The Visionless Society
Chris Hedges
Imagine yourself in early 2019. The Democrats, despite never articulating a
political vision other than not being Donald Trump and refusing to roll back
Republican legislation such as the 2017 tax bill, have regained the House of
Representatives by a slim majority. They vote articles of impeachment. The
Senate Republicans, pressured by many within their own party to abandon
Trump because of his ineptitude, increasingly erratic behavior and
corruption, call on the president to resign. Trump refuses. He uses the
megaphone of his office to incite violence by his small, fanatic base. The
military, whose deployment as a domestic police force is authorized by
Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, is called into the
streets to quell unrest. The United States, by the time the violence is
snuffed out, is a de facto military dictatorship.
That such a scenario is plausible to public figures such as Ralph Nader is a
sign of the deep decay of democratic institutions. The two major political
parties lack a coherent vision. They are subservient to corporate power.
They have abandoned the common good. They have turned politics into
burlesque. They have rendered the citizenry impotent. The press, especially
the electronic press, has transformed news into a grotesque reality show
filled with trivia, gossip and conjecture. The elites in both parties, along
with the rich and corporations, profit from a naked kleptocracy. Everything
is for sale, from public lands to public education. And the juggernaut of
corporate power impoverishes the people as it willfully destroys the facade
of the hollowed-out democratic state.
"There is no democracy," Nader said when I reached him by phone in
Connecticut. "The only democracy left in this country is they don't haul you
to jail for speaking out. What's left of democracy is a significant due
process, habeas corpus, freedom of speech and probable cause, and that's
violated when there's a terrorist attack and people are rounded up, like
Muslim Americans."
"Can there be a democracy when you don't have a competitive electoral
system?" he asked. "No. Can there be a democracy when people who come in
second win the election? No. Can there be a democracy when it's tougher to
get on the ballot than in any other Western country in the world by an order
of magnitude? No. Can there be a democracy when money rules? And not just
the money that politicians raise, but the third-party money. No. Can there
be a democracy when people have no influence on the military budget? No.
It's not subjected to hearings. It's ratified on the floor of the House and
Senate, but it doesn't go through the appropriations process. It's subject
to the most anemic, pathetic, servile questioning you can imagine. The
Congress has destroyed any kind of democratic participation . in the
military and foreign policy. The Congress is [supposed to be] invested in
the sovereignty of the people. They [those in Congress] do not comply with
the Constitution and the declaration of war authority. They don't comply
with the appropriations process. They have increasingly less public
hearings. They are cocooned on Capitol Hill with a force field of money,
militarism and materialism. Self-interests block the American people, who
can hardly call their member of Congress [because the calls are diverted to
voicemail]. This is the latest racket."
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"Trump is playing rope-a-dope with the Democrats," Nader continued. "He's
such an inviting target-all the lies, the stupidity, the outrage, the
racism, the misogyny-they can't resist. As a result, they're weakening
themselves by not having an affirmative agenda. They're still talking about
how they can learn how to connect with the average person. Can you imagine?
It's now the end of 2017. They're trying to figure out a message."
House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Nader noted, has adopted the
mantra "money, message, and mobilization" for the party. "If you start with
money, what kind of a message are you going to have?" he asked. "If you
don't have a message, what are you going to mobilize around? So here it is.
They still haven't learned because they will never learn. The party will
always be weak, flabby, indentured and dialing for the same commercial
dollars as long as the four-time losers continue to run the party. . The
country is spinning into the abyss."
The Democrats have never called for an audit of the Pentagon's massive and
bloated military budget. They do not address corporate crime, champion
consumer protection, promote the rights of workers or demand a living wage
or full Medicare for all. And because they stand for nothing other than the
politesse of identity politics and high-blown liberal rhetoric they have
been unable to protect the country from the worst generation of the
Republican Party in the nation's history.
"They don't even know how to have sonorous political language," Nader said.
"They're stealing from you-my fellow Americans. A handful of corporate,
greedy bosses controlling your government on this national stage and local
level, gouging out whole communities, sending industries to fascist
communist regimes abroad. They have no loyalties to this country. They have
no allegiance to communities other than to exploit them, abandon them. They
rose to power on the backs of you, the workers. They were subsidized by
Washington and state capitals, by you the taxpayer. The Marines bailed them
out when they got into hot water, palling around with dictators and
monarchs. Why do you allow them to rule you?"
