Yes, isn't it wonderful? This one I'm keeping. I just wish I could send it to
someone who isn't already of the same viewpoint to convince them.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, December 09, 2019 6:11 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Great American Shakedown
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.
