The Trump administration is consolidating the familiar machinery of terror of all authoritarian states. We must resist now. If we wait, it will be too late.
Amid all the crap one sees and hears in what is artfully called the News Media, your writings stand for reason and sanity. You are a real lifeline to me. I cannot thank you enough.
They have since at least the 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations. (See my main entry.) As Chris said on 1/5 in "America the Rogue State," the last D admin blocked "the only weapon that can save Americans--popular movements and strikes." He also said the D party elite thinks it's "better to let the whole ship go down than surrender their power and privilege."
Evidence? In 2016 Schumer said "For every blue collar Dem we lose in western PA we'll pick up two moderate Rs in the suburbs of Philadelphia and you can repeat that for IL, OH, WI." They stand for nothing but keeping their own power. Made blatantly obvious by how they openly conspired with the Rs in NYC, even getting an endorsement for Cuomo from Trump. D loyalists accepting "lesser of two evils" have only enabled more evil.
So very glad other people are seeing what I have been saying for a long time (and getting sneers from Dems I know). The Dem establishment is feckless, craven, interested only in their perks, investment portfolios, and insider trading action. In the end, the "elite" (BOTH parties) exist ONLY to serve wealthy individuals and corporations. They ALL belong to "the one big club"..."and we ain't in it." (RIP George). This present dismantling of our (weak) democracy and the accompanying revived neo colonialism - coups, kidnappings, dronings, invasions, wars, occupations, dogfights - have been the modus operandi since our inception and continue to this day. Planning for the present escalation has been "in the works" for decades. The present Nazi madness and horror also put us hoi polloi in the crosshairs of any entity seeking revenge for the sins of our leaders. I.e. WE, the hoi polloi, may be attacked - one way or another - by either our own or other countries protecting THEIR own interests. Nazis USA are coming to take us away.
I think the west in general has been fooled into believing they have a democracy if there are two teams, say the white hats and the black hats, and these two teams take turns having power.
But then there is Mamdani. Maybe the young see through the charade of corporate rule.
Sad the Empire is going to have to kill so many of America's youth, if that is the case.
Your one idea of a libertarian utopia existing without government is wearing a little thin. We have single payer health care in Canada. You don't get that with small government or no government at all.
The roads fall into disrepair as well, once its down to the good will of the average joe .
Your one idea is an extreme example of an intolerance. I get it, but don't need ot keep having you shoot it at me.
They want to believe they're superior individuals and have never, ever needed help. To them, government means restrictions on their right to exploit us inferiors. They assert there is no such thing as a collective society, so no such thing as structures.
Thus bleeding hearts who whine about structural inequities merely provide excuses for lazy, defective, and stupid people. The kind who did not take personal responsibility for good education and didn't make sufficient effort for success. That's why they end up in dead end jobs, bad neighborhoods, poverty, and ill health. The smug offer the adage "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps." Unaware their silly interpretation is the opposite of the original, which was meant to show its impossibility. Try it!
The techie anarcho-capitalists do want some government. Like contract enforcement and anti-union laws. When they say no state, they're denying that as merely another another non-existent structure. They fail to acknowledge that without State structures like Constitutions, there are no rights. No starting point for currency, either, thus no economic system. For that matter, no place for econ policies, either. No organization to deal with minor problems like ecological devastation or epidemics.
Not only is this crass, cruel, and offensive to every major religion, it's not how humans have survived. As Indigenes know by experience, humans thrive and life has meaning because of cooperation with one other and with nature. Nor can a captain run a ship without depending on the crew. Ask any of us in the engine room.
The strength of the Libertarian fantasy is what amazes me. It would seem obvious that a complex society needs centralized powers to maintain the roads, police traffic violations and petty crime.......even if we went tiny government and reverted to unpaid women doing all the care work for 0 recompense. The good ol days, remember/???
Schools??? Voluntarily run by who?? Citizens with a heart??? Oligarchs wanting tax relief??
It's not simply a stupid system. I think its a system supported by those who take the benefits of government for granted...........while demanding pure freedom to do what they will in their little spheres of absolute influence. Like Warlords, without the war.
It's primarily a male fantasy......and perhaps a reactive one, where demonization has to finger something, and the easiest thing to blame in a sweeping fashion is government....the state.
I might support them if what they wanted to do was abolish the army...there's an institution that does real harm.....but of course, military might is what they'd have supplant government.....when we come right down to it.
WE CAN WATCH TRUMP TRYING TO PUT THAT SYSTEM IN PLACE, IN REAL TIME....Calling ICE part of government is a stretch....when its actually part of the destruction of good governance, and the replacement of government with raw power.
I believe Libertarianism actually lends itself to exactly that.......in the end. No State or Governance. Just Raw Power and Male Bullies...in masks. There's also the economic spin offs......all those concentration camps being built in your once great country just now.
Stay safe...there's a lot of folks out there who mistake murder for freedom.
Just because you assert a difference doesn't mean there is one. Nor does such a claim mean your version is an infallible truth. You also imply that anyone who doesn't think like you do must be at best ignorant; at worst inferior. An odd assumption for someone not all that adept with English grammar and resorting to caps--yelling in print. It's like the rock band adage if you can't play good, play loud.
Howard: your endless list of either-or's are simple reductions of the world as it exists. See below:
Canada is a state. I live inside it. It is further divided into provinces, the rough equivalent of your states.
You can eliminate government from these states much more easily than you can get rid of the geographic reality that constitutes a nation or part of a nation.
You use words as if they were footballs......they aren't. They are referants..and in general, what they refer to, is a gross reality. Gross realities exist in the world, not the dictionary.
Getting rid of the State......but holding on to government makes 0 sense. You've just decided to demonize State............in order to rescue Government.
Try thinking in multiples rather than in doubles, one of which has to be wrong. Or perhaps complicating the data is too hard for your need for certainties??? Monolithic certainties at that/??
"Survival of the fittest" was the fave slogan of Social Darwinists. But it's nothing more than a tautology: who are the fittest? Those who survive. That's all. Besides, the dominant mode of existence on Earth is cooperation, symbiosis.
Perhaps some control...is it worse than the present Nazi total control? I think not. I'll choose the Mamdani governing model over the present Nazi control EVERY TIME. The operative concept for me is the COMMONWEALTH. We - citizens - should OWN those functions necessary to sustaining life. Natural and other resources. The government was and is not meant TO MAKE A PROFIT. That is NOT (or should NOT) be the goal. The goal: all citizens are guaranteed the BASICS of living...a right to life.
We'll likely be dead before that's known for certain....for sure it is looking like there's going to be little left for the young but precarity and serfdom....both things that lead to either despair or rebellion.
The young will do what they have to do.......we oldsters simply need to develop the knowledge and maintain the memory, that allows us NOT to play the old kermudgeon game of denouncing them.
I'm disgusted by how easily they can get essentially well meaning people to blame the victims and go with the international criminal cartels.
PS: Did you hear that Trump and his grade school drop out crew INVENTED a cartel to claim Maduro was running one??? Now they've taken that lie off the indictment, but dummies who only listen to garbage likely won't get that 'redaction'.
The1/10th of 1% plan on escaping the political, economic, and ecological chaos they know is coming. That's why they're buying megayachts and private islands. But we more workers who build and maintain the boats and the moats also know how to disable them.
What left? Center-right Ds certainly aren't. Besides, he isn't presenting anything but argument by assertion and the limited "logic" of either/or. No evidence, no empirical data, no line of reasoning. Thus no real case. Nothing but shouted beliefs we're supposed to accept because he says so.
Of couese child, of course, even as they always defend their more openly meretricious colleagues as the lesser evil, even as they are cheated without a word in protest, even as they sheepdog us "Vote Blu No Matter Who"....
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.“ Thomas Paine.
