And it worked well for Nazis who constantly shouted “Juden” and “untermenschen” and for Communists, who shouted “kulak,” “wrecker,” “bourgeoise.”

Words are magic, they conjure into existence whole classes of enemies to be pillaged and murdered, and grant the power to feel good while you’re doing it.

It’s mysterious to those who are the targets, naturally by design; and it’s ‘mysterious’ to those whose job prospects depend on not noticing.

Our young are so ignorant that they do not recognize how unique English is in its near lack of gender.

This isn’t exactly true. What “the digital age” — especially, ubiquitous telecommunications — actually does, in a lot of cases, is to enable a higher degree of *centralization*. This began with radio communications in the early 20th century, when the decision-making authority of naval captains and admirals began to be subordinated to the higher commands and political leadership onshore — indeed, even earlier, with constraints on the autonomy of ambassadors and diplomats enabled by undersea cable telegraph. We see the phenomenon today in a typical chain store, where decisions that once would have been the province of the store manager — decisions on inventory, for example–are now centralized to experts and computer systems at corporate headquarters. The vogue for “big data” will surely accelerate this.

Sigmund Freud and William Bullitt (who worked closely with Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles conference) wrote a book titled Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study. Excerpt:

“Throughout his life he took intense interest only in subjects which could somehow be connected with speech…He took no interest in mathematics, science, art or music — except in singing himself, a form of speaking. His method of thinking about a subject seems to have been to imagine himself making a speech about it…He seems to have thought about political or economic problems only when he was preparing to make a speech about them either on paper or from the rostrum. His memory was undoubtedly of the vaso-motor type. The use of his vocal chords was to him inseparable from thinking.”

The fall of an elite and its replacement with a new one appears to be sudden, but that’s only because most of the process is hidden from view. Julius Caesar didn’t actually come from nowhere. Nor did Martin Luther. Nor Lenin.