There are no answers, only ad hoc expedients which at best prove temporary. After some 5,000 years of recorded human history, we can find examples of every type of human society that proves successful for a time, and ultimately all of them fail, whether as a result of external enemies who are stronger and more ruthless, or internal corruption and contradiction.
This is because power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats, and sociopaths will corrupt any system, because sociopaths are precisely the humans who will do whatever it takes to get power. However, humans who see every interaction as a zero-sum no-holds-barred winner-take-all game rarely build anything that lasts for long, because the sociopath is loyal to nothing other than himself, he will either betray or be betrayed by another sociopath. Note how european dynasties rarely lasted for long.
Even turning one's back on power doesn't work. That power is still there, and even if you do not use it, others will. And you may not like what they do with that power.
At the same time, power continually increases with humans' technical knowledge. Feats that would have been too loopy for science fiction are now unremarkable. This is why, with all due respect to MLK, the arc of history does not bend towards justice. It bends towards power.
Well, as challenging a time as this is, I think that's up to us. There are a lot of people working to shift how our economy functions, and if enough of us learn and participate in that transformation, we might just find extraordinary results. We can learn from the past, but we shouldn't let it determine our future. In this 21st century, that is still up to us, imo.
I keep coming back to the word uttered by Major Clipton, as he watched the Kwai bridge explode - ‘Madness.’
We are in a dark place; hard to find reason for any optimism at this point. Will take a complete awareness overhaul of our history to begin the necessary course correction.
Well, we can parse madness and rational self-interest like Clinton did with sexual relations, but I think we end up in the same dystopian conclusion, logical or fallacious.
Well-written summary, thanks. As you may recall, you and I are in basic alignment on this. I have one quibble, though: I think the Iron Law of Oligarchy can, and has, accumulated *either* (or both) the psycho/sociopaths and the "normal" people, but in any case always the more capable of either, by nature and/or nurture. That said, naturally the psycho/sociopaths eventually take over, until a revolution churns things up again. No matter what, the greater portion of "powerless" never actually win. (And especially as technology reaches its soon-coming watershed, we can probably soon kiss all revolutions goodbye.) IOW, The Iron Law of Oligarchy happens even without control by psycho/sociopaths. Were the US founding fathers -- who held sway not just for a war, but for a half-century (c.1775-c.1825) -- really overloaded with psycho/sociopaths? How about mid-20th-century US? Or, for what reasons are one or both of those cases not representative?
To make any kind of "steady state" of the full range of peoples, much less the powerless, is nearly an oxymoron. Though I'm a pre-Marx Leftist (i.e. prioritize specifically flattening of hierarchy, accepting the unavoidable devils in details), I am convinced Marx and his true-religion descendants *leadership* ("vanguards") generally fall into one of two categories: conmen/women (psycho/sociopaths) looking for, well... marks, to create intra-national army fodder for holy wars; and those (normal people) in rose-colored-glasses denial of critical faults in human nature on the nation/state level.
Let us do more, much more than "hope...these acts of resistance...prevail." We need to join them, support them. Free Palestine! (And thus, free ourselves and each other)
The answer is to take all money out of our political system. Make ALL campaign contributions illegal, including money from the candidate. Provide equal debates and campaign messages to the people equally for all candidates using government funded space in both video media and print. Change the driver of our democracy from money to ideas from the people, as our founding fathers intended. Zionists now control our government and elections using money. Getting rid of the money in politics gets rid of Zionist control.
Netanyahu's government does have an outsized level of influence over Congress and the Presidency (both Democrats and Republicans), but even more insidious is powerful industry lobbyists like The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission. We live in a time of taxation without representation--we vote, but our votes are increasingly controlled by gerrymandering, and after we elect, we're ignored in favor of big corporate donors. Our Congress represents their donors, not us. So what is their incentive to pass laws preventing all money from being used in political campaigns? I agree--this would work. Maybe start on the local level--I think that's the only way to effect any change in these times. Push for town and state offices to entirely eliminate money-funded campaigns. All candidates would have the same amount of public funds to spend (a small amount); no private money or personal wealth could be used at all.