When I ask myself what circumstances might prompt this administration to engage in such universally-condemned and desperate acts, the answer I come up with is Katie Johnson and the other Epstein survivors. Katie Johnson alleges that when she was a 13 year old child, she was tied to the 4 corners of a bed and raped, with onlookers ignoring her screams for help. I spent my career as a middle school guidance counselor. In 1994, the year this allegedly took place, the most popular Christmas gifts for 13 year old girls were Furby and Polly Pocket. Here’s her testimony. https://katemanne.substack.com/p/the-actual-conspiracy-theory-surrounding. https://katemanne.substack.com/p/they-tried-to-bury-the-katie-johnson?r=2g4u&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
While resistance is key, in whatever form that may take (including non-compliance) I think it's important to do this outside the Dem/Rep, left/right, paradigm. The "leaders" you vote for are merely used as tools and the divide is not helpful/useful. As Chris often points out, our resistance is what they try to crush. Freedom and sovereignty - individual and govt.
While that is easy to say........and understandable from the positions of both major parties......it leaves a bit of an empty set when it comes to imagining how citizens organize to create, not simply resistance to the status quo.....but something better.
One of the things I see in my own country (Canada) is an articulate older population who want to resist but for the most part, don't have any movement in which to do so effectively. So we rant. Read people like Hedges........and share what we know.
But what we know won't build a new system..........and too often, what we know is partial. Most Americans went along with the regime change operations in Latin America and the Middle East........since the end of the Vietnam war. Those of us in the first world seem mostly okay with the lives of brown people being disrupted........we dozed through the American support for the generals in Argentina, the death squads in El Salvador, the contra attacks on the Sandinistas of Nicaragua....
I doubt we're even very aware of our own fascism....because white entitlement is a kind of soft fascism....we've lived as if the troubles of the third world were nothing to us......even though our society benefitted from them.
What do we actually DO now.....to come together in such numbers, and with such solidarity, that the gangsters can't force us to flee.........leaving the little ones and the cripples behind in our haste???
"Organize to create ... something better?" Resistance to what is being created seems what we need to be doing now. Not supporting it, moving ourselves out of it in as many ways as possible, now. Party politics is distracting; they are all one.
We need movements, but from those movements we need people strong enough to speak inside the parties.........to call them out, demand better.
Government is a necessity in complex societies.......therefore, the best and the smartest and the most ethical inside our movements also need to be willing to move governments in the right direction....it wouldn't seem so hard, if our resistance included alternative visions of good governance.
It's not much we can do Sandy.........but we can write and speak the truth as we know it....there's so much half truths being peddled by those in power....so much weaselly words....considering Trump's age, IQ and follow through capacity, it surely can't be him we're afraid of????
I can’t breathe. Sometimes I think the masses want to let it happen bc they are unwilling to give up the convenience of thinking “not me, not here” and go back to focusing on the distraction in front of (us). I’m guilty!!!… my “excuse” is I don’t feel I have anything or anyone to live for.., not even myself. Pathetic I realize but it’s my honest state of mind sped up from decades of pointless domination. The planet is tired of us.
Your honesty is commendable. I, too, cannot breathe sometimes.
As far as having someone to live for, we need you as much as you need all of life.
The child in Gaza needs you to be strong, to use your voice. It doesn't take that many of us to effect the changes we must instill.
You are not alone: There are billions of us, mostly good people, and that's just counting the humans. We all need you, we all need each other. Love you.
Which may be true. But how do we break out of our isolation and create something other than allies who don't know our names or histories and whom we only see at the odd rally.
We haven't exactly been community builders, where I live. And I'm in Canada, still quite socially secure compared to many places in America.
One thing I am watching for is draft dodgers.....deserters and the like. We did it during the Vietnam war, but how many would refuse service if tomorrow Trump decided to invade Canada???
No.......I haven't heard of any either, as of now. And that will be a grim sign if none materialize, as Trump dreams up weirder and more unnecessary war games.
One reason for the difference from the sixties may be the pervasiveness of American propaganda....what we're being told about Venezuela....and Iran....is far from the truth. And in everything we're told..........the impoverishing effects of years of illegal American sanctions are left out.
I suspect many Canadians on this feed don't even know much about them....so it becomes easier to convince everyone that America's enemies are evil....and we can crush them without much loss of manpower.
The Democrats are even MORE guilty of enabling this than are the Republicans. They once had a true liberal wing which if it existed today would have been shouting from the roof tops. They no longer exist but were replaced by a corporate Democratic party.
Chris has again painted a very accurate picture of the world shaping up all around us. It is hard to read, but essential. It is dystopian to some; a fiction of possibilities to some; but it is the reality we are facing every day. What will finally inspire and awaken us to do something?
I feel similar. The neolibs, who support a trickle up and corporate economics, usurped the D party. They dumped the New Deal and abandoned the majority working class. Their rightward lurch helped enable the Rs to go full out fascist. These Ivy Ds and their loyalists ignored decades of suffering, then deflected blame for election disasters onto that "basket of deplorables." How smart is it to call stupid voters you need?! We mere workers can see yours is not the party of the New Deal, it's the party of the privileged upper middle class. And we know the Rs represent 1%ers and Big Biz; they have for a century. But we deeply despise the Ds for betraying us.
Everybody went a bit bonkers during the Free Trade globalization frenzy brought to us by the corporations from away..........we were all sucked in, or at least 90% of us were.
Those like myself and my partner are mostly isolated.....even inside our social democratic party,many think socialism is the evil..........capitalism being, I guess, all that we're left with.
Not much of a choice.......but the majority chose it. Now that its on the skids, we get to see how the Wealth Creators act when the chips are down.
And let's not forget how much of this is to demonize China, Russia, Iran, and any country that doesn't allow its resources to be accessed by the global elites......mostly American, though they believe the world is truly their oyster....and they above something so parochial as nationality
Financiers worldwide hold tens of trillions of US debt. The politics of fascism is America's hedge against a debt crash. Debts that can't be paid won't be paid. An economy based on debt service-creditor or debtor economies- are doomed to stagflation, and even hyperinflation. Ergo, Trumpism is dooming us to economic ruin. This scenario, fascists know, means they must amass enough power to exist as lawless, failed states in the face of blowback, both from home and abroad. They are bringing on the thugs. But this is all downstream from finance. White collar industrial criminals, aka tech and oil bros (chiefly), are making common (lost) cause with financiers, just like the slave oligarchs did in the lead-up to the Civil War. Somehow, we must stop them. One hundred fifty years ago, in the thrall of Manifest Destiny, nobody could engineer just resolutions and slavers kept doubling down on their perdition. Same thing today. Where is the will for a moral and just society in the hallways of power? The people must reclaim our power, the cost is irrelevant at this point of ecological disaster. Everyone can see the new day right around the corner (at least Gen. Z and Alpha can), yet we are restrained from making it happen. We must break our restraints with a series of 'smart' general strikes along with a strengthened mutual aid network.
There's a difference between bonds and a budget deficit. And government debt is not like household debt. (See //The Deficit Myth// Stephanie Kelton.) Economies start with the issue of currency, fiat money. (See //Debt: The First 5,000 Years// David Graeber.) An example--fed. govt. funds freeway construction. That shows as fed. deficit, but as an asset to construction companies who make a profit and good pay to workers (hopefully, union.)
The reason this isn't well understood is because the econ system comes from theories of the Chicago School of Economics. They believe The Market is omnipotent, so should not be regulated. Boils down to two participants with equal access and perfect information making barter exchanges. (Really!) Plus they believe the only human motivation is the utility function; in plain English, personal profit. There is little, if any, empirical data to back up their claims. It's argument by assertion, like Thatcher's "there are no alternatives." There are--the New Deal and Keynesianism--which worked well for the working class majority. Why the 1%ers, banksters, and CEOs hated them.
Another huge error is enabling financialization of the economy. The Ds accepted propaganda conflating free enterprise with capitalism. Free enterprise is the privately owned production of physically real goods and services, including worker-owned businesses and co-ops. Capitalism is the privileging of that abstraction known as money (capital.) Manipulative financial vultures prey on what is called the Real Economy, sucking out the profits and leaving a destroyed husk.
