"Ill US" Are The First Five Letters Of Illusion

Is this book apocalyptic leftist political literature?  Maybe, but critics usually have little retort to its presented facts.  Just a general “it will work out” or “it’s not that bad,” which is more positive thinking self-delusion that Hedges in print screams trying to get us to see!

Cover your ears if you want, and/or peek out through your fingers.  The doc here is going to get a bit raw.

Simply stated:  The world is waiting for us to get our heads out of our asses.

The average American appears unaware and unconcerned that much of the world is waiting, with incredulous disbelief, frustration, and occasional anger, for us to get our crap together.   Now, globalization takes a bad, and often deserved, rap from those on the left.  But globalization has brought incredible benefit to the world.  Has made the world a safer place, because that world wants to be part of the greater whole, wants to be connected, wants to be part of humanity’s progress.

And we, the drivers and originators, are blowing it.  How bitterly ironic that at a time of so much promise, so many great tools with great potential, so much desire by peoples to be a global village, and we are blowing it so bad they may never see fruition.

Do other countries and other peoples have issues and challenges they need to overcome? Yes, a massive pile of them.   THEIR energy is often poised to try to overcome challenges, however.  But where is the supposed leader of the world?  Where is the central piecemaker?  (yes, reader, I meant to say it like that)

We’re checked out, that’s where.  Living in illusion and denial.  Selfish, diverted, petty, denial, delusion and illusion.

If Hedges is right, and I hope he isn’t, all those things mean we secretly long for annihilation, and are only too glad to see it helped along by “a moral decline into hedonism and giddy, communal madness.” (189)  The reader can decide for him or herself whether we are near that point.  I would argue it isn’t giddy.

Hedges, echoing Toynbee, lists once powerful civilizations—Egypt, Persia, the Maya, Rome, Byzantium, Mughal and Ottoman empires, as well as Chinese kingdoms and even dynasties.   The common thread of their fall?  “They all, at a certain point, were taken over by a bankrupt and corrupt elite.  This elite, squandering resources and pillaging the state, was no longer able to muster internal allegiance and cohesiveness.  These empires died morally.  The leaders, in the final period of decay, increasingly had to rely on armed mercenaries, as we do in Iraq and Afghanistan, because citizens would no longer serve in the military.  They descended into orgies of self-indulgence, surrendered their civic and emotional lives to the glitter, excitement, and spectacle of the arena, became politically apathetic, and collapsed.” (189) 

I am sure it is not hard for the reader to make comparisons.  The elites—all of them—actively (many), passively (most), or with laughably feeble resistance (by the few), are dragging you to your civilization’s doom.   As Hedges has said elsewhere, they are “supranational parasitic puppeteers consuming the host-state.”  The past is indeed littered with the wreckage of the arrogant who believed that somehow it would all work out.  Get ready, History.  More wreckage coming your way unless these people who will be known as Americans (like another people were known as Romans) decide to change their course.

We cling, Hedges says, to the illusions (even if some might have one time been at least partial truths) that lull us with falsely reassuring comfort.   “And the lonely Cassandras who speak the truth about our misguided imperial wars, the economic meltdown, or the imminent danger of multiple pollutions and soaring overpopulation, are drowned out by arenas full of chanting fans” of whatever flavor of spectacle and illusion we prefer (college gladiator sports, concerts, prosperity gospels, “moral” crusades, vacuous celebrities,  meaningless citizen “competitions,” etc.).  (190)

Romans too spent their energies on the games, when they needed to address the problems of their society.  Where are the Romans today (anyone irritated yet at that question? Good!).  We are a bunch of arrogant, selfish, pricks, because we are knowingly preventing our descendants—our children and our children’s children and beyond—from having a worthwhile chance, all because we can’t be bothered.  If I were them, I would dig up our graves, strip of everything, and toss our embalmed mummified corpses into a giant lime pit.  Hell, that’s the BEST our memory would deserve.  And yet we have the colossal gall to supposedly revere our own Framers, who thought of the future and the common good, of posterity.

If we are going to ignore our problems, condemn our future, and sentence our descendants, we owe it to them to write them a letter and sign it saying that’s what we’re doing.  Better yet, make a video so they can see the faces and hear the voices of their despised ancestors who sentenced them to so much misery.

Confronting reality does not apparently appeal to us Americans, a people that once prided themselves on their pragmatism and courage (as did the Romans).   “The worse reality becomes, the less a beleaguered population wants to hear about it, and the more it distracts itself with squalid pseudo-events of celebrity breakdowns, gossip, and trivia.  These are the debauched revels of a dying civilization.  The most ominous divide lies between those who chase after these manufactured illusions and those who are able to puncture the illusion and confront reality.  More than the divides of race, class, or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state, or blue state, our culture has been carved up into radically distinct, unbridgeable, and antagonistic entities that no longer speak the same language and cannot communicate.  This is the divide between a literate, marginalized minority and those who have been consumed by an illiterate mass culture.” (190)

We embrace what any observer outside our culture would say is delusion.  Our quality of living and our sense of community declines, our jobs disappear, wealth disparity reaches feudal proportions, our elections become purchased business transactions, we sacrifice our principles in the waging of endless conflicts (that we say we didn’t initiate), we pollute ourselves, both personally and societally and environmentally.  And yet we say we are the greatest and freest country on earth, with a vibrant middle class, and that we stand for what’s right.

“The world that awaits us will be painful and difficult. We will be dragged back to realism, to the understanding that we cannot mold and shape reality to human desires, or we will slide into despotism.  We will learn to adjust our lifestyles radically, to cope with diminished resources, environmental damage, and a contracting economy, as well as our decline as a military power, or we will die clinging to our illusions.  These are the stark choices before us.” (190-191)  Economics and Mother Nature will give us our harsh, just desserts.  They will also end the delusive and illusive states we have presently chosen, and we will wail and gnash our teeth in our misery.

Even if we fail to turn back the tsunami, Hedges says, even if we become economically and politically crushed, there will be hope, and he’s right on that at least.  Because “no tyranny in history has crushed the human capacity for love [Prof’s Note: possibly because it transcends this existence].  And this love—unorganized, irrational, often propelling us to carry out acts of compassion that jeopardize our existence—is deeply subversive to those in power.  Love, which appears in small, blind acts of kindness, manifested itself even in the horror of the Nazi death camps, in the killing fields of Cambodia, in the Soviet gulags, and in the genocides in the Balkans and Rwanda.” (191)  Love cares nothing for revenge, greed, fame, power, or any illusion.  

Even “great” and mortally powerful dictators are only here for a small bit of eternity.  Their power is mortal, their reach limited, their legacies fleeting.  As mere mortals, what else could they be?  A people may fade when too many of them cast out love, but love itself endures.  The earthly powerful seek to silence those who lead authentic lives, who see reality, who embrace love and truth.  Yet always these voices “rise in magnificent defiance.  All ages, all cultures, and all religions produce those who challenge the oppressor and fight for the oppressed.” (192)

Hedges points out that we may worship at the foot of the altar of militarism, blind obedience, selfishness, and power, but those things will be forgotten by the better human natures that will follow in our wake.  Art and philosophy and the humanities will be valued once more.  We will sacrifice for each other again rather than seek only to exploit.  We will revere nature and not excessively elevate our place in it.   

I write these words to call you to avert the dissolute path we are on.  Love will return, will triumph again.  With or without us Americans.  I want it to be with.

BUY THIS BOOK.  Read it.  Read it again. Re-read it.  Dog-ear it.  Make notes on it.  Think about it.  Dispute it, if you can.  That a book like this is published, advertised, and read by some is hope in itself.

Just don’t ignore it.  For that will mean the title is completely true.

Worst Case Scenario Girl? Meet Perfectly Plausible Chris "Scary" Hedges

Brace for impact, reader.  Hedges doesn’t wear kid gloves, and you’re about to get walloped.

