Pretty bleak. But for those of us who prefer to know rather than to believe....Chris Hedges' predictions are always worth hearing. Most of us would like to imagine that America is stronger than this..........but for those of us who have followed what America endorses and bank rolls around the world........for those of us who believe in national sorverignty but have watched America violate it over and over in the third world.........for those of us who have followed American foreign policy since Viet Nam.........it's hard to believe that the power of the American Empire will be resisted on home ground.
Most of the west has already accepted that the American deep state can do whatever it wishes abroad. How instructive then, and easy....will it be to participate in that same deep state....putting in place on home ground........the fascistic autocracy it has always deemed best for all those 'others'......naive enough to think they might create their own societies....around the world.
Perhaps Fascism had to come Home.........in order for Americans...and their subservient allies...to recognize it for what it is. The supreme ideology of Supreme Wealth.
EVERYONE GET OFF X. It's not going to happen...on the contrary, not being on X will out us as terrorists,
"EVERYONE GET OFF X. It's not going to happen...on the contrary, not being on X will out us as terrorists," Do you really believe this BS, or are you carrying this anti-Trump shit to an extreme, like they did during his first four years in office? Remember how they kicked Trump off twitter and propagandized for Biden and his son, including the CIA and their agenda was to interfere in an election. What about Russia-gate, where so many so called left wing sites also pushed that lie, demonizing Russia as well. Interesting how all this rhetoric about fascism really gets on a roll when Trump is in office, but was only background noise when Biden was president as well as others, a man who is responsible not only for the war in Ukraine, and 600 thousand Ukrainian dead, but also someone who helped implement a genocide and pushed a 21st agenda of Middle eastern wars that killed and displaced millions. I'm sure Hochul calling Trump king because he halted her ridiculous New York City's congestion pricing plan, and I'm sure such an accusation will become common place to justify the absurd. I say Thank God!!!!!!!!! Hedges can claim this movement toward fascism has a long history through many presidencies, but it really picked up steam with another Trump win. If anything this anti-Trump bias, so obvious, will do just the opposite.
Also, let me ask, did you think calling a riot an insurrection, which was followed by a Jan 6 comm, was democratic? Many, if not most anti-Trumper's did. Odd that they spent 4 years delegitimizing his presidency, to remove him from office, and worked in complicity with a press that no longer views anything with objectivity, or a democratic perspective. The so called left was also on their side, since they too harbored so much hatred for Trump, so he became everyone's scapegoat. Truth is never conveyed through extreme bias.
Well it's obvious which side you are on..........but my dislike for Musk predates Trump....and my scepticism about so called Artificial Intelligence is the main reason I'd boycott X. We need less algorithms masking as intelligence, and better investment in the education of all the human brains we let go to waste......or damage with our bigotries and other certainties.
I'm not American.........so see both your parties as serving wealthy elites........AND financing covert wars against any nation with the temerity to imagine it might take care of all its people. I know what we did in Haiti.....Americans and Canadians running off a Jesuit....for the love of the goddess.......who's big election promises was to raise wages and build schools.
I'm actually with the guy who said at the end of Romeo and Juliet....a plague on both your houses. The American Empire needs a serious kick in its entitled Ass......from up here in Canada where I sit. Fix your schools, your hospitals, consider single payer health care.......and YES......defund both your military and your fascistic police force.
I pray for all the good people suffering under you duopoly....but would oppose my country coming in and interferring.........just because we might know better than you how to maintain a democracy.
And Good Luck.......you'll need to park that outrage, if you actually intend to make things better for all the children in that not so great Empire of yours. Hard work and public service helps...