Nader said the ruling elites have "lost the fear of the people." This has
given rise to "a multifaceted dictatorial government indentured to the
plutocratic class symbolized by Wall Street."
Corporations, enjoying a new tax code that reduces corporate income taxes to
21 percent while individuals pay up to 37 percent, have been awarded the
constitutional rights of individuals while individuals have been stripped of
their rights.
"The Constitution is increasingly a dead letter," Nader said.
Corporate media companies view the news division as a revenue stream. They
collude with Trump in the daily Gong Show that masquerades as news.
"Trump took the press from profanity to obscenity," Nader said. "He learned
some lessons from 'The Apprentice.' He realized the media, with a few
exceptions, will do anything for ratings and money. What does he do? He goes
down the sensuality ladder. He starts talking openly about racism, rapists
and sex, grab them wherever you want and get away with it. They [the media]
go wild. That destroyed all the opponents in the Republican primary. Knocked
them out day after day, as the press went after sensuality. The coarseness,
the brutishness. There's always a novel attack. He kept them catching up
with him. One day he goes after [Sen. Marco] Rubio. Another day, he goes
after Hillary. Another day, a veteran family."
"When The New York Times has two pages of tiny print of Trump's lies, what
impact does it have unless there are remedies and mobilizations that use
that material to strengthen the opposition to replace him?" Nader asked.
"After a while, people just shrug their shoulders and go back to playing
video games. The margin for the defeat of the Democrats by the Republicans
can be attributed sufficiently to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael
Savage and all these creeps. They have a massive soliloquy, day after day
after day with no rebuttal. And they've got the blue-collar worker that way.
What kind of a population on the left of center would have allowed that to
happen? Using our public airwaves for free."
Nader said he feared that the population was so effectively anesthetized by
mass culture that it might not rise up against the elites. "The U.S. has
developed a society with an almost indeterminate absorptive capacity for
injustice, abuse and degradation," Nader said. "There is no civic education
in the schools. They don't know what the Constitution is. They don't know
what the law of torts is. They don't know where the town hall is. They're
living in virtual reality, swinging between big screen TV and their
cellphones. They're wallowing in text messages. To an extent, they're
excited by the workings of the minds symbolized by Wall Street and Silicon
Valley. That's the young generation. Great changes start with people in
their 20s. But look what you've got now. You've got 10 years of internet
connection, cellphones available to any child. That's one. The second is
24/7 entertainment. The third is the abandonment by the elderly generation.
They've sort of given up. They don't know the gadgetry. They don't know the
language. They have their own economic insecurity. They're not extending any
kind of historical experience to the young which contains severe warnings.
Watch out. You don't think it can happen again, [but] it can happen again
and again. There's no verbal, oral tradition between the generations. Less
and less. Then you have the political system, which is deep-sinking the
society. How are people going to mobilize themselves? Is there a strong
union, a labor movement? No. A strong consumer movement? No. They're losing
their privacy. They're losing their ability to use legal tender. The
corporate coercion is, to a degree, now getting rid of cash. Marx never
believed that could happen. Why do they want to get rid of cash? They want
to drive everybody into an incarcerated penitentiary that is surrounded by
mobile payments, credit cards, credit scores, credit ratings, debit cards,
constant debt, invasion of privacy, and the ability to assess penalties,
charges and unwanted purchases because they control people's money. That's
Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo got away with 3 million forced, unknown and
unwanted credit card sales, auto insurance sales, repairing their ratings.
Some people lost their cars and their homes. They're flipped over into
bankruptcy. Nobody has been prosecuted yet."
Compounding the decay is the collapse of the legal profession, a problem
exacerbated by Trump's stacking of the federal courts with incompetent and
far-right judges selected by groups such as The Federalist Society. The
courts, he said, have already destroyed the freedom of contract and the law
of torts. They have repeatedly revoked constitutional rights by judicial
fiat, ruling, for example, that unlimited campaign contributions by
corporations is a form of free speech and the right to petition the
government.
Wall Street and the big banks, bailed out in 2008, have returned to the
games of speculation that led to the global financial collapse. And when the
next collapse comes, the banks and Wall Street will again descend on the
U.S. Treasury for trillions more in bailouts.
