Look carefully and see the mechanism at work. There are two teams that take turns managing USA Inc.

Team A: Makes you scared of terrorists so that you won’t complain when your civil liberties are taken away and your tax dollars are wasted on pointless wars of empire. Of course there are some real terrorists that sometimes kill people but then again there are also car crashes (40000 die each year!) tornadoes and hurricanes and lightning and earthquakes and sharks that also kill people but let’s just forget about them and be really scared of terrorists, okay?

Team B: Makes you scared of global warming so that you won’t complain when your civil liberties are taken away and your tax dollars are wasted on pointless wars of empire. Of course there might be some truth that CO2 is warming up the atmosphere but of course there are also GMO foods, DU munitions, carcinogenic pesticides, heavy metals in our trash that leach into the groundwater, giant fields of decaying plastic waste in the ocean that kill untold millions of fish and marine animals, poisonous vaccines that also hurt people but let’s just forget about them and be really scared of global warming, okay?

At any point in time a little over half of the population supports one team and a little less than half supports the other team. Whenever a new team is given control of USA, Inc., those supporters cheer like when their favorite football team wins and then they strut around and act really tough. Meanwhile the new management team commences another round of economic rape against them while they’re not even looking and they wonder why they’re working harder than their parents did but not taking as many vacations and they’re stressed out all the time because the prices keep going up and their health insurance benefits and pensions get cut again and on and on and on it goes…