We share the pathologies of all dying empires with their mixture of buffoonery, rampant corruption, military fiascos, economic collapse and savage state repression.
Hedges has the courage to tell the whole truth about the impending collapse of the American empire which is hidden from most citizens who just want to go shopping and who have no idea what is happening in the halls of their corrupt government. They think that they still have the power to vote but nearly all candidates are bought and paid for by oligarchs who are pulling the strings of their puppets for profits.
I decided to do the same but I admit, I know few people that would 1) be interested or 2/ be able to understand. There are big words and concepts here, and I fear education is not what it was.
Yes, you are correct. the vocabulary of Americans has tragically fallen to the point one has to write as if one were doing bubbles for comic books. This form of illiteracy obviously corresponds with the death of the Guttenberg press, but it is more: it is the colonization of subjectivity itself, the mind. Monos bailando we say in Latin America: Dancing Monkeys
Agree, but I feel you left out one vital factor to the demise of the American empire that makes it different than the collapse of previous empires. That vital factor is the virtual takeover of America by the minions of a foreign country. So powerful and all encompassing this takeover has become, that to even speak of it in public can bring punishment, condemnation and vicious retribution. Both George Washington and John F Kennedy warned America about this happening if we did not stay vigilant, and it has now come to pass.
Russia? China? Or the international Oligarchs? America is controlled by multi-billionaires who are rapidly gaining more wealth and power as slide into total corruption and chaos. Global workers and the environment are already paying the price for this insanity!
Perhaps capitalism was aleays destined to self implode in this manner. Today's oligarchs have abandoned all pretense of morals and have severed themselves from all historical connections to the past. As flawed as those connections may have been, oligarchs at least valued the artistic and creative achievements of centuries past. Today's imbeciles can't see farther into the past than the founding of the internet. They have become bots and avatars the are seemingly preprogrammed to destroy everything in their paths. Is this capitalism's inevitable destiny? Ever wealthier individuals with even greater diminishing skills and sensibilities taking us to the finish line?
Musk is firing all the little people at the Department of Education, many ex-school teachers and from public educational works. Place remember that report that came out about Tesla, how the Tesla Factory had the highest injury rate of any motor vehicle manufacturing in the US. Musk doesn’t care about people, anyone but himself and Musk isn’t elected to do anything.
Musk is not elected nor vetted to be doing any of what he is doing in government. All he did was dance at Trumps conventions and hire Matt Taibbi to go after those free speech hating Dems once Musk threw his lot in with the Republicans after moved to Texas.
When will Americas stop putting Oligarchs on pedestals? How is invading Greenland ANY different to Hitler’s invading of Poland? Yes, Greenland has a lot of rare earth minerals but I guess it is to much to ask Musk to simple pay for the ever he needs and since it now appears he can use US cannon fodder military to go get it for him.
JD Vance said that Ukraine was Biden’s Administration policy but when Trump went to the NATO meeting in his fort Presidential term he also said “something will have to be done about that pipeline” when discussing Nord Stream Pipeline.
Since that is Drill, baby drill” the big oil interests that is one of Donald’s biggest Oligarch owner-supporter participants, it had everything to do with Trump. Every time Americas vote for one party or the other, we the American people go from the frying pan into the fire.
There is no good Democratic Party member and no good Republican Party member. We have to get rid of this party member delusion because all Washington officials are owned lock, stock barrel by Oligarchs that only ever care about themselves and are victimizing the American people on a daily basis.
Alas, it existed long before it was exposed and to an extent unimaginable today.
The consistent violent films, Hollywood glorification of 'cops and robbers' has created a situation where subjectively the population not only understands that a warrant is not needed anymore as a way of invading privacy, and they have adopted the posture of 'lock em up' spread by the same Madison Ave. purveyors of misinformation.
Think of shows like Law and Order that glorified getting around the law, grilling suspects without Miranda rights or a lawyer. The American mind is turned keyed to accept the atrocities commited before them.
Add to that they know little about the law or its processes, and you have a perfect storm for police violence. George Jackson, a prisoner murdered in San Quentin by guards and the State wrote in Blood in my Eye: "The purpose of the chief repressive institutions within the totalitarian capitalist state is clearly to discourage and prohibit certain activity, and the prohibitions are aimed at very distinctly defined sectors of the class- and race-sensi- tized society.
