The trilogy "The Hunger Games" tells the story, seen though teenage perspective, of how an exploitative empire operates.
The fictional world of "The Hunger Games" is based in the land of Panem: an essentially "imperial" structure where the various districts all function for the purpose of providing for the "capitol", whose own inhabitants largely live dissolute lives that are disconnected from the other districts, and whose understanding of life in the districts is similarly disconnected. It is a deeply-hierarchical and centralized structure, where even the communications between, and thus understanding of, one district to the next is limited. In this way, the capitol controls Panem through a combination of media control, fear and manipulation.
The story at its heart is a classic description of how tyrannical empires work, which is what makes it a universal tale. Its historical inspiration stems from Rome, but there are deliberately-unsettling parallels with some aspects of modern life in America, which is what makes the story also a warning.
The disconnect between the "Beltway" and the rest of America is a common complaint, but the parallels between the exploitative description of life in "Panem" and life in a real-world "empire" come closer to the mark if we look at a different example across the water from America: life in the UK.
Exploiting the "districts" to indulge the capital
While there are certainly valid complaints about how too much power is held inside the "Beltway", the USA is still one of the most highly decentralized administrations in the developed world, where the states have considerable legal powers, separate from the centre. By contrast, Britain (and England in particular), remains one of the most highly-centralized administrations in the developed world.
At a fundamental level, Whitehall and Westminster are loathe to cede power, jealously guarding it within their claws. Simply, they do not trust local government.
Trained to believe in their own infallibility and the innate incompetence (and malevolence) of those outside of the centre, they have only given out a few crumbs of autonomy to the devolved administrations when absolutely necessary, to maintain the fiction of accountability. The centre's instinct is to horde power relentlessly, jealously guarding information (as it doesn't trust the motives of "outsiders"), with decision-making done in secret. There is little real sense of government being in service of "the people", beyond how government needs the people to be compliant and/or ignorant.
Apart from the deeply-hierarchical administrative structure, the wider structure of the economy is aligned primarily with the interests of the capital in mind. Money raised by the government in taxes is disproportionately spent on the inhabitants of the capital and the neighbouring regions (i.e. London and the South-east), with little going on public works in other parts of the country by contrast. This is then "justified" by to the disproportionate amount of wealth the capital generates, in spite of the fact that this vicious circle of wealth-hoarding only makes the inequalities between the capital and the other regions all the starker. This is what then creates the impression of a capital inhabited by people socially and economically disconnected from the rest of the country, whose interests are simply in the exploitation of everyone else.
As in "Panem", the UK's resources are also designed with the needs of the capital in mind, with an economic model that makes the capital richer and richer while slowly starving the regions of both manpower and resources. This economic model also attracts people to the capital because life in the regions for some has become intolerable, adding yet more to the dissonance between the "rulers" and the "ruled".
In this way, the UK has become one of the most unequal societies in Europe.
The question is:why?
Public schools and "indoctrination" - educating a different class
Britain is still a society where its ruling class (i.e. its top percentile) send its children away from their parents for the large part of their formative years for the purpose of "education". In this very specific way, it marks Britain's (and particularly, England's) ruling class as being self-segregating from the rest of society, using boarding schools as a way to "educate" their offspring in an closed environment through their formative years; away from the opposite sex, away from their family, and away from the rest of society.
It is important to emphasize how much the boarding school system is designed to entrench the cultural separation of a "ruling class" from the wider population. While those who have been part of the system will extol its virtues ("never did me any harm"), it is important to emphasize how this attitude is simply the product of long-term indoctrination - in other words, a form of psychological conditioning and "normalizing".
The "establishment" is a product of the boarding school, and cannot be understood without recognizing this essential ingredient. Until relatively recently, it was debatable whether boarding schools actually gave any meaningful education to its boarders at all. Boarding school was much more about "moral" education than anything else; in other words, about turning children into adults. This was largely done through the "school of hard knocks" approach, and it seems that parents were more likely than not complicit in understanding this reality. They more often than not put it to the back of their minds and saw the boarding school experience as just "one of those things". Then again, there were also some wealthy parents who were simply glad to have their children out of the way for a few years.
One generation's trauma and indoctrination got passed on to the next as a matter of simple tradition, with what we would now call psychological "conditioning" the name of the game. In this way, any memories of psychological and physical abuse are repressed as "character-building"; indeed, building characters that will ideally have hearts of stone.
The wider indoctrination at boarding school was to instill an innate sense of superiority: that the boarding children were there because they were superior, the elite. This was necessary in order to maintain the belief that the "establishment" was in a position of power because it was also necessary; without it, it was implied, Britain would face collapse. This attitude is still ingrained in those in positions of power today.
That superiority is passed on in different ways: such as seeing British education as the best; seeing British traditions as the best ("fair play" etc. etc.); and instilling a general self-confidence that is evident whenever speaking to someone who is a product of the system - the ruling class often excel at sounding as they know exactly what they're talking about even when they haven't got the faintest clue in reality. That breezy self-confidence is then reinforced by those lower in the social order having the in-built assumption that their social superiors must be right in what they're saying to have such self-confidence.
On such ingrained attitudes of deference to the ruling class, an empire is built. The mystique of deference is essential to maintain the illusion.
To prevent the ruling class from being in danger, thus the illusion is fed to the rest of society that their social superiors are more intelligent, more competent and more morally-upright people, while the reality is often the exact opposite. The First World War was the first real evidence of this, and the establishment had to adapt to survive.
