2020-07-29 v. 1
Masters, the 1% of the 1%, are the owners and rulers. Minions, aka the professional-managerial class (PMC), corral the muppets (precariat working class) on behalf of the masters. The heart of the struggle is to detach the minions from the masters and get them into service to the muppets. For that, we'll need muppet solidarity.
To a first approximation, there are three classes in the USA. At the top is the ruling elite, the one percent of the one percent. These are the owners and rulers. I'll call them the masters.
Next, scrabbling for advantage in the meritocracy
,
we find the professional-managerial class (PMC).
About 10-15% of the population,
the PMC is essential to the continued rule of the masters.
The PMC carries out most of the crucial missions of the masters,
of which the most important mission
might be maintaining the tribal divisions outside of the ruling elite.
In recognition of the importance of the PMC role,
I designate the PMC as minions.
At the bottom (85-90%) is everybody else. The precariat. As we used to say on Wall Street, if you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu. Hence, I'll designate the bottom rung as muppets.
Muppets are a resource to be exploited by the minions on behalf of the masters, not unlike oil, lumber, and soil. Or perhaps domestic livestock is the best analog. To keep the muppets in line, a never-ending program of divide-and-conquer is played by the minions in the media. Muppets are divided into ever-narrower slices according to the dictates of identity politics, and are encouraged to hate each other and blame each other for their ever-worsening conditions. The cure for this affliction is muppet solidarity.
Precipitated after long cogitation by Scipio Sattler on underminding Sanders.
Amber A'Lee Frost usefully assessed the rather dismal possibility of solidarity between the PMC and the working class.