You read a lot into what I said, but incorrectly so. I didn't vote for Trump in 2016, and a Clinton win was out of the question, since she supported all of our many middle eastern wars, and I knew Russia would be next on her agenda, considering we implemented a coup under Obama in Ukraine and that was their plan, but it had to wait for Biden. I am definitely not ignorant about politics and was very active against our rampage through the Middle East during the 21st century, and I am not singing our praises. I don't disagree with Hedges on this issue, not at all, but he claims to speak about this issue in an all inclusive manner, both parties, but Trump has been used as a symbol of all that is wrong with the good old USA, including his desire to enrich the rich and bleed most Americans turning us into an autocracy. Even governor Hochul referenced Trump as king after he blocked her congestion pricing toll in NYC. I say good. The pictures Hedges post reflects his particular bias in this regard when it comes to Trump and that is my main objection. Basically the US has used him to take on the onus of all that is wrong with the good old USA. That's what I don't like! As for artificial intelligence nothing wrong with that, if it's not misused, and maybe it's become an issue because Musk is on the Trump team. Look at how the democrats and CIA tried to secure a Biden win in 2020 by lying about Hunter's laptop on twitter with other lies thrown in. Look at how they used a riot to claim an insurrection, incarcerating many and often with no charges, and of course nothing democratic about the Jan 6th, comm either. MSNBC is using Trump to prevent an end to the war in Ukraine, and on and on. Dangerous to make someone a scapegoat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I wondered today (after the preliminary results of the German elections - why did they have elections at all? i.e. what a waste of money - it will be the same old same old ...) if this call for getting ready for war - all the billions for senseless armament etc. is to finish what Covid could not achieve - get rid of us oldies ... (am still hoping the EU & NATO will go bancrupt before these morons incinerate us all- otherwise it is absolutely hopeless!)
All of this went on in Pinochet's Chile – Neo-liberal fascism was put in place in Chile in 1973 by Anaconda Copper, ITT and the ruling oligarchs and military.
The socialist president was overthrown and died fighting.
This was the first true experiment in fascist neo-liberalism also called 'libertarian' by some.
This was the Chicago School of Economics task, a fascist think tank more than a branch of study. They were to be the economic wrecking ball for full privatization in Chile and they did a stupendous job..
What the US did in Chile they did in the former Soviet Union and what they are trying to do today in all of Latin America and in the US itself.
The 1973 Chilean coup d’état led to a confluence between libertarianism and fascism.
This is what we are seeing now. The full privatization of all forms of government much like one sees in what is still called 'The Third World', all under the guise of libertarianism.
Privatization is fascism and globalism is imperialism and this is what you are seeing with what has gone on now that fascist Trump is in power.
Privatization replaces public, government-owned, assets, by privately owned assets, and so it transfers control from publicly elected (government) leaders (who are answerable to everyone at ballot-boxes), to private ones — to private stockholders who decide how those assets will be used — regardless of whether the asset happens to be schools, or hospitals, or land, or natural resources, or roads, or whatever.
Anything can be privatized. Anything can be run by an elite, by an ‘owner.’
Fascism tries to maximize that: private ownership of what was formerly public property. This is what Trump and Musk are doing.
Mussolini was the man-of-the-future, but — after Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, and finally Thatcher and Reagan and other ‘free-marketeers’ came into office — Mussolini’s «future» has increasingly become our own «now»: the Axis Powers’ ideology has actually been winning in the post-WW-II world.
Only, this time, it’s called instead by such names as «libertarianism» or «neo-liberalism», no longer «fascism», so that only the true-believing fascists, the aristocrats, will even know that it’s actually fascism. It’s their Big Con. It’s their Big Lie.
Just renaming fascism as «libertarianism» or «neo-liberalism», has fooled the masses to think that it’s pro-democratic. «Capitalism» has thus come to be re-defined to refer to only the aristocratically controlled form of capitalism: fascism.
The ideological battle has thus apparently been won by a cheap terminological deceit. That’s all it takes for dictatorship to be able to win.
Yes. The Koch brothers promoted the Libertarian Party as a ruse in order to hide their plans to destroy democracy behind a “new” and legal political entity. This had been in the works for decades.
It is a mob war if one understands gangsterism to be fascism. But at its core it is fascism with a theological center.
"The foundation stone of democratic fascism is populism and the division of society into ‘us’, the people, and ‘them’, the corrupt and immoral elite. The democratic fascist professes to speak for ‘the people’ and be the voice of common sense and righteousness in an unfair world ruled by people different from ‘us’. Democratic fascism claims to represent the unrepresented, the underdog, and the forgotten despite its inherent viciousness and nihilism.
Democratic fascism’s division of society into ‘us’ and ‘them’ is indicative of its broader tendency to perceive everything as a dichotomy.
The worldview of democratic fascism is black and white, with no room for nuance, ambiguity, or shades of grey.
Every issue is filtered through the lens of dualism: right and wrong; us and them; friend and enemy; native and foreign.
Constructing the world as a series of binaries means that the democratic fascist presents politics in a crude and reductive form, but one that is accessible, appealing, and easily understood by many in the general public.
This often contrived and always exaggerated construction of opposing sides foments division, resentment, and anger, which are all essential ingredients of democratic fascism. It also helps to identify enemies, which is also crucial to the democratic fascist’s modus operandi, for there must always be an enemy (often many) to attack, vilify, and blame."
Agreed with much if not all. So let us know how we can personally prepare. Disappear from social media? Fight by writing, marching etc? Do we secrete as much cash as we can. Help us survive.
Born 1946 (11 days before Trump ;-), did not see much notice of politics taken by my fellow youth, except among student and academic elites amplified by the media in the 60's and 70's, which was very effective and then coopted. The current neoliberal media owned by moneyed interests have betrayed those liberal agendas for decades and those young people interested in them turned to social media which is now also being coopted. Those who actively seek to address social/political problems are always a minority and cannot succeed without the media. Support Substack and Rumble as long as they support independent journalism.
We have had hot wars here, just among ourselves--North vs South, business vs labor, law enforcement vs the ghettoed. What we have had since WWII here is an internal cold war of wealth vs democracy (small d), which has been easily ignored or rationalized. It is getting a bit more real now.
The seeds if destruction of the US, economically and socially, were sown well before Trump took office. Police forces gearing up with military equipment; hundreds of thousands of medical bankruptcies annually; the unaccountability and unknown budgets of the Deep State; military spending out of control; and wars that have left the US with a massive debt.
The Trump regime is certainly not going to remedy this sad state of affairs, but considering that Musk's first targets are USAID and the DOD, and people all over the globe will appreciate this curbing of US exceptionalism.
Working people in the US have been squeezed as hard as can be, already. Further erosion of their conditions, wages, and lives will be financially disastrous.
It is understandable that Trump would have hostility towards the judiciary, after all those ridiculous charges brought against him. However, an independent judiciary is essential for democracy, and to take away that independence (a lot of it gone already) would be disastrously damaging.
We can only hope that the people around Trump curb any desire that he might have to completely follow through with agenda 25. Good governance relies on a strong, secure public service. Political appointees are fair game, but career public servants are vital to its functioning.
"The usurpers who ruled after the 1960s assassinations took American industry down. They dictated wars, austerity and censorship. That era is now ending, though they will try to sabotage and regroup.
How can we shape a development agenda to return America to progress and self-government? Why is international cooperation vital? What reckoning is needed with crimes against humanity, and crimes against our nation?"
Sure, vigilance is required, as always... but uprooting the ossified deep state is GOOD and long over due!
Pretty bleak. But for those of us who prefer to know rather than to believe....Chris Hedges' predictions are always worth hearing. Most of us would like to imagine that America is stronger than this..........but for those of us who have followed what America endorses and bank rolls around the world........for those of us who believe in national sorverignty but have watched America violate it over and over in the third world.........for those of us who have followed American foreign policy since Viet Nam.........it's hard to believe that the power of the American Empire will be resisted on home ground.
Most of the west has already accepted that the American deep state can do whatever it wishes abroad. How instructive then, and easy....will it be to participate in that same deep state....putting in place on home ground........the fascistic autocracy it has always deemed best for all those 'others'......naive enough to think they might create their own societies....around the world.