JFK, for all that he was just another Capitalist tool, said it: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable". Of course, there is no "peaceful revolution". Capitalism is fascism in its last stage. Even meliorist efforts are denied. There can never be reform. It must be overthrown. Whatever comes of the violence is justified by the tyranny of Capitalism. Will there be chaos? Certainly. Would you rather have eternal slavery and the wholesale destruction of all life?
What do you think the data centers are for? Why do you think that the administration has taken such pains to cozy up to the Palantirs and Oracles of the world?
Found on internet:
"The bet is that whoever gets to a certain level of AI and with the infrastructure to run it will lock in global dominance in perpetuity, by being able to do absolute surveillance and immediate suppression of all dissent and resistance. And whoever gets there first will be the master of the world forever, because there will be no way to break the chains.
This is also why they are seriously going for deep underground data centers and data centers in space. The only way to get rid of the data centers in space is with ASAT weapons, but ASAT weapons pretty much require a state actor to put together. But once Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have been destroyed and subjugated (which is part of the plan, obviously), there will be no such independent actor. No rag-tag rebels will be able to amass the resources to deorbit the data centers in space, which will lock in the perpetual dominance of whoever controls them. Putting them deep underground is also a level of protection above that provided by the current practices of having them on the surface. I am not quite sure how cooling will work in either case though, but the intent is clear."
Intent is one thing; performance is another. The Empire will never subjugate Russia, China, and Iran, which are far ahead of it in tech development. The Empire is a sorry, sclerotic, used up Capitalist relic that has run its ugly course. It will crash and die, in financial meltdown or war, and soon.
This is Musk's wet dream. I think and hope it won't be quite this easy to subjugate all of us. They dream of developing bots that can do everything us prols do--plant & harvest crops, feed and milk the cows . . .or grow food in labs--so they can just let all us seditious insects die of starvation. Unfortunately in this process of bot development they are only accelerating the death of the Earth.
This is a great sci fi plot, but I'm hoping it's less real than it feels right now. The reason I think you're more on target than others are giving you credit for is that Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg et al. are ignorant & power-corrupted humans who believe they are gods, and they seem to share the same crazy megalomaniacal dreams. No one is stopping Musk from shooting satellite after satellite into space, creating a giant garbage heap to orbit the dying Earth.
As much as I agree with much of this article, and am very concerned about the direction our country has taken, I'm not going to share it because it is too hopeless. We need people who have a vision for the future and who can share innovative ways to get there. These people exist and they are all across the U.S. and around the world. As challenging a time as this is, I believe that the future is still up to us. There are a lot of people working to shift how our economy functions, and if enough of us learn and participate in that transformation, we might just find extraordinary results. The energy we bring to this challenge is important. We can learn from the past, but we shouldn't let it determine our future. In this 21st century, that is still up to us, imo.
As much as I would prefer to lean into your position, the record and apparent course of history are obviously more as Hedges describes. Every time some progress is achieved, the oligarchs manipulate a reaction; consider Jim Crow, McCarthyism, Reagan and now Trump II. Power exists, corrupts, and will not go gently. Those good visionary people you praise surely exist, but power doesn't care about them, dismisses them, and will crush them unless they organize and defend themselves assiduously. Power only bows to power.
If there is to be any hope, we need to think differently than we have in the past. We need to think with both mind and heart, and connect with others more effectively than we have in the past. It's easy to lie down and accept our 'fate' based on the past. Doing things in a way that hasn't been done before is not easy, but is necessary if we are going to survive as a species. I chose not to have children because I didn't like the way the world worked. But I know many young people who give me hope.
It's not so much about resistance as about transformation. Pete Seeger said that, if there's a human race 100 years from now, it will be because of all the little things done by millions of people every day. We have been stuck in an extractive economy and mindset for a few hundred years. Not that it is easy to change that, but people are only just starting to learn about different ways our economy might function that would actually value people and the natural systems that support our lives.
Big Capital was running scared when COVID-19 shut it all down.
The shutdown had the powerful effect of a general strike, but there were no workers to blame or cudgel to death, only a natural force. They bought us off with unemployment benefits (which my state, at least, is trying to claw back by claiming 'fraud' and threatening prosecution).
