To the editor:

Making big money by dividing Americans into warring camps involves what I’ve come to call “wedging.” Red states/blue states, black hats/white hats, big time wrestling, Americans love fantasy contests that pit some hastily fabricated group of good guys against the latest version of the evil ones. Intentionally ginning up an endless variety of shocking controversies and exaggerated levels of outrage makes a few people very, very rich and the rest of us increasingly more isolated, poorer, dumber, and just plain nuts.

“The real problem with America is those doggone (insert inflammatory group name here).” Cable news hosts and social media influencers of every stripe pounce on every nuance and exploit every opportunity to make their version of the “bad guys” seem badder and their own appointed heroes of the moment more heroic. “And now a word from (insert name of exorbitantly overpriced drug here).” Fight the good fight and ask your doctor for a prescription that will cost you, or your insurance provider (another racket) 60k a year. Win-win for the corporate Titans who peddle this offal; lose-lose for Joe and Josephine Lunch Bucket.

The problem with the intentional “divide to conquer” modus operandi is that breaking Americans into warring groups makes it easier to exploit us by causing us to blame our imagined problems on our fictional enemies rather than on the corporate overlords that control who gets which few table scraps and who gets completely left out in the cold.

And the bad news is, things are going to get much worse before they get any better. Soon, more and more jobs will be automated. More and more people will compete for those fewer and fewer jobs, driving down wages and ramping up outrage. So-called “service jobs” will begin to disappear as more and more products become disposable. Retail jobs will evaporate as the few remaining stores become more automated. “Why pay more?” will be replaced by “Who can afford anything?”

When the day arrives that you begin to hate your neighbor simply because of who she voted for, the battle to fully oppress working Americans will be nearly over.

And the mega rich, enabled by the bought and paid for governmental flunkies they put into office, will jet off to exotic places to revel in their ill-gotten gains.

“Making America Great Again” by setting neighbor against neighbor makes absolutely no sense!