Perhaps Fascism had to come Home.........in order for Americans...and their subservient allies...to recognize it for what it is. The supreme ideology of Supreme Wealth.
EVERYONE GET OFF X. It's not going to happen...on the contrary, not being on X will out us as terrorists,
"EVERYONE GET OFF X. It's not going to happen...on the contrary, not being on X will out us as terrorists," Do you really believe this BS, or are you carrying this anti-Trump shit to an extreme, like they did during his first four years in office? Remember how they kicked Trump off twitter and propagandized for Biden and his son, including the CIA and their agenda was to interfere in an election. What about Russia-gate, where so many so called left wing sites also pushed that lie, demonizing Russia as well. Interesting how all this rhetoric about fascism really gets on a roll when Trump is in office, but was only background noise when Biden was president as well as others, a man who is responsible not only for the war in Ukraine, and 600 thousand Ukrainian dead, but also someone who helped implement a genocide and pushed a 21st agenda of Middle eastern wars that killed and displaced millions. I'm sure Hochul calling Trump king because he halted her ridiculous New York City's congestion pricing plan, and I'm sure such an accusation will become common place to justify the absurd. I say Thank God!!!!!!!!! Hedges can claim this movement toward fascism has a long history through many presidencies, but it really picked up steam with another Trump win. If anything this anti-Trump bias, so obvious, will do just the opposite.
Also, let me ask, did you think calling a riot an insurrection, which was followed by a Jan 6 comm, was democratic? Many, if not most anti-Trumper's did. Odd that they spent 4 years delegitimizing his presidency, to remove him from office, and worked in complicity with a press that no longer views anything with objectivity, or a democratic perspective. The so called left was also on their side, since they too harbored so much hatred for Trump, so he became everyone's scapegoat. Truth is never conveyed through extreme bias.
Well it's obvious which side you are on..........but my dislike for Musk predates Trump....and my scepticism about so called Artificial Intelligence is the main reason I'd boycott X. We need less algorithms masking as intelligence, and better investment in the education of all the human brains we let go to waste......or damage with our bigotries and other certainties.
I'm not American.........so see both your parties as serving wealthy elites........AND financing covert wars against any nation with the temerity to imagine it might take care of all its people. I know what we did in Haiti.....Americans and Canadians running off a Jesuit....for the love of the goddess.......who's big election promises was to raise wages and build schools.
I'm actually with the guy who said at the end of Romeo and Juliet....a plague on both your houses. The American Empire needs a serious kick in its entitled Ass......from up here in Canada where I sit. Fix your schools, your hospitals, consider single payer health care.......and YES......defund both your military and your fascistic police force.
I pray for all the good people suffering under you duopoly....but would oppose my country coming in and interferring.........just because we might know better than you how to maintain a democracy.
And Good Luck.......you'll need to park that outrage, if you actually intend to make things better for all the children in that not so great Empire of yours. Hard work and public service helps...
You read a lot into what I said, but incorrectly so. I didn't vote for Trump in 2016, and a Clinton win was out of the question, since she supported all of our many middle eastern wars, and I knew Russia would be next on her agenda, considering we implemented a coup under Obama in Ukraine and that was their plan, but it had to wait for Biden. I am definitely not ignorant about politics and was very active against our rampage through the Middle East during the 21st century, and I am not singing our praises. I don't disagree with Hedges on this issue, not at all, but he claims to speak about this issue in an all inclusive manner, both parties, but Trump has been used as a symbol of all that is wrong with the good old USA, including his desire to enrich the rich and bleed most Americans turning us into an autocracy. Even governor Hochul referenced Trump as king after he blocked her congestion pricing toll in NYC. I say good. The pictures Hedges post reflects his particular bias in this regard when it comes to Trump and that is my main objection. Basically the US has used him to take on the onus of all that is wrong with the good old USA. That's what I don't like! As for artificial intelligence nothing wrong with that, if it's not misused, and maybe it's become an issue because Musk is on the Trump team. Look at how the democrats and CIA tried to secure a Biden win in 2020 by lying about Hunter's laptop on twitter with other lies thrown in. Look at how they used a riot to claim an insurrection, incarcerating many and often with no charges, and of course nothing democratic about the Jan 6th, comm either. MSNBC is using Trump to prevent an end to the war in Ukraine, and on and on. Dangerous to make someone a scapegoat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What is, was The Deep State?
