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Health Associates Federal Credit Union
i usually don't pay attention to colonialpolitics but there's very outrageous things taking place. when people come to our territories, we askthem if they're coming with a good heart and a good mind. the song i sang coming up the aisle is oneof our paddle songs.
Health Associates Federal Credit Union, it comes from a relative of ours named rosegreen from the stolo nation. so we would get in our canoes and go out andgreet who was coming in. and we went out and greeted every boat nomatter where they were coming from. this land is not just for the english, andjust for the french.
it's only 150 years old, this thing calledcanada. it's not for anyone to say who can be hereand who can't be here. this is how we coexist. so many of us i see in this audience, we'vebeen here on the front lines fighting for our environment and this beautiful place. but now you have to fight for the children. so that's the message my ancestors are givingyou today. chris hedges speaks of the best of his prize-winningjournalism as amplifying the voices of the dispossessed.
we see that when he speaks at standing rock,at the women's march, standing beside chelsea manning, and the whistleblowers, when he standswith the leaders of black lives matter. but chris is also a daring intellectual. his interviews with activists and the thinkersof our day may reinforce his opinions as does his practice as a reader. but the analysis is his own. and those of our who spend our lives challengingauthority have learned to use his voice to reinforce our research with his, to strengthenour personal integrity with his, to cherish and emulate his determination to learn andto speak truthfully.
his address tonight is likely to, once again,stiffen our spines. the final stages of capitalism, karl marxpredicted, would be marked by global capital being unable to expand and generate profitsat former levels. that sustained them. democracy, social welfare, electoral participation,the common good and investment i n public transportation, roads, bridges, utilities, industry, education, healthcare and the protection of the ecosystem would be sacrificed to feed the mania for short-termprofit.
these assaults would destroy the host. this is the stage of late capitalism thatdonald trump represents. trump and his reactionary capitalists who have seized 34 of 50 governorships and 68 of 99 state legislatures 49 of which are bicameral plan to oversee the final campaign of corporate pillaging of america and the rest of the planet. it will be crass and brazen. as crass and brazen as the fleecingof the desperate people, hoping for a miracle
in the face of dead-end jobs and ruinous personal debt who patronized trump’s casinos and the casinos springing up across the united states and canada -- or who shelled out thousands of dollars for the sham of trump university. he is unleashing a kleptocracy -- the wordcomes from the greek klã©pto, meaning thieves, and kratos, meaning rule, so it is literally“rule by thieves†-- one that will rival the kleptocracies carried out by suharto inindonesia and marcos in the philippines. it is not that trump and his family will usethe influence of government to increase their
wealth, although this will certainly takeplace on a massive scale; it is that hundreds of billions of federal dollars will be divertedinto the hands of cronies, sleazy bankers, unethical financial firms and scabrous hedgefund managers. everything will, to use a business term, be“harvested." the decaying pillars of the liberal statein america will be obliterated. at the same time, the militarization of america is being accelerated. the defense budget will be increased by 10percent, or 54 billion dollars, although the united states already spends more than the defense budgets of the next 7 countries combined. the paramilitary forces of immigration andcustoms enforcement
which will soon hire 10,000 more agents and the border patrol, whichwill hire 5,000 more agents, along with homeland security, have all deputized local andstate police to function as their auxiliaries. they will be flooded with cast-off military-issue equipment. these paramilitary forces will not disbandonce they have finished terrorizing and deporting some of the 11 million undocumented workersin the untied states. they will turn on their next victims -- muslims, african-americans, asians, dissidents. this militariziation of society is designed to carry out the race war that trump and those around him see as inevitable at home and abroad.
in poor communities of color, this race war has already begun. racial profiling. random police stops. raids at homes and businesses. people of color pulled from vehicles at checkpoints. seizures of individuals with no criminal recordsor who never committed a serious crime. imprisonment without trial. expedited deportation hearings and removalproceedings that violate the most basic human rights. the arrest of a beneficiary of the deferredaction for childhood arrivals (daca) program,
daniel ramirez medina, 23, who along withthe program’s other 750,000 successful applicants had revealed all personal history to the governmentin applying for daca status. parents separated, perhaps forever, from theirchildren. the hunted going underground. the end of the rule of law. the abandonment of the common good. the obliteration of a social state in whichinstitutions and assistance programs -- from public education to social security and welfare-- make justice, equality and dignity possible. white europeans who are undocumented are notbeing targeted.
the executive orders of trump aredirected against people of color. they begin from the premise that white americansare the true victims of neoliberalism, deindustrialization and falling living standards. the trump orders are written not to make americagreat again but to make america white. they are an updated version of the nazis’nuremberg laws, the jim crow laws, the chinese exclusion act and the naturalization act of1870. they are intended to institutionalize an overtracial hierarchy in the united states, one already advanced in the miniature police states where people of color live in marginal communities.
