"The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression"

[Better Believe It]

2011: A Brave New Dystopia
By Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute.
December 27, 2010


Our manufacturing base has been dismantled. Speculators and swindlers have looted the U.S. Treasury and stolen billions from small shareholders who had set aside money for retirement or college. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus and protection from warrantless wiretapping, have been taken away. Basic services, including public education and health care, have been handed over to the corporations to exploit for profit. The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate establishment as freaks.

The façade is crumbling. And as more and more people realize that they have been used and robbed, we will move swiftly from Huxley’s “Brave New World” to Orwell’s “1984.” The public, at some point, will have to face some very unpleasant truths. The good-paying jobs are not coming back. The largest deficits in human history mean that we are trapped in a debt peonage system that will be used by the corporate state to eradicate the last vestiges of social protection for citizens, including Social Security. The state has devolved from a capitalist democracy to neo-feudalism. And when these truths become apparent, anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity. The bleakness of our post-industrial pockets, where some 40 million Americans live in a state of poverty and tens of millions in a category called “near poverty,” coupled with the lack of credit to save families from foreclosures, bank repossessions and bankruptcy from medical bills, means that inverted totalitarianism will no longer work.

The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression. Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone records turned over to the government. We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history. Many of us have our daily routine caught on dozens of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits are recorded on the Internet. Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are patted down at airports and filmed by scanners. And public service announcements, car inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to report suspicious activity. The enemy is everywhere.

Those who do not comply with the dictates of the war on terror, a war which, as Orwell noted, is endless, are brutally silenced. The draconian security measures used to cripple protests at the G-20 gatherings in Pittsburgh and Toronto were wildly disproportionate for the level of street activity. But they sent a clear message—DO NOT TRY THIS. The FBI’s targeting of antiwar and Palestinian activists, which in late September saw agents raid homes in Minneapolis and Chicago, is a harbinger of what is to come for all who dare defy the state’s official Newspeak. The agents—our Thought Police—seized phones, computers, documents and other personal belongings. Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury have since been served on 26 people. The subpoenas cite federal law prohibiting “providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.” Terror, even for those who have nothing to do with terror, becomes the blunt instrument used by Big Brother to protect us from ourselves.

Read the full article at:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/2011_a_brave_new_dystopia_20101227/

[Bozita]

1. Hedges was on w/Bob McChesney for an hour 8 days ago - Good stuff! - link to audio

http://will.illinois.edu/mediamatters

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Chris Hedges and Bob McChesney Sunday at 1pm

Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Call and comment during this live program. http://www.truthdig.com

Audio archivess:

Play now:


RealAudio archive

Download: mp3 file

[Better Believe It]

3. Thanks for the link. I will listen to it later today.

[snappyturtle]

30. Yes, it's excellent! nt

[Wilber_Stool]

2. I'm just waiting for

the Supreme Court to rule that a Corporation can bail out a state. California any one? On sale. Only $35B. Such a deal.

[Kennah]

5. China offers $8B

[flamingdem]

53. I hope my state is bailed out by Ben & Jerrys! nt

[Bobbieo]

4. I wish the FBI would pay some attention to the scam mail coming out of Nigeria that is supposedly

being sent from their DC headquarters. I have gotten three this past week threatening to have me arrested as a terrorist if I do not follow their instructions.

[Better Believe It]

6. I've received the same kind of crap! But, the FBI is way too busy watching and listening to us.

[PufPuf23]

22. The FBI is collecting Cheney's bribe to not be prosecuted for bribery

in Nigeria.

Insert head spin and sarcasm.

Cheney is an unapologetic War Criminal.

A six figure settlement negotiated by Halliburton and former USA political leaders settled the crime.

Heck, I have always paid my speeding tickets and was punished when convicted of driving without a license twice when under-aged and free-ranged adolescent of the 60s.

Our largest prison and jail population on the planet is shameful when Cheney-like criminals get a pass.

There is no rule of law, only law of influence and money in the USA. This reality extends to the county and Federal jursidiction across the USA. The courts and Bar Associations are corrupt and protect their own.

[Jackpine Radical]

51. The US falls for the biggest Nigerian scam on record.

[sakabatou]

31. Really?

[maryf]

7. also here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x578303

but glad to recommend again!

[Odin2005]

8. K&R

[gratuitous]

9. Oh, you guys are so alarmist!

Now, the new chant is:

Four legs good,
Two legs better

This replaces any former chants you may have learned before, which you didn't.

[Art_from_Ark]

18. You mean I no longer have to chant "Boooooo! Hissssss!" for 2 minutes

every time they show Emmanuel Goldstein's picture on the TV?

