i hesitate to say anything even slightly critical of the great Hedges, but
while I agree with some of this, a lot of it reads like, I say it, therefore it
is true. I think there is a sizable degree of speculation…not uninformed
speculation, but to say there will be no differences on all those points
between Dummpfass and Killary is something of a stretch. And, if he or anyone
thinks that the silver bullet is overthrowing capitalism, I’m not buying that
one, either…not in that blanket way, fix this one thing, and everything will be
fine. If nothing else, history has proven this to be incorrect
OK, now I’m ready for all the admirers of Hedges to take my head off. I also
admire him. That does not mean I agree with everything he says or how he says
it.
On Jul 27, 2016, at 4:06 PM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Truthdig
The 1 Percent's Useful Idiots
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_1_percents_useful_idiots_20160726/
AddThis Sharing Buttons
Share to FacebookShare to TwitterMore AddThis Share optionsShare to Email
Posted on Jul 26, 2016
By Chris Hedges
It's official: Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party's nominee for
president. (schroepfer /
Flickr(https://www.flickr.com/photos/schroepfer/27530337000/) )
PHILADELPHIA-The parade of useful
idiots(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot) , the bankrupt liberal
class that long ago sold its soul to corporate power, is now led by Sen.
Bernie Sanders. His final capitulation, symbolized by his pathetic motion to
suspend the roll call, giving Hillary Clinton the Democratic nomination by
acclamation, is an abject betrayal of millions of his supporters and his
call for a political revolution.
No doubt the Democrats will continue to let Sanders be a member of the
Democratic Caucus. No doubt the Democrats will continue to agree not to run
a serious candidate against him in Vermont. No doubt Sanders will be given
an ample platform and media opportunities to shill for Clinton and the
corporate machine. No doubt he will remain a member of the political
establishment.
Sanders squandered his most important historical moment. He had a chance,
one chance, to take the energy, anger and momentum, walk out the doors of
the Wells Fargo Center and into the streets to help build a third-party
movement. His call to his delegates to face "reality" and support Clinton
was an insulting repudiation of the reality his supporters, mostly young men
and young women, had overcome by lifting him from an obscure candidate
polling at 12 percent into a serious contender for the nomination. Sanders
not only sold out his base, he mocked it. This was a spiritual wound, not a
political one. For this he must ask forgiveness.
Whatever resistance happens will happen without him. Whatever political
revolution happens will happen without him. Whatever hope we have for a
sustainable future will happen without him. Sanders, who once lifted up the
yearnings of millions, has become an impediment to change. He took his 30
pieces of silver and joined with a bankrupt liberal establishment on behalf
of a candidate who is a tool of Wall Street, a proponent of endless war and
an enemy of the working class.
Sanders, like all of the self-identified liberals who are whoring themselves
out for the Democrats, will use fear as the primary reason to remain
enslaved by the neoliberal assault. And, in return, the corporate state will
allow him and the other useful idiots among the 1 percent to have their
careers and construct pathetic monuments to themselves.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will be pushed through whether Donald
Trump or Hillary Clinton is president. The fracking industry, fossil fuel
industry and animal agriculture industry will ravage the ecosystem whether
Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is president. The predatory financial
institutions on Wall Street will trash the economy and loot the U.S.
Treasury on the way to another economic collapse whether Donald Trump or
Hillary Clinton is president. Poor, unarmed people of color will be gunned
down in the streets of our cities whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is
president. The system of neoslavery in our prisons, where we keep poor men
and poor women of color in cages because we have taken from them the
possibility of employment, education and dignity, will be maintained whether
Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is president. Millions of undocumented
people will be deported whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is
president. Austerity programs will cut or abolish public services, further
decay the infrastructure and curtail social programs whether Donald Trump or
Hillary Clinton is president. Money will replace the vote whether Donald
Trump or Hillary Clinton is president. And half the country, which now lives
in poverty, will remain in misery whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton
becomes president.
This is not speculation. We know this because there has been total
continuity on every issue, from trade agreements to war to mass
deportations, between the Bush administration and the administration of
Barack Obama. The problem is not Donald Trump. The problem is capitalism.
And this is the beast we are called to fight and slay. Until that is done,
nothing of substance will change.
To reduce the political debate, as Sanders and others are doing, to
political personalities is political infantilism. We have undergone a
corporate coup. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will not reverse this coup.
They, like Barack Obama, know where the centers of power lie. They serve
these centers of power.
Change will come when we have the tenacity, as many Sanders delegates did,
to refuse to cooperate, to say no, to no longer participate in the political
charade. Change will come when we begin acts of sustained mass civil
disobedience. Change will come when the fear the corporate state uses to
paralyze us is used by us to paralyze the corporate state.