For this reason--having experienced out very frightening the shutdown was to corporations--I think our only hope is a massive union movement, powerful enough to declare a general strike. That is why Amazon, Starbucks, Hachette's and so many other big corporations fight worker organizing tooth and nail. Labor organizing in this country has a long history of bloodshed required for any gains, which we are NOT taught in public or private schools, for a reason. If we all knew what it had taken our grandparents and great-grandparents & great-greats to get a living wage, an eight-hour day [where has THAT gone], some semblance of safety in the workplace, we might be more prepared to fight tooth and nail ourselves and to stand together instead of nurturing racist hate. We would grow up knowing what it would take. The U.S. labor force was bought off, got comfortable, and let our most powerful weapon--mutual aid embodied in the unions--wither away and be replaced by the myth of the American Dream instead.
The Smith Act--which made attempting to overthrow the U.S. Government by use of force or violence, should have been used to prosecute Donald Trump for January 6. It was only ever used successfully against Lefties. To this day both Democrats and Republicans see nothing wrong with imposing crippling sanctions on Socialist governments or assassinating Socialist leaders, while sending billions in aid to repressive authoritarian genocidal leaders, many of whom were installed via the efforts of the CIA and/or Southern Command or some other arm of the U.S. military. If Socialism is so doomed to failure because it is an inferior system, why is there a need to try to cripple nations like Cuba and Venezuela? Why try to foment rebellion by making it impossible to buy fuel, food, and medicine? The media--including NPR--just buy into this worldview without questioning it. We are fed this worldview with mother's milk. And this is another reason we don't have widespread rebellion in the U.S.; why it takes the form of demagoguery and white supremacy instead of worker solidarity--because our cultural institutions allowed not just labor history & Marxist thought to be expunged from our educations, but actively promoted a worldview that these truths are a given:
--The United States is the Land of the Free, and a force for Good in the world (like Pinochet),
--Socialist governments are evil and of course we should do everything we can to topple them
--Never mind about genocide when it's happening in a capitalist nation--all the little children and grandparents and journalists and emergency medical personnel they killed were terrorists.
The extinction of the human race will be a positive outcome for the earth since humans through various means such as war, the release of carbon and other substances are destroying the earth and its innocent creatures. When the human race disappears not only will the earth and its creatures be able to better prosper, but in the universe it will not even be noticed, everything will go on with no disruption. The human race has a case of hubris it really believes it is special, when in fact it is practically nothing in terms of the entire universe. If we understood this we would better take care of our home and the innocent creatures that live with us.
We aren’t on the cusp of fascism. We have arrived.
“They orchestrate severe state and vigilante violence. They install dictators and fascists who abolish civil liberties, carry out mass arrests and criminalize even the most tepid forms of dissent.”
We have seen this on full display in the UK, Germany, and the US already.
We are, broadly speaking, a very pathetic species. We seem born to find ways to war with one another, covet material things, and destroy what gives us life. Chris is right not to be optimistic. I find it harder and harder to be. Especially when I encounter those who mimic the sociopathic and blindly ignorant actions of Felon Trump and so many others. We are also a very gullible species, so easily led by con men and shysters of all types; smooth-talking preachers to charming used car salesman-types. Organized religions have only helped fan the flames of righteous intent and holy wars, in the name of our unique "Gods". How very sad. We slaughtered the natives who dared resist our "Christianizing them". Manifest Destiny itself was a crime on humanity by humanity, so to speak. I don't know what to feel minimally hopeful about. Our political parties have disintegrated into two parts of the same corrupt system, well beyond any salvaging. Revolution is indeed, in some forms, our only hope. Meanwhile, let us do what each of us can to resist. Go down fighting is better than being mowed down while running away. Thank you Chris for always speaking in the raw, bold colors of truth which always tells us what's really going on.
Despite all forms of resistance, it may be that addiction to power and luxury ultimately ends the human experiment. Then what? Maybe our "specialness" turns out not to be so special, while other species we now look down on prevail. Even so, to quote Chris: I fight fascism not because I think I can win, but because it's fascism.
The human brain has been engaged with an internal cerebral civil war by natural selection for millenia. We have the intelligence to probe nature from the subatomic to the cosmos. We have torn the physical world apart and then fashion things to our suiting. Within short order we promptly disgard the remains.
We do not appear to be remotely close to restraining ourselves from our plundering inclinations that we find so intoxicating. Regardless of the consequences, economic growth is the engine of industrial civilization.
What could possibly go wrong?
