give big donations to politicians, fund armies of lobbyists, or start phony grassroot movements.
While they stay in the background.
But the problem with that, besides the obvious, is that ape-rulers, whether they are kings or merely king-makers, tend to have a narrow field of vision.
You don't get to be an ape-ruler, or stay one long, unless you always consider your own wealth and power to be more important than anything else.
"Anything else" includes the population of Egypt, the dangers of nuclear power or deep-water drilling, worker's bargaining rights, and the current recession.
"Their own wealth and power" includes the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, the Citizens United case in the Supreme Court (and their ability to use their wealth to control elections), and a policy of undermining anything that strengthens their opponent: the middle class.
This is why their propaganda machine has been loosing a barrage of attacks on public school teachers, welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and health care reform.
Each and every one of those institutions makes the middle class—the modern equivalent of hunter-gatherer society—stronger.
This is the meaning of class warfare: the use of money and power by the upper class to increase that money and power at the expense of the middle class.
And, although there are many tactics employed on this economic battle-ground, the most important tactic is deception.
We outnumber them.
We control the source of their wealth and power, since we are the ones whose work and know-how create their wealth.
The only way they can keep us under their thumb is if we allow them to fool us, to sell us a phony worldview that keeps us from acting in our own interests.
That is what Fox, and Right-wing talk radio, and astro-turf-root websites and all of those conservative think tanks are all about.
Next: The Logic of Hierarchy...