I am 94, one of millions of "old folks". I presume I am, we are disposable?
Yes you are disposable.
IF the 'sheep in Europe' don't catch on quickly We older people are also disposable.
In my time on this earth it seems IMPOSSIBLE (at age 76yrs old) to share our wisdom with the young.
They will make their own mistakes......and Good Luck.
MY Grandfather went through 2 world wars. I listened to him.
I wondered today (after the preliminary results of the German elections - why did they have elections at all? i.e. what a waste of money - it will be the same old same old ...) if this call for getting ready for war - all the billions for senseless armament etc. is to finish what Covid could not achieve - get rid of us oldies ... (am still hoping the EU & NATO will go bancrupt before these morons incinerate us all- otherwise it is absolutely hopeless!)
All of this went on in Pinochet's Chile – Neo-liberal fascism was put in place in Chile in 1973 by Anaconda Copper, ITT and the ruling oligarchs and military.
The socialist president was overthrown and died fighting.
This was the first true experiment in fascist neo-liberalism also called 'libertarian' by some.
This was the Chicago School of Economics task, a fascist think tank more than a branch of study. They were to be the economic wrecking ball for full privatization in Chile and they did a stupendous job..
What the US did in Chile they did in the former Soviet Union and what they are trying to do today in all of Latin America and in the US itself.
The 1973 Chilean coup d’état led to a confluence between libertarianism and fascism.
This is what we are seeing now. The full privatization of all forms of government much like one sees in what is still called 'The Third World', all under the guise of libertarianism.
Privatization is fascism and globalism is imperialism and this is what you are seeing with what has gone on now that fascist Trump is in power.
Privatization replaces public, government-owned, assets, by privately owned assets, and so it transfers control from publicly elected (government) leaders (who are answerable to everyone at ballot-boxes), to private ones — to private stockholders who decide how those assets will be used — regardless of whether the asset happens to be schools, or hospitals, or land, or natural resources, or roads, or whatever.
Anything can be privatized. Anything can be run by an elite, by an ‘owner.’
Fascism tries to maximize that: private ownership of what was formerly public property. This is what Trump and Musk are doing.
Mussolini was the man-of-the-future, but — after Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, and finally Thatcher and Reagan and other ‘free-marketeers’ came into office — Mussolini’s «future» has increasingly become our own «now»: the Axis Powers’ ideology has actually been winning in the post-WW-II world.
Only, this time, it’s called instead by such names as «libertarianism» or «neo-liberalism», no longer «fascism», so that only the true-believing fascists, the aristocrats, will even know that it’s actually fascism. It’s their Big Con. It’s their Big Lie.
Just renaming fascism as «libertarianism» or «neo-liberalism», has fooled the masses to think that it’s pro-democratic. «Capitalism» has thus come to be re-defined to refer to only the aristocratically controlled form of capitalism: fascism.
The ideological battle has thus apparently been won by a cheap terminological deceit. That’s all it takes for dictatorship to be able to win.
Yes. The Koch brothers promoted the Libertarian Party as a ruse in order to hide their plans to destroy democracy behind a “new” and legal political entity. This had been in the works for decades.
And it worked.
As Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn pointed out on ATW, it's mob war. The new Godfather is attacking the rackets that keep his enemies in business.
It is a mob war if one understands gangsterism to be fascism. But at its core it is fascism with a theological center.
"The foundation stone of democratic fascism is populism and the division of society into ‘us’, the people, and ‘them’, the corrupt and immoral elite. The democratic fascist professes to speak for ‘the people’ and be the voice of common sense and righteousness in an unfair world ruled by people different from ‘us’. Democratic fascism claims to represent the unrepresented, the underdog, and the forgotten despite its inherent viciousness and nihilism.
