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.
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the clarification. I get that it is pretty difficult to find a social justice position in your country these days.......and I agree with you in the main.
In Canada, I'm discovering the degree to which left leaning liberals don't want to give up their assumptions that America has been the good guy in the past.......most don't know as much about the shenanigans of your government around the world...........and have accepted that Cuba is the bad government...Venezuela the crooked commies....etc. etc.
Language overstates it a bit..........but we're all of a sudden very angry and a bit scared by Trump............but the role of your government in the CIA capers....not just in Ukraine, but for sure in Ukraine.........this they don't want to entertain....BECAUSE..........it might dilute the hatred they've agreed to feel for Russia ....for decades.........while paying next to no independent attention to anything ressembling impartial history.
I just found out the extent to which our government went along with yours...following the disaster we engineered in Haiti....and the Canadian journalist who exposed the degree to which Trump is threatening a very willing American ally just now is something most Canadians are unaware of.
So yes, yes, yes...........what we don't know, don't want to know.......about covert American foreign policy under both of your parties.......is making it hard to wake up in many parts of the world just now.
Stay well........and thanks for the complications...clarifications. We're in a bit of a stew of a mess for sure.
Thanks, and I was just listing to Glen Greenwald covering this issue on Piers Morgan, and while his perspective is dead on accurate in regard to Russia/Ukraine an American political operative spewed nothing more then American propaganda, Russia hate, and mistrust, even with much of the truth being out there, and for years. Sometimes It makes you just want to scream.
I've been thinking since we exchanged posts. I'll be brief.
Trump is a warning...and a possibility. He's no Hitler, he's an intellectually/ethically challenged old white man.
The epitome of the problem we all face perhaps?
At any rate, if we defeat him, but do not defeat in ourselves the desire to be on the side of the angels against the evil demons of old superstition.......it won't matter.
We have to learn to work together...help each other...exclude no one...share with everyone..........once we do that, like by the Sea of Galilee...there will be enough. The miracle was that somehow Jesus got them to pull out the food they were hoarding....they call it The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes...it was.
No metaphysical incense waving required.
We have to heal the divide that's threatening all life on this planet. NOW. I don't think the planet will give us a second chance.
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.
Thnx fr the invite. Chris and I go wsy back, happy to support his journalism.
I've always admired his scholarship, if not his raison d'etre. I can understand it though given his upbringing. But aren't priests more than truthtellers? Once, during an emotional crisis, I confided in a friend, also a priest, and later apologised for dumping on her. "Well, I'm an ordained minister, after all." And I thought, "right, that's her job, after all," and I was suddenly grateful to priests for the first time in my life. Not for truthing me, but just for being there. What did Milton say? "They also serve, who only stand and wait."
Thanks fr the invite! Chris and I go way back but it doesn't hurt to throw him some coins now and then. Consider joining The Free Press. You'll have to wade through the rabid zionists but the debate isn't bad.
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.
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!)
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.
David, I've been thinking that maybe there are people who are serious about fighting for democracy who know enough to keep their heads down and their online profile slim to non-existence. Either they exist out there unknown, doing what they think is going to save them/us, or they don't. Everyday more and more people see the truth of what is planned for we, the wee people, and everyday, the chances that such people exist increases too. Every day.
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.
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."
Yup. We don't live in an either/or universe. William S. Burroughs pointed out that the downfall of western thought can be largely attributed to addiction to "either/or" thinking. Everything must be black or white, republican or democrat, this or that, with no wiggle room anywhere. When we are hooked on "either/or" thinking, we are suckers for all manner of manipulation.
This kind of model works for a while. Sooner or later, the marks wise up, the words become meaningless, and the ruling elites are left with brute force as their only remaining option.
I think the words "fascism" and "democratic" are getting worn out almost as much as the word "antisemitic."
All three of the above words are used as emotional triggers, so as to increasingly diminish their functional value in conveying information.
I'm not volunteering. Don't look to me for new words! It's above my pay grade. The old ones are dying from over-use, but it will take some talents I don't personally posess to arrive at a new lexicon.
