The
Elites Won’t Save Us
By
Chris Hedges
February 13, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"Truth
Dig" -
The four-decade-long assault on our
democratic institutions by corporations has
left them weak and largely dysfunctional.
These institutions, which surrendered their
efficacy and credibility to serve corporate
interests, should have been our firewall.
Instead, they are tottering under the
onslaught.
Labor unions are a spent force. The press
is corporatized and distrusted. Universities
have been purged of dissidents and
independent scholars who criticize
neoliberalism and decry the decay of
democratic institutions and political
parties. Public broadcasting and the arts
have been defunded and left on life support.
The courts have been stacked with judges
whose legal careers were spent serving
corporate power, a trend in appointments
that continued under Barack Obama. Money has
replaced the vote, which is how someone as
unqualified as Betsy DeVos can buy herself a
Cabinet seat. And the Democratic Party,
rather than sever its ties to Wall Street
and corporations, is naively waiting in the
wings to profit from a Trump debacle.
“The biggest asset Trump has is the
decadent, clueless, narcissistic,
corporate-indentured, war-mongering
Democratic Party,”
Ralph Nader said when I reached him by
phone in Washington. “If the Democratic
strategy is waiting for Godot, waiting for
Trump to implode, we are in trouble. And
just about everything you say about the
Democrats you can say about the
AFL-CIO. They don’t control the train.”
The loss of credibility by democratic
institutions has thrust the country into an
existential as well as economic crisis. The
courts, universities and press are no longer
trusted by tens of millions of Americans who
correctly see them as organs of the
corporate elites. These institutions are
traditionally the mechanisms by which a
society is able to unmask the lies of the
powerful, critique ruling ideologies and
promote justice. Because Americans have been
bitterly betrayed by their institutions, the
Trump regime can attack the press as the “opposition
party,” threaten to cut off
university funding, taunt a federal
jurist as a “so-called
judge” and
denounce a court order as “outrageous.”
The decay of democratic institutions is
the prerequisite for the rise of
authoritarian or fascist regimes. This decay
has given credibility to a pathological
liar. The Trump administration, according to
an Emerson College poll, is considered by 49
percent of registered voters to be truthful
while the media are considered truthful by
only 39 percent of registered voters. Once
American democratic institutions no longer
function, reality becomes whatever absurdity
the White House issues.
Most of the rules of democracy are
unwritten. These rules determine public
comportment and ensure respect for
democratic norms, procedures and
institutions. President Trump has, to the
delight of his supporters, rejected this
political and cultural etiquette.
Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of
Totalitarianism” noted that when democratic
institutions collapse it is “easier to
accept patently absurd propositions than the
old truths which have become pious
banalities.” The chatter of the liberal
ruling elites about our democracy is itself
an absurdity. “Vulgarity with its cynical
dismissal of respected standards and
accepted theories,” she wrote, infects
political discourse. This vulgarity is
“mistaken for courage and a new style of
life.”
“He is destroying one code of behavior
after another,” Nader said of Trump. “He is
so far getting away with it and not paying a
price. He is breaking standards of
behavior—what he says about women,
commercializing the White House, I am the
law.”
Nader said he does not think the
Republican Party will turn against Trump or
consider impeachment unless his presidency
appears to threaten its chances of retaining
power in the 2018 elections. Nader sees the
Democratic Party as too “decadent and
incompetent” to mount a serious challenge to
Trump. Hope, he said, comes from the
numerous protests that have been mounted
in the streets,
at town halls held by members of
Congress and at flash points such as
Standing Rock. It may also come from the
2.5 million civil servants within the
federal government if a significant number
refuse to cooperate with Trump’s
authoritarianism.
“The new president is clearly aware of
the power wielded by civil servants, who
swear an oath of allegiance to the U.S.
Constitution, not to any president or
administration,” Maria J. Stephan, the
co-author of “Why Civil Resistance Works,”
writes in The Washington Post. “One of
Trump’s first acts as president was a
sweeping federal hiring freeze affecting all
new and existing positions except those
related to the military, national security
and public safety. Even before Trump’s
inauguration, the Republican-controlled
House of Representatives reinstated an
obscure 1876 rule that would allow Congress
to slash the salaries of individual federal
workers. This was a clear warning to those
serving in government to keep their heads
down. Trump’s high-profile firing of acting
attorney general Sally Yates, who refused to
follow the president’s immigration ban, sent
shock waves through the bureaucracy.”
A sustained, nationwide popular uprising
of nonviolent obstruction and noncooperation
is the only weapon left to save the
republic. The elites will respond once they
become afraid. If we do not make them afraid
we will fail.
The four-decade-long assault on our
democratic institutions by corporations has
left them weak and largely dysfunctional.
