Chris Hedges, as usual, paints a grim future for democracy. He points
to Matt Taibbi's Book, "Insane Clown President President Dispatches
From The 2016 Circus", a better title might have been, "Narcissistic
Court Jester President - President Distractions From The 2016
Circus".
What on Earth will we tell our children and grandchildren when they
ask us how we allowed the roof of democracy to fall around our ears?
"The Packers were playing that day," we might say. "But," they will
cry as they reach out and wipe the drool from our lips, "what about
the day before and the day after? Surely you had to know your rights
were being trampled."
"Huh, was that around the time we were told to pledge allegiance to
Emperor Trump?"
Carl Jarvis
On 3/12/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Empty Piety of the American Press
Mr. Fish / Truthdig
The press, giddy with its newfound sense of mission and purpose, is
carrying
out a moral crusade against Donald Trump. The airwaves and print have shed
their traditional claims of “impartiality” and “objectivity.” They
fulminate
against Trump, charging—falsely—that he was elected because of Russian
interference and calling him a liar, ignorant and incompetent. They give
airtime to his bitterest critics and bizarre associates, such as Omarosa
Manigault-Newman, a onetime star of “The Apprentice” and now a fired White
House aide, and Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who says she had a sexual
relationship with Trump. It is great entertainment. It is great for
ratings.
It is great for profits. But it is not moral, and it is not journalism.
The empty piety is a mask for self-interest. It is accompanied by the
veneration of the establishment politicians, generals, intelligence chiefs,
corporate heads and hired apologists who carried out the corporate coup
d’état that created our system of “inverted totalitarianism.” The corporate
structures that have a stranglehold on the country and have overseen
deindustrialization and the evisceration of democratic institutions,
plunging over half the country into chronic poverty and misery, are
unassailable. They are portrayed as forces of progress. The criminals on
Wall Street, including the heads of financial firms such as Goldman Sachs,
are treated with reverence. Free trade is equated with freedom. Democratic
politicians such as Barack Obama—who assaulted civil liberties, transferred
trillions of dollars upward to reigning oligarchs, expanded the drone wars
to include targeted assassinations of American citizens, and used the
Espionage Act to silence investigative journalism—are hailed as champions
of
democracy. Deference is paid to democratic processes, liberties, electoral
politics and rights enshrined in our Constitution, from due process to
privacy, that no longer exist. It is a vast game of deception under the
cover of a vacuous morality.
Those cast aside by corporate capitalism—Noam Chomsky calls them
“unpeople”—are rendered invisible and reviled at the same time. The
“experts” whose opinions are amplified on every issue, from economics to
empire and politics, are drawn from corporate-funded think tanks, such as
the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, or are
former
military and intelligence officials or politicians who are responsible for
the failure of our democracy and usually in the employ of corporations.
Cable news also has the incestuous habit of interviewing its own news
celebrities. Former CIA Director John Brennan, one of many former officials
now on the airwaves, has morphed into a senior national security and
intelligence analyst for NBC and MSNBC. Brennan was the architect of the
disastrous attempt to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to arm
“moderate” rebels in Syria, oversaw the huge expansion of our drone wars
and
instigated the canard that Russia stole the last U.S. presidential
election.
The most astute critics of empire, including Andrew Bacevich, are banished,
as are critics of corporate power, including Ralph Nader and Chomsky. Those
who decry the waste within the military, such as MIT Professor Emeritus Ted
Postol, who has exposed the useless $13 billion anti-ballistic missile
program, are unheard. Advocates of universal health care, such as Dr.
Margaret Flowers, are locked out of national health care debates. There is
a
long list of the censored. The acceptable range of opinion is so narrow it
is almost nonexistent.
Where is the flood of stories about families being evicted or losing their
homes because of foreclosures and bank repossessions? Where are the stories
about the banks and lending agencies that prey on recent college graduates
burdened with crippling loans and unable to find work? Where are the
stories
about families going into bankruptcy because they cannot pay medical bills
and the soaring premiums of for-profit health care? Where are the stories
about the despair that drives middle-aged white men to suicide and millions
of Americans into the deadly embrace of opioid addiction? Where are the
stories on the cruelty of mass incarceration, the collapse of our court
system and the reign of terror by police in marginal communities? Where are
the investigative pieces on the fraud and the tax boycott that have been
legalized for Wall Street, the poisoning of the ecosystem by the fossil
fuel
and animal agriculture industries? Why is climate change a forbidden
subject, even as extreme weather devastates the nation and much of the rest
of the planet? Why are the atrocities we commit or abet in Iraq,
Afghanistan
and Yemen gnnored? Why are the war crimes carried out by Israel against the
Palestinians erased from news coverage?
