The goal obviously is for the rich men to enserf if not enslave the poor, to get rid of the men who question you, to drive the women before so you can take separate the Wives from the Whores, and for the young to be suitably programmed. Poor women don't scare rich men so much, they just want a place to keep the ones somebody wants to keep track of. The lower down the scale she is the easier she is to give away, rent, or sell. Western civilization has been run this way since the Assyrians at least.
As for the role and power of women in society, a lot depends on whose women or at least which women. Women who can somehow get away with defying Patriarchy must have something they can do better than most people, or they'd simply be gotten rid of. So a man who wants to move up in the world will try to link up with a "co-conspirator," and those men who think they've risen far enough above already just want breeders and whores. And maybe governesses, when the women come from gentry that's fallen on hard times but who are smart emough to teach the children how to be obedient and to be worth trading away.
As to which sex rules society, or whether they share it between them, you can't be sure you can tell. Remember that however they conceive of any such thing from their own point of view, which is to say from their position of power. What you hear and see around you depends on what they want you to think, feel, believe, and do. Which might not have anything to do with how society is run and by whom. I hesitate to say that the particular ways of the Classes have nothing to do with what you're supposed to think is going on, because for example novelists have a lot of trouble leaving out autobiographical material. Or what they want you to think is autobiography anyway.
The plainest fact, from watching the public sphere as the Masses experience it, is that they want us all to be very confused. To be confused in a particular way, or to whatever be generally confused to whatever degree they intend. If you're too confused, too stupid, or too broken to be useful, they'll find a way to get rid of you, get you to get rid of yourself, or perhaps to get various groups to get rid of one another.
There's nothing in our social experience that's not manipulation. For the very powerful it's all a game they play together; what we get is whatever crumbs they let go of. They think of us as cattle, as house pets, as pieces to be moved about, or as prey for their little human hunts. Part of Prohibition's usefulness was as a way to come to grips with the Mafia from Sicily or their closest cousins from the Italian mainland. Sometimes they'd even done business with the Jews, a tradition that goes back perhaps to Pompey's little con game. Prohibition was also way to give the Irish a way to prove themselves worthy of becoming employed.
And Prohibition generated a lot of monetary circulation: you can't really be sure that the "authorities" were not milking Those People for all they could get, but framing it as a crusade against the Papists. Represented mostly by Italians. Who were at least from a civilized society, except that those Italians Italy could easily do without were huddled en masse and shipped here. "Oh boy, that didn't turn out so well."
Take the Jews, for example.
As it was with the European Jews at around the same time: many of those who'd come here wanted to do something for the Tribe. Even for those superstition Hasidim, who nevertheless circumcise their sons. everybody's connections abroad could be part of a business network. And some among the Jews that were already here, or who had family and business with them, wanted to buy in to the Corporation. Those who got holocausted were those the "western," "civilized" Jews had left to their fates. Conspicuous among them were the various Hasidic sects left behind, which was most of them.
Of course America had a clique or two of powerful Jews, whether they "practiced the religion" at all or not. Which is to say, those Jews who had a lot of power primarily over other Jews would be the ones to treat with the Gentiles. The Sanhedrin, as Napoleon wanted to call it. And of course power involves money: those Jews who got rich from international commerce wanted to take in only those who were presently pertinent, while those who got rich from their congregations wanted to take only those who were more religious and easier to control. And, naturally, those were closer to the main trade routes of the day, and involved in or at least affected by whatever was going on there that meant the most to those here. You might say it was a contest between the businessmen and the Levites. It would appear that the Levites were too weak to save their Eastern European co-religionists. Or it could be that they simply didn't need those who were left behind.
As for the German and French Jews, and sometimes Italian ones, they were at least civilized people, wise and/or rich. Those were the most resourceful were the most useful: of course you'd get Einstein and Wittgenstein out alive. It buttressed that cliques' claim to be smarter than most people in ways that were especially useful. First you get out some physicists, then you set up physics laboratories. By getting rid of their academic Jews they deprived themselves of nuclear fission. Which is why antisemitism, or race prejudice, or other overly broad personification of The Other is counterproductive and stupid. You sort through them, the same as with anybody else.
As for the uncivilized Easterners perpetuating the 14th century, well... That's too bad for them. They were basically too hard to get to when these trade networks were growing. Damn the Russians, they ruined "Polish-Lithuanian" Jewry. A couple hundred years of bigoted persecution can do that to anybody. The Nazis finished off the Tsardom's job, pretty much. If that regime had refused to let "civilized" Jews interact with them that would not have happened. But Imperial Russia's trade routes were mostly internal and secondly "oriental," so the trade involving Jews in Mother Russia was mostly external. It was they who traded the tea and learned the local languages. Whether they meant to or not, the most useful commercial contacts for the expending Russian power were with the Jews of those land they took over or planned to. Hitler's jewcatchers never reached Bukhara: it took Jerusalem's jewcatchers to reel them in to use them.
