Evan,
You're misinterpreting what I'm writing.
America is my country. I live here, and I have been reading about my country's
history and its current affairs for my whole life. I participate in this
society, am part of its culture. I can criticize what my government did in the
past and what it is doing now in my name. One of the things that I've learned
about my government is that it lies about what it does, and it lies about what
other governments do. That does not make me an apologist for authoritarian
governments. I can easily accept that they do things which I detest. At the
ssame time, I can question whether everything that my government says about
them is true. I did not approve of Saddam Hussein. However, I didn't think that
it was the right of my government to declare war on Iraq and remove him from
power. I don't approve of the Assad regime. However, I think it is wrong for my
government to turn Syria into a failed state where a proxy war is raging. I
think Stalin was a monster. But I think that the US was wrong when it chose to
turn a multipolar world into one where it competed with Russia for world
domination. And it was US policy that helped bring Mr. Putin and all the
oligarchs to power.
If anyone still chooses to believe in the innocence of the US, just look at the
history of the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia. By the way, the
Intercepted podcast has an excellent section today on this issue. Talk about
evil countries! I'll nominate Saudi Arabia as a candidate at least as bad as
Stalinist Russia any day. And lest anyone forget, it was Saudi nationals who
attacked the US on 9/11. But every US President since FDR has courted Saudi
Arabia, both Democratic and Republican regimes. The US, my country, has been
aiding Saudi Arabia in its genocidal war on Yemen for several years. Talk about
profit! My government is selling them billions in military equipment so they
can do what they're doing. So now this young prince, good friend of our
president's son-in-law, felt confident enough to openly murder one of his
subjects who happened to be employed by a US national newspaper, and suddenly,
people are outraged. It has been OK to kill millions of Yemenis, but certainly
not an employee of the Washington Post. And what do you suppose the great
punishment will be?
Evan, the US is the richest, most powerful country in the world. Before Saudi
Arabia ever began bombing Yemen, the US was murdering Yemenis with drones. The
US was not at war with Yemen. It secured permission from its leader to go in
their and murder its people. That guy was, according to our government, a good
guy because he allowed the US to do what it chose to do to his people.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 2:03 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny
or Revolution
Wow Miriam, I've never seen you so wishy washy before. You give with one side
of your mouth, then take it all back with the other. You say that you think the
Gulag happened, but then you follow that with so many equivocations and
qualifications that it pretty much amounts to, well, maybe it didn't really
happen, or if it did, it was vastly exagerated.
Do you approach the crimes of the U.S. government that you never tire of
repeating in the same skeptical way? No you don't. You are always unhesitating
and unequivocal in your absolute condemnation of those crimes.
There's never any of this, well, facts can be interpreted in various ways, or,
I've learned to be wary because some things i heard turned out later to be vast
exaggerations. Never any of that where the U.S. is concerned.
Your outrage is selective. When it comes to the United States government, it's
in full effect; when it comes to the former Soviet Union, it's muted, or plain
nonexistent.
The contrast between your harsh, absolute condemnation of the United States
government and your hemming and hawing about the Gulag Archipelago couldn't be
clearer.
I mentioned a while back how many on the left, and the right for that matter,
give a pass to the atrocities of countries they agree with ideologically, and
harshly condemn those they disagree with. You denied that you were an apologist
for authoritarian regimes. Your response below makes it clear that you are
indeed an apologist, at least for one of them, and historically one of the
worst at that.
I'm disappointed, but not really surprised.
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 9:22 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny
or Revolution
I think that actually happened. But I've learned to be wary because there are
other things that I, like everyone else, heard on the news over the years and
read about in novels and saw in films and these things turned out to be, in
some cases, vast exaggerations, and in other cases, outright lies.