Inflation and other statistics in our society are manipulated and baldly changed in tracking and composition.  Why?  Because they can, and it serves the corporate elite.   By significant underreporting and misrepresentation, these false statistics greatly benefit corporations.  "An artificial inflation rate, one far lower than the real rate, keeps down equitable interest payments in bank accounts and certificates of deposit.  It masks the deterioration of the American economy. The fabricated statistics allow corporations and the corporate state to walk away from obligations tied to real adjustments for inflation.  These statistics mean that less is paid out in Social Security and pensions.  These statistics reduce the interest on the multitrillion-dollar debt.  Corporations never have to pay real cost-of-living increases to their employees.” (181)

“Financial collapses lead to political extremism. The rage bubbling up from our impoverished and disenfranchised working class presages a looming and dangerous right-wing backlash.” (182-183).  Too many have lost hope and live in fear.   The despair goes on, and becomes not just personal, but familial, even extended family, even throughout community and society.  They know those “good jobs” aren’t coming back.  They are ripe for manipulation by “demagogues and charlatans.” (183)  Do we not already see this?  And with much of the middle class embracing misdirected anger, the true originators of the impoverishment and negative change are not being focused on.  “And unless we rapidly re-enfranchise our dispossessed workers into the economy, unless we give them hope, our democracy is doomed.” (183)

Hedges is bringing so much to us in the final pages of this last chapter.  He quotes from the book Collapse, written by economist Jared Diamond.  Diamond “lists five factors that can lead to social decay, including a failure to understand and prevent causes of environmental damage; climate change; depredations by hostile neighbors; the inability of friendly neighbors to continue trade; and finally, how the society itself deals with the problems raised by the first four factors.  A common failing involved in the last item is the dislocation between the short-term interests of elites and the longer-term interests of the societies the elites dominate and exploit.” (183)

Hedges goes on to say that Diamond’s “last point is crucial.  Corruption, mismanagement, and political inertia by an elite, which is beyond the reach of the law, almost always result in widespread cynicism, disengagement, apathy, and finally rage.  Those who suffer the consequences of this mismanagement lose any loyalty to the nation and increasingly nurse fantasies of violent revenge.  The concept of the common good, mocked by the behavior of the privileged classes, disappears.  Nothing matters.  It is only about ‘Me.’” (183)

Whoa.  The illusion-shattering is becoming deafening, and the shards are everywhere.  Hedges thinks the American public will see this and grasp the abyss of how much betrayal and abuse our true rulers and their lackeys have visited upon us.  Will finally see that both the Democratic and Republican parties are near-automaton tools of the corporate state.  Will see a day when “savings accounts, college funds, and retirement plans become worthless,” will see unemployment go up markedly and home values plummet.  But, he believes, instead of the public realizing who the real enemy is, the anger and ignorance will combine to propel right-wing radicals, both the religious and a-religious kind, to the fore. (183) Some of this was seen in the Great Depression of the 1930s, but this time, the “center” is weak.  No wonder that Russian analyst a few years ago felt that America could come apart at the seams, become so radicalized and disunited that mass riots or even civil war were not unthinkable.

The crisis of faith in the robber/casino/criminal form of capitalism we have allowed to develop has been long coming—and long overdue.  Not just the idea of “unrestrained” (read, unregulated) markets needs thoroughly re-examined, but the traditional blind acceptance of the basic form of capitalism is also deeply flawed and in need of our critical thinking.  The capitalist ideology is unlimited growth (sometimes modified to mean only unlimited “development”), which by itself can be consuming, unsustainable, and self-defeating.  It reaches its utter absurdity when we pause to consider that the premise is UNLIMITED GROWTH IN A LIMITED SPACE (the Earth).   If we were rational and self-examining, we could have seen long ago that we would, sooner rather than later, run into walls, and maybe deplete the resource wells.  We long ago started using up resources past the replenishing point.  Whether it is fossil fuels, clean, fresh water, fish stocks, precious topsoil where we grow life, or any of a number of resource marks, we are staring catastrophe in the face.  Combine these with overpopulation and environmental change (see a concise but still lengthy list by Hedges on 185) and pollution, and we face resource famine.  And precisely because we have drained those resources far past the replenishing point, bouncing back won’t be easy—if it is possible for many of us at all. (184)

We combine this with more ingredients for catastrophic failure: colossal, unregulated international flows of capital from utterly greedy and self-serving manipulators and corporations who care nothing for how it affects the majority of the world’s people, and who are so reckless they are willing to risk train-wrecking the world financial system and ushering in the Mother of All Depressions;  unchanneled money that seeks and creates “bubbles” that rob middle class citizens of what wealth they thought they accumulated in stocks and homes and other “recommended” things; workers who are watching their wages being effectively ratcheted down to increase profits of money-mad corporations and uber-wealthy “owners” who surely own those workers in all but name; marked and growing inequality and the drying up of social movement or advancement; the corruption of the people’s supposed representatives and those “representatives” subservience to moneyed power; gargantuan-like excessive “defense” and “security” spending at a time when the world has rarely been systemically safer—and that every dollar so burned up is not available for the society, the infrastructure, the education, or the common good of its people; and borrowing, borrowing, borrowing, thoroughly unsustainable and irrational borrowing, like some crazily drunk giant gone berserk right before collapsing. (184)

Hedges tells us that Karl Polyani tried to warn us in 1944 in his seminal book The Great Transformation about blindly, foolishly trusting “the market” to “self-regulate.”  He had just watched the fascism that followed in the wake of dysfunctional or broken down market societies.  And “he warned that a financial system always devolved, without heavy government control, into a Mafia capitalism—and a Mafia political system—which is good description of our power elite.” (184)

Polyani also wrote that “self-regulation” of a “free” market means that human beings as well as nature itself become commodities to be ruthlessly exploited and used up, where the “market” determines their worth.  From this flows the destruction of both the “society and the natural environment.” (184)  Polyani, Hedges writes, cried out to “us that a society that no longer recognizes that nature and human life have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic worth beyond monetary value, ultimately commits collective suicide.  Such societies cannibalize themselves until they die.” (184)

“Those who run our corporate state have fought environmental regulation as tenaciously as they have fought financial regulation.  They are responsible, as Polyani predicted, for our personal impoverishment and the impoverishment of our ecosystem. We remain addicted, courtesy of the oil, gas, and automobile industries and a corporate-controlled government, to fossil fuels.” (185)  Not just temperature rise, but other things as well, may soon make huge portions of the world effectively uninhabitable.  The rest of humanity largely wants to, in varying degrees, tackle this civilization-threatening and maybe biosphere-threatening challenge head-on.   Who are the feet draggers?  Yes, US.

When we nearly melted the national and world economic system just a few years ago, how did we respond?  The corporate managers and government officials did the only things they knew how to do: pour massive amounts of money and resources into the financial sector whose criminality had caused it—the servants of the system know only how to manage and sustain the system; they have neither the will nor the ability to change it. (186)

The corporate powers of today move like their counterparts in Germany and Italy of the 1920s.  They push power and money to economic and social interest groups that serve them (now), and seek to weaken the state by dissolving the public interest and making everything presently public instead private, contracted out, or for sale.   Hedges says this sounds “depressingly familiar.” (186)  The reader can investigate for him or herself how corporations fed and fueled and aided and abetted the rise of the fascists of Germany and Italy.

The US working class has definitely become the lower class.  Their wages are going down in real dollars, and, though it was never a good thing to have to compensate by borrowing, their ability to borrow to keep up has now largely been removed from them.   Meanwhile, the wealthy corporations and plutocrats drain the state and national treasuries by their self-serving elite welfare, burden the society by using more of the roads, airways, court systems, etc., and yet maneuver to pay little for all those things.  By having their political servitors drive their taxes low, they have simultaneously underfunded and defunded the government, forcing massive borrowing in the people’s name. 