Human exceptionalism.. .the fairy tale that we can ignore limits. Natural laws are dismissed in economics. By some miracle we can assume the universe will understand.
It doesn't.
We have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet. Overshoot is our Zietgeist.
Technology keeps the reality out of view.
Ecologist William Rees was interviewed by Nate Hagens on The Great Simplification which is but one of numerous conversations available.
What “we” is that? I take no responsibility for the behavior of our Kings and Tyrants. That has about as much sense as blaming the Tudor peasants for removing Ann Boleyn’s head.
I strongly disagree with the binary choice. Historically, movements such as the Nonpartisan league have succeeded and took over the election machinery to throw out all the capitalist tools and install actual Laborist representatives who made a huge difference. True, the response to the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota was that the parasitic financiers freaked out and poured infinite nationwide money and agents into little North Dakota to sow internal division and fake issues that finally broke the movement, the same playbook that they have used to keep working people's movements down ever since. But the fact is that if you can assemble enough focused energy to do a revolution, then you can instead use the tools our founders gave us to peacefully install a true Laborist government and fundamentally transform our economy. I have written about this strategy at length https://laboristmovement.substack.com/p/laborismhttps://laboristmovement.substack.com/p/getting-there-laborist-organizinghttps://github.com/Laborism/Manifesto/blob/9b72683a2e8232c9e83682069848a8ffe6f336b1/Laborist%20manifesto.pdf , but here suffice it to say that that the strategy for seizing power is pretty simple. The hard part is getting people to get off their behinds, talk to each other, and organize.
I do have faith that America will return to the New Deal era. The capitalist system we had at the time of the robber barons was about the same than we have today. Yes, today the capitalists have more technology to supress dissent and they are well organized and live in a broader connected network of capitalists. But, still they would not be able to survive if there were nobody to exploit nor to sell their products. Hey, the people through their socialist, communist and labor unions were able to unite and bring about the New Deal, so we today can do the same.
And THEN there are mind control weapons. One more thing to consider, as Chris offers no solution (as there is none). Mind Control Weapons are used and tested by the CIA. If Chris only knew what I know as I'm a Targeted Victim. I have 2000+ tweets of my 2 year torture on X. I guess because I am not a CIA fuck with a voice on 60 minutes, my experience gets little validity. But the data is out there. You all are fucked. These weapons are used while you sleep and remove FREE WILL. That is the least of what they do. BUT This is what will end your free will. You could act to stop it by asking serious questions. But you will not do that. Actually .. unfortunately .. Nuclear War is the only thing that will free us - if their enemies (my friends) can take out all of out mind control and torture satellites in space. I call for that! Russia if you are listening. The CIA likes to broadcast that Putin sleeps in a protected bunker - and he does. To protect himself from Microwave Torture and Microwave Poisoning. Not bombs. Whistleblowers have related to Targeted Justice members that 9 of Putins Top Generals have been compromised and relieved of duty because they did not live in protected bunkers. The CIA has started every war and strife in my 70 year lifetime, and they will end life as we know it very soon as we fight about other lesser things. The Senate Intelligence community is aware this is happening and they could stop it, but there are no Frank Church's to ask questions. MK-ULTRA was never stopped. THE CIA has thought about almost NOTHING else except creative ways to point microwaves at human beings brains. 75 years of Tin Hat jokes are an easy barometer in this timeline. Whos cares if you NEVER heard of this. I NEVER hear the press mentioning anything the CIA does with their billions. Please, Chris, cover this topic.
"I guess because I am not a CIA fuck with a voice on 60 minutes, my experience gets little validity. But the data is out there." Have you told your story to independent media like Democracynow.org or the Intercept, etc?
There are no answers, only ad hoc expedients which at best prove temporary. After some 5,000 years of recorded human history, we can find examples of every type of human society that proves successful for a time, and ultimately all of them fail, whether as a result of external enemies who are stronger and more ruthless, or internal corruption and contradiction.
This is because power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats, and sociopaths will corrupt any system, because sociopaths are precisely the humans who will do whatever it takes to get power. However, humans who see every interaction as a zero-sum no-holds-barred winner-take-all game rarely build anything that lasts for long, because the sociopath is loyal to nothing other than himself, he will either betray or be betrayed by another sociopath. Note how european dynasties rarely lasted for long.
