Another brilliant piece by Chris Hedges. I studied French in high
school. I should have studied English.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/4/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Here it all is. Hedges has explained our situation clearly and concisely
which is why he's not allowed on any US media anymore, not even Democracy
now, just RT. A man who is a Presbyterean minister and was a New York Times
foreign bureau chief, is teaching literature to prisoners in New Jersey and
his material is on one alternative website.
Miriam
The Enemy Within
The Enemy Within
Our democracy is not in peril-we do not live in a democracy. The image of
our democracy is in peril. The deep state-the generals, bankers,
corporatists, lobbyists, intelligence chiefs, government bureaucrats and
technocrats-is intent on salvaging the brand. It is hard to trumpet
yourself
as the world's guardian of freedom and liberty with Donald Trump blathering
on incoherently about himself, inciting racist violence, insulting our
traditional allies along with the courts, the press and Congress, tweeting
misspelled inanities and impulsively denouncing or sabotaging bipartisan
domestic and foreign policy. But Trump's most unforgivable sin in the eyes
of the deep state is his criticism of the empire's endless wars, even
though
he lacks the intellectual and organizational skills to oversee a
disengagement.
The deep state committed the greatest strategic blunder in American history
when it invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Such fatal military
fiascoes, a feature of all late empires, are called acts of
"micro-militarism." Dying empires historically squander the last capital
they have, economic, political and military, on futile, intractable and
unwinnable conflicts until they collapse. They seek in these acts of
micro-militarism to recapture a former dominance and lost stature. Disaster
piles on disaster. The architects of our imperial death spiral, however,
are
untouchable. The clueless generals and politicians who propel the empire
into expanding chaos and fiscal collapse are successful at one
thing-perpetuating themselves. No one is held accountable. A servile press
treats these mandarins with near-religious veneration. Generals and
politicians, many of whom should have been cashiered or put on trial, are
upon retirement given lucrative seats on the boards of the weapons
manufacturers, for whom these wars are immensely profitable. They are
called
upon by a fawning press to provide analysis to the public of the mess they
created. They are held up as exemplars of integrity, selfless service and
patriotism.
After nearly two decades, every purported objective used to justify our
wars
in the Middle East has been upended. The invasion of Afghanistan was
supposed to wipe out al-Qaida. Instead, al-Qaida migrated to fill the power
vacuums the deep state created in the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen.
The war in Afghanistan morphed into a war with the Taliban, which now
controls most of the country and is threatening the corrupt regime we prop
up in Kabul. The deep state orchestrated the invasion of Iraq, which had
nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11. It confidently predicted it could
build a Western-style democracy and weaken Iran's power in the region.
Instead, it destroyed Iraq as a unified country, setting warring ethnic and
religious factions against each other. Iran, which is closely tied to the
dominant Shiite government in Baghdad, emerged even stronger. The deep
state
armed "moderate" rebels in Syria in an effort to topple President Bashar
Assad, but when it realized it could not control the jihadists-to whom it
had provide some $500 million in weapons and assistance-the deep state
began
to bomb them and arm Kurdish rebels to fight them. These Kurds would later
be betrayed by Trump. The "war on terror" spread like a plague from
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya to Yemen, which after five years of war
is suffering one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters. The financial
cost for this misery and death is between $5 trillion and $8 trillion. The
human cost runs into hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, shattered
cities, towns and infrastructure and millions of refugees.
Trump committed political heresy when he dared to point out the folly of
unchecked militarism. He will pay for it. The deep state intends to replace
him with someone-perhaps Mike Pence, as morally and intellectually vacuous
as Trump-who will do what he or she is told. This is the role of America's
executive: Personify and humanize the empire. Do so with pomp and dignity.
Barack Obama-who speciously reinterpreted the 2001 Authorization for Use of
Military Force to give the executive the right to assassinate anyone
abroad,
even a U.S. citizen, deemed to be a terrorist-excelled at the game.
The removal of Trump from office would not threaten corporate power. It
would not restore civil liberties, including our right to privacy and due
process. It would not demilitarize the police or champion the rights of the
working class. It would not impede the profits of the fossil fuel and
banking industries. It would not address the climate emergency. It would
not
disrupt the warrantless surveillance of the public. It would not end
extraordinary renditions, the kidnapping of those around the globe
considered to be enemies of the state. It would not halt the assassinations
by militarized drones. It would not halt the separation of children from
their parents and the warehousing of these children in filthy, overcrowded
conditions. It would not remedy the consolidation of wealth and power by
the
oligarchs and the further impoverishment of the citizenry. The expansion of
our prison system and of black sites throughout the world, sites where we
torture, would continue, as would the gunning down of poor, unarmed
citizens
in urban wastelands. Most importantly, the catastrophic foreign wars that
have resulted in a series of failed states and wasted trillions of taxpayer
dollars, would remain sacrosanct, enthusiastically embraced by the leaders
of the two ruling parties, puppets of the deep state.
The impeachment of Trump, despite the enthusiasm of the liberal elite, is
mostly cosmetic. The entire political and governmental system is corrupt.