By driving up debt and starving the government for revenue, all while feeding themselves many tens and hundreds of billions in payments (whether military contractors, or security, or any number of private firms doing lucrative—and often corrupt—business with the government), they ensure the enfeeblement of what the Framers designed to be the people’s creature: the government.    “The government—the only institution citizens have that is big enough and powerful enough (Prof’s Note: As Teddy Roosevelt knew!) to protect their rights—is becoming weaker, more anemic, and increasingly unable to help the mass of Americans who are embarking on a period of deprivation and suffering unseen in this country since the 1930s.” (186)  To add searing insult to grievous injury, the people are even whipped up by the servitors of the corpocracy to fear and hate their government—the one entity they the people might use to rescue and free themselves.

Ralph Nader warns us how corrupt nearly everything connected with “high” finance has become.  And even if we had dedicated, incorruptible people in government to regulate it (hard to do when the knowledgeable ones almost all come from the diseased sector), the government doesn’t have the resources.  “’It doesn’t have a tenth of the prosecutors, the investigators, the auditors, the attorneys needed’” to deal with the criminal behavior of Wall Street, Nader says.  A Wall Street, if you’ll remember, that knew how so untouchable it was that it paid itself lucrative bonuses and retirement packages instead of reforming anything, indeed for even apologizing for vaporizing the wealth of millions of everyday citizens. (as listed in Hedges 186)

The modern feudal lords are fine with modern-day feudalism: “’Private police, gated communities, and serfs with a twenty-first century nomenclature,’” Nader says, are examples of the forming feudalism.  (Hedges 187)

All this borrowing to feed our criminal elites (and our illusions) can come to a forced end at any time.  Look up and witness the chilling words China gave the US Treasury Department during the financial crisis of 2008.  Hedges paints an equally cold picture for us: “The moment China, the oil-rich states, and other international investors stop buying U.S. Treasury Bonds, the dollar will become junk.  Inflation will rocket upward.  We will become Weimar Germany.  A furious and sustained backlash by a betrayed and angry populace, one unprepared intellectually and psychologically for collapse, will sweep aside the Democrats and most of the Republicans.  A cabal of proto-fascists, from Christian demagogues to simpletons like Sarah Palin to loudmouth talk-show hosts, will find a following with promises of revenge and moral renewal.  The elites, the ones with their Harvard Business School degrees and expensive vocabularies, will retreat into their sheltered enclaves of privilege and comfort.  We will be left bereft, abandoned outside the gates, and at the mercy of the security state.” (188)

If we, by our foolishness, selfishness, and refusal to face reality, make our currency of little value or even worthless, we will unravel it all.  “When money becomes worthless, so does government.  All traditional standards and beliefs are shattered in a severe economic crisis.  The moral order is turned upside down.  The honest and industrious are wiped out while the gangsters, profiteers, and speculators” win.  “An economic collapse does mean only the degradation of trade and commerce, food shortages, bankruptcies, and unemployment.  It also means the systematic dynamiting of the foundations of a society.” (188)

Hedges does not let us go.  Like the hero who makes the selfish, ignorant, coward look at what that coward has done, at the truth of it all, so does Hedges: “The free market and globalization, promised as routes to world-wide prosperity, have been exposed as two parts of a con game. But this exposure does not mean our corporate masters will disappear.  Totalitarianism, as George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia.  ‘A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,’ Orwell wrote.  ‘That is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.’ They have engaged in massive fraud.  Force is all they have left.” (Hedges 188)

While Hedges, writing in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, MAY have cast things too dark (hard to tell yet), and certain aspects of globalization have been positive, it is hard to ignore the overall theme.  He would classify the present period as a lull, nothing more.  “There are powerful corporate entities, fearful of losing their influence and wealth [Prof’s Note:  especially with ethnic and age demographics tilted against them], arrayed against us.  They are waiting for a moment to strike, a national crisis that will allow them, in the name of national security and moral renewal, to take complete control.  The tools are in place.  These antidemocratic forces, which will seek to make an alliance with the radical Christian right and other extremists, will use fear, chaos, the hatred for the ruling elites, and the specter of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian controls to extinguish our democracy.  And while they do it, they will be waving the American flag, chanting patriotic slogans, promising law and order, and clutching the Christian cross.  By then, exhausted and broken, we may have lost the power to resist.” (189)  And as you Madame, have pointed out, our enfeebling and energy sapping diets and lifestyle only depress this further.

Can this 236 year old marriage of the people and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” be saved?  Hedges is giving us the counseling—and the warnings.  It is up to us to do the hard work.  It won’t come from being distracted by yet more diversions.  Diversions are tools used by our common adversaries.  Focus and dedication are your counter-tools.  But first you have to pick them up.

Watch The Sand

Gentle Readers:

I have promised Madame to finish out my comments on this epically important book by August, so in a special installment set, today will be followed by another posting tomorrow, which will be followed by a Tuesday installment.

Let’s begin.  The thoroughly corrupt financial near meltdown of 2007-2009 was one indication.  The Bush administration’s lies overall and its USING the not unwilling press to promote going to war with Iraq on false pretenses  was another.  But both times the elite and the corporate media were ONE.  And there’s never any accountability, never a retraction or big apology.

The press, the government, the top corporations, and the plutocracy have become nearly inseparable, all serving the same ends.  Even so  called “liberal leaning” places like the New York Times often aren’t.   While  the corporate media does not much parrot the Corporate-Lite prattle of the Dems, it does the Corporate-Heavy  prattle of the Repubs. 

If we have little press that is looking out for the truth—or the relevant—another bulwark our Framers put in place to preserve our republic falls away.  The steady rise of corporate power, which has surged relatively unchecked for a long while—indeed has been fostered actively for the last 30-40 years—changes the very character of who and what we are as a nation.  We put “freedom” and “democracy” and “economic opportunity” as our supposed values, but our system makes a lie of them.  The Constitution becomes not just a speed bump for those running over us, but is twisted and used by the power elite, and we the people, in our ignorance of our own foundation document, are twisted into whatever emotional furor the plutocratic elite wants.

Those who hold faith in Democrats to change things are deluded.  Democrats are near-meaningless as a check on abusive power of the plutocracy.  Democrats may sometimes drag their feet against the ways of the plutocracy, but it is at most an occasional rear-guard temporary holding action before further retreat.  In essence, they are merely a slower route to complete plutocratic dominance than their party counterparts.  So Money dominates the Dems too, and in their defense, we the people have given them few options for it not to. 

FISA, as Hedges points out, was passed by a Democratic Congress.  It not only gives licenses to invasion of privacy, not only excuses all those who have stomped on our civil liberties, but actually criminalizes anyone who does the right thing and tells the public what is happening. (175-176)  And the cycle of control is complete because those patriots who look out for the right to privacy are labeled “leaking traitors,” with the people joining in on the condemnation.  It is an indignity and injustice even worse than the dark days of the woman’s suffrage movement, where marching women would be pelted and called “whores” by the very women they were marching to secure rights for.

Massive deregulation and elimination of anti-trust protection mean than we have little influence anymore.  Corporations have often swelled into massive entities of colossal power, and with few to no meaningful regulations on them, they do what they want.  Hedges quotes FDR, whose warning we heeded partially for a period, then forgot (a dooming trait of humanity, and Americans in particular):  “’The liberty of democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of the Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.’  It is also ‘not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way to sustain an acceptable standard of living.’” (as quoted in Hedges 177)

Economic power and political power are linked.  We have a country and government (local, state, federal) “run by and on behalf of corporations.” (177)  These institutions are wily enough to prepare for the probable:  As “despair and impoverishment reach into larger and larger segments of the populace, the mechanisms of corporate and government control are being bolstered to prevent civil unrest and instability.” (177)

The atrophy and brittleness of the few tools of the people not completely rusted through and broken to pieces means a hard road.  Debt—of both citizens and their governments, along with many small and medium sized businesses—is ubiquitous and paralyzing.  And so we get no movement in a forward direction.  “There is no coherent and realistic plan, one built around our severe limitations, to sta(u)nch the bleeding or ameliorate the mounting deprivations we will suffer as citizens.  Contrast this with the national security state’s preparations to crush potential civil unrest and you get a glimpse of the future.” (178)  The Occupy movement, which was a gnat, got quite the overreaction from authorities, most especially when it got anywhere near—or demonstrated the potential—to being effective.

