Do Sanders’ supporters believe they can wrest power from the Democratic establishment and transform the party? Do they think the forces where real power lies—the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, corporations, the security and surveillance state—can be toppled by a Sanders campaign? Do they think the Democratic Party will allow itself to be ruled by democratic procedures? Do they not accept that with the destruction of organized labor and anti-war, civil rights and progressive movements—a destruction often orchestrated by security organs such as the FBI—the party has lurched so far to the right that it has remade itself into the old Republican Party? link
Oh, Chris Hedges — the Eeyore of the left — never change.
Yeah, I really can’t disagree with the quote above or much of anything else in the article it comes from. I’ve read The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer and David Talbot’s book The Devil’s Chessboard about the creation of the Deep State. And, one of the things that has shocked me on Daily Kos since the ascendancy of Bernie is the same kind of right wing talking points in comments against Bernie that I hear from my just right of John Birch in-laws.
I’m not going to disagree with the following, either:
We do not live in a capitalist democracy. We live in what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls a system of “inverted totalitarianism.”
Inverted totalitarianism, Wolin said when we met at his home in Salem, Ore., in 2014 to film a nearly three-hour interview, constantly “projects power upwards.” It is “the antithesis of constitutional power.” It is designed to create instability to keep a citizenry off balance and passive.
He writes, “Downsizing, reorganization, bubbles bursting, unions busted, quickly outdated skills, and transfer of jobs abroad create not just fear but an economy of fear, a system of control whose power feeds on uncertainty, yet a system that, according to its analysts, is eminently rational.”
Inverted totalitarianism also “perpetuates politics all the time,” Wolin said when we spoke, “but a politics that is not political.” The endless and extravagant election cycles, he said, are an example of politics without politics.
“Instead of participating in power,” he writes, “the virtual citizen is invited to have ‘opinions’: measurable responses to questions predesigned to elicit them.”
Political campaigns rarely discuss substantive issues. They center on manufactured political personalities, empty rhetoric, sophisticated public relations, slick advertising, propaganda and the constant use of focus groups and opinion polls to loop back to voters what they want to hear.
Manufactured political personality? Empty rhetoric? Hillary, check your email server.
Money has effectively replaced the vote. Every current presidential candidate—including Bernie Sanders—understands, to use Wolin’s words, that “the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates.” The citizen is irrelevant. He or she is nothing more than a spectator, allowed to vote and then forgotten once the carnival of elections ends and corporations and their lobbyists get back to the business of ruling.
“If the main purpose of elections is to serve up pliant legislators for lobbyists to shape, such a system deserves to be called ‘misrepresentative or clientry government,’ ” Wolin writes. “It is, at one and the same time, a powerful contributing factor to the depoliticization of the citizenry, as well as reason for characterizing the system as one of antidemocracy.”
The result, he writes, is that the public is “denied the use of state power.” Wolin deplores the trivialization of political discourse, a tactic used to leave the public fragmented, antagonistic and emotionally charged while leaving corporate power and empire unchallenged.
“Cultural wars might seem an indication of strong political involvements,” he writes. “Actually they are a substitute. The notoriety they receive from the media and from politicians eager to take firm stands on nonsubstantive issues serves to distract attention and contribute to a cant politics of the inconsequential.”
Off balance, passive, fearful, uncertain, fragmented, antagonistic and emotionally charged: Those words certainly could describe all of us, me included, lately.
I think some of the “reform class” mentioned below might pop in here every once in awhile, also, mostly to lecture about the importance of fealty to the Democratic Party.
“The reform class, those who believe that reform is possible, those who believe in humanism, justice and inclusion, has become incredibly lazy over the last 30 or 40 years,” Saul said. “The last hurrah was really in the 1970s. Since then they think that getting a tenured position at Harvard and waiting to get a job in Washington is actually an action, as opposed to passivity.” link
So, after all this gloom and doom, would you believe that I’m an ardent Bernie Sander’s supporter? And, I’m absolutely convinced that he has a shot of winning the presidency? Because I most certainly am.
Chris Hedges basically makes a pretty good case for Bernie being a sellout for joining the Democratic Party in order to not fragment the vote with an independent party run that could result in a Republican winning. Is he right? There’s no way we can know for sure.
However, if there’s one thing that has been made clear to me, after the Iowa and Nevada caucuses, it is the power elite of the Democratic Party — I’m looking at you Harry Reid and Debbie Suppress the Grassroots Wasserman Schultz — obviously don’t want Bernie to be the nominee.
By this time in the 2008 primaries, the elites had sussed Obama out and determined that he was a guy they could work with, so they were okay with either Obama or Hillary winning. That is why Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy got dismantled, so that the grassroots couldn’t consolidate their own power. That’s not the impression I’m getting with Sanders. They are scared of them and I’m sure we’ll be seeing lots of shenanigans coming his way, and not just from the Hillary Camp, but from the party apparatus itself.
So why, in heaven’s name, should we throw in our lot with a guy who is going to be sanderbagged constantly by the power elite, media included, between now and the convention? Because he is OUR guy not theirs. Hillary is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party and the corporate oligarchy. Bernie, not so much.
He has hinted through his campaign organization, his revolutionary rhetoric, along with his astonishing small donor fundraising, that he is in it for the long haul. He is creating a powerful, populist machine that can hopefully sustain itself past the election and be used in the next midterms and beyond to encourage more progressive down ballot candidates — whether or not he gets the nomination or gets elected President.
But what a poke in the eye it would be to the establishment if Bernie occupied the White House! It would send a message that the oligarchs and the deep state aren’t as entrenched as they might think. It would send a message to the millenials in this country that the future belongs to them.
So are we doomed? That’s up to us. Let’s get out there, give money, volunteer, organize, VOTE, and make Chris Hedges eat his bitter, bitter words.
“The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it.”
I.F. Stone