Easy to show the flaws of the current system and of some alternatives. (See //Debunking Economics// Steve Keen.) Also look at his YT lessons, which demonstrate what economics looks like if we used computerized accounting with the actual data of debits and credits instead of relying on theoretical assertions. Then it's clear a debit entry for Fed. govt. shows as a credit entry elsewhere. Politicians know better--why trillions for military adventurism, WMDs, and corporate bailouts aren't a problem. The supposed horror of govt. deficits is used to terrify the general public into acquiescence about huge cuts for anything serving the common good. Fear over "deficits" also justifies not doing something really expensive like eco and climate amelioration.
I have been bouncing between narratives and trying to process these events without bias. That is not easy. But i do not come to this moment with your life experience. I value everything you share and it shapes my attachment to the few threads of humanity I try to embrace. Thank you
Humans have yet to solve the fundamental problem of self-organizing ourselves to ensure our continued place in the planetary arena.
We invent stories of human and American exceptionalism. We claim we're immune from the forces and natural laws that define the boundaries of all living systems.
Three and half billion years of evolution has produced a spectacular array of examples of what works and what doesn't.
And there's a distinction that describes the reason. Living systems function within the reality of the physical world.
Water fowl do not kid themselves when the water is frozen. They deal with it as is.
Humans, (at least those who are in charge), abhor reality.
Today we find ourselves scraping the bowl of natural resources for the materials and energy required to run the free market operating system that we use to plunder anything and everything available.
Bottom line is, ignore reality and you will perish.
It's a tragedy that in spite of all the evidence right at our feet, we have always allowed ourselves to be dominated by those who cater to the darker element of the human brain.
Our intelligence and capacity for imagination has been molded into a curse.
Thank you Chris Hedges for your decency and commitment to presenting reality.
The dominant econopathy defines away destruction of communities and ecosystems as externalities. It also assumes the only human motivation is the utility function, in plain English, personal profit.
Consider in contrast the complex, obligate symbiosis of tree roots with fungal hyphae; this alone makes cooperation the dominant mode of existence on Earth. And there are many more symbioses, including in and on human bodies.
Doesn't mean the entire Universe is always benevolent--black holes, solar flares, earthquakes, and diseases show otherwise. But as Indigenous peoples know by experience and retain as vital knowledge, human cooperation with and respect for all living beings is more than just nice sounding, it's practical.
We stand stymied because of a misguided belief in the power of peaceful protest--Foucault disabused us of its usefulness fifty or sixty years ago (though he also believed we must still persist with it). If we are to have any agency in the dire times to come, it will not obtain in our righteous indignation, but at the end of a pitchfork, if Solzhenitsyn is to be believed... This is a truly powerful post Mr. Hedges, and it is a radical call to radical action that will require all of us to acknowledge that we have nothing left to lose. But are we there yet?
Gandhi and Martin Luther King would disagree with you about the power of peaceful protest. If you wish to change this world through force, through the use of guns, you play right into the hands of those with the most weapons: the State.
Gandhi's and King's peaceful protests were affective only because the controlling powers still retained a modicum of legitimacy and regard for justice. That's all changed now. How do you think your peaceful protests will go over with the ICE army thugs? We'll find out if there really are more of us than them.
There is no way to peace, peace is the way. I agree with you but I also think we haven't begun to imagine, think together, creatively build...........the kind of peaceful protest that this time requires.
One of the biggest successes of the neoliberal order is how isolated they have made so many of us. Currently, we only know about 3 people we could completely trust if we were to move into peaceful actual resistance............and one of them just accepted a job in Ontario.
People talk. How many would be willing to be a safe house?? How many would deliver messages?? Provide food?? Provide transportation???
I don't know how we begin.........but if Trump tries to annex Canada, we're going to have to learn.........and we'll be building from the ground up when that time comes....
Because most of us don't have a network of any kind. And certainly not one that would risk being seen as a resister of ICE.
There is still a brutal caste system in India in which decolonization (a bit of a fiction in many respects) meant nothing to the poorest of the poor. And there is still a brutal race war going on in the US in which a repressive state apparatus "holds all the cards," to quote a certain orange personage. Our righteous indignation at the use of force against us no longer requires pointing out the problem; it requires self defence. I agree that once upon a time, peaceful protest could make a difference--you are right about that. I'm just not so sure it matters any more in a vibrant democracy turned banana republic . . .
Any fool with a gun can take out an ICE agent. But what does that do, except provide an excuse for the use of more force, more repression?
Non-violent disobedience requires more courage, more solidarity, but, as a tactic, it is more effective than the alternative, as King pointed out and demonstrated.
As soon as we gum up the workings of the war machine, cause it to cease being profitable, Wall Street itself will snuff out Trump and his goons.
Well, what it does, as Hedges' article notes, is it poses the question of mortality to those who would carry out the wishes of those reducing immigrants to bare life. I don't think non-violent protest worked quite as well as we like to think it did, and a context two generations old does not apply today. Civil disobedience still has the possibility of working as long as the corporate state wishes to preserve the facade of its own civility. But that hallucination has been broken for at least a generation, and its bones laid bare in the last year or so. Those who would resist need to ask themselves, "what now?" Hedges points us in a radical direction for the answer, no question, and I understand and sympathize with your resistance to it.
While many of Hedges concerns are justified, I believe at least some of his understanding of Trump is incorrect. Trump is a populist using authoritarian tactics to defeat an enemy who has pulled out all the stops to defeat him, legally and illegally. ICE oversteps at time, but it serves primarily as a corrective to the excesses of the Biden era and the Left. Trump may inadvertently foster authoritarianism. The Left openly embraces it, by condemning all who oppose their ideology, and using hostile and violent tactics to stop those who oppose them. There is risk of totalitarianism from both sides, but at the present time, the risk of it is greater from the Left than from the Right, IMHO.
Mark Brody, why is it that Republicans can’t consider psychological factors? Your statement that “Trump may inadvertently foster authoritarianism” is wilfully derelict of all observation on your part. For Trump, co-existence with any other power structure is appeasement. Did Jonathan Ross shoot his victim “inadvertently”? No, he was hired, just like the death squads of Argentina or Chile before him, to check people’s papers, and that’s how you do it when you are a fascist with the complete confidence of your employer, you kill people’s you consider soft and subversive to your perfect country.
Trump’s niece Mary Trump has him bang to rights. His mother left him alone when he was turning two, and the lack of love in his life has sent him on this toddler-tantrum retribution trip since then. Nothing, as she puts it, will fill this void in his life.
I once talked to a man who was a prison guard for extremely sick and dangerous criminals. He told me that they all had something missing from their personalities. In Trump’s case it is love; without love we are an empty vessel And what a clanger this one is. He also lived in a childhood house which had a library without books in it; my first realisation that he was a complete malignant narcissist was when he answered the question “Who are your heroes?” with, guess what, he “didn’t believe in the concept of heroes.” Who says that? Who has no guiding lights or rôle models in their life? Well, the thugs are presumably not coming for you. Unless it helps them make quota. Your President pays top dollar with signing bonuses like those if sportsmen to put in place death squads which kill innocent mothers of three by on the streets of America. And you think that’s inadvertent.
We in Scotland are helping him with piracy, and will soon be asked to help him invade Greenland. Now he wants a second hand Nobel Peace Prize to go with the consolation prize he got from FIFA. I hope my message helps in tipping you off that you have a megalomania fascist madman leading your country into pogroms and civil and external wars of Vietnam-like dimension.
Add the enabling of econopathy by the Dem, Labour, and Lib parties that abandoned the majority working class and dumped the New Deal and Keynesianism. Consider also the Biden Dem admin Dept. of State was run by neocons trained by Republican creepy V.P. Dick Cheney. Allied with neocons of similar parties in the Anglophoney world and their west continental Euro elite cronies. The lessons of WWI about the futility of fighting to retain empire are to be ignored in favor of fantasy.