"The banks are making huge profits," Nader said. "Therefore, they're taking
bigger risks. The consumer dollars are being transferred to corporate
profits, which are now being transformed into stock buybacks in order to
meet the criteria for higher compensation even if it's against the interest
of their own company."
"From 2005 to 2014, you had $3.9 trillion of stock buybacks, 50 percent of
all corporate net profits," he said. "Fifty percent of the top 500
corporations profited in that decade with stock buybacks. Not to better
salaries or shoring up pension plans, not to dividends, not to research and
development, not to productive capital and job creation. It's to stock
buybacks. The biggest story untold, or minimally told, in the American
economy today. With all this money repatriating from overseas and more
corporate offices, they're planning more stock buybacks. It's like burning
money."
"Walmart, instead of raising wages for its wage-starved masses, has about
$65 billion stock buybacks in the last seven years," Nader said. "If you
take a million Walmart workers and you give them a thousand dollars more a
year, that's $1 billion. Multiply that by 60 to 70 times."
The speculation, which is trashing the country's economy, will continue,
Nader said, until the financial system collapses and the U.S. defaults on
its bonds.
Nader worries that as long as "10 to 15 percent of the American people are
well-off" the elites will have enough support to continue the assault.
"Societies have been repressed by far smaller members of well-instituted
upper classes," he said. "That's what we forget. Eighteenth-, 19th-,
20th-century Europe. A tiny clique controlled them. When there's any problem
it flips over to dictatorship. As long as the contented classes are not
upset, the system of control is in lock, like connecting gears."
"The corruption never ends," he said. "We're a gambling society. We bet on
the future. We don't build the future. You've got casinos everywhere, video
gambling. They're pushing for gambling on your mobile phone. They're pushing
for legalization of gambling in sports. Then you got marijuana. Day after
day there are stories about the legalization of marijuana. What's going to
happen? It's already a big business. The paraphernalia. They don't write
anything about legalizing industrial hemp. Which could be a significant
industry in the country. All the farmers want it, and even the paper
companies want it. And the DEA has still got it on a proscribed list. You
got [Sen.] Rand Paul and [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell supporting
legalization of hemp. It's not being pushed in Congress by the Democrats."
Resistance, Nader said, must be local. First we need to organize to take
back our own communities, he said. Congressional seats have to be contested
by grass-roots organizations that use the power of numbers to overwhelm mass
media and corporate money. And we can expect the corporate state to attempt
to shut out our message.
"Living wage, taxes, universal health insurance, that have 70 percent
support or higher," Nader said in listing campaign issues. "Breaking up big
banks, 90 percent support. Cracking down on corporate crime, similar. People
need to give corporate crime a face. This is what happens to your credit.
This is what happens to your home. This is what happens to your job. This is
what happens to you if you have cancer. This is what happens in the
hospital. This is what happens when you're denied health insurance; you
can't cover your kids. It's pretty crazy when you can't make this kind of a
pitch to a large audience."
The greed of the corporate state leaves us unprepared for the ravages of
climate change, he warned. And by the time the elites respond it may be too
late.
"It's a race," Nader said. "Once Miami gets inundated, especially Fisher
Island, it might bring the wealthy class to their senses. The problem with
solar is it needs a network. Solar panels are fine, but if you're going to
have solar electricity you need a different type of grid system. That
requires infrastructure investment."
"Justice needs money," he concluded, calling on enlightened elites to spend
a billion dollars to fund resistance movements outside the Democratic Party.
"The abolition movement needed money. The suffrage movement needed money.
They got it from wealthy people. Civil rights movement. The Curry family.
The Stern family. The early 1950s, 1960s. Environmental movements got money
from rich people. Don't wait for the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party
is an instrument. On the first round you've got to use it and control it. On
the third round, when you're mobilized, you can throw it aside. It's a
hollowed feature that is a part of the duopoly. But it's there. These
parties are very vulnerable. They're shells that rest on money and
television ads that nobody likes. Unrebuttable right-wing talk radio. All
these can be circumvented neighborhood by neighborhood, but you've got to
have money. Labor halls are unoccupied. Veteran halls are unoccupied.
Libraries are unoccupied. There are a lot of meeting places around. A lot of
empty stores can be rented."