Americans have no idea of, or regard for, the implications of terrorism-hysteria, and general security hysteria, all fanned by the elite.  Such hysteria has allowed the Constitution to be trampled and subverted.  The government, by the legislation authorized by the people’s supposed representatives, and okayed by you the people in fear, has the power to seize ANY of you, hold you without charge, without legal representation, and “without access to the outside world.” (179)  In our general fear, we acquiesce to this perversion, even welcome it.  This has been a pattern in us, dating all the way back to the founding generation, but it has gotten worse.

The “news” has a tendency to label any who resist the above as part of a ‘criminal element,” much like the Nazis did to cement their power.  Remember history well: The Nazis did that WITH THE WILLING ACQUIESCENCE OF THE MAJORITY OF GERMANY’S PEOPLE.  A people who either went along or were actually glad all those “troublemakers” were being gotten out of the way.

Money has become power.  Power has won.  It will remain winning until you the American public become knowledgeable, until you drop your illusions and--until you correct the catastrophic course you and your society are on--most of your diversions most of the time.   Only then can you coalesce into a movement, and movements are what can bring change.

The world is waiting on you.  The world has progressed.  You have stagnated or gone backward.  You still have a little time to set the world to right without experiencing deeply painful catastrophic failure first.  But the sand is deep in the hourglass.

Fully Alive Illusions

Professor J,

As we approach the end of this discussion, I'm slightly amused that it has taken us very nearly a year to work our way through it. Of course with my need to connect information and opinion presented in  Empire of Illusion to current events, and your penchant for thorough analysis and putting things in historical context, the reader cannot be surprised.  We haven't been able to keep it short; hopefully we have been able to keep it interesting, do the work justice, and encourage our readers to think more deeply about the hard things.

This is not a book for the faint of heart as we said when we started. Likewise Hedges' other books, interviews, and  speeches reveal uncomfortable truths and force us to ask difficult questions not only of those in authority and seats of power, but of ourselves. Questions like: Is this the best we can do? Is this who we are? Do we really think so little of freedom as to sit idly by, lulled by distractions and entertained while we slip over the edge of a cliff without so much as a whimper of protest?

We'd like to think not but the pull of the illusion created for us is strong.


While home schooling my kids I had a frequent mantra which often followed discussions of those throughout history who brought about change, stood against evil, and took action when their consciences wouldn't let them do otherwise:

Never give up your right to think for yourself to anyone else. Not to a political leader, a religious leader, or anyone  who wants to exert control over you.  The moment you do, you are a slave.

Not a lesson taught in most schools or churches, and certainly not advocated in political speeches. People thinking for themselves--what a dangerous concept. It's bad enough when individuals or groups acquiesce free thinking, when an entire culture does it, it's tragic on a historic level. And we don't have to imagine how badly it can go; we've seen it. We've seen it over and over again. Of course one must know a bit of history to realize it...


"Individualism is touted as the core value of American culture, and yet most of us meekly submit, as we are supposed to, to the tyranny of the corporate state." (p. 182)

 In schools, aside from not teaching them history and critical or divergent thinking, we have allowed educators and the medical community to drug students, particularly males, into passivity thus wasting those prime years when young adults have historically questioned authority, demanded change, and in general caused all kinds of trouble for the establishment. I wonder what the full cost (as you like to say) of that is going to turn out to be. 

 Yesterday at coffee we pondered  the meaning of the phrase "fully alive" used by St. Irenaeus. We spent some time imagining what a person living that way might look like and how close any of us were to it. Would we say our lives are being lived with passion, concern for others, and contentment? Would we say we've found (as Sir Ken Robinson would say) our "element?" How were we doing at stepping away from blatant consumerism and living a life of peace and service? Had any of us found that one thing we were passionate about? How was our moral courage? While I'm writing this and thinking on the things Hedges points out in his work, I'm wondering what a society, or on a smaller scale, a community that is "fully alive" might look like. I'm comparing that ideal I envision with what Hedges describes in this book.


Comparing it for instance to lurid wrestling matches, tawdry talk shows, brutal porn, objectified women and girls, a celebrity culture that treats human beings as commodities, the "moral nihilism embraced by elite universities," a gospel of prosperity, a "defense industry" and "permanent war economy," and a press that can no longer risk telling the truth to an electorate who would probably change the channel anyway.


Fully alive? It's a wonder we are still getting the faint gasps of air that we are...

Corps Is Only One Letter From Corpse

Madame M:

An excellent article and excellent comments by you.  The author we review keeps making points.  If only more were listening…

Is it so hard for people to believe that corporations are so powerful?  I thought about quoting nearly the entirety of page 166 of the book, but suffice to say that ideological drivel is being used to further corporate coffers, often in ways that are egregious.  So many government functions are done (expensively) via contract by “more efficient and less costly” corporations.  Of course, often they are neither. 

Halliburton has received hundreds of billions of dollars from US taxpayers, is nearly unaccountable to anyone but itself, and hides its profits in foreign countries in ways that show how multinationals do whatever they want.

As the middle class gets more and more squeezed, and as the lower class is already, more are spinning out of home ownership and into renting.  Often this becomes multi-generational or even multi-family in one unit as well.  While this may have some tangential beneficial side effects, how in general is that the American dream?

Corporations have assumed effective control, and not enough care about that.  We still schlepp forward under the illusion that we the people do the hiring and firing politically.  But Hedges sets us straight about corporate control: “You cannot, in most instances, be a viable candidate without their blessing and money. These corporations, including the Commission on Presidential Debates ( a private organization), determine who gets to speak and what issues candidates can or cannot challenge, from universal, not-for-profit, single-payer health care, to Wall Street bailouts, to NAFTA.  If you do not follow the corporate script, you become as marginal and invisible as Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, or Cynthia McKinney.” (Hedges 167)  And most people don’t know or care.  It is also, Hedges says, why, even when they are reluctant, which isn’t often, Democrats—supposedly the reps of the “common man”—toe the corporate line on nearly any subject.  Everything meaningful is moved in the direction the big and powerful corporations want.

We pretend not to see that Depression-level layoffs—most of those jobs are forever lost—have occurred.  We let the corporate-media and the corporate-controlled statisticians play games with statistics and cloud their true meaning.  We pretend not to realize that stopping looking for work—giving up—is not a positive trend.  Nor is regaining jobs that don’t pay enough to live.  Nor is getting only part-time work when full-time work is needed.  We willingly give ourselves a scatoma, so as not to see that “there are whole sections of the United States that now resemble the developing world.” (168)  We pretend not to see increasing poverty.  Our willing historical amnesia—nay, our disdain for history as being relevant for anything—keeps us from realizing we are going back, back, back to the dark days we painfully and barely managed to climb out of  in the 1800s and early 1900s.  Except that this time, we may not get the chance: The corporations do know history, and feel they know how to prevent the people’s assertions this time.   You mentioned some of the methods in your post.

When profit-maximization is the sole goal, even competitive American businesses and workers are outsourced if it can be done a little cheaper elsewhere.  That it’s not as good is irrelevant. 

