Who Runs This Town?

Perhaps one of the most vexing facts of political life is the realization by the masses that no matter who they vote for, the same type of people always seem to come out of the election as winners. A nation’s political ideology flavor does little to change the power dynamics of the nation, who is elected to office, and the way in which wealth is concentrated. Even in countries that preach socialism and the overthrow of the capitalist class, power and wealth is still concentrated in the hands of an elite few.

There is also the widespread belief that our elected or selected leaders answer to a more secretive cabal that pulls their strings and sets their agendas inclusive of the fiscal and monetary policies to be pursued. If there are powerful shadows lurking behind the political curtain controlling and manipulating our leaders then the obvious concern would be the identity of this secret cabal of shadow leaders.

The answers to the question of who runs this global town that we call our world ranges from the sublime to the hysterically outrageous. Perhaps the most widespread answer to the question of who runs the world comes from within the bowels of Judeo-Christian spirituality. According to the Jewish and Christian scriptures, mankind is caught in the middle of a cosmic conflict between extraterrestrial intelligences. Most people who adhere to this belief systems advance the idea that extraterrestrials have set up their base camp on earth and that it is these extraterrestrials who make up the real cabal of hidden puppeteers.

For the less spiritually inclined, it is basically open season for ideas and speculations. The name David Icke has become synonymous with the reptilian agenda. Icke and his aficionados take the extraterrestrial concept to another level. According to Icke, many of the political leaders of the world are nothing more than a species of intelligent shape shifting reptiles that were genetically created by extraterrestrials. The extraterrestrials and their genetically engineered shape shifting reptiles are the true rulers of the world according to Icke.

Men and women who subscribe to the Aryan charm of Adolf Hitler and his Caucasian supremacy ideology are far more germane and down to earth than David Icke. According to this school of thought, the real vampires of the global system are those who issued from the loins of Abraham the progenitor of the Jewish ethnic grouping. Adolf Hitler was so convinced that Jews were the hidden hand behind the curtain of global affairs that he envisaged a world without Jews.

Another view which gained traction among Christian groups that followed Martin Luther, John Calvin and the other reformers in their revolt against Catholic Christianity, cast the spotlight of infamy on Catholic Christianity. The Catholic Church was presented as the great anti-Christ system, the whore of Babylon and the beast of the Apocalypse. The anti-Catholic school of thought affirmed that the Vicar of Christ in Rome and his minions were in bed with the kings and queens of the earth dictating their every move. This perspective seems to have fallen on hard times even among Seventh-day Adventists, one of the Protestant groups that was most strident in promoting this viewpoint.

People of African ancestry, long accustomed to looking for Caucasian shadows behind Black politics, in recent times have jumped on the who done it bandwagon and have started pointing fingers at the global elite of the super wealthy. Names like Bill Gates and George Soros have become popular punching bags for Africans and people of African ancestry in the Diaspora. Bill Gates in his critically assigned role of health czar of the world has been blamed for global depopulation through vaccination programs, the creation of dangerous genetically crops and a host of other supposedly unsavory and inhumane projects.

One hundred years from now the human family will still be speculating about who really runs the world. By then new theories and new personalities will have emerged to replace ideas that are no longer tenable and people who are no longer breathing. Hopefully, in one hundred years people of African ancestry would have gotten our act together and would have sufficiently learned how to play the game of power politics so that our exploits would be noteworthy enough to inspire new theories about who runs the world.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of The Rebirth of Black Civilization: Making Africa and the Caribbean Great Again.