At each end, are the fighters who, for whatever reason, think that their side can't compromise and must fight on toward total victory. (See figure in PowerPoint slide.) Towards the center are the coexisters (or compromisers)-the folks who want to find some way to live together in peace. What it does is imagine aligning all of the people in a society in a big row. An earlier post describing the conflict between Coexisters, Fighters and Divide and Conquerors is important in this context. The goal is to break the provocation/counter provocation spiral. To do that, we have to find ways to effectively damp down the animosities at the same time provocateurs are trying to inflame them. The whole idea, which I explained in more detail in the last post, is that, somehow, we have to build something close to a 99-percent coalition to challenge the authoritarians and plutocrats. In the last post, I highlighted this article, which I'll mention again briefly, which provides a detailed description of one instance in which this is playing out in real life. To an alarming degree, the conflict between the left and the right is being driven by the manipulators and not any real grassroots public feelings. It's important to understand that the struggle against authoritarianism is very different from the struggle between the left and the right.
This also goes back to my silly diagram about puppeteers and divide-and- conquer conflict manipulators. The focus is on the dangers posed by what might be called the global oligarchy – an informal network of very, very rich and powerful people operating through a wide range of multi-national organizations that are, to varying degrees, in various countries, accumulating ever more wealth and power. It also adds to that long-standing problem a new set of problems associated with emerging technologies that I think are changing the game in very worrisome ways. This goes back to Sarah Chayes' book, Thieves Of The State, and the threat that corruption poses to global security. The main focus is defending democracy. President Trump and the controversy surrounding his presidency is not so much the problem, but a symptom of a much larger problem. While there will be things here that criticize President Trump, that's not the main focus. Again, the focus here is on defending democracy and not partisanship. For this post, I want to talk in more detail about the nature of the divide-and-conquer strategy and the authoritarian and plutocratic threat. Of particular concern is the very real possibility that today's high-tech information system could, in the absence of successful peacebuilding, give authoritarians a decisive advantage over democratic forms of governance. These strategies intensify and exploit existing cultural and distributional divides for selfish gain. This post focuses on the nature of the rapidly-advancing high-tech authoritarian threat and sophisticated propaganda techniques that are being used by those who seek power over everyone else.
BEYOND PLUTOCRACY OFFLINE
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