Chris Hedges: Driving American Politics Underground

[marmar]

from truthdig:


by Chris Hedges


Politics, if we take politics to mean the shaping and discussion of issues, concerns and laws that foster the common good, is no longer the business of our traditional political institutions. These institutions, including the two major political parties, the courts and the press, are not democratic. They are used to crush any vestiges of civic life that calls, as a traditional democracy does, on its citizens to share among all its members the benefits, sacrifices and risks of a nation. They offer only the facade of politics, along with elaborate, choreographed spectacles filled with skillfully manufactured emotion and devoid of real political content. We have devolved into what Alexis de Tocqueville feared—“democratic despotism.”

The squabbles among the power elites, rampant militarism and the disease of imperialism, along with a mindless nationalism that characterizes all public debate, have turned officially sanctioned politics into a carnival act.

Pundits and news celebrities on the airwaves engage in fevered speculation about whether the wife of a former president will run for office—and this after the mediocre son of another president spent eight years in the White House. This is not politics. It is gossip. Opinion polls, the staple of what serves as political reporting, are not politics. They are forms of social control. The use of billions of dollars to fund election campaigns and pay lobbyists to author legislation is not politics. It is legalized bribery. The insistence that austerity and economic rationality, rather than the welfare of the citizenry, be the primary concerns of the government is not politics. It is the death of civic virtue. The government’s system of wholesale surveillance and the militarization of police forces, along with the psychosis of permanent war and state-orchestrated fear of terrorism, are not politics. They are about eradicating civil liberties and justifying endless war and state violence. The chatter about death panels, abortion, gay rights, guns and undocumented children crossing the border is not politics. It is manipulation by the power elites of emotion, hate and fear to divert us from seeing our own powerlessness.

“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country,” Edward Bernays observed in his 1928 book, “Propaganda.” “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

Politics in the hands of the corporate state is anti-politics. It is designed to denigrate and destroy the values that make a liberal democracy and political participation possible. It is a cynical form of mass control. Corporate money has replaced the vote. Dissent is silenced or ignored. Political parties are Punch and Judy shows funded by corporate puppeteers. Universities, once the epicenter of social change, are corporate headquarters, flush with corporate money, government contracts and foundation grants. The commercial press, whose primary task is attracting advertising dollars, has become an arm of the entertainment industry. It offers news as vaudeville. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/driving_american_politics_underground_20140907

[djean111]

1. Political parties are Punch and Judy shows funded by corporate puppeteers.

Yes.

[RKP5637]

3. Absolutely!!!! n/t

[woo me with science]

4. +1 Kabuki. Red versus Blue theater.

Utter garbage.

[freefaller62]

11. We've been Pawned

Interesting point: It is manipulation by the power elites of emotion, hate and fear to divert us from seeing our own powerlessness.

There are times I feel that we've been shafted. I can't help but to wonder who controls the debt; who will be calling the shots when that obligation is called-in. Getting into debt has been a political act that brought power to groups, but it's at the expense of eventually serving some power. Now what?

Does anybody have a good answer for this?

[marmar]

27. c'est vrai

[woo me with science]

2. K&R Please distribute this far and wide.

This was worth logging in to rec.

This should be on the Greatest Page but, even more importantly, please distribute it beyond DU. Here it will be drowned in the same 24/7 corporate propaganda Hedges is talking about.

Please send this to everyone you know and encourage them to send it along, too. This is what we face.

[adirondacker]

13. +1000. nt

[sabrina 1]

14. Yes, it is definitely worth reading. But then Hedges is a real journalist who will never be seen on

the Corporate Media. This kind of truth telling is a huge threat to the corporate state.

“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country,” Edward Bernays observed in his 1928 book, “Propaganda.” “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

People we have never heard of. But I do think they are being exposed more now than they probably were back then, which explains the militarized reaction to protests which did expose them like OWS.

The truth is though, they could not succeed without help from at least half the people. Which is why any alliances among the people are seen by them as a such a huge threat.

[navarth]

16. In my opinion, everything Chris Hedges says should be distributed far and wide.

He walks the walk. He is one of the few I trust.

[littlemissmartypants]

5. Kicking. Thank you. nt

[KG]

6. AutoChrisHedgesDURec

[grahamhgreen]

7. Kick

[WillyT]

8. HUGE K & R !!! - THANK YOU !!!

[daleanime]

9. K&R....

[trof]

10. Nailed it.

[Kablooie]

12. What I wonder is when was it NOT, a Punch amd Judy show?

My guess is that it's always been the same except that because of the plethora of instantaneous communications we hear more about it and the elite have more ways than ever to force their demands into the popular discourse.

[1StrongBlackMan]

21. +1,000 ...

As much as I agree with the OP, I can't help but think he (and the supporting political philosophers) is pining for a "democracy" and "democratic institutions" that have never existed.

[Kablooie]

26. Yeah. People are people.

Communication technology changes but people are basically the same as we were thousands of years ago.

The rich will always grab up everything they can using all the power they can muster and the poor will always have to clamor for attention and appeal to moral principals for justice.

[adirondacker]

15. KICK! and AGHRRRRR! nt

[JEB]

17. K&R

Hedges nails it again.

[xchrom]

18. du rec.

[JEB]

19. Certainly an accurate description of the USA.

Thus after taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; ... it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.

I know I feel like an industrious animal.

[1StrongBlackMan]

20. One cannot argue with this OP's take on the current state of "Democracy" ...

in the U.S.