Even turning one's back on power doesn't work. That power is still there, and even if you do not use it, others will. And you may not like what they do with that power.
At the same time, power continually increases with humans' technical knowledge. Feats that would have been too loopy for science fiction are now unremarkable. This is why, with all due respect to MLK, the arc of history does not bend towards justice. It bends towards power.
Learn well The Iron Law Of Oligarchy.
Well, as challenging a time as this is, I think that's up to us. There are a lot of people working to shift how our economy functions, and if enough of us learn and participate in that transformation, we might just find extraordinary results. We can learn from the past, but we shouldn't let it determine our future. In this 21st century, that is still up to us, imo.
I keep coming back to the word uttered by Major Clipton, as he watched the Kwai bridge explode - ‘Madness.’
We are in a dark place; hard to find reason for any optimism at this point. Will take a complete awareness overhaul of our history to begin the necessary course correction.
To that end, Aaron and Bryce weigh in here: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab69TVss16I&t=4466s
Not madness at all, just rational hedonistic self-interest taken to its logical conclusion.
Well, we can parse madness and rational self-interest like Clinton did with sexual relations, but I think we end up in the same dystopian conclusion, logical or fallacious.
No argument from me.
Well-written summary, thanks. As you may recall, you and I are in basic alignment on this. I have one quibble, though: I think the Iron Law of Oligarchy can, and has, accumulated *either* (or both) the psycho/sociopaths and the "normal" people, but in any case always the more capable of either, by nature and/or nurture. That said, naturally the psycho/sociopaths eventually take over, until a revolution churns things up again. No matter what, the greater portion of "powerless" never actually win. (And especially as technology reaches its soon-coming watershed, we can probably soon kiss all revolutions goodbye.) IOW, The Iron Law of Oligarchy happens even without control by psycho/sociopaths. Were the US founding fathers -- who held sway not just for a war, but for a half-century (c.1775-c.1825) -- really overloaded with psycho/sociopaths? How about mid-20th-century US? Or, for what reasons are one or both of those cases not representative?
To make any kind of "steady state" of the full range of peoples, much less the powerless, is nearly an oxymoron. Though I'm a pre-Marx Leftist (i.e. prioritize specifically flattening of hierarchy, accepting the unavoidable devils in details), I am convinced Marx and his true-religion descendants *leadership* ("vanguards") generally fall into one of two categories: conmen/women (psycho/sociopaths) looking for, well... marks, to create intra-national army fodder for holy wars; and those (normal people) in rose-colored-glasses denial of critical faults in human nature on the nation/state level.
Let us do more, much more than "hope...these acts of resistance...prevail." We need to join them, support them. Free Palestine! (And thus, free ourselves and each other)
The answer is to take all money out of our political system. Make ALL campaign contributions illegal, including money from the candidate. Provide equal debates and campaign messages to the people equally for all candidates using government funded space in both video media and print. Change the driver of our democracy from money to ideas from the people, as our founding fathers intended. Zionists now control our government and elections using money. Getting rid of the money in politics gets rid of Zionist control.
Alayna
Netanyahu's government does have an outsized level of influence over Congress and the Presidency (both Democrats and Republicans), but even more insidious is powerful industry lobbyists like The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission. We live in a time of taxation without representation--we vote, but our votes are increasingly controlled by gerrymandering, and after we elect, we're ignored in favor of big corporate donors. Our Congress represents their donors, not us. So what is their incentive to pass laws preventing all money from being used in political campaigns? I agree--this would work. Maybe start on the local level--I think that's the only way to effect any change in these times. Push for town and state offices to entirely eliminate money-funded campaigns. All candidates would have the same amount of public funds to spend (a small amount); no private money or personal wealth could be used at all.
JFK, for all that he was just another Capitalist tool, said it: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable". Of course, there is no "peaceful revolution". Capitalism is fascism in its last stage. Even meliorist efforts are denied. There can never be reform. It must be overthrown. Whatever comes of the violence is justified by the tyranny of Capitalism. Will there be chaos? Certainly. Would you rather have eternal slavery and the wholesale destruction of all life?
What do you think the data centers are for? Why do you think that the administration has taken such pains to cozy up to the Palantirs and Oracles of the world?
