WAYS TO DIVIDE: And get conquered!

MONDAY, APRIL 21, 2014

Part 1—Getting divided by age: Gack!

Last Friday, we took the bait on these click-bait headlines at the new Salon:

Boomers are humiliating themselves: Why their pandering to millennials is so sad
From Instagram video walls in hotel rooms to the RNC's lame ad campaign, we're just laughing (and screaming) at you

Those stupid, insincere boomers! According to those click-bait headlines, they have been at it again!

Sadly, we clicked. When we did, we found a largely intelligent piece about (1) the economic challenges facing many younger people as the plutocracy grows and (2) the silly attempts by corporate groups to market their worthless products to those younger people.

The author, Tim Donovan, never used the word “boomers.” He never said that the silly marketing tricks he described could be laid at the feet of some generational cohort.

Donovan wrote a sensible piece. The editorial staff baited the headlines, presumably just for clicks.

To all appearances, the new Salon loves the task of dividing the 99 percent into warring factions. The journal’s love for generational war may be its dumbest such instinct.

In this case, Donovan wasn’t pimping generational anger and war. The headline writers were.

We live at an odd political time—a time when the 99 percent keeps finding ways to get defeated in the face of vast provocation and systematic injustice.

The one percent keeps finding ways to syphon off more of the cash. Our intellectual leaders keep finding ways to split us, the 99 percent, into warring camps.

In those silly click-bait headlines, Salon was trying to split us up by generation again. The new Salon plays this low-IQ card pretty much all the time.

Presumably, the suits have found that this particular bait helps Salon’s bottom line. In comment threads, angry readers often show how easy it is to sell this catnip to some among the young.

We’re still recovering from a weekend with a superlative seven-year-old. We’re reminded of Dylan’s most famous saying: Never trust anyone with children under 30!

As the week proceeds, we’ll catalogue some of the ways the 99 percent keep getting divided. It’s the oldest, most famous way to get conquered.

Alas! When it comes to conquest through division, there are quite a few ways for the one percent to succeed. Some of us the people seem inclined to take the bait each time.