These institutions, which surrendered their
efficacy and credibility to serve corporate
interests, should have been our firewall.
Instead, they are tottering under the
onslaught.
Labor unions are a spent force. The press
is corporatized and distrusted. Universities
have been purged of dissidents and
independent scholars who criticize
neoliberalism and decry the decay of
democratic institutions and political
parties. Public broadcasting and the arts
have been defunded and left on life support.
The courts have been stacked with judges
whose legal careers were spent serving
corporate power, a trend in appointments
that continued under Barack Obama. Money has
replaced the vote, which is how someone as
unqualified as Betsy DeVos can buy herself a
Cabinet seat. And the Democratic Party,
rather than sever its ties to Wall Street
and corporations, is naively waiting in the
wings to profit from a Trump debacle.
“The biggest asset Trump has is the
decadent, clueless, narcissistic,
corporate-indentured, war-mongering
Democratic Party,”
Ralph Nader said when I reached him by
phone in Washington. “If the Democratic
strategy is waiting for Godot, waiting for
Trump to implode, we are in trouble. And
just about everything you say about the
Democrats you can say about the
AFL-CIO. They don’t control the train.”
The loss of credibility by democratic
institutions has thrust the country into an
existential as well as economic crisis. The
courts, universities and press are no longer
trusted by tens of millions of Americans who
correctly see them as organs of the
corporate elites. These institutions are
traditionally the mechanisms by which a
society is able to unmask the lies of the
powerful, critique ruling ideologies and
promote justice. Because Americans have been
bitterly betrayed by their institutions, the
Trump regime can attack the press as the “opposition
party,” threaten to cut off
university funding, taunt a federal
jurist as a “so-called
judge” and
denounce a court order as “outrageous.”
The decay of democratic institutions is
the prerequisite for the rise of
authoritarian or fascist regimes. This decay
has given credibility to a pathological
liar. The Trump administration, according to
an Emerson College poll, is considered by 49
percent of registered voters to be truthful
while the media are considered truthful by
only 39 percent of registered voters. Once
American democratic institutions no longer
function, reality becomes whatever absurdity
the White House issues.
Most of the rules of democracy are
unwritten. These rules determine public
comportment and ensure respect for
democratic norms, procedures and
institutions. President Trump has, to the
delight of his supporters, rejected this
political and cultural etiquette.
|
Information
Clearing House
-
News You Won't Find On CNN
|
Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of
Totalitarianism” noted that when democratic
institutions collapse it is “easier to
accept patently absurd propositions than the
old truths which have become pious
banalities.” The chatter of the liberal
ruling elites about our democracy is itself
an absurdity. “Vulgarity with its cynical
dismissal of respected standards and
accepted theories,” she wrote, infects
political discourse. This vulgarity is
“mistaken for courage and a new style of
life.”
“He is destroying one code of behavior
after another,” Nader said of Trump. “He is
so far getting away with it and not paying a
price. He is breaking standards of
behavior—what he says about women,
commercializing the White House, I am the
law.”
Nader said he does not think the
Republican Party will turn against Trump or
consider impeachment unless his presidency
appears to threaten its chances of retaining
power in the 2018 elections. Nader sees the
Democratic Party as too “decadent and
incompetent” to mount a serious challenge to
Trump. Hope, he said, comes from the
numerous protests that have been mounted
in the streets,
at town halls held by members of
Congress and at flash points such as
Standing Rock. It may also come from the
2.5 million civil servants within the
federal government if a significant number
refuse to cooperate with Trump’s
authoritarianism.
“The new president is clearly aware of
the power wielded by civil servants, who
swear an oath of allegiance to the U.S.
Constitution, not to any president or
administration,” Maria J. Stephan, the
co-author of “Why Civil Resistance Works,”
writes in The Washington Post. “One of
Trump’s first acts as president was a
sweeping federal hiring freeze affecting all
new and existing positions except those
related to the military, national security
and public safety. Even before Trump’s
inauguration, the Republican-controlled
House of Representatives reinstated an
obscure 1876 rule that would allow Congress
to slash the salaries of individual federal
workers. This was a clear warning to those
serving in government to keep their heads
down. Trump’s high-profile firing of acting
attorney general Sally Yates, who refused to
follow the president’s immigration ban, sent
shock waves through the bureaucracy.”
A sustained, nationwide popular uprising
of nonviolent obstruction and noncooperation
is the only weapon left to save the
republic. The elites will respond once they
become afraid. If we do not make them afraid
we will fail.
Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a
foreign correspondent in Central America,
the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He
has reported from more than 50 countries and
has worked for The Christian Science
Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas
Morning News and The New York Times, for
which he was a foreign correspondent for 15
years.