Found on internet:
"The bet is that whoever gets to a certain level of AI and with the infrastructure to run it will lock in global dominance in perpetuity, by being able to do absolute surveillance and immediate suppression of all dissent and resistance. And whoever gets there first will be the master of the world forever, because there will be no way to break the chains.
This is also why they are seriously going for deep underground data centers and data centers in space. The only way to get rid of the data centers in space is with ASAT weapons, but ASAT weapons pretty much require a state actor to put together. But once Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have been destroyed and subjugated (which is part of the plan, obviously), there will be no such independent actor. No rag-tag rebels will be able to amass the resources to deorbit the data centers in space, which will lock in the perpetual dominance of whoever controls them. Putting them deep underground is also a level of protection above that provided by the current practices of having them on the surface. I am not quite sure how cooling will work in either case though, but the intent is clear."
Intent is one thing; performance is another. The Empire will never subjugate Russia, China, and Iran, which are far ahead of it in tech development. The Empire is a sorry, sclerotic, used up Capitalist relic that has run its ugly course. It will crash and die, in financial meltdown or war, and soon.
Wishful thinking. Russia is in a sorry state and simply seeks to be allowed to joint he West, not to make war on it.
China simply wants to sell things and make money.
You've had far too much Empire Koolaid, Feral One. Try to get some sense of what's real before selling the old dead raps.
You give an answer so vague as to be unfalsifiable.
This is Musk's wet dream. I think and hope it won't be quite this easy to subjugate all of us. They dream of developing bots that can do everything us prols do--plant & harvest crops, feed and milk the cows . . .or grow food in labs--so they can just let all us seditious insects die of starvation. Unfortunately in this process of bot development they are only accelerating the death of the Earth.
This is a great sci fi plot, but I'm hoping it's less real than it feels right now. The reason I think you're more on target than others are giving you credit for is that Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg et al. are ignorant & power-corrupted humans who believe they are gods, and they seem to share the same crazy megalomaniacal dreams. No one is stopping Musk from shooting satellite after satellite into space, creating a giant garbage heap to orbit the dying Earth.
As much as I agree with much of this article, and am very concerned about the direction our country has taken, I'm not going to share it because it is too hopeless. We need people who have a vision for the future and who can share innovative ways to get there. These people exist and they are all across the U.S. and around the world. As challenging a time as this is, I believe that the future is still up to us. There are a lot of people working to shift how our economy functions, and if enough of us learn and participate in that transformation, we might just find extraordinary results. The energy we bring to this challenge is important. We can learn from the past, but we shouldn't let it determine our future. In this 21st century, that is still up to us, imo.
As much as I would prefer to lean into your position, the record and apparent course of history are obviously more as Hedges describes. Every time some progress is achieved, the oligarchs manipulate a reaction; consider Jim Crow, McCarthyism, Reagan and now Trump II. Power exists, corrupts, and will not go gently. Those good visionary people you praise surely exist, but power doesn't care about them, dismisses them, and will crush them unless they organize and defend themselves assiduously. Power only bows to power.
If there is to be any hope, we need to think differently than we have in the past. We need to think with both mind and heart, and connect with others more effectively than we have in the past. It's easy to lie down and accept our 'fate' based on the past. Doing things in a way that hasn't been done before is not easy, but is necessary if we are going to survive as a species. I chose not to have children because I didn't like the way the world worked. But I know many young people who give me hope.
And what is your plan for an effective peaceful resistance?
It's not so much about resistance as about transformation. Pete Seeger said that, if there's a human race 100 years from now, it will be because of all the little things done by millions of people every day. We have been stuck in an extractive economy and mindset for a few hundred years. Not that it is easy to change that, but people are only just starting to learn about different ways our economy might function that would actually value people and the natural systems that support our lives.
Who constitutes your “we”?
I can see the writing on the wall.
Why kid ourselves?
Big Capital was running scared when COVID-19 shut it all down.
The shutdown had the powerful effect of a general strike, but there were no workers to blame or cudgel to death, only a natural force. They bought us off with unemployment benefits (which my state, at least, is trying to claw back by claiming 'fraud' and threatening prosecution).
For this reason--having experienced out very frightening the shutdown was to corporations--I think our only hope is a massive union movement, powerful enough to declare a general strike. That is why Amazon, Starbucks, Hachette's and so many other big corporations fight worker organizing tooth and nail. Labor organizing in this country has a long history of bloodshed required for any gains, which we are NOT taught in public or private schools, for a reason. If we all knew what it had taken our grandparents and great-grandparents & great-greats to get a living wage, an eight-hour day [where has THAT gone], some semblance of safety in the workplace, we might be more prepared to fight tooth and nail ourselves and to stand together instead of nurturing racist hate. We would grow up knowing what it would take. The U.S. labor force was bought off, got comfortable, and let our most powerful weapon--mutual aid embodied in the unions--wither away and be replaced by the myth of the American Dream instead.
The Smith Act--which made attempting to overthrow the U.S. Government by use of force or violence, should have been used to prosecute Donald Trump for January 6. It was only ever used successfully against Lefties. To this day both Democrats and Republicans see nothing wrong with imposing crippling sanctions on Socialist governments or assassinating Socialist leaders, while sending billions in aid to repressive authoritarian genocidal leaders, many of whom were installed via the efforts of the CIA and/or Southern Command or some other arm of the U.S. military. If Socialism is so doomed to failure because it is an inferior system, why is there a need to try to cripple nations like Cuba and Venezuela? Why try to foment rebellion by making it impossible to buy fuel, food, and medicine? The media--including NPR--just buy into this worldview without questioning it. We are fed this worldview with mother's milk. And this is another reason we don't have widespread rebellion in the U.S.; why it takes the form of demagoguery and white supremacy instead of worker solidarity--because our cultural institutions allowed not just labor history & Marxist thought to be expunged from our educations, but actively promoted a worldview that these truths are a given:
--The United States is the Land of the Free, and a force for Good in the world (like Pinochet),
--Socialist governments are evil and of course we should do everything we can to topple them
--Never mind about genocide when it's happening in a capitalist nation--all the little children and grandparents and journalists and emergency medical personnel they killed were terrorists.
Oops--"The Smith Act--which made attempting to overthrow the U.S. Government by use of force or violence ILLEGAL, ..."
The extinction of the human race will be a positive outcome for the earth since humans through various means such as war, the release of carbon and other substances are destroying the earth and its innocent creatures. When the human race disappears not only will the earth and its creatures be able to better prosper, but in the universe it will not even be noticed, everything will go on with no disruption. The human race has a case of hubris it really believes it is special, when in fact it is practically nothing in terms of the entire universe. If we understood this we would better take care of our home and the innocent creatures that live with us.
I have also been looking, but haven’t been successful in finding God.
We aren’t on the cusp of fascism. We have arrived.
“They orchestrate severe state and vigilante violence. They install dictators and fascists who abolish civil liberties, carry out mass arrests and criminalize even the most tepid forms of dissent.”
We have seen this on full display in the UK, Germany, and the US already.
Agreed - Fascism is here - on fool display.
We are, broadly speaking, a very pathetic species. We seem born to find ways to war with one another, covet material things, and destroy what gives us life. Chris is right not to be optimistic. I find it harder and harder to be. Especially when I encounter those who mimic the sociopathic and blindly ignorant actions of Felon Trump and so many others. We are also a very gullible species, so easily led by con men and shysters of all types; smooth-talking preachers to charming used car salesman-types. Organized religions have only helped fan the flames of righteous intent and holy wars, in the name of our unique "Gods". How very sad. We slaughtered the natives who dared resist our "Christianizing them". Manifest Destiny itself was a crime on humanity by humanity, so to speak. I don't know what to feel minimally hopeful about. Our political parties have disintegrated into two parts of the same corrupt system, well beyond any salvaging. Revolution is indeed, in some forms, our only hope. Meanwhile, let us do what each of us can to resist. Go down fighting is better than being mowed down while running away. Thank you Chris for always speaking in the raw, bold colors of truth which always tells us what's really going on.
Despite all forms of resistance, it may be that addiction to power and luxury ultimately ends the human experiment. Then what? Maybe our "specialness" turns out not to be so special, while other species we now look down on prevail. Even so, to quote Chris: I fight fascism not because I think I can win, but because it's fascism.
