Guest Post by Chris Hedges
There are no institutions, including the press, an electoral system, the imperial presidency, the courts or the penal system, that can be defined as democratic. Only the fiction of democracy remains.
There is a fatal disconnect between a political system that promises democratic equality and freedom while carrying out socioeconomic injustices that result in grotesque income inequality and political stagnation.
Decades in the making, this disconnect has extinguished American democracy. The steady stripping away of economic and political power was ignored by a hyperventilating press that thundered against the barbarians at the gate — Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, ISIS, Vladimir Putin — while ignoring the barbarians in our midst.
The slow-motion coup is over. Corporations and the billionaire class have won. There are no institutions, including the press, an electoral system that is little more than legalized bribery, the imperial presidency, the courts or the penal system, that can be defined as democratic. Only the fiction of democracy remains.
The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin in Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism calls the U.S. system “inverted totalitarianism.” The façade of democratic institutions and the rhetoric, symbols and iconography of state power have not changed. The Constitution remains a sacred document.
Collective Self-Delusion
July 4, 2019, Washington, D.C. (Joe Lauria)
The U.S. continues to posit itself as a champion of opportunity, freedom, human rights and civil liberties, even as half the country struggles at subsistence level, militarized police gun down and imprison the poor with impunity, and the primary business of the state is war.
This collective self-delusion masks what America has become — a nation where the citizenry has been stripped of economic and political power and where the brutal militarism practiced overseas is practiced at home.
In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union, economics was subordinate to politics. But under inverted totalitarianism, the reverse is true. There is no attempt, unlike fascism and state socialism, to address the needs of the poor. Rather, the poorer and more vulnerable you are, the more you are exploited, thrust into a hellish debt peonage from which there is no escape.
Social services, from education to health care, are anemic, nonexistent or privatized to gouge the impoverished. Further ravaged by 8.5 percent inflation, wages have decelerated sharply since 1979. Jobs often do not offer benefits or security.
[You can watch an interview I conducted in 2014 with Sheldon Wolin here.]
In my book America: The Farewell Tour, I examined the social indicators of a nation in serious trouble. Life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2021, for the second year in a row. There have been over 300 mass shootings this year. Close to a million people have died from drug overdoses since 1999. There are an average of 132 suicides every day. Nearly 42 percent of the country is classified as obese, with one in 11 adults considered severely obese.
These diseases of despair are rooted in the disconnect between a society’s expectations of a better future and the reality of a system that does not provide a meaningful place for its citizens. Loss of a sustainable income and social stagnation causes more than financial distress.
Diseased Society
Evicted from their homes, Seattle. (Joe Lauria)
As Émile Durkheim points out in The Division of Labor in Society, it severs the social bonds that give us meaning. A decline in status and power, an inability to advance, a lack of education and adequate health care, and a loss of hope result in crippling forms of humiliation. This humiliation fuels loneliness, frustration, anger and feelings of worthlessness.
In Hitler and the Germans, the political philosopher Eric Voegelin dismisses the idea that Hitler — gifted in oratory and political opportunism but poorly educated and vulgar — mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he writes, supported Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures” surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness.
Voegelin defines stupidity as a “loss of reality.” The loss of reality means a “stupid” person cannot “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.” The demagogue, who is always an idiote, is not a freak or social mutation. The demagogue expresses the society’s zeitgeist.
The acceleration of deindustrialization by the 1970s, as I write in America, The Farewell Tour, created a crisis that forced the ruling elites to devise a new political paradigm, as Stuart Hall explains in Policing the Crisis. Trumpeted by a compliant media, this paradigm shifted its focus from the common good to race, crime and law and order. It told those undergoing profound economic and political change that their suffering stemmed not from rampant militarism and corporate greed but from a threat to national integrity.
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The old consensus that buttressed New Deal programs and the welfare state was attacked as enabling criminal Black youth, “welfare queens” and other alleged social parasites. This opened the door to a faux populism, begun by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which supposedly championed family values, traditional morality, individual autonomy, law and order, the Christian faith and the return to a mythical past, at least for white Americans.
The Democratic Party, especially under Bill Clinton, moved steadily to the right until it became largely indistinguishable from the establishment Republican Party to which it is now allied. Donald Trump, and the 74 million people who voted for him in 2020, were the result.
Political Theater
Biden speaks in Philadelphia. (White House Photo)
It will do no good, as Biden did on Thursday in Philadelphia, to demonize Trump and his supporters in the way they demonize Biden and the Democrats. Biden, raising clenched fists, backlit by Stygian red lights and flanked by two U.S. Marines in dress uniforms, announced from his Dantesque stage set that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.”