Thank goodness for small favors

[Doctor_J]

10. Here's a cogent comment on the site

By Big B, December 27 at 8:32 pm Link to this comment

Queenie

I too, believe there will be some blowback. We do, after all, live in a nation that is armed to the teeth. But one must realize that a large portion of these armed maniacs will be fighting to MAINTAIN the corporate status quo, for they have been told by every media entity from Faux news to their own mega-church pastors that anyone who does not blindly support the free market is an enemy and should be “eradicated” ASAP. Between that sizable group, and the private military contractors that major corporations have begun hiring as their internal security, we on the true left can look forward only to mayrterdom. After all, a privately hired merc will not have nearly the aversion to firing on protesting citizens as would a member of our own US military.

Our only hope for successful revolution against the coming corporate state lies, ironically enough, in the same thing that gave Lenin and Reds a victory over the whites, and that is in the hope that when the shit hits the fan, the peoples military will side with us, and not the state. That is of course, if this thing takes a stictly militant path (which I am afraid it will) If we all took the Ghandi route, we may eventually succeed, but that would take decades, and the cooporation of hundreds of millions of oppressed people in dozens of countries.

Maybe it would just be easier to put on a brown shirt and start shouting “Achtung, Juden!”

====

Some lucid folks there at truthdig

[ladjf]

11. I believe that the revolution will start somewhere other than in the U.S.

But, if it takes root, it could and probably would spread to the U.S. It could never be a military type unless some or all of the military sided with the people, which is unlikely to happen and would create more problems that it would solve.

I can't imagine how any large scale revolt could succeed in the current environment. There just doesn't seem to be enough potential power to take over anything. It's already too late to do it by ballot. Almost all of the wealth is owned by less than 5% of the people.

I do believe that the super rich are neurotically hoarding wealth and power for reasons that they themselves don't even understand. If I am correct, then there might be an opening for the middle to exploit.

[molly77]

49. Doctor-J

Our two political parties have evolved into entirely new entities.

The far right and far left have more in common with each other than their respective parties.

DLC and conservative republicans are one and the same.

If the two factions could ever unite, we could have change. MSM is doing their best to keep US hating each other.There are a lot of progressives who want fiscal responsibility but strong social programs.The Tea Party was supposed to incite hatred and division. It is back firing . The Tea Party is turning off conservative republicans. This group of conservatives see the waste in continual war and the abortion/homophobe mantra is wearing thin in the face of massive foreclosures , joblessness and hunger.And distrust of print and network news.

Jane Hampsher is the only progressive, who has addressed the shift. She talked with Grover Norquist. Was slammed by Daily Kos. But she thinks outside the box. Howard Dean seems to know too.Maybe Obama. 2012 will tell.

Bill Clinton's Third Way is a corporative wet dream.

[emilyg]

12. k/r

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. Well, this DID answer the burning question for me.

How planned is all this?

"We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing".

"Power is not a means; it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution.
The object of torture is torture.
The object of power is power.”


Got it.

[ooglymoogly]

27. What do you think all the pug, right wing, Orwellian think tanks do.

They are the store fronts for the biggest thugs in history, who plan these things. And they plan them to the letter. If they have to cheat at elections to make their plans work, so be it. If they have to take out, or assassinate anyone on earth or anyone of power that is in their way, so be it.

They will do whatever is required to bring about the Machiavellian results that their plans keep on track; now well under way. Packed judiciary, packed justice system, packed intelligence, packed military industrial complex and on. They have stolen pensions right and left, to the tune of trillions and are now poised for another round with "QE",(Google it if in doubt "Quantitative Easing") And if you believe the bailouts have been paid back you are mistaken, only the basics of those loans have been paid back but with more bailout money as far as GM is concerned or from the spread of no interest money by its use, in the case of the banks.

They are now poised to cover their tracks for stealing the trillions already stolen from SS.

Hyperbolically speaking; all that will be left of the middle class, the elderly and poor will be their bones picked clean, the gold from their teeth will be gone.

These plans are not even secret, you just have to dig in the weeds to find them and well documented they are.

All that was planned long before 9/11 came to pass and 9/11 whether conspiracy or not, has been the vehicle to achieve those plans.

But make no mistake; these plans are on track in spades.

[Enthusiast]

38. Nice fucking post!

"The façade is crumbling."

They have propaganda artists from the various think tanks on C-Span's Washington Journal nearly every single day. And they NEVER have anyone on to refute this insane rhetoric.

[immoderate]

67. American Enterprise Institute and The Heritage Foundation seem to own C-SPAN.

--imm

[ooglymoogly]

75. Thanx nt

[valerief]

14. We are an extension of Mexico. nt

[KG]

15. The captain said excuse me ma'am, this species has amused itself to death

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMijMWQlnUc

[Amonester]

19. :o))

It's A Miracle (:sarcasm:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duO0jNUYOg8&feature=related

[Dj13Francis]

21. Yeah

My favorite Roger Waters album. Brilliant.

[Enthusiast]

39. Plus one! nt

[OwnedByFerrets]

48. One of my favorite cds

[radhika]

16. We've been expecting this for some time....n/t

[Amonester]

17. The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk

"The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate establishment as freaks."

Wow.. Maybe he's been lurking on DU and stumbled on some of the sensible centrists http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1296155071179146825#">rationalization "constant state-of-denial" of the urgent nature of these current years.

[truedelphi]

20. Corporations do not consider us "freaks" - they consider us "terrorists."

And if there were any in the Political Class who were trying to stop this, they have been kept rather quiet.

[davidwparker]

23. Gloomy.

I think we are better than this picture. The robber barons returned to control and they need to be beaten again.

Enlightened liberals have seen this coming. When the knuckle dragging right gets mad, they will turn on the let-them-eat-cake elite. Then, together, we can take back the country.

[BlackHoleSon]

25. Way too rosy

You hold WAY too much faith in your fellow citizens.

[chill_wind]

35. The right is way too indoctrinated-- and very comfortable

with police state authoritarianism. They've been happily helping facilitate it all along with their predilection for pro-corporate fascist, authoritarian unitary executive type leadership. The ever "pragmatic" DLC co-facilitators are supportive of it as well, it should be extremely obvious by now.

[Enthusiast]

41. Now all the mechanisms

are firmly in place to continue the indoctrination. The lies are getting bigger and are more deeply believed than even a few years ago. The right is now so invested in the lies that accepting the truth would be crippling.

[me b zola]

24. K&R

[defendandprotect]

26. Right ... a crime wave by capitalists -- corporate/elites -- Enron-izing all of government ....

[Zax2me]

28. Rec - KICK n/a

[Octafish]

29. Orwell and Huxley were both right.

"We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled."

Thank you for the heads-up on a must-read, Better Believe It! Great thread.

[walldude]

32. Two things....

I agree with this except for the "We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history." I think the Chinese would debate that point.

The other:

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater." -Frank Zappa

[DeSwiss]

33. K&R

- It's actually a lot worse than what Chris is saying......

"The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities." ~Zbigniew Brzezinski http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/162691">(link)

[chill_wind]

34. 2 pages and highly recommend. Every gut wrenching paragraph of it. .

[democrank]

36. "The few who raise voices of dissent.........."

How true

[Enthusiast]

37. K&R

"The façade is crumbling."

And this is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. This is when our lives are in grave danger.

[TheUnspeakable]

40. k&r

[gtar100]

58. Interesting picture of the presidents in your sig.

The positioning of each man and the color of the ties says it all.

[cali]

42. Hedges is a secular apocalyptist

and he sees everything through that prism. So are a lot of DUers so it's a perfect fit.

[CL455W4R]

43. Go back to sleep America!

Thank you Cali. I'll get back to bed. Why worry, right?

[cali]

45. pointing out that Hedges is a secular apocalyptist who

writes the same essay over and over, is hardly saying there's nothing to worry about

[Better Believe It]

46. I don't think that Hedges is a religious or secular ....

كاشف‌ مجهولات‌ ، متخصص‌ در تفسير مكاشفات‌ يوحنا

So there!

[cali]

52. he's a doomsdayer.

[Jester Messiah]

55. So is it your opinion then that the article holds no truth?

I would have to disagree.

[cali]

61. No, I think it holds some truth, but I doubt that the end is nigh.

[stockholmer]

63. don't fall victim to normalcy bias

the end is not nigh, but the paradigm of Anglo-American empire, and the unlimited check-writing and inter-generational, inter-state debt-transfer capability is crumbling rapidly

when the dollar falls as the global reserve currency, so falls the utter fallacy of Pax Americana, as the bond market is truly a rapacious beast (just ask Ireland, Greece, Argentina, Spain, Portugal, Italy, most of Africa and South America etc etc)

then, the collapse will truly be sudden

[cali]

69. All empires end. I greet that with a shrug.

And for almost 30 years, I've lived a life outside of the mainstream. I live in Northern Vermont, in a small house, heated with wood, with gravity fed water.

But no, I doubt that the end will be a sudden collapse.

I tend more toward:

this is the way the world will end...not with a bang but with a whimper. ..

ee. cummings, by the way.

[stockholmer]

72. well said, and your lifestyle sounds like a Norrbotten Swede, lolol

in terms of sudden collapse, I meant the monetary system in the USA

good to see a true sustainable life being lived

cheers

[chill_wind]

74. T.S. Eliot, actually. n/t

[Better Believe It]

57. So what points do you disagree with in the article and why? You have the floor.

And I'm paying attention.

Proceed.

[Raster]

59. You're going to be waiting a long time.

[cali]

62. yep. went out to do a bit of snow shoeing on this bright and beautiful day.

[Raster]

77. I stand by my earlier statement.

Happy New Year!

[Narkos]

56. Couldn't agree with you more. He's way over the top. n/t

[stockholmer]

65. across exactly what arena of human freedom and rights are things not mouldering in the West?

[rhett o rick]

44. k & r

[OwnedByFerrets]

47. How very true

[ThoughtCriminal]

50. All Circus, no bread

And if it gets really dark, watching people suffer becomes the circus.

[nashville_brook]

54. big k and r. Hedges' new book is epic.

[earcandle]

60. To both facebook and noodlebrain news! Thank you very much!

[grahamhgreen]

64. Glad to see this at the top of the home page - hopefully the powerbrokers are paying attention.

[postatomic]

66. Awareness is a useful tool

There are many signs that point to something wicked this way comes. It's easy to climb inside your bubble and pretend that everything is fine - everything will be okay.

Be aware. Look. See.

[cali]

68. I don't disagree that there are elements of both Orwell's and Huxley's visions

embodied in current American society/gov/culture, but elements are not duplicates and no, we're not in 1984. All those "who do not comply with the dictates of the war on terror" are not brutally silenced. And there is no way of knowing if the "FBI's targeting of anti-war and Palestinian activists" is a harbinger of things to come. There are not scores of political prisoners languishing in jail for things they've said or written.

I don't believe that we're all defenseless and doomed. Of course, unfettered capitalism is a brutal force. All Power abused is that.

I find paragraphs like the following utterly simplistic:

"They control the messages in movies and television. And, as in “Brave New World,” they use these tools of communication to bolster tyranny. Our systems of mass communication, as Wolin writes, “block out, eliminate whatever might introduce qualification, ambiguity, or dialogue, anything that might weaken or complicate the holistic force of their creation, to its total impression.”

Really? Does anyone actually believe that Hollywood, for example, is out to bolster tyranny.


As for the public facing the truth, that's unlikely to happen. It takes work to live a conscious life- it always has. And in my experience, most people don't want to do that work.

And Hedges repeats himself constantly, not only in article after article, but in the same article.

Nor does he offer anything but bitter attacks. He offers no practical solutions.

[leftstreet]

70. I'm sure you don't mean to be condescending

but that's exactly what you're doing:

As for the public facing the truth, that's unlikely to happen. It takes work to live a conscious life- it always has. And in my experience, most people don't want to do that work.

...maybe for Hedge Fund Democrats and Latte Liberals, still faithfully believing there's got to be something wonderful for them under that huge pile of shit.

Working class peons and impoverished serfs have no problem 'facing' the truth. They don't have to 'work' at it. They're fucking LIVING it

[leftstreet]

71. K&R

[Javaman]

73. "are you or have you ever been a member of the Democratic Underground?"

And I ask you, "have you no sense of decency?"

The times are a changing, friends.

Who will you rat out? Who will you inform on? Who will you seek to expose for your own safety?

Will you be false witness against your friends for the safety of your family? Will you say anything to stay out of prison? Will you fail to look those in the eye to whom you falsely exposed?

Hard questions. Answers only come when confronted. Everyone likes to think we would do the right thing, but in an era where water boarding is accepted, do you really know how you would react?

It's all fun and games, surfing the web and posting on boards until you are called to confess your sins to big brother.

Big Brother knows all and if Big Brother doesn't, Big Brother will just make something up as if it were real. Real and fantasy become one and the same. Logic means nothing.

If you want to be prepared, read "the trail" by Kafka. That will be your manual.

[PufPuf23]

76. I expect a WWIII before I die (or collect Social Security or Medicare)

but WWIII will not look lie WWI or WWII nor previous wars.

The war will be to reduce human population by 90% with lease damage to the Earth. The USA is a tool that will ultimately lose in the big picture.

The world is turning by necessity to global, social Darwinism or eugenics and/or God's chosen people.

Basic ecology will be much a mechanism as human evil.