America has been a great country, and can be again.  But not if it embraces its myths about how great it is right now, because that will prevent it from facing this “time of collapse, and moral and political squalor.”  (168)

Now we know why Hedges named his book what he did.  We are not in the serious business of fixing ourselves.  We are more concerned with—indeed look to with fixated anticipation—the next diversionary thing: some movie, some sport event, some video game release, some cellphone release, some purchase. 

We would not be the first people to still be going to plays, watching gladiator fights and chariot races, playing games of dice, getting caught up in consumer possessions—right up to the point it all came down in painful, catastrophic, utterly real change.

We can be different.  We can learn from the past.  We still have the means.  But not for much longer.

Life, Liberty, and Nonsense

Professor J,

You asked Americans to look to their senses in your last post. We are fighting an uphill battle on that one, aren't we? Those senses are numbed by prescription medications and any real information that might be useful is shrouded in rumors or distorted in televised screaming matches.

We are enchanted by the sparkle of what's offered up to us. We guzzle the illusion presented to us and beg for more. We pass over real news to get the latest updates on the Cruise/Holmes divorce. Fewer and fewer can even delineate between journalism and celebrity gossip and entertainment. In our real lives we are put off by and avoid the person who spreads gossip and seems to revel in the misfortunes of others. We sense the truth about them which is that instead of compassion for us in a time of despair they might make ill use of us in the same way. But as a culture we have become callous about using the personal lives (and pain) of celebrities as entertainment. I like your phrase "spiritually sad" and it certainly applies to many things about us as a culture as well as the "parasitic plutocrats."


"We are bombarded with useless trivia and celebrity gossip despite the valiant efforts of a few remaining newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, along with Democracy Now, National Public Radio, Pacifica, and Jim Lehrer of the Public Broadcasting Service. These organizations still practice journalism as an ethical pursuit on behalf of the common good, but they are a beleaguered minority. The Federal Communications Commission, in an example of how far our standards have fallen, defines television shows such as Fox's celebrity gossip program TMZ and the Christian Broadcast Network's 700 Club as "bona fide newscasts." The economist Charlotte Twight calls this vast corporate system of spectacle and diversion, in which we get to vote on American Idol or be elevated to celebrity status through reality television programs "participatory fascism." (168)

Is it any wonder our reasoning processes are cloudy and vague and our sense of history weak at best and non existent at worst? We are adrift in a sea of useless disconnected information much of which is ridiculous and we are becoming ridiculous excuses for citizens in the process.

In the lead up to the July 4th holiday, I was in the grocery and saw one of those banners for sale that you stick in your front yard. On a background of red, white, and blue were the words "Life. Liberty. Happiness." As if happiness is magically bestowed on us without pursuit. I couldn't help wonder as I stood there with the milk getting warm if this isn't part of what's wrong with us as a nation. Not the cheap little banner, but the cheap citizenship it represents. I wonder if the people who purchased this decoration had voted in our last local election, read up on the latest news, or were going to be discussing important issues at their barbecues. Did the person who came up with this idea boil it down on purpose to be scooped up by unthinking revelers planning cookouts and backyard fireworks, or did they actually perceive that we'd been promised happiness?  When we reduce one of the greatest historical documents ever penned to a marketable catch phrase on par with "live love, laugh" it cannot bode well for us.

A couple of weeks after I'd been pondering the larger meaning (if there even is one) of that $5.99 piece of nylon, I read an article by Hedges, How To Think. I whole heartedly recommend reading the entire thing but here's a quote we that probably won't see on flimsy yard decor any time soon:

"Human societies see what they want to see. They create national myths of identity out of a composite of historical events and fantasy. They ignore unpleasant facts that intrude on self-glorification. They trust naively in the notion of linear progress and in assured national dominance. This is what nationalism is about—lies. And if a culture loses its ability for thought and expression, if it effectively silences dissident voices, if it retreats into what Sigmund Freud called “screen memories,” those reassuring mixtures of fact and fiction, it dies. It surrenders its internal mechanism for puncturing self-delusion. It makes war on beauty and truth. It abolishes the sacred. It turns education into vocational training. It leaves us blind. And this is what has occurred. We are lost at sea in a great tempest. We do not know where we are. We do not know where we are going. And we do not know what is about to happen to us."

 Perhaps it's that naive trust in "linear progress" that made the creator jump from "pursuit of" to just plain ole "happiness."  Hedges warned us previously in this book about positive psychology. Let's just all believe we're happy while the thing falls apart around us. Our founders, however (and honestly couldn't we say pretty much every rational person up until about 40 years ago?) knew that "happiness" isn't really the end goal. I suspect that Jefferson knew that it was "the pursuit," the striving and struggling for improvement in ourselves, our circumstances, our families, and communities, that made us better and provided rich internal lives.

The sickening irony of our celebrating our national independence with items "made in China" like this one, when we are so heavily in debt to them, we can save for another discussion.

Here's the last paragraph from Hedges' How We Think article:  "And here is the dilemma we face as a civilization. We march collectively toward self-annihilation. Corporate capitalism, if left unchecked, will kill us. Yet we refuse, because we cannot think and no longer listen to those who do think, to see what is about to happen to us. We have created entertaining mechanisms to obscure and silence the harsh truths, from climate change to the collapse of globalization to our enslavement to corporate power, that will mean our self-destruction. If we can do nothing else we must, even as individuals, nurture the private dialogue and the solitude that make thought possible. It is better to be an outcast, a stranger in one’s own country, than an outcast from one’s self. It is better to see what is about to befall us and to resist than to retreat into the fantasies embraced by a nation of the blind."

Dis Enchantment

Madame:

Yes, can we please heed Mr. Hedges and summon willfulness to break the enchantment of those who have twisted American capitalism—and American “democracy”—into a tranquilizing slow death spiral that serves only the plutocratic elite?

We have a population largely made desperate enough by the economic plight inflicted by the plutocrats “to work for low wages without unions or benefits.” (Hedges 164).  Even to cooperate willingly, emotionally in the steady vaporizing of the last vestiges of unionism in the country (indeed, to readily believe propaganda that those unions are a major source of America’s weakness and problems, rather than a middle class strength!).

While the elite-dominated media focus us on the shouting matches of their “commentators” and the political “contests” of the various flavors of the corporate-state (“b.s. light” and “b.s. dark,” is how a friend of mine coined those “flavors”), life gets worse, even as we inhale the lotus-vapors to not notice.  No matter what “source” of our problems is trotted out momentarily by the corporate-controlled media, no matter the “issues” and “solutions” narrowly and exclusionarily defined by that media, look to your senses Americans!  Is your life, that of your children, and your grandchildren, better than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago?  If it is, recognize that you are the exception, not the rule!  And even if it is, how is your community doing?  Your state?  Your region? NOT how you are told it is.  How it is when you get out and look, talk to people, reflect on the changes, reflect on things in general. 

If, after at least 40 years of the general philosophy espoused by the elites, things are not better, why believe that things will be by doing the same?  They told you that competition was everything, that “sacrifices” and “hard decisions” needed to be made in order for America to “compete.”

It was a deflection, wrapped in a deception, inside a manipulation.  Coated with just enough truth to appeal perfectly, emotionally, to American pragmatism, competitive spirit, adaptability, and work ethic. 

All of which were used against the middle-class and lower-class worker.  And so we bought the treasonous pursuit of profit to the exclusion of all else, all in the name of “competition.”  Multinational corporations and their elite operators and effective owners benefitted, but the country and its people suffered. More profit was made for these American-dominated corporations by moving operations—often exploitative operations--overseas.  Who did that benefit? Yes, occasionally the American CONSUMER.  But that consumer was also an American WORKER, and that worker was overall seeing a steady fall in wages (and many were losing their formerly high paying jobs that kept them middle class or upper lower class).  Eventually, that American worker started borrowing more and more to try to keep up.  Because even buying the sometimes cheaper goods (from the overseas operation that put him out of his higher paying job), he couldn’t keep up.