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.
Do you really have to ask that after the Covid 19/forced vaccination campaign? As much as I love and respect Chris Hedges for his skepticism and brilliant analysis, he missed the boat on Covid, and that skews his perception enough that I have a healthy skepticism of his insights now. Yes, "they" have been killing innocent civilians by the millions - for years - and for the only 'conspiracy theory' needed to explain it: Corporate Profit. The psychopaths Hedges fears are already here, granted "personhood" by the courts they bought up long ago, given special rights and privileges by the elected representatives that are supposed to protect the people from them, and they are absolutely killing people at will.
I have been following Hedges since about 2012 and the story he has told through his books, talks and interviews have all lead us here, to the final prediction of Wolon and Hedges, the inversion of the inverted totalitarian dictatorship of the last forty years into a fascist dictatorship with an ageing demagogue at its head and a bevvy of rapacious, nasty, oligarchs to do his bidding. A bunch of dangerous, ignorant and lazy buffoons now rule America.
I never had any doubt that this would happen and I am fairly sure Chris, if he had been a betting man, would have put money on it. Four years ago when Trump lost to Biden I said to my wife that Trump will be back. And here he is, far more dangerousand far more organised than last time.
Some will claim this final chapter of the fall of the American republic marks the end of democracy, however democracy was dismantled by Nixon (stacking the Supreme court), then Rega (deregulation and Provatisation) and was finished off by Clinton when he abandoned the working class for Wall Street. It has been the dismantling of democracy and the death of the liberal class that has made Trump possible. By the year 2000 American democracy was pronounced dead as a consequence of neglect and attrition.
What this new chapter does mark is the end of is civil society and the rule of law on which it depends. Whereas the institutions of government were made up in the main ordinary middle class people who valued the "common good" they will be replaced a tiny cabal of far right water carriers for the cult of Trump who value the beliefs of the cult and vie for the admiration of Trump by being more radical than the man himself. If you think Hitler, then think Himler, Goebells and Heydrich all equally as evil as Hitler minself and probably worse. Then think of the Brownshirts and Gestapo.
Live and let live will be replaced by "Live and Let Die" where those who don't fit the straightjacket of the fascist regime will be marginalised, persecuted and ultimately murdered as enemies of the state. The institutions that offerred at least a minimal level of protection against the corporates and the oligarchs will be removed and replaced by insititutions that exclusively meet the needs of the capitalist class and which will provide all of the means by which this class can control and exploit the ordinary people and to neutralise anyone who pushes back.
How long will it last. Not long. Unlike the Roman Empire which declined over hundreds of years, global climate change and the grotesque internal contradictions of radical, unfettered capitalism, in combination with armed conflict over climate induced failures of states will cause fascist America it to implode on itself. I give it ten years at most. I find it hard to mount an argument that our global civilisation will survive it. Tainter in his work The Collapse ov Civilisations, would probably call it failure through "over-complexity," I call it failure due to greed and moral corruption, We understand what needs to be done, but the corrupt elites won't do it.
Perhaps my favourite passage of Hedge's that describes the final chapter of the republic is:
"When a tiny cabal seizes power—monarchist, communist, fascist, or corporate—it creates a mafia economy and a mafia state. Trump is not an anomaly. He is the grotesque visage of a collapsed democracy. Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and moral deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner’s novels. The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated, former slaveholding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family—which includes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulates with a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality—are fictional representations of the scum now elevated to the highest level of the federal government. They embody the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism."
Brilliant!
What better description of Trump's America could be written.
"These acts of defiance will be met with brutal state repression. But if we do not resist, we succumb morally and physically to the darkness. We become complicit in a radical evil. This, we must never allow."