On the flip side of this implicit superiority, is fed an innate distrust and arrogance towards those lower down in the social order. If the children at boarding schools are there because they are special, it follows that those who are less fortunate (and less educated) are there through their own failings. This is the essential morality of inequality. Those at the top are there by their own individual merit; those at the bottom are there through their individual failings.
Those less fortunate are undeserving of pity because the moral code instilled in them at boarding school is about "stiff upper lip" and removing sentimentality. This explains such behaviour as burning a fifty-pound note in front of a beggar. Such twisted morals were thought necessary to create a cohort that would take over the reins of power, seamlessly passed on from one generation to the next without any thought to changing the system.
As we can see, the boarding school system is the primary method of indoctrinating a ruling class to perpetuate the established system of inequality.
Destroying hope - neutering the threat through Thatcherism
Apart from a highly-centralized, exploitative system and an indoctrinated ruling class, there are other methods used to ensure that the "lower orders" know their place.
The onset of industrialization created a skilled working class, necessary for the operation of complex machinery. The danger that this led to was that an educated working class might also become more demanding. This became increasingly apparent throughout the 20th century, with strikes becoming more and more frequent as workers demanded a more equitable share in the cake.
The mythology of the "winter of discontent" created a bugbear that the "establishment" could use to reshape society into a form more in fitting to their wishes.
The "establishment" envisaged a society where the capital grew rich not from the output of factories, but from the manipulation of money. Done right, this would benefit the "establishment" enormously; meanwhile, the country's workforce could be restructured to benefit the capital better.
Workers' rights were sharply curtailed. The industries that provided the skilled and reliable work for those that lived in some regions were destroyed. As a result, many towns across those regions lost their primary source of employment, with the only other work on offer being unreliable, low-skilled and low-paid. This has remained the situation ever since.
But those populations did not revolt against the centre. The thing that empires fear most is "hope", and the destruction of industries in those regions effectively killed their hope and self-respect, leaving in its place only a sense of defeat and self-loathing. Those "defeated" populations turned in on themselves, falling back on the dark solaces of alcohol and drugs, turning to crime and violence against each other.
This was how the "establishment" created an underclass and another scapegoat.
Divide and rule - demonizing the poor
After removing the self-respect that skilled employment offered those formerly-industrialized regions, the resulting underclass was the ideal scapegoat in the new "individualistic" morality that the "establishment" were keen to engender.
After being the threat to the "establishment" when they had self-respect, as a defeated underclass, their self-loathing and violence was seen as the ultimate moral evil. After removing their industries, they were further divided by the Thatcher government selling off vast tracts of social housing to those who could afford it. This left "social housing" as the preserve of the dregs of society, creating the implicit connection of social housing with moral failure.
Manipulation from the centre had thus created a sense that the de-industrialized regions, as places of the "feckless poor" were places where nothing good was to be expected; a self-perpetuating myth was created by the centre that the regions were thus incompetent and that only the centre, the capital, was where ideas could come from, where growth came from.
Thus we also had, over the last forty years, a "brain drain" as well as an economic hollowing-out of the regions. Those born in the regions were encouraged to leave and pursue life in the capital as the place where everything happened; thus the formerly troublesome regions became the exploited "slaves" to the capital, in one form or another. Those born into that background had become indoctrinated into associating it with failure, and the capital with success. Exactly as "the establishment" intended.
Creating a false idol - a fake "opposition"
But even people with no hope can only go so long before they look for something else.
As we have seen, the manipulation of the working class began in earnest during the Thatcher era with the reorienting of morality against the idea of social housing and collective workers' rights, in favour of a more individualistic outlook.
This manipulation towards an individualistic morality through the media in the 1980s also coincided with the rising Euroscepticism in the press. The anti-European mood was explained through the same individualist lens; against European regulations that were "stifling" British business.
While the capital grew rich from restructuring the economy in its favour, those regions that remained without any stable industries after the capital's "reforms" simply fell further behind. By the time the financial crisis hit ten years ago, those deprived regions were looking for a scapegoat of their own for their troubles.
As the media had manipulated them into believing that it was somehow the EU's fault that their industries had collapsed thirty years ago and that European migrants were taking their jobs, it suited "the establishment" to use the EU scapegoat for the further inequalities that the centre was inflicting on the rest of the country. Instead of blaming "austerity", it was better that they blame the EU.
In this way, the "hope" that the long-defeated underclass had after decades of economic suffering, was that leaving the EU would somehow make their lives better. The fact that the people spreading this narrative were figures of selfsame exploitative "establishment" themselves was something that the media helpfully glossed over.
The hideous irony over "Brexit" is that during the referendum "the establishment" was in reality acting as both government and opposition. The winning side, while painting themselves as "insurgents", were in reality "establishment" extremists; far worse than even the relative "moderates" who were in government at the time. The "establishment" extremists were exploiting the sense of "hope" that had been kindled from a manipulative media; that manufactured "hope" they would then be able to crush when the time was right.
In the empire of the establishment's creation, they would even have a monopoly on "hope" itself.
The "Brexit" vision that won over many in the deprived regions is one that would create yet more inequality, cement the domination of the capital over the country yet further, with an agenda that seeks to enrich the voracious hierarchy on the backs of others' poverty.
The cruelest form of "hope" is the one that delivers the precise opposite.
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