And I've also discovered that a set of facts can be presented in different
ways, purposefully laid out and interpreted in order to lead the reader or
listener to the set of conclusions that the reporter or news organization,
wishes him or her to accept. Also, accepting one set of facts doesn't
necessarily lead me to the next step, the step that the Washington consensus
wants me to take. If I accept that Stalin was an authoritarian leader who ran a
police state and killed or imprisoned people whom he perceived as his enemies,
it doesn't follow that his goal was to dominate the whole world including the
US. Also, I've been to Russia and it was in the mid 90's when the US had openly
meddled with Russian politics and economics and the Russian people suffered as
a result of the shock therapy which the economists from the Chicago School of
Economics had forced on the Russian government. When I was there, I didn't yet
know the details about what the US was doing. But what I did know was that the
people were very poor and that a lot of them were angry at Gorbachev for having
ended Communism and the Soviet Union. They said that everyone was doing better,
financially under Communism. The people who said this were the people who
worked as tour guides and the people who worked on the little cruise ship that
we were on and the tour bus driver. Those were the people with whom we had
contact and who spoke English. I remember how shocked I was because I thought
they would be telling American tourists how grateful they were to have more
freedom and to now have a growing tourist industry.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 5:41 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny
or Revolution
I notice how you qualify accounts of the vast oppression of the former Soviet
Union, as stories we were told, as though their veracity were in question.
So I will just ask, was Solzhenitsyn just making all that stuff up about the
Gulag Archipelago?
And is the fact that it was only available as an underground publication for
16 years, because it wasn't allowed to be legally published in the former
Soviet Union until 1989, just one of those stories we were told?
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 5:20 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny
or Revolution
Carl,
I suppose that we're all defining "freedom of speech" differently. Evan, and I
imagine, a lot of people, think about all those stories they read about the
Soviet Union in which, we were told, people there would get dragged off to
Siberia if they said something that differed from what was published in Pravda.
Similar stories are told about East Germany. Evan wrote me privately earlier,
about Russia blocking reception of The Voice of America in eastern block
countries. You and I are talking about something much more subtle, and it
isn't obvious to people, particularly if they're measuring what we have here
against what they've been told about countries that have been defined as our
enemies. Especially for white male Americans, it's hard to imagine anyone who
doesn't believe that it's better to be an American and to live here than to be
the citizen of, or live in another country. And Evan believes that after the
second world war, since the US was the dominant country, it was vital that it
take charge because the alternative was that Stalin would have. For most
people, the fact that the US, Russia, and Great Britain divided the world among
them and that Stalin might have abided by the agreement had the US done so, is
inconceivable. We'll never know. The opportunity has fled. But if the behavior
of our country since 1951 provides any clues, I'd say that it has been the US
foreign policy that has been the greatest evil in the world.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 4:03 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny
or Revolution
Hi Evan,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. If my keyboard holds out and the "D"
and "A" and "i" keys ddon't jam and stick, I'll push forward. I was going to
buy a new keyboard today, but we returned home from our daughter's with a nasty
cold, and Cathy is not driving me anywhere.
It's interesting to me, the differences in each of us. Chris Hedges stimulates
my mind while you find his writing too broad and lacking specific examples. If
you have read many of my rambles, besides extending my condolances, I'd point
out that I'm pretty much of a generalist, painting the subject with broad
sweeps of the brush. But I am not writing to defend Chris Hedges. He is very
capable of making his own case. And as I've said, I am not seduced by him as
much as stimulated.
I do believe that Freedom of Speech is on the ropes, and has been controlled as
far back as I can recall...which goes to around the early 1940's. Back during
WW II, our war news was tightly controlled.
At the same time, President Roosevelt controlled the direction of the nation by
controlling how news was released, and by whom. FDR needed support for the
changes he had planned for the recovery. He brought under his wing a
collection of White Racists he called "Dixicrats", and sold them to America as
Democrats.
I'm struggling with my computer, so I'll keep this brief, and hope to write
more later. But Where I'm going with all this is that in my mind, freedom of
speech is a matter of control. Our information is tightly controlled by our
Ruling Class. As long as they have control over the minds of a majority of
Americans, they can ignore the griping of a few rebels.
Enough for now.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/23/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Actually, I suppose that "freedom of speech" is a relative term. We
can say anything that we want to say on the Blind Democracy list and
Hedges can say what he wishes to say on Truthdig. However, neither he
nor I can say what we wish to say on any corporate media source, a
source where we might be heard by millions of people. You can talk to
your family about your latest birthday party on Facebook, but the
pages of voices known to have dissident views are being closed down
with the counsel of organizations like the Atlanta Council (a voice
for many interests including NATO), at the behest of Congress. Groups
can physucakky protest only in approved locations, usually far away
from the sites they wish to protest. And remember, Hedges was fired
from the NY Times for making a speech of which the Times
disapproved. Michael Moore was speaking at an Oscar ceremony and when,
during the speech, he made a statement opposing the Iraq War, the mike
was turned off and he was ushered off the stage. So yes, I have the
freedom to write these words on an email list in October 2018 which
will reach, perhaps
20 or so people, if there are that many on this list and you may
choose to call that freedom of speech. But Alex Jones was removed from
Twitter because his speech is considered to be extreme and he reaches
a lot more people than
20 blind folks.
