In this regard, the influ­ence of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, its mem­bers and poli­cies on the world stage can hardly be quan­ti­fied. The Com­mis­sion, founded by David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski in 1973, drew mem­ber­ship from North America, Europe and Japan. Out of approx­i­mately 300 mem­bers, only 86 were orig­i­nally from the United States, and yet they cor­po­rately devised and pushed poli­cies that suited the entire mem­ber­ship, and did so under a vir­tual cloak of invis­i­bility that lasts even into 2013.

Today, we reap the "ben­e­fits" of Tri­lat­eral manip­u­la­tion. The Euro­pean economy is trashed, Japan's economy is still smol­dering from the mid-1990's and the U.S. is much worse off today than in the late 1960's. But, the polit­ical sys­tems of these coun­tries are not much better off than their economies. The fruit of decay in the United States is painfully evi­dent with a frac­tured and con­tentious politic that defies rec­on­cil­i­a­tion on even the most minor issues.