Chris Hedges is one of the Great Unsung Heroes of the Working Class.
At this time, the American Empire simply ignores his insight. But
when the time comes that his words gain access to an ever widening
audience, the Empire will smack him down. Although I do fear for
Chris Hedges well being, at the same time I want to see him on the
firing line, telling it like it is.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/22/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
For recipients of this email who are not members of the Blind Democracy
list
Chris Hedges, former New York Times bureau chief in the Middle East,
ordained Episcopal minister, although he never had a congregation, is a
truth teller. Everything he writes about our society is factual. I've been
reading the evidence in articles for years, and I hear it discussed on
podcasts. But you'll never see it discussed in mainstream media. The
reality
of what has happened to our society is one of the reasons I'm so sad.
Miriam
Truthdig
The Death of the Republic
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_death_of_the_republic_20170521/
Posted on May 21, 2017
By Chris Hedges
The deep state
(https://www.google.com/search?q=tgo&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=deep+state ;) 's
decision in ancient Rome-dominated by a bloated military and a corrupt
oligarchy, much like the United States of 2017-to strangle the vain and
idiotic Emperor Commodus in his bath in the year 192 did not halt the
growing chaos and precipitous decline of the Roman Empire.
Commodus, like a number of other late Roman emperors, and like President
Trump, was incompetent and consumed by his own vanity. He commissioned
innumerable statues of himself as Hercules
(http://en.museicapitolini.org/collezioni/percorsi_per_sale/museo_del_palazz
o_dei_conservatori/sale_degli_horti_lamiani/busto_di_commodo_come_ercole )
and had little interest in governance. He used his position as head of
state
to make himself the star of his own ongoing public show. He fought
victoriously as a gladiator in the arena in fixed bouts. Power for
Commodus,
as it is for Trump, was primarily about catering to his bottomless
narcissism, hedonism and lust for wealth. He sold public offices so the
ancient equivalents of Betsy DeVos
(http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/watch_betsy_devos_confirmation_hearing
_20170131 ) and Steve Mnuchin
(http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/elizabeth_warren_steven_mnuchin_glass-
steagall_20170519 ) could orchestrate a vast kleptocracy.
Commodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax, the Bernie Sanders of his
day, who attempted in vain to curb the power of the Praetorian Guards, the
ancient version of the military-industrial complex. This effort saw the
Praetorian Guards assassinate Pertinax after he was in power only three
months. The Guards then auctioned off the office of emperor to the highest
bidder. The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted 66 days. There would be
five emperors in A.D. 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus.
Trump and our decaying empire have ominous historical precedents. If the
deep state replaces Trump, whose ineptitude and imbecility are embarrassing
to the empire, that action will not restore our democracy any more than
replacing Commodus restored democracy in Rome. Our republic is dead.
Societies that once were open and had democratic traditions are easy prey
for the enemies of democracy. These demagogues pay deference to the
patriotic ideals, rituals, practices and forms of the old democratic
political system while dismantling it. When the Roman Emperor Augustus-he
referred to himself as the "first citizen"-neutered the republic, he was
careful to maintain the form of the old republic. Lenin and the Bolsheviks
did the same when they seized and crushed the autonomous soviets
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Soviet_Socialist_Republics_of_the_
Soviet_Union ) . Even the Nazis and the Stalinists insisted they ruled
democratic states. Thomas Paine wrote that despotic government is a fungus
that grows out of a corrupt civil society. This is what happened to these
older democracies. It is what happened to us.
Our constitutional rights-due process, habeas corpus, privacy, a fair
trial,
freedom from exploitation, fair elections and dissent-have been taken from
us by judicial fiat. These rights exist only in name. The vast disconnect
between the purported values of the state and reality renders political
discourse absurd.
Corporations, cannibalizing the federal budget, legally empower themselves
to exploit and pillage. It is impossible to vote against the interests of
Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil. The pharmaceutical and insurance industries
can
hold sick children hostage while their parents bankrupt themselves trying
to
save their sons or daughters. Those burdened by student loans can never
wipe
out the debt by declaring bankruptcy. In many states, those who attempt to
publicize the conditions in the vast factory farms where diseased animals
are warehoused for slaughter can be charged with a criminal offense.