The ultimate expression of law is not order — it's prison. There are hundreds upon hundreds of prisons, and thousands upon thousands of laws, yet there is no social order, no social peace. Anglo-Saxon bourgeois law is tied firmly into economics.
One can even pick that out of those Vital Statistics. Bourgeois law protects property relations and not social relationships. The cultural traits of capitalist society that also tend to check activity — (individualism, ar-tificial politeness juxtaposed to an aloof rudeness, the rush to learn "how to" instead of “what is") — are secondary really, and intended for those mild cases (and groups) that require preventive measures only.
I've noticed an emergence of increase in the ultimate demise/collapse/ internal rot of our nation in your recent commentaries. I agree! So do all (or most)that read you. I tjink it's caused my moral decay but many others see it as an exuberant white christian supremecy uprising. Secularists will surcome to the later I suspect. The later will lead us to wherever their gods dictate.
"They propose the construction of luxury resorts on the coast of a depopulated Gaza under U.S. control which, if it takes place, would bring down the Arab regimes propped up by the U.S."
Could someone explain this to me as though to a child? Specifically the last bit, why that would happen. Thank you.
“In contrast to Germany, the U.S.A. had a constitution which was democratic from the start. And its ruling class managed, particularly during the imperialist era, to have the democratic forms so effectively preserved that by democratically legal means, it achieved a dictatorship of monopoly capitalism at least as firm as that which Hitler set up with tyrannic procedures.
This smoothly functioning democracy, so-called, was created by the Presidential prerogative, the Supreme Court’s authority in constitutional questions, the finance monopoly over the Press, radio, etc., electioneering costs, which successfully prevented really democratic parties from springing up beside the two parties of monopoly capitalism, and lastly the use of terroristic devices (the lynching system).
And this democracy could, in substance, realize everything sought by Hitler without needing to break with democracy formally. In addition, there was the incomparably broader and more solid economic basis of monopoly capitalism.”
I suppose you're asking why the Arab regimes propped up by the US would collapse. In that case, it's probably because the population in those countries would be so radicalized by the actions of the US and Israel that they would rise in violent revolt if their governments did not block or vehemently denounce the expulsion of Gazans from their homeland. And any country that accepted a large Palestinian refugee population without MASSIVE outside support to provide housing, schools, hospitals, public works, and economic opportunities for those refugees would collapse from the weight of accommodating those requirements.
Thanks! That's what I was asking. I'm not sure I completely agree about the collapse from the weight of the refugees (maybe, just not completely convinced), but at least I understand the chain of events.
Monsoon: Paul Bruno answered it. Rather, he clarified my question, then answered it. You might have a different answer, but that was the question. What Paul said.
Ya. I agree. This sentence in Chris's commentary didn't sit well with me as well. I (maybe romantically so;it Valentine day) see the Arab world coalescing (kinda as the did during the crusade's) and forming an axis of resistance rather than collapsing into disarray. What happens next? I'll leave to historians to tell this story.
I didn't even understand why it would bring down the Arab regimes, as in, there seem to be missing steps in the chain of events that I assume everyone is assuming and I don't even know what they are, and therefore can't even agree or disagree.
I know I've read that some Arab countries aren't having it, or say they aren't, so what does this mean? They aren't going to take the expelled people? So those people stay and continue to get slaughtered? Or they are going to stop watching Palestine get clobbered and enter the fray, war-style? At which point the USA rains its many missiles on THEM in more forever war? What are the little stepping stones from hotel construction in Gaza to regime change in Arab nations?
Why don't the edit & delete buttons work? Most of my second paragraph was cut off, and my attempts to edit down were thwarted.
I agree 100% with this commentary. That said, Trump has already done two things I'm delighted about: (1) pulling out of the Ukraine war and making peace with Russia, which saves us from a nuclear war Biden almost succeeded in triggering; and (2) firing all those FBI people. As to the latter, I may not have any sympathy for his reasons, but given their history of infiltrating & sabotaging movements I DO agree with, I'm rejoicing over that too.