Dear Roland: I am unhappy with many of Trump's actions and do not understand how he can be apparently so blind to the effects of what he is doing. I am also aware that I do not understand everything that is going on. Were I to understand what he does, I might still disagree with this policies. My feeling that the threat of totalitarianism is greater from the Left than the Right is based on intuition, not any deeper understanding of world affairs than anyone else. Your assessment of Trump probably is at least partially correct in my view. However, calling him a megalomanic fascist madman detracts from your argument, as it appears to be coming more from your own emotions than from any special understanding of American politics or Trump. Admittedly, it is confusing trying to make sense of it all. I think we all need to remain humble as we try to put the pieces together, when the media is working so hard to obscure the truth from us.
“Calling” him a megalomaniac fascist madman is just a description used as a summary of my argument and is backed by no more emotion than that of the sentiment expressed in the line of a song: “Where is the life I recognise?” Some believe in Trump derangement syndrome, but this is a variant of the Soviet supporting argument for treating dissenters such as Vladimir Bukhovsky as cognitively and emotionally impaired. Bujhovsky couldn’t have been too shabby, as when stilll in school he got wind that they weren’t going to let him go to university, he built a camera from first principles, forged his school graduation papers, broke into the school and placed the forgery in the pile for signing, and it was signed with the others and he progressed automatically from there. He later played on the differing “diagnoses” of two different state institutes to get one of the psychiatrists fired.
One of my earliest memories is of finding my mother leaning against a window frame, weeping, in November ‘63, and she told me a good man had been killed. So that was my first emotional connection to America; and now Trump’s name is added as an insult to that injury on JFK’s building. Which is also illegal. From my earlier point, evil is an absence of a thing, an absence of virtue, a corruption of the thing in itself.
Your point about the “media working so hard to obscure the truth from us” may be down to the billionaire owners of the legacy media not wanting to focus on the real issue of how their acquisitive talent crowds out the material needs of the tired and poor while simultaneously egging them on to want shiny stuff. Chris Hedges walked out of the NYT because they cast his policy of telling the truth as he had discovered it to be, as “activism”. But also, when you can only get access to the press manipulation room based on the apparent sympathy of your questions to the government which is supposed to be giving the answer…you’re intended to become obscure and lose readership.
I don’t “get” complainants about conspiracy theorists. No theory is required; the fact of conspiracy is written down in the thirty-year-to-discretionary-never disclosure rules. We acquiesce as a society in this. Don’t tell us what’s happening, we’ll just get by on guessing. A society without an archive, a library, is a larger fractal of a person without a memory. This, too, is by design.
Assertions based on feeling without any data to back them up might be why you are also confused about many of Pres. Trump actions. Likewise your assumption that he can't see the effects of his actions. Try letting the data speak for itself.
What Chris describes is pretty grim, but if you follow American interference in states around the world........if you have any ability to calculate what America's illegal sanctions do to starve children and increase poverty, until the people are ready to do America's bidding.........if you remember the use of white phosphorus against Falluja, to give just one example........
Then you can't pretend to be surprised that it has come home.......from all those foreign wars of imperialistic murder........to prey on the poor in the home country.
Perhaps you'll even be clever enough to realize that the vulnerable Trump began destroying were the people impoverished in their own countries by American covert wars. Immigrants have long been the blow back from what covert American operations did to their country of origin.
I keep hearing msm talk about Venezuela's 'failed economy'. Few mention the decade long unilateral illegal American sanctions that produced that poverty, so no, most American's don't know the role of their government in Venezuela's economic collapse, but yes....it doesn't look good for the citizens of mighty America now.
And no. I don't expect they'll have either the prescience or the courage, to stand against the murderous legions, many of them trained in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the covert wars fought against the poor countries of Latin America. It has taken a special kind of stupid to keep believing in that city on the hill...........given the mischief American troops have carried to every corner of the globe.
Nor am I surprised that America has stood so solidly with Israel. She's America's poster child.
Although Chris left this off this list, he knows. Probably a function of the '71 Powell memo, the Ds began to go neolib as of the late '70s. They dumped the New Deal and abandoned the majority working class while embracing an economics of trickle up and corporate agendas. After '08 the Ds bailed out Wall St. while the millions of us working class nobodies who lost jobs, pensions, and houses got nothing. And the Rust Belt/Appalachia became deaths of despair central. So what? We're nothing but a "basket of deplorables."
The upper middle class professionals and administrators the Ds actually represent are bewildered by the results of the last election. Somehow they never noticed the suffering majority. Trying to deflect blame, these betters assert 'those people' are stupid (great way to win back voters) they're ignorant (dismissing us as inferior) they support bad candidates (after 40 years of cruel neglect, we're desperate!) That ridiculous "lesser of two evils" argument?! If you never say NO, you allow evil to expand. As WWII German pastor Niemoeller said, "First they came for..." But then the prof and admin class needn't fear since they also keep fascist regimes in business.
The opening salvo was under the Ds: the 1999 anti-WTO "Battle of Seattle." For the WTO? Multinational corporations, their justifying economists, and their lapdog government officials (including Dems, Labour, Libs.) Against? Labor unions, churches, small farmers, all sorts of scientists, human rights organizations, Indigenous peoples, alt. economists, small businesses, college professors, community organizers, eco-activists, medical practitioners, students, advocates for real democracy, representatives of the Global South, et. al. The National Guard and police of a liberal city rounded us up and held us in pens. Our rights under the U.S. and WA State Constitutions were suspended. The "lesser of two evils."
I once thought that the adults -- my parents, teachers, etc. -- would save me from a violent childhood. I was wrong. Fight like your life depends upon it, because it does. (I had sutures in my stomach, from multiple surgeries. A punch to the stomach once almost killed me.) There is no cavalry. Once the judges are literally bought off, you have no one left to hear your grievance. John Roberts applies Reconstruction's Equal Protection Clause not to *persons*, as originally&universally construed, but only to citizens, as defined by John Roberts and Leonard Leo, Fedsoc's bag man. If you are black, or belong to a union, or request habeas corpus, or wish to end an unwanted pregnancy, or to impose limits on financial contributions to political campaigns, or if you are eating a slice of pizza in the DC metro -- guess what color her skin was -- you are guilty until proven innocent. Burden of proof no longer resides with the prosecution.
Amid all the crap one sees and hears in what is artfully called the News Media, your writings stand for reason and sanity. You are a real lifeline to me. I cannot thank you enough.
Remember, Team D are all in on this as well. Give them power and they will not dismantle the terror machinery, but use it for their own purposes.
correct! just look at Schumer and Jeffries unwilling to look at decreased funding for ice
As Biden did too
And St. Obama greatly increased the funding for ICE.
They have since at least the 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations. (See my main entry.) As Chris said on 1/5 in "America the Rogue State," the last D admin blocked "the only weapon that can save Americans--popular movements and strikes." He also said the D party elite thinks it's "better to let the whole ship go down than surrender their power and privilege."
Evidence? In 2016 Schumer said "For every blue collar Dem we lose in western PA we'll pick up two moderate Rs in the suburbs of Philadelphia and you can repeat that for IL, OH, WI." They stand for nothing but keeping their own power. Made blatantly obvious by how they openly conspired with the Rs in NYC, even getting an endorsement for Cuomo from Trump. D loyalists accepting "lesser of two evils" have only enabled more evil.
So very glad other people are seeing what I have been saying for a long time (and getting sneers from Dems I know). The Dem establishment is feckless, craven, interested only in their perks, investment portfolios, and insider trading action. In the end, the "elite" (BOTH parties) exist ONLY to serve wealthy individuals and corporations. They ALL belong to "the one big club"..."and we ain't in it." (RIP George). This present dismantling of our (weak) democracy and the accompanying revived neo colonialism - coups, kidnappings, dronings, invasions, wars, occupations, dogfights - have been the modus operandi since our inception and continue to this day. Planning for the present escalation has been "in the works" for decades. The present Nazi madness and horror also put us hoi polloi in the crosshairs of any entity seeking revenge for the sins of our leaders. I.e. WE, the hoi polloi, may be attacked - one way or another - by either our own or other countries protecting THEIR own interests. Nazis USA are coming to take us away.
