Chris Hedges: Calling All Rebels

[marmar]

from Truthdig:



Calling All Rebels

Posted on Mar 8, 2010
By Chris Hedges


There are no constraints left to halt America’s slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests. Popular institutions, from labor unions to political parties, have been destroyed or emasculated by corporate power. And any form of protest, no matter how tepid, is blocked by an internal security apparatus that is starting to rival that of the East German secret police. The mounting anger and hatred, coursing through the bloodstream of the body politic, make violence and counter-violence inevitable. Brace yourself. The American empire is over. And the descent is going to be horrifying.

Those singled out as internal enemies will include people of color, immigrants, gays, intellectuals, feminists, Jews, Muslims, union leaders and those defined as “liberals.” They will be condemned as anti-American and blamed for our decline. The economic collapse, which remains mysterious and enigmatic to most Americans, will be pinned by demagogues and hatemongers on these hapless scapegoats. And the random acts of violence, which are already leaping up around the fringes of American society, will justify harsh measures of internal control that will snuff out the final vestiges of our democracy. The corporate forces that destroyed the country will use the information systems they control to mask their culpability. The old game of blaming the weak and the marginal, a staple of despotic regimes, will empower the dark undercurrents of sadism and violence within American society and deflect attention from the corporate vampires that have drained the blood of the country.

“We are going to be poorer,” David Cay Johnston told me. Johnston was the tax reporter of The New York Times for 13 years and has written on how the corporate state rigged the system against us. He is the author of “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With the Bill,” a book about hidden subsidies, rigged markets and corporate socialism. “Health care is going to eat up more and more of our income. We are going to have less and less for other things. We are going to have some huge disasters sooner or later caused by our failure to invest. Dams and bridges will break. Buildings will collapse. There are water mains that are 25 to 50 feet wide. There will be huge infrastructure disasters. Our intellectual resources are in decline. We are failing to educate young people and instill in them rigor. We are going to continue to pour money into the military. I think it is possible, I do not say it is probable, that we will have a revolution, a civil war that will see the end of the United States of America.”

“If we see the end of this country it will come from the right and our failure to provide people with the basic necessities of life,” said Johnston. “Revolutions occur when young men see the present as worse than the unknown future. We are not there. But it will not take a lot to get there. The politicians running for office who are denigrating the government, who are saying there are traitors in Congress, who say we do not need the IRS, this when no government in the history of the world has existed without a tax enforcement agency, are sowing the seeds for the destruction of the country. A lot of the people on the right hate the United States of America. They would say they hate the people they are arrayed against. But the whole idea of the United States is that we criticize the government. We remake it to serve our interests. They do not want that kind of society. They reject, as Aristotle said, the idea that democracy is to rule and to be ruled in turns. They see a world where they are right and that is it. If we do not want to do it their way we should be vanquished. This is not the idea on which the United States was founded.” .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/calling_all_rebels_20100308/

[Doctor_J]

1. The problem is

that your average working class adult turns on his radio and hears that the way to fix this is

1. Buy another gun
2. Cheer tax cuts for billionaires
3. Vote for Sarah Palin

If he/she does rebel, it will be on the side of those who brought us to this sorry state.

For those rebels who want to really fix the country, the target of their fury should be hate radio. If we ever get to the point where we start inflicting heavy casualties on that entity, at the local or national level, we will start to see some change, IMO.

[SHRED]

2. these types...

...have created an imaginary enemy.

Unfortunately their nonsensical definitions are placed on others in the most grotesque and potentially violent way.

---

[tom_paine]

4. When the brutalizers and aggressors convince themselves that they are victims of aggression

THAT'S when to really watch out because the shit is starting to come on in earnest.

In the awful trek of Who We Were to What We Are Becoming, which I have been commenting on since 12/12/2000 made it clear to nature and direction of the awful terk, I would say we are getting to the latter parts of Middle Transition Phase.

The speed at which we go forward to our horrific Far-Right Corporate or Uber-Right Nazi future will be determined by whether the Funny Money Economy can be pumped up one last time (and for how long it can be pumped up).

I am guessing it can't be pumped up one more time at all, but that may be extreme. It also seems like the Busho-Corporate Rulers of America have been moving fast for the last 10 years. VERY fast. And so I don't expect Penultimate Phase and Final Phase (maybe "final solution phase but that's just speculation) to last more than 20 years, when we finally arrived fully at What We Are Becoming.

It might be a lot sooner.

In either case, a "checkpoint" on the way is clearly the restoration between the American Taliban and Local Law Enforcement to a 1870-1970 "Klan" type relationship which Repent Amarillo and it's obviously sympathetic Local Law Enforcement is a harbinger.