And those Russian Jews who survived WW2 were those who'd been integrated into Tsarist society the longest, as America's fourth- or fifth-generation Jews are here. It was the Russian invaders into Muslim lands who forged ties with the local Jews: those Jews who were Russian were too far away from the front. They were used instead to liason with those Russian nobility who could read and write and to perform clerical functions the illiterate peasants simply couldn't. Those illiterate Russian peasants who were in close contact with the Asian Muslim world were too busy killing the Muslims to have much to do with local Jews; that would be up to the Russian elite that monopolized high military commissions and civil offices, those whose famlies were of account. By then the Jews of Russia were functionally integrated into society, but Jews elsewhere were of limited utility. Those Jews who were still in the shtetels the Bosheviks had to give up had been given up on.The civilized West had no way to reach them in SS-ruled territory.
These days, when an American Jew deals with anything Israeli s/he might be most loyal to Zion; yet when an American Jew does business with the Japanese, the Turks, or the Germans, they're first and foremost *American* Jews. Israel's a small country: only those they can make useful room for will get actively recruited.
But again, we can't be sure that this is what's going on at the upper levels. For all I know the USA is being run in the interests of the Russian mafia and/or oligarchy (if there ever really was much difference). Until the Civil War the USA was ruled in the interest of the South, that provided the agricultural cash crops that were traded overseas. It wasn't till the industrial North had maneuvered itself into security that it dared interfere in inter-zone relations. (The preceding circles of commercial gentry provided bankers, governesses, and politicians.) Cutting out the middlemen was the purpose of the Civil War, 160 years ago. How that ultimately worked out, and at whose expense, you can go by the condition of urban Blacks and poor Whites in the "flyover." (Are there poor whites on Long Island, or only poor relations?) While the Southern rich are once again in charge of their part of the country and must be at least consulted on major decisions: that is to say the opposite of their position in the days of Henry Calhoun. They were beaten, those Cavaliers, and forced to be useful to the Northern bourgeoisie. And non-elite Blacks and less useful Whites were "suddenly" not important anymore. Till the next big war came on.
But these days, well, which elite clique wants to take the blame for President Cheeto? Don't blame the American Jews, or at least the ones we're told about: they're not that stupid. Instead, it looks like the Putinists are getting the credit for our current situation. And my hunch is there are very few American Jews willing to bend over for the new Tsar. Now American Jews are even less likely to join the Republican Party. How did Americans wind up with him as President? The Millenials might find out before they retire. Or it might wait for a future ancient historian to unearth.
But again, what we see on TV does not have to have anything to do with what's going on in the lives of those who can afford to really matter. For all I know the real world rulers really are reptilians; they might as well be for all the real difference it would make to me.
And this is the sense I've been able to make of contemporary life. But then I'm weird. Or so they tell us.
But again, we can't be sure that this is what's going on at the upper levels. For all I know the USA is being run in the interests of the Russian mafia and/or oligarchy (if there ever really was much difference). Until the Civil War the USA was ruled in the interest of the South, that provided the agricultural cash crops that were traded overseas. It wasn't till the industrial North had maneuvered itself into security that it dared interfere in inter-zone relations. (The preceding circles of commercial gentry provided bankers, governesses, and politicians.) Cutting out the middlemen was the purpose of the Civil War, 160 years ago. How that ultimately worked out, and at whose expense, you can go by the condition of urban Blacks and poor Whites in the "flyover." (Are there poor whites on Long Island, or only poor relations?) While the Southern rich are once again in charge of their part of the country and must be at least consulted on major decisions: that is to say the opposite of their position in the days of Henry Calhoun. They were beaten, those Cavaliers, and forced to be useful to the Northern bourgeoisie. And non-elite Blacks and less useful Whites were "suddenly" not important anymore. Till the next big war came on.
But these days, well, which elite clique wants to take the blame for President Cheeto? Don't blame the American Jews, or at least the ones we're told about: they're not that stupid. Instead, it looks like the Putinists are getting the credit for our current situation. And my hunch is there are very few American Jews willing to bend over for the new Tsar. Now American Jews are even less likely to join the Republican Party. How did Americans wind up with him as President? The Millenials might find out before they retire. Or it might wait for a future ancient historian to unearth.
But again, what we see on TV does not have to have anything to do with what's going on in the lives of those who can afford to really matter. For all I know the real world rulers really are reptilians; they might as well be for all the real difference it would make to me.
And this is the sense I've been able to make of contemporary life. But then I'm weird. Or so they tell us.
