All models are wrong. Some are useful. There are, in fact, many establishments that are frighteningly efficient at devoting time, money and effort into manipul

All models are wrong. Some are useful. There are, in fact, many establishments that are frighteningly efficient at devoting time, money and effort into manipulating people. But those establishments are ultimately guided by people, too. And those people are fallible creatures, just as prone to vagaries of ideological fashion and lapses in rational thought as those who ushered the events of January 6. Even the juggernauts make missteps. It does not diminish the empiricism of Chomsky's ideas. The phenomenon you describe transcends notions of class, race, and and so on: over lifetime timescales, a group of people is a chaotic and unpredictable system, replete with knock on effects, where any actor or interest, no matter how fringe, has the potential to dominate. And while one can apply basic sociological principles to anticipate some short-term behaviors, it stands to reason that no amount of cold calculation or meticulous planning (by governments, media, elites, or otherwise) is immune to the simple fact that the course of any given organization is extremely difficult to consistently predict.