Sorry, Chris, but battering down those you wish to be on your side with this unrelenting tsunami of negativity, just might not be the best way to accomplish even the limited, go-down-fighting-for-righteousness, outcome you seem to be hoping for. The negativitity actually has a much better chance of seeing that the resisting, and defiance, you mention is what will not happen, or with far fewer people doing the resisting than otherwise. I too want no false hopes, but this article is near to projecting completely hopelessness, which leads only to debilitating despair, thereby accomplishing nothing of value to anyone except those in power.
The Mr Fish cartoon ... I recognize the source. Harry Potter.
I saw an article saying that Trump was recruited years ago by Moscow. True or not, I don't see how he could be doing more than he is doing now to do Moscow's bidding.
A note of black humour: One of the schools succumbing to pressure to remove any book that make any white child uncomfortable has removed ... Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance.
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.
You are correct when you write "The seeds if destruction of the US, economically and socially, were sown well before Trump took office." and that Trump won't fix it and that the working class are in for a lot more squeezing.
The idea that the judicial systems independence must be maintained is also correct or may have been once; except that bird has flown. The reason the democrats (I use a lower case "d" on purpose) were able to bring those ridiculous charges against Trump is that the judicial system is already politicised and broken. Has been for years. The GFC was a crime yet not one person went to jail over it, the perpetrators were protected and rewarded.
The hope that Trump will be curtailed by the people around him is a forlorn one. Trump is surrounding himself with acolytes, with a very few exceptions. If any of them stand up to him he will fire them. Not much chance of an informed, independent and fearless public service in the Trump tent.
"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.
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the clarification. I get that it is pretty difficult to find a social justice position in your country these days.......and I agree with you in the main.
In Canada, I'm discovering the degree to which left leaning liberals don't want to give up their assumptions that America has been the good guy in the past.......most don't know as much about the shenanigans of your government around the world...........and have accepted that Cuba is the bad government...Venezuela the crooked commies....etc. etc.
Language overstates it a bit..........but we're all of a sudden very angry and a bit scared by Trump............but the role of your government in the CIA capers....not just in Ukraine, but for sure in Ukraine.........this they don't want to entertain....BECAUSE..........it might dilute the hatred they've agreed to feel for Russia ....for decades.........while paying next to no independent attention to anything ressembling impartial history.
I just found out the extent to which our government went along with yours...following the disaster we engineered in Haiti....and the Canadian journalist who exposed the degree to which Trump is threatening a very willing American ally just now is something most Canadians are unaware of.
So yes, yes, yes...........what we don't know, don't want to know.......about covert American foreign policy under both of your parties.......is making it hard to wake up in many parts of the world just now.
Stay well........and thanks for the complications...clarifications. We're in a bit of a stew of a mess for sure.
Thanks, and I was just listing to Glen Greenwald covering this issue on Piers Morgan, and while his perspective is dead on accurate in regard to Russia/Ukraine an American political operative spewed nothing more then American propaganda, Russia hate, and mistrust, even with much of the truth being out there, and for years. Sometimes It makes you just want to scream.
I've been thinking since we exchanged posts. I'll be brief.
Trump is a warning...and a possibility. He's no Hitler, he's an intellectually/ethically challenged old white man.
The epitome of the problem we all face perhaps?
At any rate, if we defeat him, but do not defeat in ourselves the desire to be on the side of the angels against the evil demons of old superstition.......it won't matter.
We have to learn to work together...help each other...exclude no one...share with everyone..........once we do that, like by the Sea of Galilee...there will be enough. The miracle was that somehow Jesus got them to pull out the food they were hoarding....they call it The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes...it was.
No metaphysical incense waving required.
We have to heal the divide that's threatening all life on this planet. NOW. I don't think the planet will give us a second chance.
Stay well....and active.
Thanks for this........my partner is out ice fishing now......but perhaps we'll listen to Glen...we much admire his work.....this evening.
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.
Thnx fr the invite. Chris and I go wsy back, happy to support his journalism.