My two thoughts:

First,

The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, who coined the term “inverted totalitarianism” to describe our corporate state, asks an essential question in his book “Democracy Incorporated.” He writes: “Can the citizen relearn the demands that democracy places on its highest, most difficult office—not, as commonly supposed, on the office of the president, but on that of the citizen? And that question has a practical corollary: the reinvigoration of citizenship requires more than a civics lesson. It would necessitate a reordering of basic power arrangements and a different understanding of civic commitments from that of spectator.”

This will be a tall order, as in our narcissistic society, "civic commitment" has come to be a vulgar "chauvinism of Me" and, more, people have no idea that they/we are actually spectators, even with all of our posts to anonymous bulletin boards laying claim to "solutions."

And secondly, (and possibly relatedly) ...

I couldn't help notice that the OP says, this:

There are groups on the front lines of economic, racial and environmental distress that are engaging in what Wolin and Tocqueville would describe as politics.

But can't/couldn't be bothered to cite to the actions of one (and only, one) issue group's efforts ... go to the link to see which issue group; but, it should be hard to guess. That, to me, is relevant as the absence, speaks volumes in terms of "values" among "liberals".

[Dustlawyer]

22. +1!!! Too true! The starting point as I see it is to organize and fight for Publicly Funded

Elections! Bernie Sanders recognizes this as well. We need to recruit candidates that vow to fight for PFEs and make our presence known. With PFEs we take away control over the government from the power elites. Then we can bust up Wall Street banks and the media conglomerates. Require "truth" in our news and not allow "lies" as "entertainment posing as news (Fox won an appeal on this allowing them to lie legally).
Most of our problems could be solved and the hyper-partisan crap would die down once we stop being manipulated and brain washed.

Spread the word!

[woo me with science]

30. +1

[adirondacker]

31. +2. I emailed this article to a dozen friends. nt

[mindwalker_i]

23. First step in reclaiming citizenship is to shoot your TV

I've had the opinion for a while that TV is an IV that pumps in "culture," which has become something of a form of mind control. Its main purpose is to turn citizens into consumers, but the close secondary purpose is to redirect or misdirect people from things that are important to the trivial. And when people get angry about getting f***** over, it redirects their anger to targets that are benign from the point of view of those with power.

For example, why the f*** does Kim Kardashian exist? There's a market for someone that people can follow aroundm as opposed to living their own lives and dealing with their own problems. People would probably be able to make better use of their efforts if they spent time examining what politicians are doing and how it affects them. That's hard. When people do get angry, the news makes sure that anger doesn't fall on the powerful, or maybe even more importantly, the rich. That anger is redirected towards other targets, like the poor. So we have a bunch of people that believe the poor are ruining their lives. Does that strike anyone but me as absolutely incredible?

I've kind of wondered why people didn't get angry when all the stuff about the government spying on us came out. One possibility is that we are so used to things like this happening, so used to being diverted away from blaming the appropriate people, that it's natural to just ignore it. Another possibility is that we've been so conditioned not to think about the causes, or even the effects of bad policies done by the government, that people just don't get outraged. We've been taught to be outraged about stupid stuff, like government-run healthcare. Our outrage circuits are broken.

And all of that is communicated by TV - or most of it. The internet was a huge threat to that propaganda stream so controlling it was essential. I believe that, to a good extent, that has been accomplished. Now, with "slow lanes" becoming legal, redirecting people to the same shit that's been pumped into us for decades through TV will now be accomplished by just making it a lot easier to get the same "content."

[freebrew]

24. I've said it before for years and years...

the divisions are the only things stopping democracy from happening.

Think about it. 1% of the people vs. the rest of us. How could it fail?

Manipulating what people hear and how they think. Putting families in distress, fear of losing jobs and security.
It amazes me that I can talk to people I know are smart, yet they cannot see that they are being manipulated by the rich.
"Welfare people 'cheating' the system buying cigs and/or liquor and drugs. They should be drug tested."
I hear this all the time. From 'liberals'. But it takes our eyes off the real injustices in the nation.
Just like all the other myriad of distractions.

There really needs to be a campaign for the truth exposing how the 'rich' got their money and power.

The people of the world suffer so the rich can live in luxury.
Eventually, it will blow up in their faces. Again. As it always does.
Too many people are suffering in the meantime.

[leftstreet]

25. DURec

[woo me with science]

28. kick

[rhett o rick]

29. The last two paragraphs of the article are quite meaningful.

"There are groups on the front lines of economic, racial and environmental distress that are engaging in what Wolin and Tocqueville would describe as politics. They are not spectators. None of them is allied with a mainstream party or movement. Their voices are not heard on any of the major broadcast networks or in the mainstream press. They have little financial support. And their activists know that jail time comes with the job description. Any engagement in the actual political life of the nation will be through them. To invest energy in what the state defines as politics, including presidential campaigns, is a waste of time."

"The call by the Climate Justice Alliance for a week of direct action, Sept. 17 through 24—coinciding with the gathering of world leaders at the United Nations summit—is politics. The coordinated activities during the same week known as Flood Wall Street are politics. The campaign by fast food workers for a livable wage is politics. The effort to block the Keystone XL pipeline is politics. The building of local food initiatives is politics. And there are many others. We must seek them out. We must embrace these groups to relearn what it means to be citizens and to participate in democracy. We must discredit and disrupt the system of faux politics that characterizes the corporate state. If we engage as citizens, rather than as spectators, if we reclaim politics, we might have a chance."

We have to stop "playing the game", stop being manipulated, like: "We love H. Clinton because she is so much better than ____________ (fill in the blank).

Those here that are pushing acceptance of the status-quo are not helping us regain our Democracy.