All The Pieces Matter

"All the pieces matter," 

--Lester Freamon, "The Wire"

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others which have ever been tried."

--Winston Churchill

"Everything is consolidating" said Michael Socolow, a media historian at the University of Maine. "What makes these deals different is that they are across multiple platforms. To have the opportunity to establish an editorial line across TikTok, CBS News and CNN--that's a new world."

--The New York Times

George Orwell imagined a world where everyone had a TV screen in his home, which allowed Big Brother to speak directly to you, and which could see you in your living space. While Orwell could not imagine cell phones, or speaking to an electric device with a name like Siri who could turn your oven on or open your garage door, or a door bell which would allow you to speak to someone at the door while you sit on a beach in Cancun, he had the general idea down pretty well--consolidation of control by a powerful person or organization which executes control over every individual living in a country.

                                      Ellison

Hitler got pretty close to that by mind control, using much more primitive technology, but sophisticated psychology, with his coterie of vile accomplices. 

And now, we see the pieces coalescing for Trump, but more importantly for a small, obscure circle of very rich men, like what Vladimir Putin has effected in Russia. We can't know who-- or all--the members of this club, but we can occasionally get glimpses of it--as we see in the NYT report on the Ellison's who Mad Dog has never heard of until now, but they may soon control big airwaves, along with social media and influencers untold. 

It's almost enough to make you believe in "a vast conspiracy."

Trump is at least smart enough to know that businessmen control the world, or at least control the United States, and that government is bought and owned by money men, and that includes the institutions we once hoped to  insulate us from moneyed interests, like the Supreme Court, the Civil Service and the generators of new knowledge: the universities and the education systems which supported them.

But since at least the turn of the century, so much of new knowledge was not generated by universities, but by business, from social media, computer science, drug development. And profit poisons whatever it touches. Or at least it can poison vital organs in many cases.

We had the desktop computer, software, social media, small phones, APs, banking online, reservations and appointments on line, zoom meetings, airplanes flown mostly by computers, satellites linking a global economy, supertankers making local factories obsolete, interconnectedness unimagined in previous centuries and yet what lagged behind was our control and understanding of biology, so the whole shebang almost came crashing down owing to an invisible virus, a thing so elementary it might not even be called "living" but which threatened to undo the whole vast conglomerate.

As the controlling interests pieced together their plan--control of the Court, control of the media, control of the educational establishment, getting control of Congress and state governments fell into place. 

And now, we can see it all closing in on us, wrapping around the vital lungs of our nation, constricting, like a boa constrictor.

The wonder is: We did not see it coming.

Lions hunt that way: One young lion will circle wide, while another stays close to the quarry and a third goes directly at the prey, and by the time the wildebeest sees the threat right in front of it, it turns to look for an escape path, only to realize there is no way out.

In "The War of the Worlds,"earth is invaded by a technologically advanced alien force which shrugged off our primitive bullets and bombs but which, ultimately was undone by a virus, not a computer virus, but an earthly organic collection of amino acids.

Something like that nearly happened with Trump I, but we haven't seen the end of Trump II yet.