Did I ever mention that I really like Chris Hedges?
Carl Jarvis
On 12/9/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Great American Shakedown
The Great American Shakedown
Mr. Fish / Truthdig
The Democratic Party and its liberal supporters are perplexed. They
presented hours of evidence of an impeachable offense, although they
studiously avoided charging Donald Trump with impeachable offenses also
carried out by Democratic presidents, including the continuation or
expansion of presidential wars not declared by Congress, exercising
line-item veto power, playing prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner to
kill individuals, including U.S. citizens, anywhere on the planet,
violating
due process and misusing executive orders. Because civics is no longer
taught in most American schools, they devoted a day to constitutional
scholars who provided the Civics 101 case for impeachment. The liberal
press, cheerleading the impeachment process, saturated the media landscape
with live coverage, interminable analysis, constant character assassination
of Trump and giddy speculation. And yet, it has made no difference. Public
opinion remains largely unaffected.
Perhaps, supporters of impeachment argue, they failed to adopt the right
technique. Perhaps journalists, by giving voice to opponents of
impeachment-who do indeed live in a world not based in fact-created a false
equivalency between truth and lies. Maybe, as Bill Grueskin, a professor at
the Columbia University Journalism School, writes, impeachment advocates
should spend $1 million to produce a kind of movie trailer for all those
who
did not sit through the hours of hearings, to "boil down the essentials of
the film" and provide "a quick but intense insight into the characters,
setting the scene with vivid imagery-to entice people to come back to the
theatre a month later for the full movie." Or perhaps they need to keep
pounding away at Trump until his walls of support crumble.
The liberal class and the Democratic Party leadership have failed, even
after their defeat in the 2016 presidential election, to understand that
they, along with the traditional Republican elites, have squandered their
credibility. No one believes them. And no one should.
They squandered their credibility by promising that the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would, as claimed by President Bill Clinton, create
200,000 new, well-paying jobs per year; instead, several million jobs were
lost. They squandered it by allowing corporations to move production
overseas and hire foreign workers at daily wages that did not equal what a
U.S. unionized worker made in an hour, a situation that obliterated the
bargaining power of the American working class. They squandered it by
allowing corporations to use the threat of "offshoring" production to
destroy unions, suppress wages, extract draconian concessions and push
millions of workers into the temp and gig economies, where there are no
benefits or job security and pay is 60% or less of what a full-time
employee
in the regular economy receives. They squandered it by forcing working men
and women to take two or three jobs to support a family, jacking up
household debt to $13.95 trillion. They squandered it by redirecting wealth
upward, so that during the Clinton administration alone 45 percent of all
income growth went to the wealthiest 1%. They squandered it by wiping out
small farmers in Mexico, driving some 3 million of them off their lands and
forcing many to migrate in desperation to the United States, a human tide
that saw the U.S. right wing and President Trump direct mounting rage
toward
immigrants. They squandered it by turning our great cities into urban
wastelands. They squandered it by slashing welfare and social service
programs. They squandered it by supporting endless, futile wars that have
an
overall price tag of between $5 trillion and $7 trillion. They squandered
it
by setting up a surveillance system to spy on every American and then lying
about it. They squandered it by catering to the big banks and gutting
financial regulations, precipitating the 2008 economic meltdown. They
squandered it by looting the U.S. Treasury to bail out banks and financial
firms guilty of massive financial crimes, ordering the Federal Reserve to
hand over an estimated $29 trillion to the global financiers responsible
for
the crash. They squandered it by not using this staggering sum instead to
provide free college tuition to every student or universal health care,
repair our crumbling infrastructure, transition to clean energy, forgive
student debt, raise wages, bail out underwater homeowners, form public
banks
to foster investments in our communities at low interest rates, provide a
guaranteed minimum income and organize a massive jobs program for the
unemployed and underemployed, whose ranks are at least double official
statistics. They squandered it by cutting child assistance programs-most
drastically during the Clinton administration-resulting in 16 million
children going to bed hungry every night. They squandered it by leaving
over
half a million Americans homeless and on the streets on any given day. They
squandered it by passing laws that keep students burdened by massive
college
loan debt that has climbed to $1.4 trillion, debt they cannot free
themselves from even if they declare bankruptcy. They squandered it by
militarizing police and building the world's largest system of mass
incarceration, one with 25% of the world's prison population. They
squandered it by revoking due process and habeas corpus. They squandered it
by passing massive tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, many of
which-such as Amazon-pay no federal income tax, ballooning the federal
deficit, now at $779 billion and climbing. They squandered it by
privatizing
everything from intelligence gathering to public education to swell
corporate bank accounts at taxpayer expense. They squandered it by
permitting corporate money-an estimated $9.9 billion will be spent this
presidential election cycle on political advertising-to buy politicians in
a
form of legalized bribery that sees corporate lobbyists write legislation
and create laws. They squandered it by doing nothing to halt the looming
ecocide.
The problem is not messaging. The problem is the messenger. The mortal
wounds inflicted on our democratic institutions are bipartisan. The
traditional Republican elites are as hated as the Democratic elites. Trump
is vile, imbecilic, corrupt and incompetent. But for a largely white
working
class cast aside by austerity and neoliberalism, he at least taunts the
elites who destroyed their communities and their lives.
The shakedown that Trump clumsily attempted to orchestrate against the
president of Ukraine in the hope of discrediting Joe Biden, a potential
rival in the 2020 presidential election, pales beside the shakedown
orchestrated by the elites who rule over America's working men and women.
This shakedown took from those workers their hope and, more ominously,
their
hope for their children. It took from them security and a sense of place
and
dignity. It took from them a voice in how they were governed. It took from
them their country and handed it to a cabal of global corporatists who
intend to turn them into serfs. This shakedown plunged millions into
despair. It led many to self-destructive opioid, alcohol, drug and gambling
addictions. It led to increases in suicide, mass shootings and hate crimes.
This shakedown led to bizarre conspiracy theories and fabrications peddled
by a neofascist right wing, deceptions bolstered by the lies told by those
tasked with keeping the society rooted in truth and verifiable fact. This
shakedown led to the end of the rule of law and the destruction of
democratic institutions that, if they had continued to function, could have
prevented the rise to power of a demagogue such as Trump.
There is zero chance Trump will be removed from office in a trial in the
Senate. The Democratic Party elites have admitted as much. They carried
out,
they argue, their civic and constitutional duty. But here again they lie.
They picked out what was convenient to impeach Trump and left untouched the
rotten system they helped create. The divisions among Americans will only
widen. The hatreds will only grow. And tyranny will wrap its deadly
tentacles around our throats.
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist,
a
New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree
program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers.
