We live in an invisible empire, and so the mechanics of the empire are never openly discussed with the rabble. Americans don’t comprehend how power actually works across the planet that their country seeks to control. They live from momentary headline to headline without any honest, in-depth analysis of why events like the Manchester bombing occur and keep occurring.

When it comes to terrorism it is dire, urgent, and desperate that the public understand, if anything is to change. But it certainly appears that Americans never will. Perhaps Britons may, and then lead the effort to stop it.

Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”

-Seymour Hersh, The Redirection, 2007

In the United States, a bigoted faction demonizes all Muslims. That faction calls for more weapons and for their own wanton terror to be perpetrated everywhere. An opposing faction absolves all Muslims and calls for peace and reconciliation… with suicide bombers? The two sides mindlessly shout clichés back and forth at one another in a cacophony, and they drown out the larger global issues that have transpired for many years. The public is thus rendered impotent, irrelevant and ignored: divided and conquered.