I'm reminded of the Pogo cartoon where he comments, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
I think the west in general has been fooled into believing they have a democracy if there are two teams, say the white hats and the black hats, and these two teams take turns having power.
But then there is Mamdani. Maybe the young see through the charade of corporate rule.
Sad the Empire is going to have to kill so many of America's youth, if that is the case.
Mamdani supports STATE CONTROL too
just with left wing agenda .
STATE CONTROl is the important factor !!!
NOT whether Left wing or Right wing
AND an important distinction of whether it is FASCIST or not.
Your one idea of a libertarian utopia existing without government is wearing a little thin. We have single payer health care in Canada. You don't get that with small government or no government at all.
The roads fall into disrepair as well, once its down to the good will of the average joe .
Your one idea is an extreme example of an intolerance. I get it, but don't need ot keep having you shoot it at me.
They want to believe they're superior individuals and have never, ever needed help. To them, government means restrictions on their right to exploit us inferiors. They assert there is no such thing as a collective society, so no such thing as structures.
Thus bleeding hearts who whine about structural inequities merely provide excuses for lazy, defective, and stupid people. The kind who did not take personal responsibility for good education and didn't make sufficient effort for success. That's why they end up in dead end jobs, bad neighborhoods, poverty, and ill health. The smug offer the adage "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps." Unaware their silly interpretation is the opposite of the original, which was meant to show its impossibility. Try it!
The techie anarcho-capitalists do want some government. Like contract enforcement and anti-union laws. When they say no state, they're denying that as merely another another non-existent structure. They fail to acknowledge that without State structures like Constitutions, there are no rights. No starting point for currency, either, thus no economic system. For that matter, no place for econ policies, either. No organization to deal with minor problems like ecological devastation or epidemics.
Not only is this crass, cruel, and offensive to every major religion, it's not how humans have survived. As Indigenes know by experience, humans thrive and life has meaning because of cooperation with one other and with nature. Nor can a captain run a ship without depending on the crew. Ask any of us in the engine room.
The strength of the Libertarian fantasy is what amazes me. It would seem obvious that a complex society needs centralized powers to maintain the roads, police traffic violations and petty crime.......even if we went tiny government and reverted to unpaid women doing all the care work for 0 recompense. The good ol days, remember/???
Schools??? Voluntarily run by who?? Citizens with a heart??? Oligarchs wanting tax relief??
It's not simply a stupid system. I think its a system supported by those who take the benefits of government for granted...........while demanding pure freedom to do what they will in their little spheres of absolute influence. Like Warlords, without the war.
It's primarily a male fantasy......and perhaps a reactive one, where demonization has to finger something, and the easiest thing to blame in a sweeping fashion is government....the state.
I might support them if what they wanted to do was abolish the army...there's an institution that does real harm.....but of course, military might is what they'd have supplant government.....when we come right down to it.
WE CAN WATCH TRUMP TRYING TO PUT THAT SYSTEM IN PLACE, IN REAL TIME....Calling ICE part of government is a stretch....when its actually part of the destruction of good governance, and the replacement of government with raw power.
I believe Libertarianism actually lends itself to exactly that.......in the end. No State or Governance. Just Raw Power and Male Bullies...in masks. There's also the economic spin offs......all those concentration camps being built in your once great country just now.
Stay safe...there's a lot of folks out there who mistake murder for freedom.
AND I did not say without GOVERNMENT !!!!
I said without a STATE !!!!!!!!!!!
That's a problem when people do not even know distinction of the two
Just because you assert a difference doesn't mean there is one. Nor does such a claim mean your version is an infallible truth. You also imply that anyone who doesn't think like you do must be at best ignorant; at worst inferior. An odd assumption for someone not all that adept with English grammar and resorting to caps--yelling in print. It's like the rock band adage if you can't play good, play loud.
Libertarians support the LIBERAL concept of Freedom of Association !
Do you support (state) MANDATED ONES ???
Howard: your endless list of either-or's are simple reductions of the world as it exists. See below:
Canada is a state. I live inside it. It is further divided into provinces, the rough equivalent of your states.
You can eliminate government from these states much more easily than you can get rid of the geographic reality that constitutes a nation or part of a nation.
You use words as if they were footballs......they aren't. They are referants..and in general, what they refer to, is a gross reality. Gross realities exist in the world, not the dictionary.
Getting rid of the State......but holding on to government makes 0 sense. You've just decided to demonize State............in order to rescue Government.
Try thinking in multiples rather than in doubles, one of which has to be wrong. Or perhaps complicating the data is too hard for your need for certainties??? Monolithic certainties at that/??
I said I oppose the STATE
NEVER GOVERNMENT !!!!!!!!!!
you look those terms UP!!!
That's second time you accuse me for supporting government
You know what GOVERNING BOARDS do for an HOA ?
The GOVERN !
Utopia??
to support state utopias is what you do !!!
Everything can be fixed by a state utopian command!
F'ed up by them is what they do!
Support everyone for themselves, that's what you do!!!
Survival of the fittest!!
To frack with everyone else!
"Survival of the fittest" was the fave slogan of Social Darwinists. But it's nothing more than a tautology: who are the fittest? Those who survive. That's all. Besides, the dominant mode of existence on Earth is cooperation, symbiosis.
STATE CONTROL always trumps SOCIAL(ist) Control AND Individual Control!!!
Perhaps some control...is it worse than the present Nazi total control? I think not. I'll choose the Mamdani governing model over the present Nazi control EVERY TIME. The operative concept for me is the COMMONWEALTH. We - citizens - should OWN those functions necessary to sustaining life. Natural and other resources. The government was and is not meant TO MAKE A PROFIT. That is NOT (or should NOT) be the goal. The goal: all citizens are guaranteed the BASICS of living...a right to life.
"the Mamdani governing model over the present Nazi control EVERY TIME."
that's like supporting the LESS OF TWO EVILS !!
THEY ARE STILL EVILS !!!!!!!
STATE CONTROL is still FASCISM
"Maybe the young see through the charade of corporate rule." Too little too late, I fear
We'll likely be dead before that's known for certain....for sure it is looking like there's going to be little left for the young but precarity and serfdom....both things that lead to either despair or rebellion.
I can only hope, and wish them well.
Fear not. You can throw wrenches into the gears and help bring the machine to a grinding halt.
The young will do what they have to do.......we oldsters simply need to develop the knowledge and maintain the memory, that allows us NOT to play the old kermudgeon game of denouncing them.
I'm disgusted by how easily they can get essentially well meaning people to blame the victims and go with the international criminal cartels.
PS: Did you hear that Trump and his grade school drop out crew INVENTED a cartel to claim Maduro was running one??? Now they've taken that lie off the indictment, but dummies who only listen to garbage likely won't get that 'redaction'.
Every dirty trick you can imagine, and others that you can't... Their diabolical ingenuity is mind-boggling.
The1/10th of 1% plan on escaping the political, economic, and ecological chaos they know is coming. That's why they're buying megayachts and private islands. But we more workers who build and maintain the boats and the moats also know how to disable them.
As the left and right have ALMOST always done with state machinery!!!
Its purpose
Missing in action - anti-FOREIGN-war democrats
Missing in action - small DOMESTIC government/state republicans
The fascist state - I have declared
State Control ALWAYS TRUMPS Social (ist) Control and Individual Control regardless of what you hear
we've got to meld them back together again for our own sake
They are NOT THE LEFT (no matter how defined), although they claim to be. And the MSM supports that claim for obvious reasons.
What left? Center-right Ds certainly aren't. Besides, he isn't presenting anything but argument by assertion and the limited "logic" of either/or. No evidence, no empirical data, no line of reasoning. Thus no real case. Nothing but shouted beliefs we're supposed to accept because he says so.
Left and Right support STATE CONTROL
just with different agendas
(Radical) Libertarians do not support STATE CONTROL
But they SUPPORT GOVERNMENT
This is true. Why would the elite abolish their own militarized security force
Not ALL team D - the ones that refuse corporate donations are on the side of sanity.