Biden’s frontal assault widens the divide. It solidifies a system where voters do not vote for what they want, since neither side delivers anything of substance, but against what they despise. Biden did not address our socioeconomic crisis or offer solutions. It was political theater.
Anti-politics masquerades as politics. No sooner does one money-drenched election cycle end, the next one begins, perpetuating what Wolin calls “politics without politics.” These elections do not permit citizens to participate in power.
The public is allowed to voice opinions to scripted questions, which are repackaged by publicists, pollsters, political consultants and advertisers and fed back to them. Few races, including only 14 percent of congressional districts, are considered competitive. Politicians do not campaign on substantial issues but on skillfully manufactured political personalities and emotionally charged culture wars.
Omnipotence
The Pentagon. (Joe Lauria)
The militarists, who have created a state within a state and who plunge us into one military debacle after another, consuming half of all discretionary spending, are omnipotent. The corporations and billionaires, which orchestrated a virtual tax boycott and gutted regulation and oversight, are omnipotent.
The industrialists who wrote trade deals to profit from unemployment and underemployment of U.S. workers and sweatshop labor overseas are omnipotent. The insurance and pharmaceutical industries that run the healthcare system, whose primary concern is profit not health and who are responsible for 16 percent of the worldwide reported deaths from COVID-19 although we are less than 5 percent of the global population, are omnipotent.
The intelligence agencies that carry out wholesale surveillance of the public are omnipotent.
The courts that reinterpret laws to strip them of their original meaning to ensure corporate control and excuse corporate crimes, are omnipotent. The courts gave us Citizens United, for example, which permits unlimited corporate financing of elections by claiming it upholds the right to petition the government and is a form of free speech.
Spectacle
July 4, 2019, parade in Washington, D.C. (Joe Lauria)
Politics is spectacle, a tawdry carnival act where the constant jockeying for power by the ruling class dominates the news cycles, as if politics were a race to the Super Bowl. The real business of ruling is hidden, carried out by corporate lobbyists who write the legislation, banks that loot the Treasury, the war industry and an oligarchy that determines who gets elected and who does not. It is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs, the fossil fuel industry or Raytheon, no matter which party is in office.
The moment any segment of the population, left or right, refuses to participate in this illusion, the face of inverted totalitarianism resembles the face of classical totalitarianism, as Julian Assange is experiencing.
Our corporate overlords and militarists prefer the decorum of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But they worked closely with Trump and are willing to do so again.
What they will not allow are reformers such as Bernie Sanders, who might challenge, however tepidly, their obscene accumulation of wealth and power. This inability to reform, to restore democratic participation and address social inequality, means the inevitable death of the republic.
Biden and the Democrats rail against the cultish Republican Party and their threat to democracy, but they too are the problem.
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Chrissy can creep up to the line , but he dare not cross over into ‘The Election Was Stolen’ territory , because at the end of the day, he’s a gatekeeper too , and the narrative must always be under control.
Miles Mathis has a plan.
” And how exactly are we to fight back in this war, if not through lawsuits, you will ask. It is to be
achieved by mass coordinated action by you, the average citizen. You need to bypass the courts, which
were created to stall you. You need to bypass Congress, which was created to stall you. You need to
forget about marching on DC, since it was created to stall you. To save time, I recommend you march
peacefully on the military bases in your state—concentrating on Air Force—surrounding, blockading,
and pressuring them until the government utterly collapses. The military cannot attack its own citizens
directly, and if it does it will only accelerate the restoration. Things will be so bad by that time the
soldiers will come over to our side, at which time it is all over. The military is the source of all
Phoenician power, and if they lose it they are toast. ”
http://mileswmathis.com/focus.pdf
Read the latest from Gary D Barnett.
Americans can’t handle the truth….
Hits it out of the park!
Lew Rockwell site……
Nothing new from LOLbertz, but well said.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/09/gary-d-barnett/american-subjects-think-they-want-to-know-the-truth-but-can-they-handle-the-truth/
I used to read LR everyday, religiously, but the old stateless cow ran dry, for me. I replaced it with Jesus is King and only the righteous can be trusted to rule. I feel better about the future now.
Good for you. Now you’ve got plenty of time to repent of your race based bigotry to the very God who created us all in His Image.
I’ll pray for you.
Enlightened centrist moment
Chris Hedges is a has been, who has been touting the very policies that have put the country into poverty and feudalism. His liberal policies of robbing John to give to Joe are the main framework of the so called democracy that is responsible for all the desegregation and despair we see around us.
To see the consequences of the policies he endorses, all one has to do, is look at any crime ridden, drug infested, economically bankrupt democratic controlled City or State.
In the real world, every action has and effect, the the effect of socialism is poverty and the degeneration of the society it infects. Chris Hedges has no answers for the problems that face us, only the same idiotic mantra of taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive. He, and his philosophies are one of the reasons we are facing the downfall we are.
