Yes, he'll probably be erased from the internet, from history. I've been
posting all these articles about the arrest of Max Blumenthal. Did you hear
that tidbit of news on any of the commercial media or NPR or PBS? Or was there
anything in the media about the fact that part of the protests in Hong Kong
were against the financial inequality caused by capitalism and the other part
was protest against China financed by the US? The Real News and Democracy Now
didn't get that right either.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2019 9:54 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Enemy Within
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.