Of couese child, of course, even as they always defend their more openly meretricious colleagues as the lesser evil, even as they are cheated without a word in protest, even as they sheepdog us "Vote Blu No Matter Who"....
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.“ Thomas Paine.
When I ask myself what circumstances might prompt this administration to engage in such universally-condemned and desperate acts, the answer I come up with is Katie Johnson and the other Epstein survivors. Katie Johnson alleges that when she was a 13 year old child, she was tied to the 4 corners of a bed and raped, with onlookers ignoring her screams for help. I spent my career as a middle school guidance counselor. In 1994, the year this allegedly took place, the most popular Christmas gifts for 13 year old girls were Furby and Polly Pocket. Here’s her testimony. https://katemanne.substack.com/p/the-actual-conspiracy-theory-surrounding. https://katemanne.substack.com/p/they-tried-to-bury-the-katie-johnson?r=2g4u&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
While resistance is key, in whatever form that may take (including non-compliance) I think it's important to do this outside the Dem/Rep, left/right, paradigm. The "leaders" you vote for are merely used as tools and the divide is not helpful/useful. As Chris often points out, our resistance is what they try to crush. Freedom and sovereignty - individual and govt.
Totally agree. The L/R framing of discussion is intentionally limiting and hence makes us very vulnerable to manipulation.
Ideology creates strange bedfellows and short-circuits critical thinking.
While that is easy to say........and understandable from the positions of both major parties......it leaves a bit of an empty set when it comes to imagining how citizens organize to create, not simply resistance to the status quo.....but something better.
One of the things I see in my own country (Canada) is an articulate older population who want to resist but for the most part, don't have any movement in which to do so effectively. So we rant. Read people like Hedges........and share what we know.
But what we know won't build a new system..........and too often, what we know is partial. Most Americans went along with the regime change operations in Latin America and the Middle East........since the end of the Vietnam war. Those of us in the first world seem mostly okay with the lives of brown people being disrupted........we dozed through the American support for the generals in Argentina, the death squads in El Salvador, the contra attacks on the Sandinistas of Nicaragua....
I doubt we're even very aware of our own fascism....because white entitlement is a kind of soft fascism....we've lived as if the troubles of the third world were nothing to us......even though our society benefitted from them.
What do we actually DO now.....to come together in such numbers, and with such solidarity, that the gangsters can't force us to flee.........leaving the little ones and the cripples behind in our haste???
"Organize to create ... something better?" Resistance to what is being created seems what we need to be doing now. Not supporting it, moving ourselves out of it in as many ways as possible, now. Party politics is distracting; they are all one.
Yes....and no.
We need movements, but from those movements we need people strong enough to speak inside the parties.........to call them out, demand better.
Government is a necessity in complex societies.......therefore, the best and the smartest and the most ethical inside our movements also need to be willing to move governments in the right direction....it wouldn't seem so hard, if our resistance included alternative visions of good governance.
Ingamarie, sometimes you really prepared me. Right now, I think I love you.
It's not much we can do Sandy.........but we can write and speak the truth as we know it....there's so much half truths being peddled by those in power....so much weaselly words....considering Trump's age, IQ and follow through capacity, it surely can't be him we're afraid of????
" I think it's important to do this outside the Dem/Rep, left/right, paradigm."
Libertarianism purposefully holds itself from that view - it is NO accident !!!
Grim reading - but necessary.
I can’t breathe. Sometimes I think the masses want to let it happen bc they are unwilling to give up the convenience of thinking “not me, not here” and go back to focusing on the distraction in front of (us). I’m guilty!!!… my “excuse” is I don’t feel I have anything or anyone to live for.., not even myself. Pathetic I realize but it’s my honest state of mind sped up from decades of pointless domination. The planet is tired of us.
Your honesty is commendable. I, too, cannot breathe sometimes.
As far as having someone to live for, we need you as much as you need all of life.
The child in Gaza needs you to be strong, to use your voice. It doesn't take that many of us to effect the changes we must instill.
You are not alone: There are billions of us, mostly good people, and that's just counting the humans. We all need you, we all need each other. Love you.
Thx doll. I know my monthly donations local and for children abroad have powerful energy ...I have to believe that. I’ll keep going ❤️
And it's really important to take care of yourself. Get out in Nature, even if it's only a walk in the park. Slow down, breathe. And thank you.
I do. Yoga. Reading. Art. Feeling guilt for my privilege tho. Minimizing exposure to the evil is a double edge walk if you will
Which may be true. But how do we break out of our isolation and create something other than allies who don't know our names or histories and whom we only see at the odd rally.
We haven't exactly been community builders, where I live. And I'm in Canada, still quite socially secure compared to many places in America.
One thing I am watching for is draft dodgers.....deserters and the like. We did it during the Vietnam war, but how many would refuse service if tomorrow Trump decided to invade Canada???
It utterly frightens, depresses, even disgusts me, but I haven't heard of any draft dodgers/deserters. If there's any out there, please enlighten me.
No.......I haven't heard of any either, as of now. And that will be a grim sign if none materialize, as Trump dreams up weirder and more unnecessary war games.
One reason for the difference from the sixties may be the pervasiveness of American propaganda....what we're being told about Venezuela....and Iran....is far from the truth. And in everything we're told..........the impoverishing effects of years of illegal American sanctions are left out.
I suspect many Canadians on this feed don't even know much about them....so it becomes easier to convince everyone that America's enemies are evil....and we can crush them without much loss of manpower.
There are those known or unknown who think you are and make life more beautiful as one of god’s children
The Democrats are even MORE guilty of enabling this than are the Republicans. They once had a true liberal wing which if it existed today would have been shouting from the roof tops. They no longer exist but were replaced by a corporate Democratic party.
Chris has again painted a very accurate picture of the world shaping up all around us. It is hard to read, but essential. It is dystopian to some; a fiction of possibilities to some; but it is the reality we are facing every day. What will finally inspire and awaken us to do something?
I feel similar. The neolibs, who support a trickle up and corporate economics, usurped the D party. They dumped the New Deal and abandoned the majority working class. Their rightward lurch helped enable the Rs to go full out fascist. These Ivy Ds and their loyalists ignored decades of suffering, then deflected blame for election disasters onto that "basket of deplorables." How smart is it to call stupid voters you need?! We mere workers can see yours is not the party of the New Deal, it's the party of the privileged upper middle class. And we know the Rs represent 1%ers and Big Biz; they have for a century. But we deeply despise the Ds for betraying us.
Everybody went a bit bonkers during the Free Trade globalization frenzy brought to us by the corporations from away..........we were all sucked in, or at least 90% of us were.
Those like myself and my partner are mostly isolated.....even inside our social democratic party,many think socialism is the evil..........capitalism being, I guess, all that we're left with.
Not much of a choice.......but the majority chose it. Now that its on the skids, we get to see how the Wealth Creators act when the chips are down.
And let's not forget how much of this is to demonize China, Russia, Iran, and any country that doesn't allow its resources to be accessed by the global elites......mostly American, though they believe the world is truly their oyster....and they above something so parochial as nationality
Financiers worldwide hold tens of trillions of US debt. The politics of fascism is America's hedge against a debt crash. Debts that can't be paid won't be paid. An economy based on debt service-creditor or debtor economies- are doomed to stagflation, and even hyperinflation. Ergo, Trumpism is dooming us to economic ruin. This scenario, fascists know, means they must amass enough power to exist as lawless, failed states in the face of blowback, both from home and abroad. They are bringing on the thugs. But this is all downstream from finance. White collar industrial criminals, aka tech and oil bros (chiefly), are making common (lost) cause with financiers, just like the slave oligarchs did in the lead-up to the Civil War. Somehow, we must stop them. One hundred fifty years ago, in the thrall of Manifest Destiny, nobody could engineer just resolutions and slavers kept doubling down on their perdition. Same thing today. Where is the will for a moral and just society in the hallways of power? The people must reclaim our power, the cost is irrelevant at this point of ecological disaster. Everyone can see the new day right around the corner (at least Gen. Z and Alpha can), yet we are restrained from making it happen. We must break our restraints with a series of 'smart' general strikes along with a strengthened mutual aid network.