The Russian writer Alexander Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of
anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it
was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: "We think we are
the doctors. We are the disease."
We are here not to reform the system. We are here to overthrow it. And that
is the only possibility left to restore our democracy and save our planet.
If we fail in this task, if this system of corporate capitalism and
globalization is not dismantled, we are doomed. And this is the reality no
one wants to speak about.
We will have to be in the political wilderness, perhaps for a decade. But a
decade ago Syriza, the party now ruling Greece, was polling at only 4
percent. This is what the Green Party is polling today. We will not bring
about systemic change in one or two election cycles. But we can begin to
build a counterweight to the corporate state. We can begin to push back.
We must find the courage not to be afraid. We must find the courage to
follow our conscience. We must find the courage to defy the corporate forces
of death in order to affirm the forces of life.
This will not be easy. The corporate state-once its vast systems of
indoctrination and propaganda do not work to keep us passive, once we are no
longer afraid, once we make our own reality rather than accommodating
ourselves to the reality imposed upon us-will employ more direct and
coercive forms of control. The reign of terror, the revocation of civil
liberties, the indiscriminate violence by the state will no longer be
exercised only against poor people of color. The reality endured by our poor
sisters and brothers of color, a reality we did not do enough to fight
against, will become our own.
To allow the ideological forces of neoliberalism to crush our ideals and our
values is to fall into a deadly cynicism and despair. To allow the consumer
culture and the cult of the self, which lies at the heart of capitalism, to
seduce us is to kill our souls. Happiness does not come with the
accumulation of wealth. Happiness does not come from possessions or power.
These are narcotics. They numb and kill all that is noble and good within
us. Happiness comes when you reach out in solidarity to your neighbor, when
you lend your hand to the stranger or the outcast, when you are willing to
lose your life to save it. Happiness comes when you have the capacity to
love.
Our span of life, in the vastness of the universe, is insignificant. I will
be 60 soon. The arch of my own life is beginning to draw to a close. We all
will die. How do we use the miracle of this flash of light that is called
life?
Albert Camus wrote, "One of the only coherent philosophical positions is
revolt. It is a constant confrontation between [human beings] and [their]
obscurity. It is not aspiration, for it is devoid of hope. That revolt is
the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought to
accompany it."
He said further, "A living [person] can be enslaved and reduced to the
historic condition of an object. But if he [or she] dies in refusing to be
enslaved, he [or she] reaffirms the existence of another kind of human
nature which refuses to be classified as an object."
There is only one way to rebel. You fight for all of the oppressed or none
of the oppressed. You understand that there is no country. Our country is
the earth. We are citizens of the world. Nationalism is a disease. It is a
disease we must purge. As long as a Muslim family suffers in a refugee camp
in Syria or an LGBT person suffers from the bigotry imposed by the Christian
heretics in the Christian right, we all suffer.
There are desperate single mothers struggling to raise children on less than
$10,000 a year in some Philadelphia neighborhoods. Many of these children go
to bed hungry. There are unemployed workers desperate to find a job and
restore their dignity. There are mentally ill and homeless we have abandoned
to the streets. There are Iraqi and Afghan families living in terror, a
terror we have inflicted on them, in the futile and endless wars waged to
enrich the arms industry. There are men and women being tortured in our
worldwide archipelago of secret detention centers. There are undocumented
workers whose families we have ripped apart, separating children from
parents, or imprisoned.
This is reality. It is the only reality that matters. It is a reality we
must and will change. Because, as the great socialist Eugene V. Debs, who
upon being sentenced in 1918 for violating the Sedition Act by defying the
madness of World War I, said, "I recognized my kinship with all living
beings. I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on
earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am
in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is
a soul in prison, I am not free."
Augustine wrote that hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and
courage-anger at the way things are and the courage to see that they do not
remain the way they are.
The fight will be hard and difficult. It will require love and
self-sacrifice. It will require anger and courage. It is the greatest moral
imperative before us. Those who do not defy the evil become its accomplice.
We may not succeed. But we must be among those of whom future generations
will say: They tried. They dared to dream. They dared to care. They dared to
love. They enabled those who followed to press on in the struggle.
The World After Me: Eternal 'Wartime' in America
Democratic Convention Live Blog, Day 3: Will Democrats Address the Elephant
in the Room?
A Lens on the Democratic Convention, Day 2: Legitimate Anger in
Philadelphia (Multimedia)
Insiders and Outsiders Mingle at the Democratic National Convention
Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
C 2016 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
Signup for Truthdig's newsletter
