Common Enemy: The Falsity of the Left-Right Divide in America
Sale price
$14.99
Regular price $17.99
Skip to product information
Common Enemy: The Falsity of the Left-Right Divide in America
Sale price
$14.99
Regular price $17.99
What if the real threat to your freedom isn't your neighbor who votes differently from you, but the billionaire class that profits from your hatred of each other?
In Common Enemy, evolutionary biologist Mitchell Ryan Distin, PhD, pulls back the curtain on the oldest tricks in the book of power and social control: divide-and-conquer and bread-and-circus. Drawing on history, science, economics, and years of traveling around the world and living in many different cultures, Distin shows how a small ruling class has weaponized identity politics, debt, media, and partisan rage to keep ordinary Americans too fractured and too exhausted to notice who's actually picking their pockets.
From the Roman Empire's panem et circenses to the British Raj's manufactured divisions in India, from the 2008 financial crisis to the Epstein files, the pattern is always the same: fragment the many, sedate them with endless distractions, and let the minority few rule unchallenged. Today that playbook is being upgraded with programmable digital currencies, mass surveillance, and AI—tools designed not for progress, but for control.
Distin argues that the left-right divide is a manufactured illusion, that 99% of us want the same basic things out of life, and that the only identity boundary that has ever truly mattered in human history is the one between ordinary people and the greedy few who live to control the rest of us. Backed by research in evolutionary biology, anthropology, economics, and political science, Common Enemy makes the case that our greatest counter-weapon is devastatingly simple: solidarity.
This book is for every American—left, right, or none of the above—who senses that the game is rigged but can't quite name the rigger. Read it. Internalize its words. And ultimately, live its core message. Then pass it along to someone who disagrees with you. For that's the only way to start a revolution. And there's nothing more American than a good ole'-fashioned revolution!
In Common Enemy, evolutionary biologist Mitchell Ryan Distin, PhD, pulls back the curtain on the oldest tricks in the book of power and social control: divide-and-conquer and bread-and-circus. Drawing on history, science, economics, and years of traveling around the world and living in many different cultures, Distin shows how a small ruling class has weaponized identity politics, debt, media, and partisan rage to keep ordinary Americans too fractured and too exhausted to notice who's actually picking their pockets.
From the Roman Empire's panem et circenses to the British Raj's manufactured divisions in India, from the 2008 financial crisis to the Epstein files, the pattern is always the same: fragment the many, sedate them with endless distractions, and let the minority few rule unchallenged. Today that playbook is being upgraded with programmable digital currencies, mass surveillance, and AI—tools designed not for progress, but for control.
Distin argues that the left-right divide is a manufactured illusion, that 99% of us want the same basic things out of life, and that the only identity boundary that has ever truly mattered in human history is the one between ordinary people and the greedy few who live to control the rest of us. Backed by research in evolutionary biology, anthropology, economics, and political science, Common Enemy makes the case that our greatest counter-weapon is devastatingly simple: solidarity.
This book is for every American—left, right, or none of the above—who senses that the game is rigged but can't quite name the rigger. Read it. Internalize its words. And ultimately, live its core message. Then pass it along to someone who disagrees with you. For that's the only way to start a revolution. And there's nothing more American than a good ole'-fashioned revolution!