I've always admired his scholarship, if not his raison d'etre. I can understand it though given his upbringing. But aren't priests more than truthtellers? Once, during an emotional crisis, I confided in a friend, also a priest, and later apologised for dumping on her. "Well, I'm an ordained minister, after all." And I thought, "right, that's her job, after all," and I was suddenly grateful to priests for the first time in my life. Not for truthing me, but just for being there. What did Milton say? "They also serve, who only stand and wait."
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Thanks fr the invite! Chris and I go way back but it doesn't hurt to throw him some coins now and then. Consider joining The Free Press. You'll have to wade through the rabid zionists but the debate isn't bad.
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.
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!)
Absolutely feel the same.
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.
David, I've been thinking that maybe there are people who are serious about fighting for democracy who know enough to keep their heads down and their online profile slim to non-existence. Either they exist out there unknown, doing what they think is going to save them/us, or they don't. Everyday more and more people see the truth of what is planned for we, the wee people, and everyday, the chances that such people exist increases too. Every day.
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.
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.
Yup. We don't live in an either/or universe. William S. Burroughs pointed out that the downfall of western thought can be largely attributed to addiction to "either/or" thinking. Everything must be black or white, republican or democrat, this or that, with no wiggle room anywhere. When we are hooked on "either/or" thinking, we are suckers for all manner of manipulation.
This kind of model works for a while. Sooner or later, the marks wise up, the words become meaningless, and the ruling elites are left with brute force as their only remaining option.
I think the words "fascism" and "democratic" are getting worn out almost as much as the word "antisemitic."
All three of the above words are used as emotional triggers, so as to increasingly diminish their functional value in conveying information.
I'm not volunteering. Don't look to me for new words! It's above my pay grade. The old ones are dying from over-use, but it will take some talents I don't personally posess to arrive at a new lexicon.
You make a very important point about language.
"I think the words "fascism" and "democratic" are getting worn out almost as much as the word "antisemitic."
Right on. The words cannot describe the horror.
And with the Gutenberg press dead, words are now merely memes.
We have always needed a new lexicon. and you are spot on.
Language matters.
When it is usurped, as it has been through weaponization, then the concepts blur.
Burroughs was so right on so many levels.
He of course is erased from history.
Young people, read Burroughs.
Never stop reading.
As Burroughs said, "Americans have a policemen in their brains."
So did Frank Zappa. He answered his song "Who are the Brain Police" by telling audiences, "YOU are the brain police."
I couldn't agree more.
Without knowing it many people embrace their own oppression, and this is the policeman in ones' brains.
Just finished this.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DGi0lxMJ7ml/
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?
Do you really have to ask that after the Covid 19/forced vaccination campaign? As much as I love and respect Chris Hedges for his skepticism and brilliant analysis, he missed the boat on Covid, and that skews his perception enough that I have a healthy skepticism of his insights now. Yes, "they" have been killing innocent civilians by the millions - for years - and for the only 'conspiracy theory' needed to explain it: Corporate Profit. The psychopaths Hedges fears are already here, granted "personhood" by the courts they bought up long ago, given special rights and privileges by the elected representatives that are supposed to protect the people from them, and they are absolutely killing people at will.
Not interested in Covid at all.
Not yet!
I have been following Hedges since about 2012 and the story he has told through his books, talks and interviews have all lead us here, to the final prediction of Wolon and Hedges, the inversion of the inverted totalitarian dictatorship of the last forty years into a fascist dictatorship with an ageing demagogue at its head and a bevvy of rapacious, nasty, oligarchs to do his bidding. A bunch of dangerous, ignorant and lazy buffoons now rule America.
I never had any doubt that this would happen and I am fairly sure Chris, if he had been a betting man, would have put money on it. Four years ago when Trump lost to Biden I said to my wife that Trump will be back. And here he is, far more dangerousand far more organised than last time.
Some will claim this final chapter of the fall of the American republic marks the end of democracy, however democracy was dismantled by Nixon (stacking the Supreme court), then Rega (deregulation and Provatisation) and was finished off by Clinton when he abandoned the working class for Wall Street. It has been the dismantling of democracy and the death of the liberal class that has made Trump possible. By the year 2000 American democracy was pronounced dead as a consequence of neglect and attrition.
