I agree that relatively small groups of people in positions of power run things. I tend to lean towards science when it comes to explaining natural phenomena, however.
The general way that large masses of people are controlled is via propaganda. That is why for example, that China has "The Great Firewall." In China, you simply can't access certain outside news. They also don't have the same social media we have.
Censorship of Facebook - Wikipedia
North Korea, same. Iran, same. Etc., etc.
Those countries could easily slip into revolution again if the people were ignited by the right kind of fervor. No country has enough military and police to stop a mass uprising.
That is why they use media to control minds. It is much easier than guns.
Sun Tzu said "battles are won in the temples."
In countries where there is little outright censorship, media conglomerates operate the large newspapers and cable stations. These conglomerates are essentially arms of the governing corporate/government system.
Social media would seem to be an exception. Unless you have a viewpoint that falls outside of the right/left political split. Actually, that isn't true. Far left viewpoints are OK. Far right viewpoints are not.
The far left works basically as controlled opposition to the existing system. It's also a kind of honeypot for people who might otherwise achieve actual revolutionary change. The system uses the left and the far left as what are called "useful idiots."
The system itself is actually "center/right," but it likes to appear center/left. That is why it opposes the far right.
We live in what is called a "Centaur State." It looks liberal if you have wealth. It looks essentially fascist if you do not have wealth.
Loïc Wacquant: The punitive regulation of poverty in the neoliberal age
Also - liberal and conservative have switched over the last 50 years. People forget it was the Republicans who pushed through the Civil Rights Acts in the mid-1960s. They were the liberals. The Democratic party was controlled by Southern Democrats who did not want change.
Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, for example. The Democrats originally stood for "power of the people." But that can lead to tyranny of the masses. The Republicans originally stood for central government and were antimajoritarian.
The real split in this country isn't even left vs right. It's coastal elites vs people who live inland and in the South. If you look at a map of where this country has the most poverty, it will literally be the same states that lost the Civil War.
We have great wounds to heal. My family has been here since we achieved freedom from Great Britain. Our current enemy is our own division.
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