Shut Your Mouth

Trey Smith

The rewriting of history by the power elite was painfully evident as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Some claimed they had opposed the war when they had not. Others among “Bush’s useful idiots” argued that they had merely acted in good faith on the information available; if they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false. The war boosters, especially the “liberal hawks”—who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman,Thomas Friedman, George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchens — did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it.

These apologists, however, acted not only as cheerleaders for war; in most cases they ridiculed and attempted to discredit anyone who questioned the call to invade Iraq. Kristof, in The New York Times, attacked the filmmaker Michael Moore as a conspiracy theorist and wrote that anti-war voices were only polarizing what he termed “the political cesspool.” Hitchens said that those who opposed the attack on Iraq “do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all.” He called the typical anti-war protester a “blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist.” The halfhearted mea culpas by many of these courtiers a decade later always fail to mention the most pernicious and fundamental role they played in the buildup to the war—shutting down public debate.
~ from America's Sell Out Intellectuals and the Perks They Get by Chris Hedges ~

When I was in grad school in the early 90s, I risked my Graduate Assistantship protesting Operation Desert Storm. When the US launched an attack against the nation of Afghanistan after 9/11, I was in the streets protesting and I did the very same when we launched our ill-fated war in Iraq in 2003. For each of these efforts, I was derided and called almost every name in the book -- just like Chris Hedges was. People -- including self-defined "liberals" -- called me unpatriotic, a lover of despots and an idiot.

When you take a public stand that is unpopular, it is maddening when many of the people who tore into you later declare that they too were on your side all along. While you faced vitriol and threats, they did not. While you were castigated publicly, they won praises as patriots and thinking liberals.

Over the years of the Obama administration, I have been a steadfast critic of his penchant for White House secrecy, incessant attacks against whistleblowers, escalation of the drone war and his overall ratcheting up of the national police state. Many so-called liberals openly have derided those of us who have the temerity to question the values and morals of America's first black president. I wonder, when a subsequent president further escalates the precedents set by Obama, if many of these very same people will do an about-face to claim that they opposed these policies from the very beginning.

It doesn't take a modicum of conviction and courage to go along in real time, only to criticize when popular opinion has changed. It is comparable to being a fair-weather friend, only a lot more pernicious!

Real Life Tao - The Madness of Kings

Trey Smith

I learned at the age of 10, when I was shipped off to a New England boarding school where the hazing of younger boys was the principal form of recreation, that those who hunger for power are psychopathic bastards. The bullies in the forms above me, the sadistic masters on our dormitory floors, the deans and the headmaster would morph in later life into bishops, newspaper editors, college presidents, politicians, heads of state, business titans and generals. Those who revel in the ability to manipulate and destroy are demented and deformed individuals. These severely diminished and stunted human beings — think Bill and Hillary Clinton — shower themselves, courtesy of elaborate public relations campaigns and an obsequious press, with encomiums of piety, patriotism, devoted public service, honor, courage and vision, not to mention a lot of money. They are at best mediocrities and usually venal. I have met enough of them to know.
~ from The S and M  Election by Chris Hedges ~

Few religions, philosophies or belief systems are monolithic. There almost always is an interplay of thought and ideas that are contributed by writers and thinkers down through the ages. While fundamentalists try to distill an orthodoxy of foundational beliefs, all this tack represents is a personal and often arbitrary delineation of a portion of that belief system's overall corpus.

The two prime figures at the center of Taoism are Laozi and Zhuangzi. It would take a great deal of mental and literary gymnastics to attempt to say that each viewed Tao and Tao's relationship to human society in the same manner. A great deal of Laozi's book, the Tao Te Ching, offers advice to rulers as to how they can rule in a sagely manner.

Zhuangzi, on the other hand, wasn't that caught up with trying to advise those in the ruling class. His school of thought argued that we should eschew external morality and rely more on the Tao that exists in us all. While I am sure that he recognized that government, in some form, is needed in human society, people who more fully grasp the essence of Tao don't need to be ruled. It is when we look to rulers to set the standards of the day that we unwittingly are admitting that we have hardly grasped the essence of Tao at all.

