Trump is the puppet master.
He has been at it for years, long before he ran for president. He knows how to pit native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, whites against blacks and Latinos.
He is well-versed in getting evangelicals and secularists steamed up about abortion, equal marriage rights, out-of-wedlock births, access to contraception, transgender bathrooms.
He knows how to stir up fears of brown-skinned people from "shitholes" streaming across the border to murder and rape, and stoke anger about black athletes who don't stand for the national anthem.
He's a master at fueling anxieties about so-called communists, socialists and the left taking over America.
He can make the white working class believe they've been losing good jobs and wages because of a cabal of Democrats, "deep state" bureaucrats and Hillary Clinton.
From the start, Trump's deal with the oligarchy has been simple: he'll stoke tribalism so most Americans won't see CEOs getting exorbitant pay while they're slicing the pay of average workers, so most Americans won't pay attention to Wall Street demanding short-term results over long-term jobs, won't notice a boardroom culture that tolerates financial conflicts of interest, insider trading and the outright bribery of public officials through unlimited campaign "donations."
The only way to overcome the oligarchy and Trump's divide-and-conquer strategy is for the rest of us to join together and win America back.
That means creating a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans who will fight for democracy and oppose oligarchy.
White, black and Latino; union and non-union; evangelical and secular; immigrant and native-born all focused on ending big money in politics, stopping corporate welfare and crony capitalism, busting up monopolies and stopping voter suppression.
This agenda is neither "right" nor "left." It is the bedrock for everything else America must do.
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