And Sinclair’s expose on capitalism and “socialism” in Oil!
Hedges is an attempted product of the
elite Ivy school system, from boarding school to grad school, and even some
teaching at these same institutions. He
knows of whence he speaks. He criticizes
not only George W. Bush, as you have related to us, but also Bush/Cheney lackey
Scooter Libby [Prof’s note; sentenced, but commuted by Bush, for violation of
multiple national security laws—fall guy for Bush and Cheney], who attended the
same pre-prep school as Hedges.
Well that Hedges has mentioned prominent
Roman historian Tacitus. This quote from
Tacitus is illustrative: “The principle office of history I take to be this: to
prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds
should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
Hedges is scathing in his criticisms of
this system we live in: “The specialized dialect and narrow education of
doctors, academics, economists, social scientists, military officers,
investment bankers, and government bureaucrats keeps each sector locked in its
narrow role. The overarching structure
of the corporate state and the idea of the common good are irrelevant to specialists. They exist to make the system work, not to
examine it. Our elites replicate, in
modern dress, the elaborate mannerisms and archaic forms of speech employed by
calcified, corrupt, and dying aristocracies [Prof’s note: bitterly ironic for a
nation founded in repulsion to aristocracy].
They cannot grasp that truth is often relative. They base their decisions on established
beliefs, such as the primacy of an unregulated market or globalization, which
are accepted as unquestioned.” (98) The system and its functionaries spit out
mindless mantras about “the free market.”
An extraterrestrial would remark that these wealthy, white,
self-professed Christians and their lackeys cause a crisis by their criminal
greed and zeal for lack of regulation, and their answer to that ongoing crisis
is to have more greed and more deregulation!
As Calvin once said in Bill Watterson’s famous comic strip: “The surest
sign that there is intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has
tried to contact us.” Regulations are
supposed to be where the society—the public—decides that protections of the
weak are needed and/or there is a desire to emplace what is just. Yet from that public there is too often only
vitriolic self-enfeebling in the interest of “getting the government off our
backs,” completely ignoring the fact that the people’s government is the only
institution with the potential power capability to protect, defend, and
champion the interests of the non-wealthy and unprivileged.
By blindly believing in the interests of big business and “the
market,” we get ready and willing acquiescence to not only defunding the
government, but a transfer of wealth upward.
The Bush tax cuts blew a hole in the federal budget, drove wealth
radically and ruinously upward, shrunk the real economy, and drove legions out
of the middle class. Yet what do we
still get out of most business schools at the universities of this
country? “If only the government would
get its meddling hands out of business and the economy, we would have financial
and economic paradise.” And even though
the evidence demonstrates to us with increasingly hard-hitting forcefulness
that the opposite is true, we choose not believe our senses. And worse, we ignore—give a ready pass
to—utterly hypocritical corporate welfare and subsidies and tax breaks and other loopholes to the
tune of many, many, tens of billions of dollars. Obama is about deregulation, “free trade”, and
an aggressive foreign policy in service to those things, just to a different
degree than his Republican predecessors and the Republican “lackeys” in
Congress and the Judiciary. His position
is largely that of an employee who often disagrees with management but does not
want to lose his job, while his Republican opponents are more like either
slavish, trapped, followers, or zealous, non-deliberative, fanatics.
Hedges is convinced by his experience
that the supposedly “best” educations at the elite institutions will not
produce the necessary transformers. As
one of Hedges’ one-time students would later remark to him, Ivy League
education often merely socializes in a certain fashion, giving one the ability
“to present even trite ideas well.” So
well funded are these largely private institutions is that they build an
incredible number of (mostly unnecessary) buildings/complexes/centers and have
begun to run out of space. “While public
schools crumble, while public universities are slashed and diminished, while
for-profit universities rise as our newest vocational schools, elite
institutions become unaffordable even for the [remaining] middle class. The privileged retreat further and further
behind the walls of their opulent, gated communities.” (99) Just like the Roman
upper class retreated to their landed estates in the countryside, and lost
touch with, concern for, or even fellowship at all with, their fellow citizens
who were not so privileged. Privilege
went from being a duty, a proud responsibility to help one’s society and be
seen as a model for character emulation, to selfish, dismissive, and
disconnected indulgence. No way did the
wealthy want to pay ANY taxes that might support the pressing social needs,
infrastructure, etc. of other Roman citizens.
And did any of those wealthy REALLY know many (or even ANY) of the unprivileged they so condemned or disparaged?
No. They formed their condemning
opinions over lavish parties they threw one another at their countryside
estates, parties made possible by the wages of slavery (and other exploited
labor) and manipulation of money. They
had decoupled themselves from the reality of their 99%.
Ours are little different. “The wealthy and powerful families in Boston,
New York, or Los Angeles are molded by these (educational) institutions into a
tribe. School, family, and entitlement
effectively combine. The elites vacation
together, ski at the same Swiss resorts, and know the names of the same
restaurants in New York and Paris. They lunch at the same clubs and golf on the
same greens. And by the time they finish
an elite college, they have been conditioned to become part of the inner circle,”
with a disdain for those who are not. “They
know few outside their elite circles. They
may have contact with a mechanic in their garage or their doorman or a nanny or
gardener or contractor, but these are stilted, insincere relationships between
the powerful and the relatively powerless.
The elite rarely confront genuine differences of opinion. They are not
asked to examine the roles they play in society and the inequities of the
structure that sustains them…The sole basis for authority is wealth….The gross
social injustices that condemn most African Americans to urban poverty and the
working class to a subsistence level of existence, the imperial bullying that
led to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, do not touch them. They engage in
small, largely meaningless forays of charity, organized by their clubs or
social groups, to give their lives a thin patina of goodness. They can live their entire lives in state of
total self-delusion and perpetual childhood.” (100)
Hedges contrasts that picture with his
working-class family—the plumbers, post-office clerks, and mill workers. “Most
of the men were veterans. They lived
frugal and hard lives. [There] if you are poor, you have to work after high
school…You serve in the military because it is one of the few jobs in which you
can get health insurance and a decent salary.
College is not an option. No one
takes care of you. You have to do that
for yourself. This is the most important
difference between members of the working class and elites. If you are poor or a member of the working
class, you are on your own.” (101)
Talking about these things usually gets
the hurt cry of “class warfare!” from the privileged and their lackeys. As if merely shouting those two words is some
sort of shaming hush button. If you feel
that way, gentle reader, step out of your conditioning! Wealth does not need to be condemned to point
out how it is being favored radically unreasonably. Point out to the shouter that you will be
glad to avoid charges of class warfare if only the rich and powerful would
quite warring on you and bringing their ill-gotten (from you) booty back to
their already dragon treasure-room like financial lairs.
One of the pitfalls of capitalism is
that if its more successful members do not have deep character, they will never
know the meaning of the words “enough” and “just” and “responsibility.” And the society and all things connected to
it suffer grievously for that deficiency.
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