The Ruling Class and how it holds power
In the modern west, who is the ruling class? That is the question on most people's minds. Most dissidents incorrectly identify the ruling class or only partly identify them. Most opposition to the reigning hegemony of the post-1945 consensus in the US by both the right and the left has failed; they have failed in direct proportion to how they have failed to identify the ruling class and how they maintain power. The powers that rule the US today can be divided into three groups: the priests; the merchants and the warriors.
The priests are the agents of science. They represent the global university system of the scientific establishment. Their role is most analogous to that of the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages; global and international in scope with highly trained priests who catechize people in the truth of all ages. This white lab coat priesthood is the real power not just in the west, but also in the east. For example, during the Cold War, both the US and USSR claimed to be progressive and scientific competing for the bona fides of orthodoxy. This conflict can be seen as two churches fighting to impose their sense of scientific orthodoxy on the other; think the great struggle between Rome and Constantinople between 1054-1453. They root their power in a vast body of arcane knowledge that gives them the power to control machines and produce new kinds of machines. These machines exert an inertia of their own compelling people to conform to their needs, rather than conforming to the peoples needs. If you want a career, food, shelter or a family you need to be able to interface with the machine to get what you want. As C. S. Lewis put it in The Abolition of Man: “Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men.” These men do not rule in their own name, but through others. Who is more powerful the man who directly wields power, or the man who tells him what to think?
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