Repeat this over and over again across a 40 year period.  All while the mantra of “free markets” enrich only a few at the top, and government is made weak by both underfunding (courtesy of a wealthy with their “trickle down” mind trick) and excessive—borrowed at that—spending on militarization, “security,” and elite “welfare.”

It was the hollowing out of America.  We will leave for another time how good we did in making our former enemies and potential present enemies want to play in the system we created.  Suffice to say at present that those potential adversaries marvel at how our corporate and plutocratic elite are so willing to sell out America—indeed, undermine it into weakness—in service to themselves and their corporate entities.  Hedges has examples of this on page 165, where he refers to how America has cannibalized itself in a massive transfer of wealth both overseas and upward to the parasitic plutocrats.   These parasitic plutocrats then buy elections to keep any latent threats to their power muted, and to also further their enrichment.  An enrichment that any psychologist worth his or her salt would say is a pathology, a mental illness, or even a criminal insanity.  Because they already have so much, and all they want is more.  Money and its associative power is their entire scorecard of meaning and existence.

How infinitely, spiritually sad.  And ruinous for the rest of us.  And underneath it all is collective illusion:

“Our elites manipulate statistics and data to foster illusions of growth and prosperity.  They refuse to admit they have lost control since to lose control is to concede failure.  They contribute, instead, to the collective denial of reality” and continue to “prop up the dying edifice.  The well-paid television pundits and news celebrities, the economists and banking and financial sector leaders [Professor’s Note: Hedges should have set this word off in quotations!], see the world from inside the comfort of the corporate box.  They are loyal to the corporate state.  They cling to the corporation and the corporate structure.  It is known.  It is safe.  It is paternal.  It is the system.” (Hedges 165-166)

How bitterly ironic that Americans marveled at how the Germans could continue to serve a dying Nazi state even as the thunder of doom could be heard. 

Myths of Decline and Fanciful Illusions

Professor J,

Let me start off by providing the link to the article you referenced in your last post: The Myth of America's Decline, which the reader can also find on our Facebook page. When I read the article I could only imagine the author's response to the opening speech from episode 1 of The Newsroom (Sundays, 10 PM EST) since he was so incensed by a quip from The Office. Fortunately for him he missed it by a couple of months. You have so carefully critiqued the article I can add little to it.

The population growth issue is, as you pointed out, a mixed bag. China panicked in 1979 and now is rethinking that policy as the ramifications are beginning to be seen in full. Fareed Zakaria had a very good piece about this on his show on Sunday morning.  Could China's One Child Policy Change?  He makes several interesting points but the one that caught my attention was the male/female ratio and his quote "Remember, countries with male youth bulges have historically seen civil wars and revolutions."  He also point out that this is a good example of the problems with "centralized authoritarian regimes." The video is worth watching

I found this quote from The American Legion article interesting: "Speaking of foreign lands, the U.S. military provides a security umbrella to about half the world’s landmass, polices the world’s toughest neighborhoods, and serves as the world’s first responder and last line of defense. No other military could attempt such a feat of global multitasking."

When did that become our job?

Back to Hedges:

"Individualism is touted as the core value of American culture, and yet most of us meekly submit, as we are supposed to to the tyranny of the corporate state. We define ourselves as a democracy, and meanwhile voting rates in national elections are tepid, and voting on local issues is often in the single digits. Our elected officials base their decisions not on the public good but on the possibility of campaign contributions and lucrative employment on leaving office. Our corporate elite tell us government is part of the problem and the markets should regulate themselves--and then that same elite plunders the U.S. Treasury when they trash the economy. We insist that we are a market economy, based on the principles of capitalism and free trade, and yet the single largest sectors of international trade are armaments and weapons systems. There is a vast and growing disconnect between what we say and what we believe and what we do. We are blinded, enchanted, and finally enslaved by illusion."

Here's a quote from a 2002 piece of writing by Ron Paul: 

"Jefferson summed up the noninterventionist foreign policy position perfectly in his 1801 inaugural address: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none." How many times have we all heard these wise words without taking them to heart? 

How many champion Jefferson and the Constitution, but conveniently ignore both when it comes to American foreign policy? Washington similarly urged that the US must "Act for ourselves and not for others," by forming an "American character wholly free of foreign attachments." Since so many on Capitol Hill apparently now believe Washington was wrong, they should at least have the intellectual honesty to admit it next time his name is being celebrated."

Those crazy founding fathers. They had no idea how much money there was to be made. Ah, but then of course they were students of history who hoped some mistakes made by others would be avoided by us...if only we would keep paying attention.  

Our readers might remember a couple of weeks ago when I posted a video, quoted, and in general raved about HBO's new series, The Newsroom. Dan Rather agrees with me. Here's his review.   Dan Rather: The Newsroom’s Third Episode Is Something ‘Every American Should See and Ponder’ Yes, as a conservative it makes me cringe at times. Unfortunately often I realize I'm having a negative reaction to some truth being presented. And that's okay! Sometimes I cringe as a woman because Sorkin does a miserable job writing women. That's not okay.  Can someone please have executive producer Makenzie MacHale, who is supposedly just back from two years covering the Iraqi and Afghan wars, stop behaving like a teenaged girl who can't get over her crush on the quarterback? Is it so hard for Sorkin to write her some adult female dialogue when she's engaging with Will? 

 

He may need to consult a real woman with questions such as "Would you ever say this?" (Call me Aaron, I'd be glad to help you out. It's okay not to be good at everything.) 


But as I've said before the show tackles what has happened to the news since we decided that selling advertising is more important than informing the electorate. In what I thought was an especially telling moment from episode 3 (in the clip above) the owner of the fictional network is worried about anyone being too hard on members of Congress because she has business before them. 

The opening speech, following a clip of Richard Clark's apology, was not to be missed. Here's the text:

“Good evening, I’m Will McAvoy, this is News Night and that was a clip of Richard Clark, former counter terrorism chief to President George W. Bush, testifying before Congress on March 24, 2004.


Americans like that moment. I like that moment. Adults should hold themselves accountable for failure. And so tonight, I’m beginning this newscast by joining Mr. Clark and apologizing to the American people for our failure – the failure of this program during the time I’ve been in charge of it to successfully inform and educate the American electorate.

Let me be clear that I don’t apologize on behalf of all broadcast journalists, nor do all broadcast journalists owe an apology. I speak for myself. I was an accomplice to a slow and repeated and unacknowledged and unamended train wreck of failures that have brought us to now. I’m a leader in an industry that miscalled election results, hyped up terror scares, ginned up controversy and failed to report on tectonic shifts in our country, from the collapse of the financial system to the truths about how strong we are to the dangers we actually face. I’m a leader in an industry that misdirected your attention with the dexterity of Harry Houdini, while sending hundreds of thousands of our bravest young men and women off to war without due diligence.

The reason we failed isn’t a mystery – we took a dive for the ratings.

In the infancy of mass communication, the Columbus and Magellan of broadcast journalism, William Paley and David Sarnoff, went down to Washington to cut a deal with Congress. Congress would allow the fledgling networks free use of taxpayer-owned airwaves in exchange for one public service. That public service would be one hour of airtime set aside every night for informational broadcasting, or what we now call the evening news.
Congress, unable to anticipate the enormous capacity television would have to deliver consumers to advertisers, failed to include in its deal the one requirement that would have changed our national discourse immeasurably for the better – Congress forgot to add that under no circumstances could there be paid advertising during informational broadcasting. They forgot to say the taxpayers will give you the airwaves for free and for 23 hours a day, you should make a profit, but for one hour a night, you work for us.

And now those network newscasts, anchored through history by honest-to-God newsmen with names like Murrow and Reasoner and Huntley and Brinkley and Buckley and Cronkite and Rather and Russert…now, they have to compete with the likes of me, a cable anchor who’s in the exact same business as the producers of “Jersey Shore.”

And that business was good to us. But News Night is quitting that business right now. It might come as a surprise to you that some of history’s greatest American journalists are working right now. Exceptional minds with years of experience and an unshakable devotion to reporting the news. But these voices are a small minority now and they don’t stand a chance against the circus when the circus comes to town. They’re over matched. I’m quitting the circus, switching teams. I’m going with the guys who are getting creamed. I’m moved. They still think they can win and I hope they can teach me a thing or two.
From this moment on, we’ll be deciding what goes on our air and how it’s presented to you based on the simple truth that nothing is more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate. We’ll endeavor to put information in a broader context because we know that very little news is born at the moment it comes across our wire.

We’ll be the champion of facts and the mortal enemy of innuendo, speculation, hyperbole and nonsense. We’re not waiters in a restaurant, serving you the stories you asked for, just the way you like them prepared. Nor are we computers, dispensing only the facts because news is only useful in the context of humanity. I’ll make no effort to subdue my personal opinions. I will make every effort to expose you to informed opinions that are different from my own.

You may ask who are we to make these decisions. We are MacKenzie McHale and myself. Ms. McHale is our executive producer. She marshals the resources of over 100 reporters, producers, analysts and technicians and her credentials are readily available. I’m News Night’s managing editor and make the final decision on everything seen and heard on this program.

Who are we to make these decisions? We are the media elite.
We’ll be back after this with the news…”

Wishing At The Magic Tree of History

Madame,

Before we proceed further into the heavily illuminating “guts” of this final chapter of Hedges’ book (available, if we haven’t mentioned recently, from Nation Publishing—at online and brick and mortar bookstores everywhere), let’s pause to look at what some of those who might disagree with him are saying: 

For instance, the article “The Myth of America’s Decline” appeared in the April 2012 issue of The American Legion Magazine.  While one might expect a heavily biased viewpoint, the article is actually quite rationally argued and deserves critique.

The author begins by resurrecting past quotes about America, by famous Americans, about America’s decline.  The author makes the point that it didn’t turn out anywhere near what the gloomy were saying. 

The author is right as far as he goes.  He just doesn’t go very far.   He is correct that the US has bounced back from lows in the past.  What the author doesn’t point out is that in those instances, the US did not have a crushing debt burden.  It also hadn’t shipped much of its economic strength overseas, nor did it bleed its economic life away with trade deficits that essentially transfer net wealth every month from this country to others (for over 32 years now!).  It didn’t simultaneously have stranglehold corporations and billionaires in control, certainly not combined with anemic or paralyzed government unable to even summon the strength to oppose its own (and the people’s) strangling.

The author also gets caught in the same sort of short-term fixation that Americans, in their seeming inability to think strategically and long-term, get into too often.   He fixes on momentary events that mattered little in the long-view.  He does point out the seeming strong position of the US in the 1990s, and he is partially correct.  Fresh from a sort of peace dividend following the end of the Soviet Union, combined with fiscal prudence and the beginnings of what would be a short-lived recovery for middle-class wages, the 1990s had great promise to give us the foundation needed to change.  The 2000s would wreck most all that.

The American economy is huge, no dispute.  It gets great productivity out of a workforce that combines a Protestant work ethic on steroids, with both fear and pitiless competition, to give most all of its great productivity gains to those who control capital (the worker shares little of it). But the author tries to imply that its size, combined with the problems that other economies have and will have, will be strong indicators for future success, which is non-sequitir.  The problems of others do not mean good things for you, in some zero-sum game fashion.  On the contrary, in today’s globalized world, problems elsewhere mean problems here (Greece anyone?).

The author also insinuates that population growth is a benefit and population decline is negative.  Not indicative!  Perhaps if examined strictly from a classical economic model, but there are multiple negatives to population growth, even aside from environmental ones.  This factor is therefore very mixed.

Further, the author equates size with health and success when it comes to corporations.  It is amusing how seemingly unaware and hypocritical people can be about that.  They deride “big government” for its supposed inefficiencies and ineffectiveness, but apply the opposite to corporations.  The author would do better to see how much wealth these corporations have vacuumed to themselves, and how blood drained that has left smaller corporations and businesses (and the rest of us). Concentration of wealth and power a sign of strength?  To who?  You don’t need to read Andrew Carnegie’s writings on this if you don’t want; watch “Too Big To Fail” on HBO.  It’s even slanted in certain people’s favor, but you’ll still get the central idea that we’ve created Leviathans that are bad for us (btw, those Leviathans need broken up, not increased; we need anti-trust enforcement in a, pardon the pun, big way).

The author does point out good strengths that we should build on: US patent law and the Patent Office; our universities (for a while longer, anyway); software; and that people want American products (even though most “American” products aren’t made here).   However, pointing out that we’re spreading our cola drinking and fast food eating habits to the rest of the world is not an example of health in any sense.

That America is not regularly tuning in, drinking up, or researching foreign things is partially untrue, but we’ll jump over that point.  Jump over it to aim it back at Americans and America for being too inward, a steep handicap in a globalized world.  And more to the exacting point, CONSUMPTION is not a sign of strength (a point we seem unable to grasp).

The author stresses that our “entitlement” spending is unsustainable, which is partially true.  Saying what he said is also a mantra for those who want to dismantle all social safety nets, safety nets he touts as a strength elsewhere in his article.   It is additional mantra for weakening government and transferring further wealth and power to the plutocracy.

He is, however, correct in that our policymakers have the tools, if not the will, to tackle our problems.  Soon, , however the tools may not work very well.

He is far off-base in pointing out the US military being a source of strength.  Hmm.  To do what?  And all this “service” is provided to the rest of the world and they pay next to nothing while we pay through the nose, meaning they are in essence free-riders and we’re what, suckers?  That some places around the globe actually want us there (sometimes, only sort of, but will concede the point) says what about our real “strength?” Because to look so “strong” means about as much as the big neighborhood kid that nobody messes with now, but inside is being eaten up by cancer.

The author pointing out that we spent more of our GDP on defense in the Cold War, and had more troops under arms (for a less populous nation), than we do now, is shallow analysis.  Maybe we are just finally feeling the cumulative effects of all that resource expenditure made on unproductive things.  Btw, we could afford more troops under arms then, because a conscript military (and a far less technical one) was cheap in comparison.

The author says we overcame worse economic crises in the 1930s and 1970s.  I could disagree with him on the face of it, but even if I agreed with him, I would point him to paragraph four above.

I will even agree with him that PRESENTLY, today’s asymmetric threats DO pale compared to the potential threats to existence that came from past powers.   He doesn’t say it outright, but I agree with his sentiment that we have succeeded greatly by creating a system in which our rivals want to play in it (a notable achievement!), and because of that, those rivals have a stake (however measured) in our success—and we in theirs. 

He is also right that the American basic system (outside its corporate-dominated subversion) does hold universal appeal in its “political pluralism, economic opportunity, cultural openness.”  I disagree with him that those by themselves give “the United States a decisive edge.”

Without specific actions, especially one to address deep and system-threatening problems, generalities aren’t going to matter much.  Wishing at some supposed magic tree, even one with historical roots, does nothing without action.  Just because you have BEEN great, does not mean you are going to stay great, or even be ONE of the greats, without strong action to confront reality.   Believing that it will all “work out somehow,” while going on with the same ruinous policies, will bring failure, perhaps catastrophic failure (as it does eventually to all embracers of illusion). 

The Romans too, were once “great,” were THE superpower, one in which no one could envision a competitor taking its place.  The Romans believed that about themselves.  And did nothing to quit undermining the foundations of their society.  The end came gradually, until finally the barbarians merely pushed in a rotten house.

