Chris Hedges: Our Invisible Revolution
from truthdig:
Our Invisible Revolution
Posted on Oct 28, 2013
By Chris Hedges
“Did you ever ask yourself how it happens that government and capitalism continue to exist in spite of all the evil and trouble they are causing in the world?” the anarchist Alexander Berkman wrote in his essay “The Idea Is the Thing.” “If you did, then your answer must have been that it is because the people support those institutions, and that they support them because they believe in them.”
Berkman was right. As long as most citizens believe in the ideas that justify global capitalism, the private and state institutions that serve our corporate masters are unassailable. When these ideas are shattered, the institutions that buttress the ruling class deflate and collapse. The battle of ideas is percolating below the surface. It is a battle the corporate state is steadily losing. An increasing number of Americans are getting it. They know that we have been stripped of political power. They recognize that we have been shorn of our most basic and cherished civil liberties, and live under the gaze of the most intrusive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. Half the country lives in poverty. Many of the rest of us, if the corporate state is not overthrown, will join them. These truths are no longer hidden.
It appears that political ferment is dormant in the United States. This is incorrect. The ideas that sustain the corporate state are swiftly losing their efficacy across the political spectrum. The ideas that are rising to take their place, however, are inchoate. The right has retreated into Christian fascism and a celebration of the gun culture. The left, knocked off balance by decades of fierce state repression in the name of anti-communism, is struggling to rebuild and define itself. Popular revulsion for the ruling elite, however, is nearly universal. It is a question of which ideas will capture the public’s imagination.
Revolution usually erupts over events that would, in normal circumstances, be considered meaningless or minor acts of injustice by the state. But once the tinder of revolt has piled up, as it has in the United States, an insignificant spark easily ignites popular rebellion. No person or movement can ignite this tinder. No one knows where or when the eruption will take place. No one knows the form it will take. But it is certain now that a popular revolt is coming. The refusal by the corporate state to address even the minimal grievances of the citizenry, along with the abject failure to remedy the mounting state repression, the chronic unemployment and underemployment, the massive debt peonage that is crippling more than half of Americans, and the loss of hope and widespread despair, means that blowback is inevitable. ............................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/our_invisible_revolution_20131028
= new reply since forum marked as read
Lots of holes in that, but at least they were building toward something.
Pretty much all I hear now is a bunch of "this or that is bad, and we don't want it". That's fine, but they aren't going to change these people they have a problem with, who are smarter and work smarter than the vast majority of people out there. They use the power that gives them for evil purposes in some cases, and spend an inordinate amount of time and money consolidating that power, and making damn sure most people can't touch them. But if one thinks that at this stage they are going to be able to come up with and enforce a set of "rules" that create a more equitable place, they need to explain what is going to stop them from getting rid of the rules we already had that did that? They stand on their balconies and laugh, and throw McDonalds applications down on people's heads because they know this.
Their opposition (us - and by that I mean the 99% who cross ALL political and social boundaries, who would have to work together to change it) consists of a bunch of fat-ass couch potatoes, upset with mean old rich people, upset that they have to pay taxes to have roads to drive on and schools to send their kids to, upset that there is a black guy in the WH, upset that mythical moms are driving mythical Cadillacs to the grocery, or a bunch of younger people with no experience who have, really, never, ever had to sacrifice anything much - not in comparison to the generations that have gone before them, and most of whom would move to the dark side for a job that pays barely twice what they make at McDonalds...
They, we are going to revolt? 
Let me propose something. de la Boetie, back about 1450, wrote that there is no need to raise a hand to the tyrant. He has nothing you haven't given him, whether it is money, land, your children, your freedom, whatever.
All you have to do is quit supporting him, and he will fall of his own weight.
The reason we are foundering as a country, everyone becoming poorer, is because the wealthy are taking far more than their fair share. They are doing it through financing of most everything, with several mechanisms built up over time to insure that everyone in the 99% pays them something every month, in interest, without gaining much, if any, in the way of equity or wealth.The Fed is paying $85 billion a month to banks to sustain this tragic comedy, corporations are doing everything they can to raise share prices rather than invest for the long term (which would include paying more, among other things)
A bunch of people who have put little thought, if any, into what "revolution" really means.
So here's a revolution. Everyone quit paying them. Just stop. Lose your home if need be, lose your food if need be. They have already thrown 10 million families out in foreclosure and we saw what a debacle that was - even the government couldn't cover, say, 30 or 40 million families saying NO!. No more. No more payments to keep an unfair system going. We get together, support each other, get each other through the rough times. The only power, they only wealth they have is what you give them. Instantly all these inequalities stop - the plan being that we all take the hit that would come from bringing everything back to, say, 1976 prices, or maybe before that. Get rid of the financing, everything goes back to it's real value, without the inflation in the price we get from financing, which profits the corps, and kills everyone else.
And if one doesn't think we can do that simple thing, then what, exactly, do they mean by revolution?
Another - We are running a trade imbalance, filling our Walmarts with cheap stuff, handing our jobs out overseas. Everyone has to stop shopping for nearly anything not made in this country - not just at Walmart, everywhere. Be willing to do without until we can make it or grow it, or trade more equitably for it here. Prices of almost everything will skyrocket due to shortages, but do you want freedom or cheap clothes and food?
That will stop our trade imbalance in its tracks. Now you have to find, roughly, $40-50 trillion to rebuild and retrain the American people to create their own economy. The wealthy folks have about $20-$30 trillion offshore, but they are muli-national corps, and it won't be coming back. We can probably take over their deserted building, however.
But what will happen? Most people will fight for the right to keep things as they are, because they will see anyone who wants to upset the applecart as the problem, regardless of their good intentions. If they don't realize they are owned by these people, how can you expect them to struggle, to "fight"? Slavery was hard. But if one wanted to be free, they had to willing to walk away from the plantation, face possible death, starvation, a future that was probably filled with more danger than where they were. Harriet Tubman said "I saved a thousand slaves. I could have saved a thousand more, if only they knew they were slaves".
And since she spoke those words, not a damn thing has changed about that observation.
So could someone just lay out a realistic, and very, very bare bones idea of what this "revolution" they speak of might look like, what do they expect to accomplish? And remember I said "realistic", not something that supports Chris Hedges (as much as I like and respect him) articles in a blog?
Because if they don't end the ability of the people who are causing them grief to continue doing it, it won't matter what kind of little feel-good party they have. In the long run the greedy, grasping wealthy will have it all again, and a lot of well-intentioned people will be hurt and killed.
I do expect, struggles, and people fighting and dying in the street and nursing homes. But until the people are willing to walk away from this plantation, nothing substantial is going to change for the long term.