There's a difference between bonds and a budget deficit. And government debt is not like household debt. (See //The Deficit Myth// Stephanie Kelton.) Economies start with the issue of currency, fiat money. (See //Debt: The First 5,000 Years// David Graeber.) An example--fed. govt. funds freeway construction. That shows as fed. deficit, but as an asset to construction companies who make a profit and good pay to workers (hopefully, union.)
The reason this isn't well understood is because the econ system comes from theories of the Chicago School of Economics. They believe The Market is omnipotent, so should not be regulated. Boils down to two participants with equal access and perfect information making barter exchanges. (Really!) Plus they believe the only human motivation is the utility function; in plain English, personal profit. There is little, if any, empirical data to back up their claims. It's argument by assertion, like Thatcher's "there are no alternatives." There are--the New Deal and Keynesianism--which worked well for the working class majority. Why the 1%ers, banksters, and CEOs hated them.
Another huge error is enabling financialization of the economy. The Ds accepted propaganda conflating free enterprise with capitalism. Free enterprise is the privately owned production of physically real goods and services, including worker-owned businesses and co-ops. Capitalism is the privileging of that abstraction known as money (capital.) Manipulative financial vultures prey on what is called the Real Economy, sucking out the profits and leaving a destroyed husk.
Easy to show the flaws of the current system and of some alternatives. (See //Debunking Economics// Steve Keen.) Also look at his YT lessons, which demonstrate what economics looks like if we used computerized accounting with the actual data of debits and credits instead of relying on theoretical assertions. Then it's clear a debit entry for Fed. govt. shows as a credit entry elsewhere. Politicians know better--why trillions for military adventurism, WMDs, and corporate bailouts aren't a problem. The supposed horror of govt. deficits is used to terrify the general public into acquiescence about huge cuts for anything serving the common good. Fear over "deficits" also justifies not doing something really expensive like eco and climate amelioration.
I have been bouncing between narratives and trying to process these events without bias. That is not easy. But i do not come to this moment with your life experience. I value everything you share and it shapes my attachment to the few threads of humanity I try to embrace. Thank you
Humans have yet to solve the fundamental problem of self-organizing ourselves to ensure our continued place in the planetary arena.
We invent stories of human and American exceptionalism. We claim we're immune from the forces and natural laws that define the boundaries of all living systems.
Three and half billion years of evolution has produced a spectacular array of examples of what works and what doesn't.
And there's a distinction that describes the reason. Living systems function within the reality of the physical world.
Water fowl do not kid themselves when the water is frozen. They deal with it as is.
Humans, (at least those who are in charge), abhor reality.
Today we find ourselves scraping the bowl of natural resources for the materials and energy required to run the free market operating system that we use to plunder anything and everything available.
Bottom line is, ignore reality and you will perish.
It's a tragedy that in spite of all the evidence right at our feet, we have always allowed ourselves to be dominated by those who cater to the darker element of the human brain.
Our intelligence and capacity for imagination has been molded into a curse.
Thank you Chris Hedges for your decency and commitment to presenting reality.
The dominant econopathy defines away destruction of communities and ecosystems as externalities. It also assumes the only human motivation is the utility function, in plain English, personal profit.
Consider in contrast the complex, obligate symbiosis of tree roots with fungal hyphae; this alone makes cooperation the dominant mode of existence on Earth. And there are many more symbioses, including in and on human bodies.
Doesn't mean the entire Universe is always benevolent--black holes, solar flares, earthquakes, and diseases show otherwise. But as Indigenous peoples know by experience and retain as vital knowledge, human cooperation with and respect for all living beings is more than just nice sounding, it's practical.
We stand stymied because of a misguided belief in the power of peaceful protest--Foucault disabused us of its usefulness fifty or sixty years ago (though he also believed we must still persist with it). If we are to have any agency in the dire times to come, it will not obtain in our righteous indignation, but at the end of a pitchfork, if Solzhenitsyn is to be believed... This is a truly powerful post Mr. Hedges, and it is a radical call to radical action that will require all of us to acknowledge that we have nothing left to lose. But are we there yet?
Gandhi and Martin Luther King would disagree with you about the power of peaceful protest. If you wish to change this world through force, through the use of guns, you play right into the hands of those with the most weapons: the State.
Gandhi's and King's peaceful protests were affective only because the controlling powers still retained a modicum of legitimacy and regard for justice. That's all changed now. How do you think your peaceful protests will go over with the ICE army thugs? We'll find out if there really are more of us than them.
The British Imperial forces in India had a modicum of legitimacy? When did that happen?
Would you compare the British Imperial forces to the Trump/maga government who care nothing for their reputation in the world?
There is no way to peace, peace is the way. I agree with you but I also think we haven't begun to imagine, think together, creatively build...........the kind of peaceful protest that this time requires.
One of the biggest successes of the neoliberal order is how isolated they have made so many of us. Currently, we only know about 3 people we could completely trust if we were to move into peaceful actual resistance............and one of them just accepted a job in Ontario.
People talk. How many would be willing to be a safe house?? How many would deliver messages?? Provide food?? Provide transportation???
I don't know how we begin.........but if Trump tries to annex Canada, we're going to have to learn.........and we'll be building from the ground up when that time comes....
Because most of us don't have a network of any kind. And certainly not one that would risk being seen as a resister of ICE.
There is still a brutal caste system in India in which decolonization (a bit of a fiction in many respects) meant nothing to the poorest of the poor. And there is still a brutal race war going on in the US in which a repressive state apparatus "holds all the cards," to quote a certain orange personage. Our righteous indignation at the use of force against us no longer requires pointing out the problem; it requires self defence. I agree that once upon a time, peaceful protest could make a difference--you are right about that. I'm just not so sure it matters any more in a vibrant democracy turned banana republic . . .
Any fool with a gun can take out an ICE agent. But what does that do, except provide an excuse for the use of more force, more repression?
Non-violent disobedience requires more courage, more solidarity, but, as a tactic, it is more effective than the alternative, as King pointed out and demonstrated.
As soon as we gum up the workings of the war machine, cause it to cease being profitable, Wall Street itself will snuff out Trump and his goons.
Well, what it does, as Hedges' article notes, is it poses the question of mortality to those who would carry out the wishes of those reducing immigrants to bare life. I don't think non-violent protest worked quite as well as we like to think it did, and a context two generations old does not apply today. Civil disobedience still has the possibility of working as long as the corporate state wishes to preserve the facade of its own civility. But that hallucination has been broken for at least a generation, and its bones laid bare in the last year or so. Those who would resist need to ask themselves, "what now?" Hedges points us in a radical direction for the answer, no question, and I understand and sympathize with your resistance to it.
I have been thinking about Foucault lately, too. And am operationalizing his conception of RESISTANCE in whatever form I am able.
I keep playing Naomi Klein's words in shock doctrine... "When all the parts are in play, it happens fast "
While many of Hedges concerns are justified, I believe at least some of his understanding of Trump is incorrect. Trump is a populist using authoritarian tactics to defeat an enemy who has pulled out all the stops to defeat him, legally and illegally. ICE oversteps at time, but it serves primarily as a corrective to the excesses of the Biden era and the Left. Trump may inadvertently foster authoritarianism. The Left openly embraces it, by condemning all who oppose their ideology, and using hostile and violent tactics to stop those who oppose them. There is risk of totalitarianism from both sides, but at the present time, the risk of it is greater from the Left than from the Right, IMHO.
Mark Brody, why is it that Republicans can’t consider psychological factors? Your statement that “Trump may inadvertently foster authoritarianism” is wilfully derelict of all observation on your part. For Trump, co-existence with any other power structure is appeasement. Did Jonathan Ross shoot his victim “inadvertently”? No, he was hired, just like the death squads of Argentina or Chile before him, to check people’s papers, and that’s how you do it when you are a fascist with the complete confidence of your employer, you kill people’s you consider soft and subversive to your perfect country.