The relentless pillorying of Trump is news-as-reality-television. Trump
fills in for Richard Hatch of the old “Survivor” show. Trump’s imbecility,
dishonesty, narcissism and incompetence are at once revolting and riveting.
The press, ostensibly seeking a more polished brand to improve the public
presentation of empire and corporate capitalism, is in fact further
empowering the lunatics who will dominate the political landscape.
“America is ceasing to be a nation,” reporter and author Matt Taibbi writes
in his book “Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus,” “and
turning into a giant television show.”
The stunts pulled during the last presidential election—Kentucky Sen. Rand
Paul wearing goggles as he chain-sawed the tax code in half, Trump inviting
women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault to a presidential debate
and Ben Carson having to defend himself against allegations he lied when he
wrote that as a child he attempted to stab another boy—will become staples
of political campaigning. Voters, stripped of all meaningful power or
control over their own destiny, used only as stage props in rallies and at
party conventions, are permitted to vote only for a system they hate. And
the winners are those who can give the best and most entertaining
expression
of that hatred. “Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star,” Taibbi
writes. “It doesn’t know how to turn the cameras off, even when it’s
filming
its own demise.”
If the press sided with citizens and exposed the corporate systems of power
that hold them captive, its advertising income would dwindle and it would
be
treated as an enemy of the state. Since corporations own the airwaves and
declining city newspapers, this will not happen. Journalism will remain
burlesque. The Public Broadcasting System, along with National Public Radio
dependent on corporate money, including the Koch brothers, is as loath to
take on the corporate establishment as its for-profit competitors.
Dissenters and critics exist only on the margins of the internet, and the
abolition of net neutrality will see them silenced.
CNN’s Jake Tapper, one of the high priests in the Trump Inquisition, was
quite open about the narrowness of the assault. Being interviewed on “The
Axe Files” podcast, hosted by former Obama White House aide David Axelrod,
Tapper addressed charges that he opposes Trump’s policies by saying,
“Whenever anybody says that to me, I say, you can’t find any evidence about
what I think about his tax plan or repealing Obamacare or DACA or
immigration or trade or any of these issues—terrorism or ISIS or Syria. I’m
agnostic on that. I want to have full and interesting and provocative
debates and call balls and strikes. But I’m not putting out there an
immigration proposal.”
The corporate airwaves have a depressing habit of taking political hacks
like Axelrod or the former Clinton strategist George Stephanopoulos and
transforming them into journalists. Even Chelsea Clinton got a shot at
journalism, being paid $600,000 a year to do fluff pieces for NBC. The
fusion of news and celebrity, with figures like Tapper appearing on late
night talk shows, fits with the reality-television presidency the corporate
press empowers.
The press, like the Democratic Party, is playing a very dangerous game. It
is banking, as Hillary Clinton did, on Trump being so repugnant he and
those
who support him will be replaced with Democrats. It relies on polls to
guide
its tactics and strategy, forgetting that every national poll offered
assurance that Trump would lose in 2016. This gamble may work. But it may
not. Policy issues accounted for only 10 percent of the media coverage
during the 2016 presidential race. News reports concentrated on the latest
polls, scandals, publicity stunts, campaign tactics and strategy as well as
Trump’s bombastic remarks, according to a report issued by the Shorenstein
Center at Harvard University. In short, there was little substance to the
coverage. This will only get worse. The gossip, trivia and invective
masquerading as news are not only irrelevant to most of the electorate but
reinforce the image of liberal elites being out of touch with the pain and
rage rippling across the nation.
Corporations that own the press look at news as a revenue stream. The news
division competes against other revenue streams. If news does not produce
comparable profits, its managers are replaced and its content is altered
and
distorted to draw in more viewers. Journalism is irrelevant. The disease of
celebrity and greed, which warps and deforms the personality of Trump,
warps
and deforms celebrities in the media. They share Trump’s most distasteful
characteristics. The consequences are ominous. An ignored, impoverished and
frustrated underclass will turn to increasingly bizarre politicians and
more
outlandish con artists and purveyors of hate. Trump is only the beginning.
The grotesque mutations to come, ones that will make Trump look reasonable,
are being spawned in newsrooms across the country.
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a
