Part of co-opting is making everything look like it helps out the dissenters while making it work to serve their own interests.
I don't think it takes much thinking to think of a lot of examples.
There's an old saying, 'What's good for the revolution is good for Winchester.' (The gun manufacturer)
There's ways to make a profit from dissent. A profit can be made from anything.
And dissent, being the way we believe that we are living in a democracy, is handy for the gov't. That's why we don't see actual revolution. No coups. Just a lot of protest. Most of it going nowhere.
And the MIC? They love dissent. They get to 'give' all their unwanted military gear to SWAT teams (they aren't allowed to sell it to them), with a lot of funny money changing hands in the way of chits in the drawer. Homeland Security jumps almost instantly to 3rd biggest cabinet agency behind DoD and the VA, and doesn't answer to DoJ the way the FBI does. They get away with stuff they aren't supposed to be doing (and saying, like identifying domestic terror groups), and they cornered the market on ammo for a few years.
Now they have ANTIFA! They couldn't be happier.
This was my position 50 years ago... I've mellowed as most old farts do.
Yes, I'm not really on the exact topic of the cartoon. I don't care. If someone is here asking what a political cartoon means, I want to fill in some general background about attitudes about gov't. Doesn't even matter to me if it's a liberal slant or a conservative one.
