From Karl Marx:

(also available as PDF: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/18th-Brumaire.pdf )

Over at Facebook my screen registered a piece from Medium, only three weeks old, titled "The End of the American Experiment." Author's name: Umair Haque. Don't know him. Point of the piece: well here's a quote:

The distraction of electoral politics has been working very well for oligarchs for a long time. The short memories of the public makes each round of insult seem new. Pick any "issue" you like and you will be able to understand how this works. In fact the dissection of their control over us into isolated issues is one of the most effective parts of the ploy.

My attention has recently been drawn back to the handful of diaries I wrote at dPOS, much of which I had subsequently forgotten. In the aftermath of the Georgia debacle, this one seems relevant. It is reproduced verbatim, including the introductory parenthetical.

*******************
Thursday Oct 30, 2008
(This is a repost of my diary from yesterday, which went largely unnoticed. Given the theme, reposting it today has metacharm.)

Why Trump’s America is like the real America

I grew up believing in a host of commonly taught myths about my country. I’m embarrassed by how long it takes to get over these myths, but I also see that many people never do.

A good way to shatter these illusions with good historical facts is to read An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Oritz. Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.

war·lord (wôr'lôrd'): A military commander exercising civil power in a region, whether in nominal allegiance to the national government or in defiance of it.