The human brain has been engaged with an internal cerebral civil war by natural selection for millenia. We have the intelligence to probe nature from the subatomic to the cosmos. We have torn the physical world apart and then fashion things to our suiting. Within short order we promptly disgard the remains.
We do not appear to be remotely close to restraining ourselves from our plundering inclinations that we find so intoxicating. Regardless of the consequences, economic growth is the engine of industrial civilization.
What could possibly go wrong?
Human exceptionalism.. .the fairy tale that we can ignore limits. Natural laws are dismissed in economics. By some miracle we can assume the universe will understand.
It doesn't.
We have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet. Overshoot is our Zietgeist.
Technology keeps the reality out of view.
Ecologist William Rees was interviewed by Nate Hagens on The Great Simplification which is but one of numerous conversations available.
What “we” is that? I take no responsibility for the behavior of our Kings and Tyrants. That has about as much sense as blaming the Tudor peasants for removing Ann Boleyn’s head.
"We", is the human species as a net result.
I strongly disagree with the binary choice. Historically, movements such as the Nonpartisan league have succeeded and took over the election machinery to throw out all the capitalist tools and install actual Laborist representatives who made a huge difference. True, the response to the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota was that the parasitic financiers freaked out and poured infinite nationwide money and agents into little North Dakota to sow internal division and fake issues that finally broke the movement, the same playbook that they have used to keep working people's movements down ever since. But the fact is that if you can assemble enough focused energy to do a revolution, then you can instead use the tools our founders gave us to peacefully install a true Laborist government and fundamentally transform our economy. I have written about this strategy at length https://laboristmovement.substack.com/p/laborismhttps://laboristmovement.substack.com/p/getting-there-laborist-organizinghttps://github.com/Laborism/Manifesto/blob/9b72683a2e8232c9e83682069848a8ffe6f336b1/Laborist%20manifesto.pdf , but here suffice it to say that that the strategy for seizing power is pretty simple. The hard part is getting people to get off their behinds, talk to each other, and organize.
I do have faith that America will return to the New Deal era. The capitalist system we had at the time of the robber barons was about the same than we have today. Yes, today the capitalists have more technology to supress dissent and they are well organized and live in a broader connected network of capitalists. But, still they would not be able to survive if there were nobody to exploit nor to sell their products. Hey, the people through their socialist, communist and labor unions were able to unite and bring about the New Deal, so we today can do the same.
And THEN there are mind control weapons. One more thing to consider, as Chris offers no solution (as there is none). Mind Control Weapons are used and tested by the CIA. If Chris only knew what I know as I'm a Targeted Victim. I have 2000+ tweets of my 2 year torture on X. I guess because I am not a CIA fuck with a voice on 60 minutes, my experience gets little validity. But the data is out there. You all are fucked. These weapons are used while you sleep and remove FREE WILL. That is the least of what they do. BUT This is what will end your free will. You could act to stop it by asking serious questions. But you will not do that. Actually .. unfortunately .. Nuclear War is the only thing that will free us - if their enemies (my friends) can take out all of out mind control and torture satellites in space. I call for that! Russia if you are listening. The CIA likes to broadcast that Putin sleeps in a protected bunker - and he does. To protect himself from Microwave Torture and Microwave Poisoning. Not bombs. Whistleblowers have related to Targeted Justice members that 9 of Putins Top Generals have been compromised and relieved of duty because they did not live in protected bunkers. The CIA has started every war and strife in my 70 year lifetime, and they will end life as we know it very soon as we fight about other lesser things. The Senate Intelligence community is aware this is happening and they could stop it, but there are no Frank Church's to ask questions. MK-ULTRA was never stopped. THE CIA has thought about almost NOTHING else except creative ways to point microwaves at human beings brains. 75 years of Tin Hat jokes are an easy barometer in this timeline. Whos cares if you NEVER heard of this. I NEVER hear the press mentioning anything the CIA does with their billions. Please, Chris, cover this topic.
"I guess because I am not a CIA fuck with a voice on 60 minutes, my experience gets little validity. But the data is out there." Have you told your story to independent media like Democracynow.org or the Intercept, etc?
Too bad no one wants to kill anyone. Slavery it is then.
Chris is at his inspiring and perspicacious best in this excellent article.
The contribution that Chris Hedges makes to the causes of decency, fairness and humanity are incalculable.