Corporations legally carry out tax boycotts. Companies have orchestrated
free trade deals that destroy small farmers and businesses and
deindustrialize the country. Labor unions and government agencies designed
to protect the public from contaminated air, water and food and from
usurious creditors and lenders have been defanged. The Supreme Court, in an
inversion of rights worthy of George Orwell, defines unlimited corporate
contributions to electoral campaigns as a right to petition the government
or a form of free speech. Much of the press, owned by large corporations,
is
an echo chamber for the elites. State and city enterprises and utilities
are
sold to corporations that hike rates and deny services to the poor. The
educational system is being slowly privatized and turned into a species of
vocational training.
Wages are stagnant or have declined. Unemployment and
underemployment-masked
by falsified statistics-have thrust half the country into chronic poverty.
Social services are abolished in the name of austerity. Culture and the
arts
have been replaced by sexual commodification, banal entertainment and
graphic depictions of violence. The infrastructure, neglected and
underfunded, is collapsing. Bankruptcies, foreclosures, arrests, food
shortages and untreated illnesses that lead to early death plague a harried
underclass. The desperate flee into an underground economy dominated by
drugs, crime and human trafficking. The state, rather than address the
economic misery, militarizes police departments and empowers them to use
lethal force against unarmed civilians. It fills the prisons with 2.3
million citizens, only a tiny percentage of whom had a trial. One million
prisoners work for corporations inside prisons as modern-day slaves.
The amendments of the Constitution, designed to protect the citizen from
tyranny, are meaningless. The Fourth Amendment, for example, reads: "The
right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized." The reality is that our telephone calls,
emails, texts and financial, judicial and medical records, along with every
website we visit and our physical travels, are tracked, recorded and stored
in perpetuity in government computer banks.
The state tortures, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air
Base
in Afghanistan or at Guantanamo Bay, but also in supermax ADX
[administrative maximum] facilities such as the one at Florence, Colo.,
where inmates suffer psychological breakdowns from prolonged solitary
confinement. Prisoners, although they are citizens, endure around-the-clock
electronic monitoring and 23-hour-a-day lockdowns. They undergo extreme
sensory deprivation. They endure beatings. They must shower and go to the
bathroom on camera. They can write only one letter a week to one relative
and cannot use more than three pieces of paper. They often have no access
to
fresh air and take their one hour of daily recreation in a huge cage that
resembles a treadmill for hamsters.
The state uses "special administrative measures," known as SAMs, to strip
prisoners of their judicial rights. SAMs restrict prisoners' communication
with the outside world. They end calls, letters and visits with anyone
except attorneys and sharply limit contact with family members. Prisoners
under SAMs are not permitted to see most of the evidence against them
because of a legal provision called the Classified Information Procedures
Act, or CIPA. CIPA, begun under the Reagan administration, allows evidence
in a trial to be classified and withheld from those being prosecuted. You
can be tried and convicted, like Joseph K. in Franz Kafka's "The Trial,"
(http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17690.The_Trial) without ever seeing
the evidence used to find you guilty. Under SAMs, it is against the law for
those who have contact with an inmate-including attorneys-to speak about
his
or her physical and psychological conditions.
And when prisoners are released, they have lost the right to vote and
receive public assistance and are burdened with fines that, if unpaid, will
put them back behind bars. They are subject to arbitrary searches and
arrests. They spend the rest of their lives marginalized as members of a
vast criminal caste.
The executive branch of government has empowered itself to assassinate U.S.
citizens
(https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/05/obama-kill-list-doj-m
emo) . It can call the Army into the streets to quell civil unrest under
Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, which ended a
prohibition on the military acting as a domestic police force. The
executive
branch can order the military to seize U.S. citizens deemed to be
terrorists
or associated with terrorists. This is called "extraordinary rendition."
Those taken into custody by the military can be denied due process and
habeas corpus rights and held indefinitely in military facilities.
Activists
and dissidents, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment,
can face indefinite incarceration.
Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations are
criminalized. The state assumed the power to detain and prosecute people
not
for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for
holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The
first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be
the last.
The outward forms of democratic participation-voting, competing political
parties, judicial oversight and legislation-are meaningless theater. No one
who lives under constant surveillance, who is subject to detention anywhere
at any time, whose conversations, messages, meetings, proclivities and
habits are recorded, stored and analyzed, who is powerless in the face of
corporate exploitation, can be described as free. The relationship between
the state and the citizen who is watched constantly is one of master and
slave. And the shackles will not be removed if Trump disappears.
John Oliver Breaks From Norm to Discuss Trump's 'Insane' Week in Office
(Video)
California to Investigate Racial Discrimination in Auto Insurance Premiums
Anti-Trump Sentiment Is Even Stronger in Europe Than It Is in the U.S.
Trump's Speech on Islam Is Just as Bizarre as Everything Else He Does
Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
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