The Knife's Edge
For those who still don't understand, let me break it down even further: the United States is in the middle of a Cold Civil War, while at the same time being involved in an international Secret War against, essentially, an institutionalized criminal syndicate tracing its roots back at least a thousand years. A syndicate that makes the Mafia and the Triads, as brutal as they are, mere bit players in the greater scheme of things.
Every shadowy criminal organization you've ever read or seen on a screen is a pale reflection of the syndicate now being attacked. No depravity was too deep for them; indeed, the worse the crime, the more the perpetrators were leveraged by the organization. The greater the crime, the greater and greater lengths they had to go to to contrive to legitimize and rationalize the undeniable evil they had participated in.
Human trafficking, sex trafficking, drugs, illegal organ and tissue harvesting – they had a hand in it all. Because when you know the deck is always stacked in your favor, there are no lengths you won't go to to protect yourself from the consequences of your actions. And when the repercussions for failure are severe and assured by the organization, targeting your family and friends, then even reluctant agents do despicable and unforgivable things to protect the ones they love.
As horrific as that all is, it isn't the worst of it. These people have had an active plan for conquering and dominating the world for centuries. The ultimate move in their plan involves maneuvering humanity into a for-real nuclear conflict which would allow their embedded players (on all sides of any conflict) to eventually dominate the survivors utterly. Using technology and the aftermath of nuclear war, they would seize all power. Everywhere. Over the bodies of billions.
Regardless of which ideology they currently hide behind, make no mistake that their goal is non less than active control of the entire planet. It's your worst James Bond villain evil plot come true. It's every bad post-apocalypse movie wrapped up into one. Human trafficking is secondary to the appalling and inhuman plot to make our world more efficient. Thanos-style.
To be continued