He didn't say that there would be no differences in our lives if Trump or
Clinton were elected. He chose some basic structural aspects of how our
country works and to that extent, I think he's correct. And when he talks
about "Capitalism", he's talking about capitalism as it is currently
manifested in America. He's not talking about it as it was in the 50's and
60's. In the debate on Democracy Now, he talked about "unregulated
capitalism". Because I've listened to him in a lot of audio and video
talks, my feeling is that he is incorporating into his analysis, a lot of
material that he reads. So he tends to write in very theoretical terms. His
writings, the books he's written and the articles, that I've read over the
past several years, have been moving to the conclusion that our present
society has become untenable, that we are moving toward self destruction.
What I think is that here is a man who was very much part of the mainstream.
He was head of the New York Times foreign offices in several countries. He
had been a war correspondent. He saw what the wars were like and when he
openly opposed the Iraq war, the New York Times fired him. He began doing
freelance reporting, traveling the country. One of his books is about four
of the poorest communities in the U.S. He began teaching writing to
prisoners. Add to the mix that he's an ordained minister. And what has
happened, because of what he's experienced and observed, is that he has been
radicalized. And that is what you're sensing in his writing, the anger and
rigidity that comes with radicalization.
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alice Dampman
Humel
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2016 4:41 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The 1 Percent's Useful Idiots
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/
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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
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