The greatest magic show on Earth has been going on for some time. It has happened in the realm of politics. My examples in the title are United States specific, but I believe you can make substitutions that likely will work for any country.
The reality is those are illusions. In reality this is all the State vs the State and the populace just gets sucked into the spinning vortex of this illusory battle. The easiest way I can demonstrate this is to have you lift your two hands in front of you. Now have those two hands start having a mock battle with each other. Your left hand is evil, No, your right hand is evil. Your left hand flipped me off, while your right hand did an obvious Nazi salute. All of the time we blissfully become unaware that they are parts of the same entity and controlled by the same entity.
We fall for the same illusions over and over again. They will use different topics of misdirection, and they'll recycle tried and true methods of creating division. It is much like a rigged wrestling match where the wrestlers discuss which round they plan to end the match, and how they are going to do it before the match has even begun.
The thing that can be easy to forget while they prance puppets around in front of us on the national and international stages is that these puppets come and go. There are however, people, businesses, etc that ALWAYS have an influence on these puppets. For these powerful outside influences there is no term limit. In fact, due to having puppets they can operate through they can easily stay very much in the shadows. They can finance to stir up hate for one of the puppets. Perhaps the populace will be angered and shout for the death or assassination of the puppet. All the while those that always seem to be there in the shadows sit back and laugh. "It worked again!" They even fund education and recycle the same arguments that have already happened historically many times.
We (I say we because most of the population applies) go along with it and we blindly, or at least willfully get sucked into their reenactments, plays, and facades. Whether it is "Kill X he/she is horrible!" or whether it is blaming "X" for all the current woes and bad things in the world, or country, even when those things existed before X was involved. We are constantly distracted by the shadow magician waving hands in front of our face. We keep fixating on what they are holding in their hands and we don't pay attention to them.
Just like a stage magician who is skilled at misdirection and thus can use that to manipulate a crowd, so too have these shadow entities become at manipulating the masses in a very real and not pleasant way.
Most of our conflicts around the world would likely die off and cease to be much of an issue if these people didn't keep funding dumping mental gasoline on the fires that if left alone would go out on their own. Most wars between nations are not things that actually interest the citizens of those nations. They only are a stage upon which the shadows can perform their play and manipulate their puppets in the acts, while also using misdirection and emotional triggers to captivate and control the audience.
I did not pick any sides here. That is the entire point. The sides largely are a sham. It is all about divide and conquer. We have been divided for a long time, and when things seem to be settling down some new divisionary movement will eventually appear and start fanning the embers of the dying flames again. There is a saying. It is "Follow the money" and there actually may be no truer statement I am aware of to explain what actually appears to be going on if you really dig.
This also transcends the entire dictatorship, democracy, republic, capitalism, socialism, and communism thing as those operating from the shadows don't care which of these we use as long as they can continue to influence and call the shots from the shadows.
They also don't care about religion, skin color, etc except as the useful tool for division they are. They use them much like a teeter totter, or pendulum so that it is popular to advocate for one while bashing the other, and then in the future they'll just reverse the direction. It is this misdirection technique that so far has not ever seemed to have failed.
What can we do?
Pay attention. Try not to let misdirection tactics suck you in and focus you on what they want you to look at. If we want their common tactics of race, and religion as division to no longer work there is something we can do as well. That is stop talking about them. Unless it is absolutely necessary simply no longer refer to people by their race or religion. This includes viewing yourself as such. It can be very easy to play that game and not realize that a seemingly innocent label or phrase that mentions race simply perpetuates the divisionary effect of these things. For some reason depending upon which way the pendulum has swung it is OKAY to be racist as long as you support the right race, and then over time the pendulum will swing the other way and what is acceptable will change. The illusion is that either of these things are acceptable. They are about control and manipulation.
So we can be aware. Try to be more aware. View everyone including ourselves as humans, rather than some other label. Simply doing that one thing removes a lot of the tools they use frequently to distract us. We can stop always pointing and focusing on the puppet, and instead can pay attention to the people that seem to be around and influencing things regardless of whom the current puppet is.
We can steem on in life and on this platform!