I've been fascinated by the evolution of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges (Not to be mistaken for the bloviating drunk Christopher Hitchens). This is a guy who's been doing hard journalism for decades. He was at the New York Times for 15 years, and it was there in 2002 that he won the Pulitzer for his coverage of terrorism.
To read him now is like reading Howard Beale, except smart. He appears to have had enough of the bullshit. And he's taking no prisoners. In fact, his excoriation of the ruling class he, as an Oxford chap, knows so well has certainly made him an enemy of such.
Behold friends, something rare and powerful is going on here. One of the most respected and revered journalist in the Western world has left the farm. And he appears to be lighting it on fire on his way out.
In his latest column, The Idiots Who Rule America, he seems to ensure that he won't be invited back to the Council on Foreign Relations Christmas party:
Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality.
Ouch. Then it gets better:
Our elites—the ones in Congress, the ones on Wall Street and the ones being produced at prestigious universities and business schools—do not have the capacity to fix our financial mess. Indeed, they will make it worse. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good. They are stunted, timid and uncreative bureaucrats who are trained to carry out systems management. They see only piecemeal solutions which will satisfy the corporate structure. They are about numbers, profits and personal advancement. They are as able to deny gravely ill people medical coverage to increase company profits as they are able to use taxpayer dollars to peddle costly weapons systems to blood-soaked dictatorships. The human consequences never figure into their balance sheets. The democratic system, they think, is a secondary product of the free market. And they slavishly serve the market.
Andrew Lahde, the Santa Monica, Calif., hedge fund manager who made an 870 percent gain last year by betting on the subprime mortgage collapse, has abruptly shut down his fund, citing the risk of trading with faltering banks. In his farewell letter to his investors he excoriated the elites who run our investment houses, banks and government.
"The low-hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking," he said of our oligarchic class. "These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America."
"On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to make a modest proposal," he went on. "First, I point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have [reined] in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. Since Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith passed, I would argue that there has been a dearth of worthy philosophers in this country, at least ones focused on improving government."
Democracy is not an outgrowth of free markets. Democracy and capitalism are antagonistic entities. Democracy, like individualism, is not based on personal gain but on self-sacrifice. A functioning democracy must defy the economic interests of elites on behalf of citizens. This is not happening. The corporate managers and government officials trying to fix the economic meltdown are pouring money and resources into the financial sector because they only know how to manage and sustain established systems, not change them. Financial systems, however, are not pure scientific and numerical abstractions that exist independently from human beings.
Such candor would never grace the pages of the New York Times. In the past, to even utter the word oligarch would be a quick ticket to nowheresville in establishment media world. But this is a new era where such a powerful voice like Mr. Hedges can no longer be silenced... unless you don't bother to read. Read the rest here.