Ditto, plus, until someone explains why I'm wrong, I'm not sad about the tariffs. It's probably good for the environment if tons of disposable clothes and plastic whatever are not put into shipping containers bound for here. We can all just go to the thrift stores and start making our own clothes again. Since we're on the brink of collapse, we had better learn all kinds of things. It's going to suck in all kinds of ways, but I am not sorry to see this go. It HAS to go.
Chris, you have covered most bases with this essay, showing that it is an ill wind that doesn't
blow some good. The dismantling of USAID, whose business is predominately NOT aid, is good for all of those nations wanting a government that can nationalise resources, and serve the people.
I have to take issue with the comments on diplomacy. Blinken was not a diplomat's armpit. He was a "My way or the highway" non-diplomat. He, Jake Sullivan, Kamala Harris and Matt Miller were certainly no better than Trump's crew.
Musk's sights are now set on the Dept of Defence. I imagine a lot of profiteers will be heading for the hills when that can of worms is opened.
Trump's Gaza real estate fantasies have precipitated a coalescing of Arab states into a united front to prick this particular Trump balloon, with Jordan and Egypt vowing to clear debris and rebuild WITHOUT displacing the Gazans.
Ukraine was not mentioned, and if Trump and Putin manage to come to an agreement there it will prevent many more Ukrainians from being fed into the meat grinder.
On domestic politics, and in particular the unions, things look bleak. A recent cartoon with Trump and Kim standing side by side had Kim saying, "I'll destroy America"
Trump replies, "No Way. That is my job. I don't want another Asian stealing an American Job!"
Thank you. It is so important to understand the corporate extractive practices in these work sites, and how USAID was part of corporate power. Never allowing the productivity to be harvested by the country
Hedges has the courage to tell the whole truth about the impending collapse of the American empire which is hidden from most citizens who just want to go shopping and who have no idea what is happening in the halls of their corrupt government. They think that they still have the power to vote but nearly all candidates are bought and paid for by oligarchs who are pulling the strings of their puppets for profits.
After I pour myself a stiff drink, I'm going to share this post with everyone I know...
I decided to do the same but I admit, I know few people that would 1) be interested or 2/ be able to understand. There are big words and concepts here, and I fear education is not what it was.
Yes, you are correct. the vocabulary of Americans has tragically fallen to the point one has to write as if one were doing bubbles for comic books. This form of illiteracy obviously corresponds with the death of the Guttenberg press, but it is more: it is the colonization of subjectivity itself, the mind. Monos bailando we say in Latin America: Dancing Monkeys
haha. yeah.
Agree, but I feel you left out one vital factor to the demise of the American empire that makes it different than the collapse of previous empires. That vital factor is the virtual takeover of America by the minions of a foreign country. So powerful and all encompassing this takeover has become, that to even speak of it in public can bring punishment, condemnation and vicious retribution. Both George Washington and John F Kennedy warned America about this happening if we did not stay vigilant, and it has now come to pass.
Russia? China? Or the international Oligarchs? America is controlled by multi-billionaires who are rapidly gaining more wealth and power as slide into total corruption and chaos. Global workers and the environment are already paying the price for this insanity!
Israel. See also AIPAC.
as WE slide into total corruption and chaos.
Perhaps capitalism was aleays destined to self implode in this manner. Today's oligarchs have abandoned all pretense of morals and have severed themselves from all historical connections to the past. As flawed as those connections may have been, oligarchs at least valued the artistic and creative achievements of centuries past. Today's imbeciles can't see farther into the past than the founding of the internet. They have become bots and avatars the are seemingly preprogrammed to destroy everything in their paths. Is this capitalism's inevitable destiny? Ever wealthier individuals with even greater diminishing skills and sensibilities taking us to the finish line?
Musk is firing all the little people at the Department of Education, many ex-school teachers and from public educational works. Place remember that report that came out about Tesla, how the Tesla Factory had the highest injury rate of any motor vehicle manufacturing in the US. Musk doesn’t care about people, anyone but himself and Musk isn’t elected to do anything.
Musk is not elected nor vetted to be doing any of what he is doing in government. All he did was dance at Trumps conventions and hire Matt Taibbi to go after those free speech hating Dems once Musk threw his lot in with the Republicans after moved to Texas.
When will Americas stop putting Oligarchs on pedestals? How is invading Greenland ANY different to Hitler’s invading of Poland? Yes, Greenland has a lot of rare earth minerals but I guess it is to much to ask Musk to simple pay for the ever he needs and since it now appears he can use US cannon fodder military to go get it for him.
JD Vance said that Ukraine was Biden’s Administration policy but when Trump went to the NATO meeting in his fort Presidential term he also said “something will have to be done about that pipeline” when discussing Nord Stream Pipeline.
Since that is Drill, baby drill” the big oil interests that is one of Donald’s biggest Oligarch owner-supporter participants, it had everything to do with Trump. Every time Americas vote for one party or the other, we the American people go from the frying pan into the fire.
There is no good Democratic Party member and no good Republican Party member. We have to get rid of this party member delusion because all Washington officials are owned lock, stock barrel by Oligarchs that only ever care about themselves and are victimizing the American people on a daily basis.
George Jackson
Alas, it existed long before it was exposed and to an extent unimaginable today.
The consistent violent films, Hollywood glorification of 'cops and robbers' has created a situation where subjectively the population not only understands that a warrant is not needed anymore as a way of invading privacy, and they have adopted the posture of 'lock em up' spread by the same Madison Ave. purveyors of misinformation.
Think of shows like Law and Order that glorified getting around the law, grilling suspects without Miranda rights or a lawyer. The American mind is turned keyed to accept the atrocities commited before them.
Add to that they know little about the law or its processes, and you have a perfect storm for police violence. George Jackson, a prisoner murdered in San Quentin by guards and the State wrote in Blood in my Eye: "The purpose of the chief repressive institutions within the totalitarian capitalist state is clearly to discourage and prohibit certain activity, and the prohibitions are aimed at very distinctly defined sectors of the class- and race-sensi- tized society.
The ultimate expression of law is not order — it's prison. There are hundreds upon hundreds of prisons, and thousands upon thousands of laws, yet there is no social order, no social peace. Anglo-Saxon bourgeois law is tied firmly into economics.
One can even pick that out of those Vital Statistics. Bourgeois law protects property relations and not social relationships. The cultural traits of capitalist society that also tend to check activity — (individualism, ar-tificial politeness juxtaposed to an aloof rudeness, the rush to learn "how to" instead of “what is") — are secondary really, and intended for those mild cases (and groups) that require preventive measures only.
The law and everything that inter- locks with it was constructed for poor, desperate people like me." https://archive.org/details/GeorgeJacksonBloodInMyEye_201512
Chris
I've noticed an emergence of increase in the ultimate demise/collapse/ internal rot of our nation in your recent commentaries. I agree! So do all (or most)that read you. I tjink it's caused my moral decay but many others see it as an exuberant white christian supremecy uprising. Secularists will surcome to the later I suspect. The later will lead us to wherever their gods dictate.
That's the near future I see.
People
Planet
Peace
Dear comrades
"They propose the construction of luxury resorts on the coast of a depopulated Gaza under U.S. control which, if it takes place, would bring down the Arab regimes propped up by the U.S."
Could someone explain this to me as though to a child? Specifically the last bit, why that would happen. Thank you.
“In contrast to Germany, the U.S.A. had a constitution which was democratic from the start. And its ruling class managed, particularly during the imperialist era, to have the democratic forms so effectively preserved that by democratically legal means, it achieved a dictatorship of monopoly capitalism at least as firm as that which Hitler set up with tyrannic procedures.
This smoothly functioning democracy, so-called, was created by the Presidential prerogative, the Supreme Court’s authority in constitutional questions, the finance monopoly over the Press, radio, etc., electioneering costs, which successfully prevented really democratic parties from springing up beside the two parties of monopoly capitalism, and lastly the use of terroristic devices (the lynching system).
And this democracy could, in substance, realize everything sought by Hitler without needing to break with democracy formally. In addition, there was the incomparably broader and more solid economic basis of monopoly capitalism.”