From my perspective, what Hedges has written above, has a Zhuangzian ring to it. The very desire to rule over others is about as anti-Tao as it gets! It is a mentality fueled by insatiable desire and, utilizing the jargon of psychology, we could say that it indeed is psychopathic.

This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.

Spectacles

Trey Smith

The giddy, money-drenched, choreographed carnival in Tampa and the one coming up in Charlotte divert us from the real world — the one steadily collapsing around us. The glitz and propaganda, the ridiculous obsessions imparted by our electronic hallucinations, and the spectacles that pass for political participation mask the deadly ecological assault by the corporate state. The worse it gets, the more we retreat into self-delusion. We convince ourselves that global warming does not exist. Or we concede that it exists but insist that we can adapt. Both responses satisfy our mania for eternal optimism and our reckless pursuit of personal comfort. In America, when reality is distasteful we ignore it. But reality will soon descend like the Furies to shatter our complacency and finally our lives. We, as a species, may be doomed. And this is a bitter, bitter fact for a father to digest.
~ from We Distract Ourselves With Petty Spectacles While the World Goes to Hell by Chris Hedges ~

I have been amazed at the amount of column inches and time blocks that both the mainstream and alternative media have devoted to the Republican and Democratic Party conventions. You would think their speakers and participants had developed some earth-shattering ideas.

Both conventions were little more than contrived spectacles whose main purpose was to buck up the spirit of each party's political junkies. Both conventions were high on rhetoric, but delivered very little of substance. Even if you only pay half attention to politics, there was nothing new presented at either venue.

And now the campaign begins in earnest. For the next two months we'll be treated to one negative mudslinging ad after another. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be tossed around by BOTH sides. Each candidate will make a slew of campaign pledges that he has no intent on keeping, if elected. It's all part of the political theater!

All the while, the big issues will grow worse. Too many people will remain unemployed. Banks will continue to foreclose -- often illegally -- on people who are out-of-work and whose homes aren't worth that much anymore. The Fed will continue to print money for Wall Street. Drones will continue to fill the skies of Muslim countries and too many innocents will be killed.

Worst of all, as Hedges points out, we will continue to push our species and many others toward the abyss.

Afternoon Matinee: It's Exactly What Orwell Wrote About In 1984

All That Glitters Is Not Gold

Trey Smith

I went to Lille in northern France a few days before the first round of the French presidential election to attend a rally held by the socialist candidate François Holland. It was a depressing experience. Thunderous music pulsated through the ugly and poorly heated Zenith convention hall a few blocks from the city center. The rhetoric was as empty and cliché-driven as an American campaign event. Words like “destiny,” “progress” and “change” were thrown about by Holland, who looks like an accountant and made oratorical flourishes and frenetic arm gestures that seemed calculated to evoke the last socialist French president, François Mitterrand. There was the singing of “La Marseillaise” when it was over. There was a lot of red, white and blue, the colors of the French flag. There was the final shout of “Vive la France.” I could, with a few alterations, have been at a football rally in Amarillo, Texas. I had hoped for a little more gravitas. But as the French cultural critic Guy Debord astutely grasped, politics, even allegedly radical politics, has become a hollow spectacle. Quel dommage.

The emptying of content in political discourse in an age as precarious and volatile as ours will have very dangerous consequences. The longer the political elite — whether in Washington or Paris, whether socialist or right-wing, whether Democrat or Republican — ignore the breakdown of globalization, refuse to respond rationally to the climate crisis and continue to serve the iron tyranny of global finance, the more it will shred the possibility of political consensus, erode the effectiveness of our political institutions and empower right-wing extremists. The discontent sweeping the planet is born out of the paralysis of traditional political institutions.
~ from The Globalization of Hollow Politics by Chris Hedges ~

It is hard for a political junkie like myself to have to admit that national politics, at best, has become vapid. On the surface, it appears to be energetic and interesting, but dig below the surface and you find, as Hedges states, it's hollow.

Politics today is all about soundbites, buzzwords, tag lines, focus groups, manufactured images and appealing to the basest of emotions. It's about sounding like a paragon of change and innovation without really meaning it! It's about saying (or inferring) just enough to appeal to the 99 percent without alarming the 1 percent. And it's about rich people trying to sell the middle class and poor on the idiotic notion that they have a scintilla of understanding what it means to live paycheck-to-paycheck.

On this last note, Mitch Romney has nary a clue. Neither does Barack Obama. Yet, come November, these will be the only viable choices.

Romney is multimillionaire several times over; Obama is a simple millionaire. Do you really think that makes much of a substantive difference? Do you think the guy who averages $1.5 million per year has any idea what it's like not to be able to find a job or to deal with the impending foreclosure (legal or not) on your home?

Big Government

Trey Smith

If you listen to Republicans and Democrats alike, BIG government is a thing of the past. The humungous size of the government -- federal, state and local -- is the chief culprit in America's decline. Speaker of the House John Boehner says it's true. So too do Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Harry Reid. Even President Obama agrees. We must reduce the size of the government if we hope to stay on top.

The Congress and the Obama administration have been working hard to pare down the size of government. Across the nation, over 550,000 public workers lost their jobs in the first quarter of this year. Regulations are being cut back and inspectors are receiving their pink slips. Everywhere we look, the size of government is being shrunk...except in 2 cases: 1) The military-industrial complex and 2) "Homeland Security."

The military budget has been way too large for the past generation or two, so this isn't eye-popping news. In fact, for an imperialistic nation like the US, a bloated military budget is a given. However, as Chris Hedges reported early this month,

There are now 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies that work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States, The Washington Post reported in a 2010 series by Dana Priest and William M. Arken. There are 854,000 people with top-secret security clearances, the reporters wrote, and in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2011. Investigative reporter James Bamford wrote in the latest issue of Wired magazine that the National Security Agency is building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah, as part of a secret NSA surveillance program code-named “Stellar Wind.” Bamford noted that the NSA has established listening posts throughout the country to collect, store and examine billions of email messages and phone calls.

You see, when it comes to spying on Americans, the government can't seem to grow fast enough! Deficit hawks who see nothing wrong with eviscerating Medicaid, ending home heating programs for the poor and elderly or throwing thousands of teachers out of work, don't seem to have any qualms whatsoever when it comes to tossing wads of public money to the ever-expanding homeland security octopus.

It turns out that the ruling politicos really don't have a problem with b-i-g government at all. No, their problem merely concerns who the big government serves. If we're talking about government that serves the people, it needs to be smaller. If we're talking about government that serves the elite, it can grow as big as it wants.

Afternoon Matinee: Unfettered Capitalism

Taking Power to Court

Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31.

The act authorizes the military in Title X, Subtitle D, entitled “Counter-Terrorism,” for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing. With this bill, which will take effect March 3, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until “the end of hostilities.” It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.

I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have “disappeared” into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.
~ from Why I’m Suing Barack Obama by Chris Hedges ~

In and Out of the Box

These protesters have not come to work within the system. They are not pleading with Congress for electoral reform. They know electoral politics is a farce and have found another way to be heard and exercise power. They have no faith, nor should they, in the political system or the two major political parties. They know the press will not amplify their voices, and so they created a press of their own. They know the economy serves the oligarchs, so they formed their own communal system. This movement is an effort to take our country back.

This is a goal the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished.

It will not stop until there is an end to the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in our black sites. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students no longer have to go into debt to be educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are radically reconfigured.

And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in trouble. That is why they keep asking what the demands are.
~ from Why the Elites Are in Trouble by Chris Hedges ~

The political and economic elites (as well as many progressives too) have tried hard to place the Occupy protests in a box of predetermined size. However, as Hedges points out, the protesters themselves have refused to be cordoned off in any way, shape or form. And this is why the elites SHOULD be worried.

One box the elites have tried to fashion for these hundreds of protests is a physical one. In most locales, officialdom has set aside certain "areas" in which citizens can exercise their rights of free speech and free assembly. Try to go outside of those designated spots and the police state rears its ugly head.

Many in the mainstream media have created a box of description. We're told that the protesters are a bedraggled phalanx of rebellious young people who don't understand what it takes to build a mighty nation. They are dirty, lazy and shiftless types who can't find jobs because they don't apply themselves. So, with nothing better to do, they have set out to block traffic, impede commerce and annoy public officials.

And then there's the box of form that the elites and many leading progressives have tried to shove the protesters into. A movement can't be taken seriously, they say, without a list of specific demands. If you can't come up with a programmatic schema, they chortle, why should we take you seriously?

But, for all the various efforts to contain these protests in one box or another, it ain't working. The protests are stretching their legs in new and bold directions.

At this point, we don't know if anything substantive will come of it, but, to borrow a phrase from the Obama campaign of 2008, it does engender the "audacity of hope!"

Do You Want This Job?

Workers in the fields earn about 50 cents for picking a bucket containing 32 pounds of tomatoes. These workers make only $10,000 to $12,000 a year, much of which they send home. The $10,000-$12,000 range, because it includes the higher pay of supervisors, means the real wages of the pickers are usually less than $10,000 a year. Wages have remained stagnant since 1980. A worker must pick 2.25 tons of tomatoes to make minimum wage during one of the grueling 10-hour workdays. This is twice what they had to pick 30 years ago for the same amount of money. (emphasis added)
~ from The Tomatoes of Wrath by Chris Hedges ~

I ask you to focus on the portion of the above snippet I have emphasized. As a reminder, one ton equals 2,000 pounds. So, Hedges is saying that, in order to claim a minimum wage rate of pay, each worker must pick 4,500 pounds PER DAY.

When was the last time you had to lift 4,500 pounds in one day?

Since most farmworkers work 6 days per week -- if they are "lucky" -- that's 27,000 pounds per week just to earn the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr. That makes working at a burger joint or nursing home seem like a dream job!

Next time I hear some conservative politico wail about all these illegal immigrants stealing jobs from red-blooded Americans, I'm going to think about 4,500 pounds of tomatoes per day. How many red-blooded Americans do you know who would jump at the chance of picking 2.25 tons of tomatoes for no more than $75 per day?

I certainly wouldn't be very interested and I know few others that would be as well.

Hedges on 9/11

Scores of people, perhaps more than 200, pushed through the smoke and heat to jump to their deaths from windows that had broken or they had smashed. Sometimes they did this alone, sometimes in pairs. But it seems they took turns, one body cascading downward followed by another. The last acts of individuality. They fell for about 10 seconds, many flailing or replicating the motion of swimmers, reaching 150 miles an hour. Their clothes and, in a few cases, their improvised parachutes made from drapes or tablecloths shredded. They smashed into the pavement with unnerving, sickening thuds. Thump. Thump. Thump. Those who witnessed it were particularly shaken by the sounds the bodies made on impact.

The images of the “jumpers” proved too gruesome for the TV networks. Even before the towers collapsed, the falling men and women were censored from live broadcasts. Isolated pictures appeared the next day in papers, including The New York Times, and then were banished. The mass suicide, one of the most pivotal and important elements in the narrative of 9/11, was expunged. It remains expunged from public consciousness.

The “jumpers” did not fit into the myth the nation demanded. The fate of the “jumpers” said something so profound, so disturbing, about our own fate, smallness in the universe and fragility that it had to be banned. The “jumpers” illustrated that there are thresholds of suffering that elicit a willing embrace of death. The “jumpers” reminded us that there will come, to all of us, final moments when the only choice will be, at best, how we will choose to die, not how we are going to live. And we can die before we physically expire.

The shock of 9/11, however, demanded images and stories of resilience, redemption, heroism, courage, self-sacrifice and generosity, not collective suicide in the face of overwhelming hopelessness and despair.
~ from A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe by Chris Hedges ~

Throughout today (including my own reflections later this morning) I will feature some of the voices from the alternative press in regards to 9/11.

Trolls R Us

The only commodity the troll state offers is fear. The corporate trolls, such as the Koch brothers, terrify the birthers, creationists, militia lovers, tea party militants, right-to-life advocates, Christian fascists and God-fearing red-white-and-blue patriots by proclaiming that unless they vote for Perry or Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann or some other product of the lunatic fringe of our political establishment, the American family will be destroyed, our children will be corrupted and the country will turn socialist. Barack Obama, who they whisper is a closet Muslim, will take away their guns, raise their taxes and bring homosexual couples into kindergartens.

For those, usually liberals, still rooted in a reality-based world, one that believes in evolutionary science, the corporate trolls offer a more refined, fear-based message of impending doom: If you abandon the Democrats we will be governed by Bible-thumping idiots who will make us chant the Pledge of Allegiance in mass rallies and teach the account of Genesis as historical and biological fact in our nation’s schools.

And underneath it all runs the mantra chanted in unison by all the trolls — terror, terror, terror. The troll establishment spins us like windup dolls and laughs all the way to the bank. What idiots, they think. And every election cycle we prove them right.
~ from The Election March of the Trolls by Chris Hedges ~

That last line above is so nauseating...and true. We are the ones who grant the oligarchs their power and, sadly, most people don't even realize it.

Narcissists R Us

This fundamentalist ideology, because it is contradictory and filled with myth, is immune to critiques based on reason, fact and logic. This is part of its appeal. It obliterates doubt, nuance, intellectual and scientific rigor and moral conscience. All has been predicted or decided. Life is reduced to following a simple black-and-white road map.

The contradictions in these belief systems — for example the championing of the “rights of the unborn” while calling for wider use of the death penalty or the damning of Muslim terrorists while promoting pre-emptive war, which delivers more death and misery in the Middle East than any jihadist organization — inoculate followers from rational discourse. Life becomes a crusade.

All fundamentalists, religious and secular, are ignoramuses. They follow the lines of least resistance. They already know what is true and what is untrue. They do not need to challenge their own beliefs or investigate the beliefs of others. They do not need to bother with the hard and laborious work of religious, linguistic, historical and cultural understanding. They do not need to engage in self-criticism or self-reflection. It spoils the game. It ruins the entertainment. They see all people, and especially themselves, as clearly and starkly defined. The world is divided into those who embrace or reject their belief systems. Those who support these belief systems are good and forces for human progress. Those who oppose these belief systems are stupid, at best, and usually evil.

Fundamentalists have no interest in real debate, real dialogue, real intellectual thought. Fundamentalism, at its core, is about self-worship. It is about feeling holier, smarter and more powerful than everyone else. And this comes directly out of the sickness of our advertising age and its exaltation of the cult of the self. It is a product of our deep and unreflective cultural narcissism.
~ from Fundamentalism Kills by Chris Hedges ~

What he wrote!

Nightmare on Main Street

When most Americans face the nightmare before us, when they realize the irreversible devastation unleashed on the ecosystem and the economic misery from which they cannot escape, violence will have a broad and terrifying appeal. Those of us who demand a return to the rule of law and remain steadfast to nonviolence will find ourselves cast aside — the useful idiots Lenin so despised.
~ from Ralph Nader Is Tired of Running for President by Chris Hedges ~

As is usual, this week's column by Hedges is a good one! However, for my purposes this morning, I want to focus on these two brief sentences.

One aspect of the civil rights movement that Martin Luther King, Jr., worked tirelessly against was the specter of violence within some factions of the movement itself. He continually warned America's leaders that, if they refused to deal with nonviolent protesters in a respectful and just manner, there were many others that were more than willing to utilize violence to make their voices heard. After his assassination, his prediction came to horrible fruition!

We stand at a similar crossroads today. While the nonviolent movement pales in comparison to that of the 1960s, it would behoove our leaders -- provided they actually give a damn -- to learn from recent history. If they follow through with their threat to eviscerate the portion of the federal budget that serves the many -- while leaving untouched or increasing the portion that benefits the few -- the country may explode in an orgy of indiscriminate violence.

When people come to realize in direct and concrete terms that their country has been sold out from under their feet, I shudder to think how many people will react. When voting doesn't do any good and peaceful protests are met with an apathetic yawn, in many people's eyes, unmitigated violence will be the only recourse.

As Hedges points out in his essay, those of us who call for determined resistance through nonviolent means will be drowned out by a cacophony of rabble-rousers -- some of which will be demagogues who merely want to profit from the misery of their brethren!

Cutting Off the Roots

The liberal class, which attempted last week to discredit the words my friend Cornel West spoke about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, prefers comfort and privilege to justice, truth and confrontation. Its guiding ideological stance is determined by what is most expedient to the careers of its members. It refuses to challenge, in a meaningful way, the decaying structures of democracy or the ascendancy of the corporate state. It glosses over the relentless assault on working men and women and the imperial wars that are bankrupting the nation. It proclaims its adherence to traditional liberal values while defending and promoting systems of power that mock these values.

The pillars of the liberal establishment — the press, the church, culture, the university, labor and the Democratic Party — all honor an unwritten quid pro quo with corporations and the power elite, as well as our masters of war, on whom they depend for money, access and positions of influence. Those who expose this moral cowardice and collaboration with corporate power are always ruthlessly thrust aside.

The capitulation of the liberal class to corporate capitalism, as Irving Howe once noted, has “bleached out all political tendencies.” The liberal class has become, Howe wrote, “a loose shelter, a poncho rather than a program; to call oneself a liberal one doesn’t really have to believe in anything.” The decision to subordinate ethics to political expediency has led liberals to steadily surrender their moral autonomy, voice and beliefs to the dictates of the corporate state. As Dwight Macdonald wrote in “The Root Is Man,” those who do not make human beings the center of their concern soon lose the capacity to make any ethical choices, for they willingly sacrifice others in the name of the politically expedient and practical.

By extolling the power of the state as an agent of change, as well as measuring human progress through the advances of science, technology and consumption, liberals abetted the cult of the self and the ascendancy of the corporate state. The liberal class placed its faith in the inevitability of human progress and abandoned the human values that should have remained at the core of its activism. The state, now the repository of the hopes and dreams of the liberal class, should always have been seen as the enemy.

The destruction of the old radical and militant movements — the communists, socialists and anarchists — has left liberals without a source of new ideas. The link between an effective liberal class and a more radical left was always essential to the health of the former. The liberal class, by allowing radical movements to be dismembered through Red baiting and by banishing those within its ranks who had moral autonomy, gradually deformed basic liberal tenets to support unfettered capitalism, the national security state, globalization and permanent war.

Liberalism, cut off from the radical roots of creative and bold thought, merged completely with the corporate power elite. The liberal class at once was betrayed and betrayed itself. And it now functions like a commercial brand, giving a different flavor, face or spin to the ruthless mechanisms of corporate power. This, indeed, is the primary function of Barack Obama.
~ from Why Liberal Sellouts Attack Prophets Like Cornel West by Chris Hedges ~

Short-Circuited

We continue to talk about personalities — Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — although the heads of state or elected officials in Congress have become largely irrelevant. Lobbyists write the bills. Lobbyists get them passed. Lobbyists make sure you get the money to be elected. And lobbyists employ you when you get out of office.

Those who hold actual power are the tiny elite who manage the corporations. Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, in their book “Winner-Take-All Politics,” point out that the share of national income of the top 0.1 percent of Americans since 1974 has grown from 2.7 to 12.3 percent. One in six American workers may be without a job. Some 40 million Americans may live in poverty, with tens of millions more living in a category called “near poverty.” Six million people may be forced from their homes because of foreclosures and bank repossessions. But while the masses suffer, Goldman Sachs, one of the financial firms most responsible for the evaporation of $17 trillion in wages, savings and wealth of small investors and shareholders, is giddily handing out $17.5 billion in compensation to its managers, including $12.6 million to its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein.

The massive redistribution of wealth, as Hacker and Pierson write, happened because lawmakers and public officials were, in essence, hired to permit it to happen. It was not a conspiracy. The process was transparent. It did not require the formation of a new political party or movement. It was the result of inertia by our political and intellectual class, which in the face of expanding corporate power found it personally profitable to facilitate it or look the other way.

The armies of lobbyists, who write the legislation, bankroll political campaigns and disseminate propaganda, have been able to short-circuit the electorate. Hacker and Pierson pinpoint the administration of Jimmy Carter as the start of our descent, but I think it began long before with Woodrow Wilson, the ideology of permanent war and the capacity by public relations to manufacture consent. Empires die over such long stretches of time that the exact moment when terminal decline becomes irreversible is probably impossible to document. That we are at the end, however, is beyond dispute.
~ from The Corporate State Wins Again by Chris Hedges ~

While I agree with the general tenor of Hedges' message, I think he is wrong on the issue of conspiracy. Global capitalism -- particularly disaster capitalism -- inherently is an ideology to usurp populist democracy. As Hedges points out above, our so-called elected leaders are "hired to permit" the unelected elite to make all the big decisions. In my book, this is the very definition of a conspiracy because, while maintaining the facade of public will, said will is marginalized to the point that it becomes entirely impotent to affect political change.

In less than two years, we will be thrust into the make-believe world of elections again. Partisans will argue for this candidate and against that candidate. Liberals will screech to the high heavens that we must re-elect Obama in order to stave off the machinations of whichever weak candidate the GOP offers up. But the whole process will be nothing more than an elaborate ruse.

Whichever figureheads are "elected," they will continue to do the bidding of the unelected elite. They will pretend to argue with each other, while the redistribution of wealth and the evisceration of civil liberties continue unabated.

And for those who believe that it is still possible to elect a true champion of the people, all I can say is that you live with your head in the clouds. If a true progressive renegade was elected to Congress, that candidate would be marginalized and drowned out by the cacophony of corporate shills. That person would have no impact on the machine.

If a true progressive renegade was elected president, one of two things would occur. That person either would be killed -- assassination or something more nefarious -- or bought off in short order.

If the People truly want to slow down or end absolute corporate control of almost every aspect of our lives, change must come from a different avenue than the electoral process. The ballot no longer makes ANY difference at all!

Doctor Doom

A lot of people have criticized Chris Hedges for his pessimistic views on a variety of subjects. Personally, I think that, if this nation itself is headed in a particularly negative direction, being realistic only SOUNDS pessimistic.

We NEED people like Chris Hedges; people who refuse to candy-coat what may well lead to our downfall. If want to alter where we're going, how can anyone hope to change to a more beneficial direction IF we can't even recognize the current course we're on?

Strike the Match

As a result of legislation to destroy unions across several states and the continued attempts by Wall Street to wrest ever more wealth from what is left of the Middle Class, one topic that has entered the public discourse from alternative media and the left is the idea of targeted strikes or a general strike. While I believe the theory behind strikes would make them a potent vehicle for the vast majority to send a message to elites throughout this nation, I simply do not believe that Americans are disciplined enough to pull them off.

As he does every Monday, Chris Hedges penned another powerful essay, "Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand" this week. At the conclusion of this week's missive, Hedges quotes the great orator Frederick Douglass.

“The whole history of the progress of human history shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle. ... If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. ...”

I don't dispute the elegant words of Douglass or Hedges, but the sad fact is that most Americans no longer understand what true struggle entails.

It is because of this lack of genuine understanding that I think a general strike would be doomed to abysmal failure. For one to work, it must be total and long-standing. It must bring the wealthy elite to their knees.

Unfortunately, with good jobs so hard to come by, there are millions of people out there who would eagerly and gladly cross the picket line, particularly those who have internalized the spin of the oligarchs against the notion of unionized labor.

Many who went on strike would lose their nerve and resolve if the strike lasted more than a few days as they have bills to pay and people to feed. I don't see any good coming from a brief strike as the elites and the media would quickly turn the majority of the American populace against the effort and, in 2012, the majority of voters would readily elect more Scott Walkers and Rick Snyders to obliterate what is left of organized labor.

And then, of course, there is the genuine threat of violence, both from some citizens and the apparatus of the state itself. Those citizens who already oppose unions would egg each other on to attack picketers and to create general mayhem. States would call out the National Guard and President Obama -- the man most responsible for the continued torture of Bradley Manning -- would most likely follow suit by calling on the armed forces.

While many European countries could pull off a general strike because their citizens understand class struggle and solidarity, Americans have grown too soft. We are left with few tools left in the bag to halt the onslaught that beckons at our door.