“You can’t wake one who pretends to be asleep.”
Denial is “pretending” on Schwartzeneggaroids: it marries a Kennedy, fucks the maid, steps “up” from the cheating POSing stage to the criminal POLitical stage, says “screw your freedom!,” orders its Golds Gyms posters taken down even as it maintains its lifelong status as pooch-screwing posterboy for whom – so far – there has not been nearly enough consequences (heart problems, organ transplants … not nearly enough) … & after all that becomes the Woke Terminator.
Then there’s denying what democracy is.
Screw “your” democracy & collectivist co(dependent)mradery, all you little t terminators wannabe’s (Hedges? We don’t need no stinkin’ hedges!”):
Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.
Democracy virtually assures that only bad and dangerous men will ever rise to the top of government. ~ Hans Herman Hoppe
Don’t hold back now. Tell us what you really think. :o)
I forget, For some strange reason I like reading your brand of drivel. I enjoy the gentle assault of very loosely connected thoughts and made-up words that make perfect sense standing alone. Kinda reminds me of standing by a raging, flood swollen creek or river and getting surprised by the variety of flotsam and jetsom that comes drifting by. I’m not sure what category to put you in so I’ll just create a new pigeonhole just for you–the i forget department. That may get confusing though because I’ve got lots of my own material in a department that goes by the same name.
I beg your pardon? I’ll take “rivulet” but “drivel”? Never, suh! ☺
LOL. Chris is a fine example of a Public School education. Somebody should clue him in that the United States is not, was not, and will never be a Democracy. As a matter of fact the “founding fathers” held democracies in extreme contempt. Hence the reason that they established a Representative Republic.
Just Sayin’
Actually to be correct, it used to be a Representative Republic, but since the passage of the 17th amendment it is a democracy….. of the oligarchs. They sit in board rooms, or collect in Davos to vote on what they want the governments to do, and that is what happens……
WRONG!
Just whistlin’. Not past the graveyard. But from within it. Under it, I mean.
It’s a “Constitutional Republic” by design…and death to anyone on this Earth who wants to change it.
LEARN THE PHRASE
“CONSTITUTIONAL Republic”
THAT is the PROPER NAME of our form of Government.
WORDS HAVE MEANING.
Words have meanings but not like Easter Island has Stone Oscars. (& even those will erode away with the passage of time.)
What words really have is fetishists. It’s a wiring problem. Has to be. Simon sez & the sesames spread their legs.
Would it were that actions have meanings, instead of words.
But action-Simons can rely on fetish-sesames to run for their dictionaries & “history” books.
What difference does it make when the Constitution is no longer in effect? The Constitution was a contract established by the sovereign States to create the Federal Government and to restrict its powers. The Federal Government broke that contract first in 1863, and then completely obliterated it in 1913, and then usurped what power it has now illegally. We now exist in a Federal dictatorship, and any warm feelings you have for the Constitution are just that, it is no longer in effect because the contract was broken long ago. It is just another illusion.
No it wasn’t. It was a contract hit upon the merely ostensibly sovereign states.
Pawns in those OK Corrals were dupes, as usual.
And the “elites” that bestrode those states merely made official & legal the hocking of all those pawns with the so-called constitution.
“No authority.” ~ Spooner
Wordists, fetishists. ~ i forget
I truly believe the world would be a better place if everyone who uttered the word “democracy” were summarily shot in the fucking face.
Democracy is for cowards.
There was never a democracy which didn’t die by suicide.
Central Scrutinizer, Amen. Democracy is very much for cowards. Government by consensus regardless of morality. Democracy allows the majority+1 to do what ever it wants to the minority. Democracy gives weak-willed people license to sin by saying, “It’s the law”. It allows evil to become permanently incorporated into law and government. So we get to the place where now good is evil and evil is good. Demos is a demon disguised as an angel of light. One of the last demons to fall in a society because it is seldom recognized as such. But it always falls.
It’s what the CIA uses to stage coups, like 2020.
The article posits that the many are prevented from advancing, and that causes rage and humiliation. However:
1) The dumb masses have nothing to offer that would allow them to advance. As it is said, consider the stupidity of the average person, and then remember that half of the population is even dumber (and they all vote!).
2) There is no drive or ambition toward greatness in the ghettos and slums of this country, unless becoming a better pimp, bum, or parasite can be defined as ambition. Life at the bottom is more like existing from moment to moment, carried along by base pleasures of the present without a concept of past or future.
It ain’t a matter of ability. It’s a matter of morality.
Even a stupid animal can be put in the traces and made useful, but if you choose the wrong direction to pull in, then that’s worse than useless.