What this new chapter does mark is the end of is civil society and the rule of law on which it depends. Whereas the institutions of government were made up in the main ordinary middle class people who valued the "common good" they will be replaced a tiny cabal of far right water carriers for the cult of Trump who value the beliefs of the cult and vie for the admiration of Trump by being more radical than the man himself. If you think Hitler, then think Himler, Goebells and Heydrich all equally as evil as Hitler minself and probably worse. Then think of the Brownshirts and Gestapo.
Live and let live will be replaced by "Live and Let Die" where those who don't fit the straightjacket of the fascist regime will be marginalised, persecuted and ultimately murdered as enemies of the state. The institutions that offerred at least a minimal level of protection against the corporates and the oligarchs will be removed and replaced by insititutions that exclusively meet the needs of the capitalist class and which will provide all of the means by which this class can control and exploit the ordinary people and to neutralise anyone who pushes back.
How long will it last. Not long. Unlike the Roman Empire which declined over hundreds of years, global climate change and the grotesque internal contradictions of radical, unfettered capitalism, in combination with armed conflict over climate induced failures of states will cause fascist America it to implode on itself. I give it ten years at most. I find it hard to mount an argument that our global civilisation will survive it. Tainter in his work The Collapse ov Civilisations, would probably call it failure through "over-complexity," I call it failure due to greed and moral corruption, We understand what needs to be done, but the corrupt elites won't do it.
Perhaps my favourite passage of Hedge's that describes the final chapter of the republic is:
"When a tiny cabal seizes power—monarchist, communist, fascist, or corporate—it creates a mafia economy and a mafia state. Trump is not an anomaly. He is the grotesque visage of a collapsed democracy. Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and moral deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner’s novels. The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated, former slaveholding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family—which includes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulates with a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality—are fictional representations of the scum now elevated to the highest level of the federal government. They embody the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism."
Brilliant!
What better description of Trump's America could be written.
"These acts of defiance will be met with brutal state repression. But if we do not resist, we succumb morally and physically to the darkness. We become complicit in a radical evil. This, we must never allow."
Sorry, Chris, but battering down those you wish to be on your side with this unrelenting tsunami of negativity, just might not be the best way to accomplish even the limited, go-down-fighting-for-righteousness, outcome you seem to be hoping for. The negativitity actually has a much better chance of seeing that the resisting, and defiance, you mention is what will not happen, or with far fewer people doing the resisting than otherwise. I too want no false hopes, but this article is near to projecting completely hopelessness, which leads only to debilitating despair, thereby accomplishing nothing of value to anyone except those in power.
For all HISTORY, the Name that will be attached to this current and coming decade will forever be named This Insane TRUMP SECOND DEPRESSION!!!!
This SECOND GREAT TRUMP DEPRESSION!
The Mr Fish cartoon ... I recognize the source. Harry Potter.
I saw an article saying that Trump was recruited years ago by Moscow. True or not, I don't see how he could be doing more than he is doing now to do Moscow's bidding.
A note of black humour: One of the schools succumbing to pressure to remove any book that make any white child uncomfortable has removed ... Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance.
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.
You are correct when you write "The seeds if destruction of the US, economically and socially, were sown well before Trump took office." and that Trump won't fix it and that the working class are in for a lot more squeezing.
The idea that the judicial systems independence must be maintained is also correct or may have been once; except that bird has flown. The reason the democrats (I use a lower case "d" on purpose) were able to bring those ridiculous charges against Trump is that the judicial system is already politicised and broken. Has been for years. The GFC was a crime yet not one person went to jail over it, the perpetrators were protected and rewarded.
The hope that Trump will be curtailed by the people around him is a forlorn one. Trump is surrounding himself with acolytes, with a very few exceptions. If any of them stand up to him he will fire them. Not much chance of an informed, independent and fearless public service in the Trump tent.
This is nothing new to Europe and yet: the stupid EU follow like sheep.
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?