Well then, you'd better start teaching them. It's not like the mass
media are going to make sure that they learn.
---
David Hume
??? In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable
degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral
evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. ???
??? David Hume,
On 11/5/2019 9:31 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
I can only hope that my grand children will learn about Chris Hedges
as one of America's great minds.
Carl Jarvis
s
On 11/5/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
We could have studied English for 20 years, 20 hours a day and we'd never
have been able to learn to write like that because neither of us has his
brain power. Yes, he's incredibly articulate, but he's also able to
understand stuff. He can put his religious studies and his philosophical
reading, and his war experiences, and his political instincts together, like
no one else.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, November 04, 2019 9:44 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Enemy Within
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.