I come from a generational fandom of the Terminator movies. My dad loved 1984's Terminator, and took me to see it in the movie theater about a dozen times, where I fell in love with it too. My 11 year old son now loves the Terminator franchise. We have seen all the movies, and regularly tell each other "I'll be back" and "come with me if you want to live". Like the Star Wars franchise, Terminator has had its ups and downs. There are classic episodes, such as 1984’s T1 and 1991’s T2, along with the Terminator equivalent of Jar Jar Binks, such as T3, Salvation, and Genisys.
I say all of that to say this:
A fundamental means of controlling any population is “divide and conquer”. Identify those who are oppressed, abused, and excluded, and then get them to hate one another instead of joining together to overcome those who are oppressing, abusing, and excluding them. Teach them to exclude and diminish other powerless people on the basis of race, culture, religion, origin, citizenship, gender, and sexuality. Then all the powerless will be so busy pointing fingers at each other, they will forget all about those who control the levers of power and shape the system that keeps them in bondage. Give them a scapegoat to hate and they will forget all about those who supplied the scapegoat in the first place. “Us versus them” is the first and foremost way that the powerful keep the powerless under control. Because if the powerless realized their shared cause and common struggle together, no force on Earth could stop them from joining in solidarity to create a more just and compassionate society. United we stand, divided we fall.
This is a bunch of incoherent babble to make us think hard about our incredible love affair with the God of the universe, our astounding infidelities against God, and God's incredible grace to heal and restore us through Christ. Everything on this site is copyright © 1996-2023 by Nathan L. Bostian so if you use it, please cite me. You can contact me at natebostian [at] gmail [dot] com