If it is not pushed back on, it will expand. In the days of the Old American Republic, media would bring attention to it and federal law enforcement would push local law enforcement to "get the job done" and sometimes bust the local LE for being in collusion.

The FBI, being "Bushified" might or might not perform this function and with corporate media giving publicity to the story is questionable - they have easily suppressed much worse.

Welcome to Middle Transition Phase.

[BakedAtAMileHigh]

3. once again Hedges nails it, terrifyingly

Thanks for the post.

[FlyByNight]

5. Just makes me wonder how bad things...

...have to get in order for truly meaningful change to occur (without violence). Even the most sensible of reforms get neutered long before they get to the Obama's desk. That corporate-sponsored glass jaw the Dems continually show only strengthens the perception that they're weak and damn near as bought-and-paid-for as the Republican'ts.

The conditions for the economic meltdown in late '08 persist: Goldman Sachs and other economic terrorists are still acting as if it's business as usual. No real reform has been enacted as of yet, if I'm not mistaken.

I'd like to think that the White House and more than a few Dems hear us but they may not be really listening. I simply can't envision Pres. Obama (channeling FDR) using the term "economic royalist" to describe those that brought us to the cusp of economic ruin. Or that he would "welcome their hatred."

I like Mr. Hedges but he paints an evil potential future. Starting to get that feeling of despair.

:scared:

[Doctor_J]

6. That ship has already sailed

Any change that occurs peacefully at this point will be for the worse - if actual Dems and other patriots just step aside while we slip into complete fascism. Any movement in the correct direction is going to have to overcome the full power of the Bush/Bankster/Media cabal. We did our best in November 2008 to rectify the situation lawfully, and it's obvious today that it was woefully inadequate.

My worst fear is not that we'll end up living in Franco's Spain or Stalin's Russia. It's that we'll go there without any resistance. FWIW, I plan to try to expatriate in a couple years if some changes haven't begun for the good. It sickens me to have to live the last 20 years of my life in a different country, but I would rather flee than live under President Palin.

[NICO9000]

7. Makes me glad I have no children

My friends have had kids in the past few years and I really fear for their future. Naturally, they have a more positive outlook 'cos what else can they do? I sincerely hope that they turn out to be right and I'm wrong, but I don't have a lot faith that it's gonna turn out that way.

[barbiegeek]

15. I tell my kids to leave if they can

[IndianaGreen]

8. 'Totalitarian capitalism'

The engines of social reform are dead. Liberal apologists, who long ago should have abandoned the Democratic Party, continue to make pathetic appeals to a tone-deaf corporate state and Barack Obama while the working and middle class are ruthlessly stripped of rights, income and jobs. Liberals self-righteously condemn imperial wars and the looting of the U.S. Treasury by Wall Street but not the Democrats who are responsible. And the longer the liberal class dithers and speaks in the bloodless language of policies and programs, the more hated and irrelevant it becomes. No one has discredited American liberalism more than liberals themselves.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/calling_all_rebels_20100308/

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

Or like we say in Frech: touché!

[Doctor_J]

12. I am still not sure abandoning the Dems is correct

This means handing the next three elections at least over to the Palinites. The US will be completely dead by then.

[Juche]

9. Has anyone read books by Strauss and Howe?

I just ordered the book the fourth turning, but it hasn't arrived yet.

http://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Turning-William-Strauss/dp/0767900464

According to them, generations tend to repeat in about 4 cycles with periods of consciousness expansion and national crisis separated by about 40 years. So the consciousness revolution of the 1960/70s had the counterpart (the progressive revolution of the 1890s) and the disaster of the 30/40s also had a counterpart of the civil war in the 1860s. They basically went back a few hundred years and found this pattern of alternating consciousness revolutions and periods of national crisis going in 80 year cycles.

Back in the 1990s they predicted the next great crisis would be in the 2005-2025 area, and might not let the US as a nation survive. Back then that was blasphemy since the US was doing great economically, the USSR was gone, the world was fairly peaceful, etc. But now it seems totally realistic. We are a plutocracy that more and more people are learning is economically unsustainable and that does not really respond to/care about the interests of the bottom 90%.

[Doctor_J]

10. One theory as to why disasters hit every 80 years

is that most of the people who were around for the previous one are dead, and thus those lessons forgotten. That makes sense in a twisted way.

I have one tiny quibble with your post. It's now the bottom 95% who are being screwn, and still we can't overcome our oppressors.

[mod mom]

14. Notice how little is done to curb the likes of blackwater/xe. The elitist are willing to allow this

country to deteriorate so severely that they release they will need protection of a highly trained militia.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.

[BeFree]

13. Yeah, me too. n/t