In Dependence

Most Madamest M:

I will decline to point out the irony of “Independence” Day, and just wish everyone a happy one.

I also wish this intellectual endeavor (Our blog!) a Happy Anniversary!  Two years ago today, it was launched, and still so much to talk about!

The “news” (although I usually forget, I need to use quotation marks around it to denote its pseudo aspects) reports that fireworks sales have been the lowest in many decades.  The consumers of those fireworks, the lower and middle classes, just don’t have the financial room anymore, it would seem.

Our featured author keeps making our points for us (and in my case at least, saying them better).  His latest, http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10107-chris-hedges-time-to-get-crazy, is superb, and will perhaps surprise you a bit Madame.

You said it extremely well about the communities that post-disaster or post-system collapse will foment.  “A community of gardeners, carpenters, people who keep chickens and bees, the tinkerer who can fix nearly anything, the nurse, the ham radio enthusiast, seamstress, teacher, owner of a large library, and a talented cook.”  To those I might add healer, herbalist, and wellness sustainer, hunters and gatherers, food preservers, and of course storyteller/historian! :)

Your excellent piece about the brain on fear: I think most historians would agree that the vast majority of what was a conservative German population disliked and distrusted those who were different, those who espoused radical ideas about justice, fairness, equality, compassion.  They were more than glad to have the police repress them, often brutally. The Nazis appealed to those who were, yes, fearful, but more to the point, the Nazis channeled that fear in the directions they wanted.  They stoked resentment, making simple, easily identifiable scapegoats (one after another, from “traitors” who had chosen peace in WW1, to Communists, Socialists, homosexuals, union members, and a great host of those people that today would be called “liberals,” and then, of course, the Jews) for Germany’s loss of power and prestige.   Simple answers.  And of course, the desire for Germany to be “strong again, and respected.”  How often we humans, especially when confronted with continual change, are seduced by manipulators who promise us a restoration to a rose-colored version of the past.  Combine all these, and only emotions matter; facts can be ignored at will, except for the “facts” that support your emotions.  In Germany, in the minds of the largely conservative populace, the country had gone to hell because of weaklings and traitors and other “diseases” that needed to be eradicated from the population.  And other countries needed to be dealt with until they showed Germany respect.  In service to those general feelings, facts came to mean nothing outside the functions of the workplace and perhaps the home—the greater German community ran on the desire to be strong again, to feel proud again, to be superior.

I sincerely hope that all those who say the American character is too different to ever be Nazi-like are correct.  I am disturbed, as are those still alive who have memories of that dark Nazi period, to hear too much of the same general Nazi-era emotional talk from too many segments of the largely conservative American population AND THAT THE REST OF THAT CONSERVATIVE POPULATION DO NOT CENSURE IT IN ANY WAY.  One could hope that the very variable ethnic composition could provide a buffer against this this poisonous trend, but it is uncertain.

For instance, sure, I hear mindless, knee-jerk reactions from people on “the left” about Romney, but they are low-tone and rarely threatening.  On “the right,” I hear shrill tones, much more frequent, much more emotional, and much more menacing in tone about his opponent.  And Obama is not even a true liberal; he is barely even a pseudo-one.  In a setting where they believe the country is falling apart at every turn because the liberals are dragging it into a fiscal, cultural, and economic abyss, the low-informed or the no-informed are willing to believe ANYTHING without checking if it is fact.  Even when confronted with undeniable evidence that it ISN’T fact, they still persist that the general overview is true, and that a vast liberal plot is about to sink the country.  They are hyper-emotional, with such hatred, frustration, and general anger lurking barely beneath the surface, that blame gets ascribed in ways that are fantastically implausible.   It becomes such a dizzying phantasmagoria that even the confusion doesn’t matter—plow on in sheer emotion alone!  Evaluation becomes completely discarded.  Support anyone who promises a way there, or more importantly, a way AWAY from their perception of a weak, liberal, mess.

And way too many churches, far from being bulwarks against un-Christian behavior, often condone it or even encourage it.   Their peoples are conservative, and the views and policies they support and espouse reflect it.  The “second greatest commandment” (love your neighbor as yourself) is ignored, or conveniently interpreted to mean only the neighbor that looks and acts and thinks like you do.

THAT’S why the descent to fascism is not a long step.

A people with little or no awareness of actual history—nay, even have disdain—are prey and prone to the same horrible mistakes, to keep the human race cycled in this ever-repeating destructive pattern.  The greed, fear, and paranoia of the strong-willed few can only succeed because the dimly informed, emotional, weak-willed many are more than okay with it.  “Fine, fine, fine,” those many say, “do that if you want, so we can get back to our lives.” 

And then later, they are muttering, “But they said they were going to…” or “but they said they weren’t going to…”

It’s just that easy.

“Articulate disappointment.” I like that phrase, Madame.   Jeff Daniel’s character in Newsroom exhibited that.    How to get people to WANT the truth more than they want to be right?  Find the answer to that, and you can name your price! :)

I’m presently reading “That Used To Be Us,” by Friedman and Mandelbaum.  It starts out scathing about America’s delusion that it’s so great anymore.   An America that can’t even REPAIR its infrastructure (and certainly not in any reasonable time frame), while China CREATES a truly impressive, pride-infusing infrastructure, in record time.

This quote from Eric R. in the book is instructive and echoes Newsroom: “We used to embrace challenges, endure privatation, throttle our fear and strike out into the (unknown) wilderness.  In this mode we rallied to span the continent with railroads, construct a national highway system, defeated monstrous dictators, cured polio and landed men on the moon.  Now we text and put on makeup as we drive, spend more on video games than books, forswear exercise, demonize hunting, and are rapidly succumbing to obesity and diabetes.” (page 6 of the book)

I share Friedman’s and Mandelbaum’s positions as “frustrated optimists.” There is so much potential that could be built on, and so much progress that could be made in meeting our steep challenges, but we aren’t doing.  Indeed, the very idea of collective action is repeatedly discredited by those who advance and espouse the Cult of Hyperindividualism.

There are frustrated realists too.  My favorite realist political scientist is Stephen M. Walt of Yale.  Here is a piece from his “Is AmericaAddicted to War?” in Foreign Policy,4 April 2011:

"The truly exceptional thing about America today is not our values (and certainly not our dazzling infrastructure, high educational standards, rising middle-class prosperity, etc.)…Lurking underneath the Establishment consensus on foreign-policy activism is the most successful Jedi mind trick that the American right ever pulled. Since the mid-1960s, American conservatism has waged a relentless and successful campaign to convince U.S. voters that it is wasteful, foolish, and stupid to pay taxes to support domestic programs here at home, but it is our patriotic duty to pay taxes to support a military establishment that costs more than all other militaries put together and that is used not to defend American soil but to fight wars mostly on behalf of other people. In other words, Americans became convinced that it was wrong to spend tax revenues on things that would help their fellow citizens (like good schools, health care, roads, and bridges, high-speed rail, etc.), but it was perfectly OK to tax Americans (though of course not the richest Americans) and spend the money on foreign wars. And we bought it."

When people glance back briefly at history (which isn’t anywhere near often enough), while catching some History Channel presentation or some movie at the box office that has history in it,  they often say things like: “How could those people…” (fill in the blank: have been so cruel, so ignorant, so ruthless, so uninformed, so accepting, so crude, so blind, so meek, so obedient, so selfish, so greedy, so emotional, so mob-like, etc. etc. etc.).

It is the human limitation to rarely recognize the same traits in themselves.  The better question might be: “If they could be that way, my God, what if I could too, what if we all could?”

THAT question is one of the first fields of defense, for an attempt to question one’s feelings and one’s thoughts is one of the best armors that money can’t buy.

The time is fast slipping away where America can significantly shape its destiny.  The choices it makes—or doesn’t make—for itself will determine how much “Independence” Day has true meaning.