Het volgende artikel van Chris Hedges (en Matt Taibbi in de bijgevoegde video) op Information Clearing House (overgenomen van ‘Truth Dig’) handelt over de neergang van de democratie en haar instituties t.b.v. grote bedrijven, banken en het militair-industrieel complex, noodzakelijk voor de uiteindelijk beoogde fascistisch machtsovername…… (Bedrijven functioneren uitstekend in een fascistische staat….)

De vakbonden zijn verworden tot grote instituties waar kapitalen worden verspild en die nog amper van enige betekenis zijn. De reguliere (massa-) media zijn in handen van enkele figuren en dienen als eerste het belang van die topgraaiers en vervolgens het belang van de zittende neoliberale regering (althans als die goed voor de bedrijven werkt….). Wat betreft de publieke zendgemachtigden, zoals de BBC (en de NOS in ons land), is het dienen van het belang van de zittende regering overduidelijk….. Ach ja, wiens brood men eet……….

Het is in ons land al zo zot, dat men het normaal vindt, dat de Eerste Kamer bestaat uit figuren die in het (grote) bedrijfsleven werkzaam zijn en uiteraard lobbyen voor die bedrijven (bedrijven inclusief de financiële maffia en het militair-industrieel complex….). Een zienswijze die wordt gedeeld door de reguliere massamedia……..

In de VS gaat men zover, dat kritische studenten worden weggezuiverd van de universiteiten……. Ook de rechterlijke macht fungeert, meer en meer als een klassen-justitieel systeem, waar de belangen van het neoliberalisme worden gediend…… Dat geldt overigens ook voor een groot deel voor Nederland, zo besloot vanmorgen de hoogste bestuursrechter in Nederland, de Raad van State, dat er naar gas mag worden geboord bij Terschelling……..* (klik ook op het label ‘klassenjustitie’, dat u onder dit bericht terugvindt).

Lees dit uitstekende artikel en zie de bijgevoegde video (onder het artikel kan u klikken voor een ‘Dutch’ vertaling, dit neemt wel enige tijd in beslag):

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. (WaPo) “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.

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.

The
views expressed in this article are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information
Clearing House.

“Insane
Clown President”

Chris
Hedges and Matt Taibbi

Chris Hedges examines the spectacle
of the 2016 presidential election and the system that created
President Donald Trump with Matt Taibbi, author of “Insane Clown
President”.

Click
for Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, French,
translation- Note- Translation
may take a moment to load. 

==========

* Lees en teken a.u.b. de petitie tegen gasboringen bij Terschelling!

Voor meer berichten n.a.v. het voorgaande, klik op één van de labels, die u onder dit bericht terug kan vinden, dit geldt niet voor de labels: Arendt, Nader, M.J. Stephan en Taibbi.