Georg Lukacs
Lukács, The Destruction of Reason, 770
A younger child, please
I suppose you're asking why the Arab regimes propped up by the US would collapse. In that case, it's probably because the population in those countries would be so radicalized by the actions of the US and Israel that they would rise in violent revolt if their governments did not block or vehemently denounce the expulsion of Gazans from their homeland. And any country that accepted a large Palestinian refugee population without MASSIVE outside support to provide housing, schools, hospitals, public works, and economic opportunities for those refugees would collapse from the weight of accommodating those requirements.
Thanks! That's what I was asking. I'm not sure I completely agree about the collapse from the weight of the refugees (maybe, just not completely convinced), but at least I understand the chain of events.
Not sure what you are asking or mean, Phoebe. Please clarify
Monsoon: Paul Bruno answered it. Rather, he clarified my question, then answered it. You might have a different answer, but that was the question. What Paul said.
Ya. I agree. This sentence in Chris's commentary didn't sit well with me as well. I (maybe romantically so;it Valentine day) see the Arab world coalescing (kinda as the did during the crusade's) and forming an axis of resistance rather than collapsing into disarray. What happens next? I'll leave to historians to tell this story.
I didn't even understand why it would bring down the Arab regimes, as in, there seem to be missing steps in the chain of events that I assume everyone is assuming and I don't even know what they are, and therefore can't even agree or disagree.
I know I've read that some Arab countries aren't having it, or say they aren't, so what does this mean? They aren't going to take the expelled people? So those people stay and continue to get slaughtered? Or they are going to stop watching Palestine get clobbered and enter the fray, war-style? At which point the USA rains its many missiles on THEM in more forever war? What are the little stepping stones from hotel construction in Gaza to regime change in Arab nations?
Why don't the edit & delete buttons work? Most of my second paragraph was cut off, and my attempts to edit down were thwarted.
I agree 100% with this commentary. That said, Trump has already done two things I'm delighted about: (1) pulling out of the Ukraine war and making peace with Russia, which saves us from a nuclear war Biden almost succeeded in triggering; and (2) firing all those FBI people. As to the latter, I may not have any sympathy for his reasons, but given their history of infiltrating & sabotaging movements I DO agree with, I'm rejoicing over that too.
Also the like buttons don't work. For me, anyway.
Ditto, plus, until someone explains why I'm wrong, I'm not sad about the tariffs. It's probably good for the environment if tons of disposable clothes and plastic whatever are not put into shipping containers bound for here. We can all just go to the thrift stores and start making our own clothes again. Since we're on the brink of collapse, we had better learn all kinds of things. It's going to suck in all kinds of ways, but I am not sorry to see this go. It HAS to go.
Chris, you have covered most bases with this essay, showing that it is an ill wind that doesn't
blow some good. The dismantling of USAID, whose business is predominately NOT aid, is good for all of those nations wanting a government that can nationalise resources, and serve the people.
I have to take issue with the comments on diplomacy. Blinken was not a diplomat's armpit. He was a "My way or the highway" non-diplomat. He, Jake Sullivan, Kamala Harris and Matt Miller were certainly no better than Trump's crew.
Musk's sights are now set on the Dept of Defence. I imagine a lot of profiteers will be heading for the hills when that can of worms is opened.
Trump's Gaza real estate fantasies have precipitated a coalescing of Arab states into a united front to prick this particular Trump balloon, with Jordan and Egypt vowing to clear debris and rebuild WITHOUT displacing the Gazans.
Ukraine was not mentioned, and if Trump and Putin manage to come to an agreement there it will prevent many more Ukrainians from being fed into the meat grinder.
On domestic politics, and in particular the unions, things look bleak. A recent cartoon with Trump and Kim standing side by side had Kim saying, "I'll destroy America"
Trump replies, "No Way. That is my job. I don't want another Asian stealing an American Job!"
P.S. I'm also thrilled that Trump plans to cut our military budget in half. I hope he follows through with that.
“The sleep of reason,” as Francisco Goya said, “brings forth monsters.”
He is a fascist and fascism is a global project.
Thank you. It is so important to understand the corporate extractive practices in these work sites, and how USAID was part of corporate power. Never allowing the productivity to be harvested by the country
buffoonery. bufoonish buffooon.
my new words
root from buffalo?