The difference between ideology and citizens' lived experience is becoming explosive.
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Every political and social order comes in two flavors: What its small elite and the minority exploiting it to the full want everyone to believe, and the reality that most of its members actually live in. The two never match, but this mismatch need not be a big problem. However, if the difference becomes too great and too obvious for too long, no order can continue unchanged.
None of the above is news. Keen observers have long understood that things get shaky when a majority loses their belief in - or at least passive acceptance of - the prevalent ideology (in the original meaning of the term, namely, as the elite's imaginative story about reality, keeping the non-elites compliant).
In such a situation, things will change, but it is hard to predict how, exactly. An acute ideology-reality mismatch can lead to rebellion and, if the latter succeeds, revolution. Yet it can also make the elites ramp up their indoctrination or become more punitive, adding more direct compulsion to keep those below in line. There is always also the option of going to war with enemies abroad - real or, much more likely, invented - to distract from disunity at home. Finally, all of the above can happen in a messy sequence, or even at the same time.
Despite differences and tensions, the West does constitute some form of political and social order. In its elites' ideology, as spread by their compliant mainstream media, it is a fairy-tale realm of political and economic freedom, combining representative democracy with free markets, the rule of law, individualism, and superior
"values" to make the best of all possible worlds. In reality, obviously, it's a dark zone of capitalist oligarchy with increasingly authoritarian tendencies. Not the Hobbits' cozy Shire; rather Sauron's domain under construction.
Markets, for one thing, are not
"free," but routinely and crassly gamed by insiders. Currently for instance, both
the beginning of the criminal Israeli-US war against Iran and deliberately timed, repeated
rumors about peace
have facilitated manipulative trades worth billions of dollars.
The September 11, 2001 attacks can be considered the evil Big Bang of our current iteration of mass manipulation, authoritarian power grabs in the name of
"emergency" response, permanent warfare, and lying so intense it is sometimes hard to remember there is a truth. As the rebellious US ex-MAGA conservative Tucker Carlson
has just reminded us,
9/11 was also accompanied - and preceded - by trading, for which the description "highly suspicious" is an understatement.
Comment: Trump is not forever. Neither are the rest.