As for those technological inventions used for public benefit, well,
yes we benefit from them, but the greatest benefit is reaped by the
very wealthy and although we benefit, we are also greatly harmed.
There's so much to this subject that we, or I, just can't deal with
it, certainly not in an email. But what comes to mind is automobiles.
Once upon a time, guys used to really love repairing their cars. They
liked doing it and doing it saved them money. Now cars are
manufactured with technology which is so complicated that no one can
repair their own car anymore. Actually, people often don't even own
their cars because in order to have a car in good condition, you need
a new one every two or three years. Financially, what is most feasible
is to lease a car. That means that you just keep making payments
forever and ever. In that way, you can afford to have a car that runs
well which is a necessity in a country which has made convenient
public transportation unavailable. A long time ago, if you were away
from home and had an emergency or needed information from someone,
there was a pay phone nearby. It cost a dime, than a quarter. But now
we are so lucky because we have been conditioned to require a small
computer wherever we go in order to make contact with the rest of the
world and it costs more than a dime or a quarter. There's no exception
if you're poor, if you earn $7.50 an hour or are unemployed, no pay
phones for you. You are still required to have a mini computer, called
a smart phone, costing hundreds of dollars with a complicated pay
plan. But yes, technology is wonderful.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2018 10:09 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either
Tyranny or Revolution
First of all, let me say I generally agree with Hedges' description of
the character traits of the uber-rich. While I was reading it, I was
thinking how it reminded me of many monarchs, wealthy merchants, and
inheritors of wealth throughout history. But I do have a few issues
with the piece.
Aristotle warned of the perils of rule by the uber-rich. So they've
been around for thousands of years, and somehow humanity has managed
to survive.
Not only survive, but thrive. How is that possible?
Just a few quotes here:
"... the uber-rich make war on the “freedom of conscience, freedom of
speech, ..."
Hmmm, war on freedom of speech? But here we are reading an article on
how pernicious they are. So they certainly haven't won, and after
thousands of years of effort! Imagine!
Another quote:
"The uber-rich, as Karl Polanyi wrote, celebrate the worst kind of
freedom—the freedom “to exploit one’s fellows, or the freedom to make
inordinate gains without commensurable service to the community, the
freedom to keep technological inventions from being used for public
benefit, ..."
What technological inventions might those be? Are any specifics
forthcoming?
Would it be too much work for Hedges to provide an example or two?
Apparently so.
Here we are, our residences full of technological marvels our
ancestors more than a couple of generations back wouldn't even
understand, but somehow the uber-rich are keeping unspecified
technological inventions from us.
But here's the one that bugs me most:
"The dark pathologies of the uber-rich, lionized by mass culture and
mass media, have become our own. We have ingested their poison...."
Okay, so who is this "we" he refers to? Now, I've been a native
speaker of English for over 50 years, and "we" generally refers to the
speaker, or the author in this case, and one or more other people. So
is he refering to himself and an unspecified number of fellow
ingesters of the poison of the pathologies of the uber-rich? If not,
then why is he using the word "we"? He certainly doesn't speak for me,
or most of the people I know. In fact, as I already said, I generally
agree with his characterization of the uber-rich Of course, once
again, we get a sweeping pronouncement, devoid of specifics, or any
kind of evidence.
Just Hedges letting his hyperbole carry him away again.
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2018 3:19 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either
Tyranny or Revolution
The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution
Mr. Fish / Truthdig
At the age of 10 I was sent as a scholarship student to a boarding
school for the uber-rich in Massachusetts. I lived among the
wealthiest Americans for the next eight years. I listened to their
prejudices and saw their cloying sense of entitlement. They insisted
they were privileged and wealthy because they were smarter and more
talented. They had a sneering disdain for those ranked below them in
material and social status, even the merely rich.