Hunter Biden was reportedly paid $50,000 a month to sit on the board of the
Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, although he has no training or
experience in the gas industry. He had previously worked for the credit
card
corporation MBNA, which was one of Joe Biden's largest campaign
contributors
when he was a senator from Delaware. Hunter Biden was hired by Burisma
Holdings for the same reason he was hired by MBNA. His father, long a tool
of corporate power and the military-industrial complex, in short the deep
state, was a senator and later the vice president. Joe Biden, the Clintons
and the Democratic Party leaders personify the legalized bribery that
defines their rivals in the Republican Party. Corporate candidates in the
two ruling parties are preselected, funded and anointed. If they do not
abide by the demands of the deep state, which protects corporate interests
and the management of empire, they are removed. There is even a word for
it-primarying. Corporate lobbyists write the laws. The courts enforce them.
There is no way in the American political system to vote against the
interests of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, AT&T, Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart,
Alphabet, Facebook, Apple, Exxon Mobil, Lockheed Martin, UnitedHealth Group
or Northrop Grumman.
We, the American public, are spectators. An audience. Who will be seated
when the game of musical chairs stops? Will Trump be able to hold on to
power? Will Pence be the new president? Or will the deep state elevate a
political hack like Biden or a neoliberal apologist such as Pete Butiggieg,
Amy Klobuchar or Kamala Harris to the White House? Will it draft Michael
Bloomberg, John Kerry, Sherrod Brown or, God forbid, Hillary Clinton? And
what if the deep state fails? What if the rot in the Republican Party, or
what Glen Ford calls Trump's "white man's party," is so profound it won't
sign on for the political extinction of the most incompetent president in
American history? The power struggle, which includes blocking Bernie
Sanders
and Elizabeth Warren from obtaining the Democratic Party nomination, will
make for months of great television and generate billions in advertising
revenue.
The war between the deep state and Trump began the moment he was elected.
Former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper-both now paid news cable commentators-along with
former FBI head James Comey soon would accuse Trump of being a tool of
Moscow. Intelligence agencies leaked salacious stories about "pee tapes"
and
blackmail, plus reports of "repeated contacts" with Russian intelligence.
Brennan, Clapper and Comey were quickly joined by other former intelligence
officials, including Michael Hayden, Michael Morell and Andrew McCabe.
Their
attacks were then amplified by former senior military leaders including
William McRaven, James Mattis, H.R. McMaster, John Kelly, James Stavridis
and Barry McCaffrey.
The Russia conspiracy, after the release of the Mueller report, proved to
be
a dud. The deep state actors, however, were re-energized by Trump's
decision
to pressure the government of Ukraine to investigate Biden. Trump, this
time, seems to have given his deep state enemies enough rope to hang him.
The impeachment of Trump marks a new and frightening chapter in American
politics. The deep state has shown its face. It has made a public
declaration that it will not tolerate dissent, although Trump's dissent is
rhetorical, mercurial and ineffectual. The effort to impeach Trump sends an
ominous message to the American left. The deep state not only intends to
prevent, as it did in 2016, Bernie Sanders or any other progressive
Democrat
from achieving power, but has signaled that it will destroy any politician
who attempts to question the maintenance and expansion of empire. Its
animus
toward the left is far more pronounced than its animus toward Trump. And
its
resources to destroy those on the left are nearly inexhaustible.
The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin saw it all in his 2008 book
"Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted
Totalitarianism." He wrote:
"
The political role of corporate power, the corruption of the political and
representative processes by the lobbying industry, the expansion of
executive power at the expense of constitutional limitations, and the
degradation of political dialogue promoted by the media are the basics of
the system, not excrescences upon it. The system would remain in place even
if the Democratic Party attained a majority; and should that circumstance
arise, the system will set tight limits to unwelcome changes, as is
foreshadowed in the timidity of current Democratic proposals for reform. In
the last analysis the much-lauded stability and conservatism of the
American
system owe nothing to lofty ideals, and everything to the irrefutable fact
that it is shot through with corruption and awash in contributions
primarily
from wealthy and corporate donors. When a minimum of a million dollars is
required of House candidates and elected judges, and when patriotism is for
the draft-free to extol and for the ordinary citizen to serve, in such
times
it is a simple act of bad faith to claim that politics-as-we-now-know-it
can
miraculously cure the evils which are essential to its existence.
There are no internal or external checks on the deep state. The democratic
institutions, including the press, that once gave citizens a voice and a
say
in the exercise of power have been neutered. The deep state will further
the
corporate consolidation of wealth and power, expand the social inequality
that has thrust half of Americans into poverty or near poverty, strip us of
our remaining civil liberties and feed the rapacious appetites of the
military and the war industry. The resources of the state will be
squandered
as the federal deficit balloons. The frustration and feelings of stagnation
among a disempowered and neglected citizenry, which contributed to the
election of Trump, will mount.
There will come a moment of reckoning, as there has during the last few
days
in Lebanon and Chile. Social unrest is inevitable. Any population can be
pushed only so far. The deep state, incapable of reform and determined to
retain its grip on power, will morph under the threat of popular unrest
into
a corporatized fascism. It has at its disposal the legal and physical tools
to instantly turn the United States into a police state. This is the real
danger behind the deep state's drive to impeach Trump. It is a stark
message
to obey or be silenced. Trump, in the end, is not the problem. We are. And
if the deep state fails to rid itself of Trump it will, however
reluctantly,
use him to carry out its dirty work. Trump, if he manages to survive in
power, will get his military parades. We will get, with or without Trump,
tyranny.
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist,
a
New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree
program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers.