Calls for change don’t just happen. They don’t come out of nowhere. No one woke up out of a sound sleep and said, “My God, our elections are unprotected. We need voter I.D. to insure their integrity!” If no crisis precipitates a call for change, then something else must. A reflective, analytic person must ask, “Where did this come from?” The calls for gun control always follow most strongly when large number of people are massacred by guns. But no one in America ever gets elected by illegal voting. So who created this crisis? And how did they get millions of people convinced there was a crisis?
Wealthy Conservatives (we’ve all heard of the Kochs) fund a number of think tanks with cute, patriotic names—the Heritage Foundation and The American Enterprise Institute for example—tasked with coming up with ways to serve their interests, i.e. to enhance their power and wealth. This is part of the strategy that also includes massive funding of Republican candidates who, to maintain that funding, will vote for what these men and women tell them to vote for. The think tanks then come up with strategies to get these friendly candidates elected. One part of that strategy is to suppress in any possible way the vote of people who will not support the friendly candidates. Voter I.D. laws are one strategy they use. But how can you get people to support laws to fix a problem that doesn’t exist? You tell your puppet candidates to pretend the problem does exist. You direct them to play on fear and patriotism to work their supporters into a frenzy. You pour resources into campaign ads and social media campaigns that keep stabbing at that sore spot: fear and patriotism. (My God, look at those ungrateful black people kneeling during the National Anthem! We need a second patriotic song at baseball games! We need more air force jets shooting colored exhaust over stadiums across America!) Pretty soon you can let the victims do your work for you. They share your memes; they even create their own. They’re doing your work for free. This is an essential step, because unless they are willing to do your work, they won’t get your puppets elected, the ones who will protect you from the false crises of Muslims and Mexicans. Patriotism! Fear! You are led to believe in very strict definitions of “us” and “them.” Those who belong, and those who do not belong. Those who don’t belong have to be removed forcibly or made invisible (not counted in the census).
And while you’re distracted by fear and inflamed by patriotism, they can scoop up more and more of the wealth of your country and gain more and more power over what happens in the world.