Most of the uber-rich lacked the capacity for empathy and compassion.
They formed elite cliques that hazed, bullied and taunted any
nonconformist who defied or did not fit into their self-adulatory
universe.
It was impossible to build a friendship with most of the sons of the
uber-rich. Friendship for them was defined by “what’s in it for me?”
They were surrounded from the moment they came out of the womb by
people catering to their desires and needs. They were incapable of
reaching out to others in distress—whatever petty whim or problem they
had at the moment dominated their universe and took precedence over
the suffering of others, even those within their own families. They
knew only how to take. They could not give.
They were deformed and deeply unhappy people in the grip of an
unquenchable narcissism.
It is essential to understand the pathologies of the uber-rich. They
have seized total political power. These pathologies inform Donald
Trump, his children, the Brett Kavanaughs, and the billionaires who
run his administration. The uber-rich cannot see the world from
anyone’s perspective but their own. People around them, including the
women whom entitled men prey upon, are objects designed to gratify
momentary lusts or be manipulated. The uber-rich are almost always amoral.
Right. Wrong. Truth.
Lies. Justice. Injustice. These concepts are beyond them. Whatever
benefits or pleases them is good. What does not must be destroyed.
The pathology of the uber-rich is what permits Trump and his callow
son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to conspire with de facto Saudi ruler
Mohammed bin Salman, another product of unrestrained entitlement and
nepotism, to cover up the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi,
whom I worked with in the Middle East. The uber-rich spend their lives
protected by their inherited wealth, the power it wields and an army
of enablers, including other members of the fraternity of the
uber-rich, along with their lawyers and publicists. There are almost
never any consequences for their failures, abuses, mistreatment of
others and crimes. This is why the Saudi crown prince and Kushner have
bonded. They are the homunculi the uber-rich routinely spawn.
The rule of the uber-rich, for this reason, is terrifying. They know
no limits. They have never abided by the norms of society and never
will. We pay taxes—they don’t. We work hard to get into an elite
university or get a job—they don’t. We have to pay for our
failures—they don’t. We are prosecuted for our crimes—they are not.
The uber-rich live in an artificial bubble, a land called Richistan, a
place of Frankenmansions and private jets, cut off from our reality.
Wealth, I saw, not only perpetuates itself but is used to monopolize
the new opportunities for wealth creation. Social mobility for the
poor and the working class is largely a myth. The uber-rich practice
the ultimate form of affirmative action, catapulting white, male
mediocrities like Trump, Kushner and George W. Bush into elite schools
that groom the plutocracy for positions of power. The uber-rich are
never forced to grow up. They are often infantilized for life,
squalling for what they want and almost always getting it. And this
makes them very, very dangerous.
Political theorists, from Aristotle and Karl Marx to Sheldon Wolin,
have warned against the rule of the uber-rich. Once the uber-rich take
over, Aristotle writes, the only options are tyranny and revolution.
They do not know how to nurture or build. They know only how to feed
their bottomless greed. It’s a funny thing about the uber-rich: No
matter how many billions they possess, they never have enough. They
are the Hungry Ghosts of Buddhism. They seek, through the accumulation
of power, money and objects, an unachievable happiness. This life of
endless desire often ends badly, with the uber-rich estranged from
their spouses and children, bereft of genuine friends. And when they
are gone, as Charles Dickens wrote in “A Christmas Carol,” most people
are glad to be rid of them.
C. Wright Mills in “The Power Elite,” one of the finest studies of the
pathologies of the uber-rich, wrote:
“
They exploited national resources, waged economic wars among
themselves, entered into combinations, made private capital out of the
public domain, and used any and every method to achieve their ends.
They made agreements with railroads for rebates; they purchased
newspapers and bought editors; they killed off competing and
independent businesses and employed lawyers of skill and statesmen of
repute to sustain their rights and secure their privileges. There is
something demonic about these lords of creation; it is not merely
rhetoric to call them robber barons.