Trump’s niece Mary Trump has him bang to rights. His mother left him alone when he was turning two, and the lack of love in his life has sent him on this toddler-tantrum retribution trip since then. Nothing, as she puts it, will fill this void in his life.
I once talked to a man who was a prison guard for extremely sick and dangerous criminals. He told me that they all had something missing from their personalities. In Trump’s case it is love; without love we are an empty vessel And what a clanger this one is. He also lived in a childhood house which had a library without books in it; my first realisation that he was a complete malignant narcissist was when he answered the question “Who are your heroes?” with, guess what, he “didn’t believe in the concept of heroes.” Who says that? Who has no guiding lights or rôle models in their life? Well, the thugs are presumably not coming for you. Unless it helps them make quota. Your President pays top dollar with signing bonuses like those if sportsmen to put in place death squads which kill innocent mothers of three by on the streets of America. And you think that’s inadvertent.
We in Scotland are helping him with piracy, and will soon be asked to help him invade Greenland. Now he wants a second hand Nobel Peace Prize to go with the consolation prize he got from FIFA. I hope my message helps in tipping you off that you have a megalomania fascist madman leading your country into pogroms and civil and external wars of Vietnam-like dimension.
Add the enabling of econopathy by the Dem, Labour, and Lib parties that abandoned the majority working class and dumped the New Deal and Keynesianism. Consider also the Biden Dem admin Dept. of State was run by neocons trained by Republican creepy V.P. Dick Cheney. Allied with neocons of similar parties in the Anglophoney world and their west continental Euro elite cronies. The lessons of WWI about the futility of fighting to retain empire are to be ignored in favor of fantasy.
Dear Roland: I am unhappy with many of Trump's actions and do not understand how he can be apparently so blind to the effects of what he is doing. I am also aware that I do not understand everything that is going on. Were I to understand what he does, I might still disagree with this policies. My feeling that the threat of totalitarianism is greater from the Left than the Right is based on intuition, not any deeper understanding of world affairs than anyone else. Your assessment of Trump probably is at least partially correct in my view. However, calling him a megalomanic fascist madman detracts from your argument, as it appears to be coming more from your own emotions than from any special understanding of American politics or Trump. Admittedly, it is confusing trying to make sense of it all. I think we all need to remain humble as we try to put the pieces together, when the media is working so hard to obscure the truth from us.
“Calling” him a megalomaniac fascist madman is just a description used as a summary of my argument and is backed by no more emotion than that of the sentiment expressed in the line of a song: “Where is the life I recognise?” Some believe in Trump derangement syndrome, but this is a variant of the Soviet supporting argument for treating dissenters such as Vladimir Bukhovsky as cognitively and emotionally impaired. Bujhovsky couldn’t have been too shabby, as when stilll in school he got wind that they weren’t going to let him go to university, he built a camera from first principles, forged his school graduation papers, broke into the school and placed the forgery in the pile for signing, and it was signed with the others and he progressed automatically from there. He later played on the differing “diagnoses” of two different state institutes to get one of the psychiatrists fired.
One of my earliest memories is of finding my mother leaning against a window frame, weeping, in November ‘63, and she told me a good man had been killed. So that was my first emotional connection to America; and now Trump’s name is added as an insult to that injury on JFK’s building. Which is also illegal. From my earlier point, evil is an absence of a thing, an absence of virtue, a corruption of the thing in itself.
Your point about the “media working so hard to obscure the truth from us” may be down to the billionaire owners of the legacy media not wanting to focus on the real issue of how their acquisitive talent crowds out the material needs of the tired and poor while simultaneously egging them on to want shiny stuff. Chris Hedges walked out of the NYT because they cast his policy of telling the truth as he had discovered it to be, as “activism”. But also, when you can only get access to the press manipulation room based on the apparent sympathy of your questions to the government which is supposed to be giving the answer…you’re intended to become obscure and lose readership.
I don’t “get” complainants about conspiracy theorists. No theory is required; the fact of conspiracy is written down in the thirty-year-to-discretionary-never disclosure rules. We acquiesce as a society in this. Don’t tell us what’s happening, we’ll just get by on guessing. A society without an archive, a library, is a larger fractal of a person without a memory. This, too, is by design.
Assertions based on feeling without any data to back them up might be why you are also confused about many of Pres. Trump actions. Likewise your assumption that he can't see the effects of his actions. Try letting the data speak for itself.
What Chris describes is pretty grim, but if you follow American interference in states around the world........if you have any ability to calculate what America's illegal sanctions do to starve children and increase poverty, until the people are ready to do America's bidding.........if you remember the use of white phosphorus against Falluja, to give just one example........
Then you can't pretend to be surprised that it has come home.......from all those foreign wars of imperialistic murder........to prey on the poor in the home country.
Perhaps you'll even be clever enough to realize that the vulnerable Trump began destroying were the people impoverished in their own countries by American covert wars. Immigrants have long been the blow back from what covert American operations did to their country of origin.
I keep hearing msm talk about Venezuela's 'failed economy'. Few mention the decade long unilateral illegal American sanctions that produced that poverty, so no, most American's don't know the role of their government in Venezuela's economic collapse, but yes....it doesn't look good for the citizens of mighty America now.
And no. I don't expect they'll have either the prescience or the courage, to stand against the murderous legions, many of them trained in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the covert wars fought against the poor countries of Latin America. It has taken a special kind of stupid to keep believing in that city on the hill...........given the mischief American troops have carried to every corner of the globe.
Nor am I surprised that America has stood so solidly with Israel. She's America's poster child.
Although Chris left this off this list, he knows. Probably a function of the '71 Powell memo, the Ds began to go neolib as of the late '70s. They dumped the New Deal and abandoned the majority working class while embracing an economics of trickle up and corporate agendas. After '08 the Ds bailed out Wall St. while the millions of us working class nobodies who lost jobs, pensions, and houses got nothing. And the Rust Belt/Appalachia became deaths of despair central. So what? We're nothing but a "basket of deplorables."
The upper middle class professionals and administrators the Ds actually represent are bewildered by the results of the last election. Somehow they never noticed the suffering majority. Trying to deflect blame, these betters assert 'those people' are stupid (great way to win back voters) they're ignorant (dismissing us as inferior) they support bad candidates (after 40 years of cruel neglect, we're desperate!) That ridiculous "lesser of two evils" argument?! If you never say NO, you allow evil to expand. As WWII German pastor Niemoeller said, "First they came for..." But then the prof and admin class needn't fear since they also keep fascist regimes in business.
The opening salvo was under the Ds: the 1999 anti-WTO "Battle of Seattle." For the WTO? Multinational corporations, their justifying economists, and their lapdog government officials (including Dems, Labour, Libs.) Against? Labor unions, churches, small farmers, all sorts of scientists, human rights organizations, Indigenous peoples, alt. economists, small businesses, college professors, community organizers, eco-activists, medical practitioners, students, advocates for real democracy, representatives of the Global South, et. al. The National Guard and police of a liberal city rounded us up and held us in pens. Our rights under the U.S. and WA State Constitutions were suspended. The "lesser of two evils."
I once thought that the adults -- my parents, teachers, etc. -- would save me from a violent childhood. I was wrong. Fight like your life depends upon it, because it does. (I had sutures in my stomach, from multiple surgeries. A punch to the stomach once almost killed me.) There is no cavalry. Once the judges are literally bought off, you have no one left to hear your grievance. John Roberts applies Reconstruction's Equal Protection Clause not to *persons*, as originally&universally construed, but only to citizens, as defined by John Roberts and Leonard Leo, Fedsoc's bag man. If you are black, or belong to a union, or request habeas corpus, or wish to end an unwanted pregnancy, or to impose limits on financial contributions to political campaigns, or if you are eating a slice of pizza in the DC metro -- guess what color her skin was -- you are guilty until proven innocent. Burden of proof no longer resides with the prosecution.