Democratic fascism’s division of society into ‘us’ and ‘them’ is indicative of its broader tendency to perceive everything as a dichotomy.
The worldview of democratic fascism is black and white, with no room for nuance, ambiguity, or shades of grey.
Every issue is filtered through the lens of dualism: right and wrong; us and them; friend and enemy; native and foreign.
Constructing the world as a series of binaries means that the democratic fascist presents politics in a crude and reductive form, but one that is accessible, appealing, and easily understood by many in the general public.
This often contrived and always exaggerated construction of opposing sides foments division, resentment, and anger, which are all essential ingredients of democratic fascism. It also helps to identify enemies, which is also crucial to the democratic fascist’s modus operandi, for there must always be an enemy (often many) to attack, vilify, and blame."
The rise and meaning of democratic fascism
Mark Gordon
https://gordonmark.medium.com/the-rise-and-meaning-of-democratic-fascism-a11f7e4d14b
America is turned keyed for dictatorship.
Agreed with much if not all. So let us know how we can personally prepare. Disappear from social media? Fight by writing, marching etc? Do we secrete as much cash as we can. Help us survive.
Dear David. As much as I want to help you as an old aged person. I cannot.
Young people in the USA are now taking notice of politics which for years they did not.
Lack of education and geography/you did not care!
Born 1946 (11 days before Trump ;-), did not see much notice of politics taken by my fellow youth, except among student and academic elites amplified by the media in the 60's and 70's, which was very effective and then coopted. The current neoliberal media owned by moneyed interests have betrayed those liberal agendas for decades and those young people interested in them turned to social media which is now also being coopted. Those who actively seek to address social/political problems are always a minority and cannot succeed without the media. Support Substack and Rumble as long as they support independent journalism.
What is really happening here:
The US has had no wars on their land mostly because of Geography.
This your war now America.
You cannot sit on the 'sidelines' and continue your shopping.
We have had hot wars here, just among ourselves--North vs South, business vs labor, law enforcement vs the ghettoed. What we have had since WWII here is an internal cold war of wealth vs democracy (small d), which has been easily ignored or rationalized. It is getting a bit more real now.
That maybe so.............but are they killing innocent civilians?
The seeds if destruction of the US, economically and socially, were sown well before Trump took office. Police forces gearing up with military equipment; hundreds of thousands of medical bankruptcies annually; the unaccountability and unknown budgets of the Deep State; military spending out of control; and wars that have left the US with a massive debt.
The Trump regime is certainly not going to remedy this sad state of affairs, but considering that Musk's first targets are USAID and the DOD, and people all over the globe will appreciate this curbing of US exceptionalism.
Working people in the US have been squeezed as hard as can be, already. Further erosion of their conditions, wages, and lives will be financially disastrous.
It is understandable that Trump would have hostility towards the judiciary, after all those ridiculous charges brought against him. However, an independent judiciary is essential for democracy, and to take away that independence (a lot of it gone already) would be disastrously damaging.
We can only hope that the people around Trump curb any desire that he might have to completely follow through with agenda 25. Good governance relies on a strong, secure public service. Political appointees are fair game, but career public servants are vital to its functioning.
Trump is 80... which is EXACTLY the same age when Hitler took power in Berlin... He will be dictator for life - OMG!
"...when Hitler took power in Berlin" in 1932 he was 44.
I like more Cynthia's point of view here:
https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/rtf-invitation-the-post-kennedy-era
"The usurpers who ruled after the 1960s assassinations took American industry down. They dictated wars, austerity and censorship. That era is now ending, though they will try to sabotage and regroup.
How can we shape a development agenda to return America to progress and self-government? Why is international cooperation vital? What reckoning is needed with crimes against humanity, and crimes against our nation?"
Sure, vigilance is required, as always... but uprooting the ossified deep state is GOOD and long over due!
That was sarcasm... "Dictator for life" at 80 means nothing?
This is nothing new to Europe and yet: the stupid EU follow like sheep.