Corporate capitalism, which has destroyed our democracy, has given
unchecked power to the uber-rich. And once we understand the
pathologies of these oligarchic elites, it is easy to chart our
future. The state apparatus the uber-rich controls now exclusively
serves their interests. They are deaf to the cries of the
dispossessed. They empower those institutions that keep us
oppressed—the security and surveillance systems of domestic control,
militarized police, Homeland Security and the military—and gut or
degrade those institutions or programs that blunt social, economic and
political inequality, among them public education, health care,
welfare, Social Security, an equitable tax system, food stamps, public
transportation and infrastructure, and the courts. The uber-rich
extract greater and greater sums of money from those they steadily
impoverish. And when citizens object or resist, they crush or kill them.
The uber-rich care inordinately about their image. They are obsessed
with looking at themselves. They are the center of their own universe.
They go to great lengths and expense to create fictional personas
replete with nonexistent virtues and attributes. This is why the
uber-rich carry out acts of well-publicized philanthropy. Philanthropy
allows the uber-rich to engage in moral fragmentation. They ignore the
moral squalor of their lives, often defined by the kind of degeneracy
and debauchery the uber-rich insist is the curse of the poor, to
present themselves through small acts of charity as caring and
beneficent. Those who puncture this image, as Khashoggi did with
Salman, are especially despised. And this is why Trump, like all the
uber-rich, sees a critical press as the enemy. It is why Trump’s and
Kushner’s eagerness to conspire to help cover up Khashoggi’s murder is
ominous. Trump’s incitements to his supporters, who see in him the
omnipotence they lack and yearn to achieve, to carry out acts of
violence against his critics are only a few steps removed from the
crown prince’s thugs dismembering Khashoggi with a bone saw. And if
you think Trump is joking when he suggests the press should be dealt
with violently you understand nothing about the uber-rich. He will do
what he can get away with, even murder. He, like most of the
uber-rich, is devoid of a conscience.
The more enlightened uber-rich, the East Hamptons and Upper East Side
uber-rich, a realm in which Ivanka and Jared once cavorted, look at
the president as gauche and vulgar. But this distinction is one of
style, not substance. Donald Trump may be an embarrassment to the
well-heeled Harvard and Princeton graduates at Goldman Sachs, but he
serves the uber-rich as assiduously as Barack Obama and the Democratic
Party do. This is why the Obamas, like the Clintons, have been
inducted into the pantheon of the uber-rich. It is why Chelsea Clinton
and Ivanka Trump were close friends.
They come from the same caste.
There is no force within ruling institutions that will halt the
pillage by the uber-rich of the nation and the ecosystem. The
uber-rich have nothing to fear from the corporate-controlled media,
the elected officials they bankroll or the judicial system they have
seized. The universities are pathetic corporation appendages. They
silence or banish intellectual critics who upset major donors by
challenging the reigning ideology of neoliberalism, which was
formulated by the uber-rich to restore class power.
The uber-rich have destroyed popular movements, including labor
unions, along with democratic mechanisms for reform that once allowed
working people to pit power against power. The world is now their
playground.
In “The Postmodern Condition” the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard
painted a picture of the future neoliberal order as one in which “the
temporary contract” supplants “permanent institutions in the
professional, emotional, sexual, cultural, family and international
domains, as well as in political affairs.” This temporal relationship
to people, things, institutions and the natural world ensures
collective self-annihilation. Nothing for the uber-rich has an
intrinsic value. Human beings, social institutions and the natural
world are commodities to exploit for personal gain until exhaustion or
collapse. The common good, like the consent of the governed, is a dead
concept. This temporal relationship embodies the fundamental pathology
of the uber-rich.
The uber-rich, as Karl Polanyi wrote, celebrate the worst kind of
freedom—the freedom “to exploit one’s fellows, or the freedom to make
inordinate gains without commensurable service to the community, the
freedom to keep technological inventions from being used for public
benefit, or the freedom to profit from public calamities secretly
engineered for private advantage.” At the same time, as Polanyi noted,
the uber-rich make war on the “freedom of conscience, freedom of
speech, freedom of meeting, freedom of association, freedom to choose
one’s own job.”
The dark pathologies of the uber-rich, lionized by mass culture and
mass media, have become our own. We have ingested their poison. We
have been taught by the uber-rich to celebrate the bad freedoms and
denigrate the good ones. Look at any Trump rally. Watch any reality
television show. Examine the state of our planet. We will repudiate
these pathologies and organize to force the uber-rich from power or
they will transform us into what they already consider us to be—the help.
Chris Hedges
