Domestic political and cultural divisiveness has become the United States’ greatest strategic weakness. This grim vulnerability, exploited by international rivals and authentic domestic enemies who despise the U.S. Constitution, puts the U.S. republic in peril.

Let me provide a background example. Left-wing 1960-ish feminists politicized the personal. Demonizing men as innate aggressors was a cool political tool. The feminist propagandist portrayed herself as something more than a reborn 1912 suffragette demanding the vote. She was a systemic victim of the patriarchy, an oppressive, predatory sociocultural, political and American structural scheme concocted by males to marginalize human females.

Somehow the scheme (always hazily defined) managed to oppress British queens and female New York millionaires.

Note I did not write “human males.” Edgy 1970s feminist cranks, doubting XY chromosome carriers possessed humanity, dehumanized men.

Silly, neurotic soap opera slander? In some cases, yes. But substitute “capitalism” for the oppressive scheme and you’ve a divisive, tribal Cold War Marxist tract with the XX proletariat tribe battling the XY capitalist tribe.

Crypto-Marxist diatribe doesn’t begin to explain human relations. Alas, sensationalist mainstream media adored the slanderers, gave them pulpits. Media portrayed the cranks as righteously angry victims combating tyrannical cultural patriarchy.

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A base reading of that phrase: Dads are dictators. Swallow that hook and families become harmful institutions. Now make the Marxist-tribalist leap. Freedom as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution is a cultural fraud. That Constitution was written by dictator males with WHITE SKIN.

That assertion, of course, ignores the fact that the checked and balanced U.S. Constitution was amended and women had the vote. Ironically, for 21st century identitarians, it also ignores how the Constitution’s authors and signers may have ethnically, culturally and spiritually identified themselves. Indeed, the Constitution guys are lumped into a convenient DEMON TARGET.

Several key words that factor in the 21st-century attacks fracturing America appear in the previous paragraphs. “Predatory,” “marginalizing,” “systemic,” “oppressive,” “structural,” “ethno-cultural identity,” “dehumanization” and “demonization” are key conceptual attacks on the U.S. Constitution and American culture for the politically divisive who would destroy both.

Who benefits domestically from the tactics and strategy of strategically fracturing America? America’s hard left, which is currently waging war on the 1st Amendment (protecting free speech) and the 2nd Amendment (protecting the right to bear arms).

Absolutist ethnic identity powers the divisive propaganda. But the raw translation for leftist race identity is tribalism, another case of the proletariat versus the capitalist recast.

No one sane ever said that black lives didn’t matter or that racial prejudice doesn’t exist in America – just the opposite. But assert “all lives matter” (they do), much less “blue lives matter” (the lives of law enforcement officers), and Black Lives Matter activists, their political allies and media pals bash your words as gutter racism. Then Big Tech Media cancels your internet posts and stifles criticism of hard-left radical tactics, including criticism of their violence.

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In truth, the very name Black Lives Matter is a divisive tool for left-wing power grabbers. The name amounts to a race-baiting false accusation. It’s a great propaganda tactic but, at its core, a manipulative Big Lie designed to weaken American faith in freedom while strengthening a radical activist’s grip on the community he/she/it seeks to politically control.

Jump from local to global. The Chinese strategist Sun Tzu wrote that the greatest general is he who wins without fighting – he does not risk forces in combat.

Hybrid war predates Sun Tzu. So does the concept “divide and conquer.”

America has international enemies who exploit its political divisions, with the goal of weakening the U.S. and ultimately destroying it.

Sowing division is a classic Russian tactic. The Kremlin insistently fuels division among NATO members. False narratives, spun by both Russian operatives and local proxies, are a key technique.

China uses disruptive information warfare attacks. A recent and utterly noxious example: COVID-19/the Wuhan virus was brought to China by a U.S. Army reservist.

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Sure, it’s absurd, and Beijing knows the pandemic began in China, which is one reason it refuses to provide data from 2019 requested by World Health Organization investigators.

However, an American public primed to believe the U.S. system is a structurally oppressive scheme might just capitulate to the Big Lie.

Advantage: Sun Tzu.

Austin Bay is a syndicated columnist and author.


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