in these impoverished enclaves there is noright to trial or due process. militarized police kill with impunity, andthe courts lock people away often for life. rights are treated as privileges that caninstantly be revoked. the poor, especially poor people of color,are exempted from moral consideration. they are attacked as impediments to social cohesion. and these impediments must be eliminated. jews -- their community centers enduring threatsof violence and their graveyards desecrated -- will also be persecuted. american fascism is rapidly being cemented into placeby uniformed and heavily armed paramilitary
goons clutching the flag and the cross andreciting the pledge of allegiance and the lord’s prayer. “little or no prospect of rescue from individualindolence or impotence can be expected to arrive from a political state that is not,and refuses to be, a social state,†the sociologist zygmunt bauman wrote. “without social rights for all, a largeand in all probability growing number of people will find their political rights of littleuse and unworthy of their attention. if political rights are necessary to set socialrights in place, social rights are indispensable to make political rights ‘real’ and keepthem in operation.
the two rights need each other for their survival;that survival can only be their joint achievement.†presidential chief strategist stephen bannon,in his public comments and his films such as “generation zero,†has embraced a historicaldeterminism worthy of karl marx. he posits that western culture has been contaminatedand is being destroyed by darker races and barbaric religions and belief systems. his conspiratorial view of history and societysees a global war between the white race and the lesser breeds of the earth as not onlyinevitable but one that will reinvigorate and purify america. this idea of regeneration through violence which has always been part of the american myth
is also a central tenant of fascism. racists and conspiracy theorists such as bannon,michael anton, stephen miller and sebastian gorka constitute trump’s ideological braintrust. gorka goes so far as to argue that the failureto understand the evil of radical islam stems from a “systematic subversion of the nationalsecurity establishment under the banner of inclusivity, cultural awareness and politicalcorrectness.†in a 2014 speech, bannon said, “i believewe’ve come partly off-track in the years since the fall of the soviet union and we’restarting now in the 21st century, which i believe, strongly, is a crisis both of ourchurch, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of
the west, a crisis of capitalism.†“there is a major war brewing, a war that’salready global,†bannon said. “it’s going global in scale, and today’stechnology, today’s media, today’s access to weapons of mass destruction, it’s goingto lead to a global conflict that i believe has to be confronted today. every day that we refuse to look at this aswhat it is, and the scale of it, and really the viciousness of it, will be a day whereyou will rue that we didn’t act.†bannon is a proponent of the theory popularizedby authors william strauss and neil howe in their books “generations: the history ofamerica’s future, 1584 to 2069†(1991)
and “the fourth turning: an american prophecy-- what the cycles of history tell us about america’s next rendezvous with destinyâ€(1997). this authors argue that roughly every 80 years,roughly an average human life span, the country goes through a cataclysmic crisis. this crisis triggers war, industrious slaughter, and genocide, and lasts for a decade or more. in its aftermath they argue the social order is rejuvenated. strauss and howe highlight the american revolutionof 1775-83, the civil war, the great depression and world war ii as examples of how the cycleworks.
pseudo-intellectuals such as strauss and howeplay the role that paul de lagarde, julius langbehn, arthur moeller van den bruck andalfred rosenberg played for the nazi party. they give an intellectual veneer to racistconspiracy theories, a virulent nationalism, a hatred for culture and the lust for dominationthrough violence. i share bannon’s distaste for corporateglobalization, free trade agreements, the failure to put wall street bankers in jail,the bank bailouts and crony capitalism and would even concede that americans wallow inthe moral swamp of a culture of narcissism. he is right when he attacks the two majorpolitical parties as the one “party of davos.†but his solution to the purported crisis -- totalwar by the white race to regain its ascendancy
-- is insane, as are the causes he cites:a new deal that turned citizens into whining dependents; the permissiveness of the 1960s;white guilt that made the country cater, in his words, irresponsibly to african-americans by giving them socialservice programs and undeserved mortgages that led to the 2008 financial meltdown; anintellectual and a liberal class composed essentially of traitors who hate america; and the “new barbarity†of “jihadist islamic fascism.†racism, misogyny, the inherent cruelty ofcapitalism and the crimes of empire, from wounded knee to vietnam and iraq, simply donot exist in bannon’s mystical nationalist worldview.
he insists that the white male aristocraticelites who formed a republic that enslaved african-americans, exterminated native americansand denied the vote to women and white men without property created “a church and acivilization that really is the flower of mankind.†this is the myth he wants to recover. it may be that the deep state -- the shadowyworld of the security and surveillance bureaucracy, the arms industry, wall street, silicon valleyand corporations that actually rule the country -- disturbed by trump’s impulsivity, irrationalityand incompetence will move to replace him. this was certainly the idea when the organsof internal security used a wiretap to discredit
and remove michael flynn, and it is what is happening now with the leaks about the attorney general's two meetings withe russian ambassador. but the ascendancyto the white house of michael pence, a more polished and disciplined politician who willvigorously advance the agenda of the christian right, will not make things better – indeedthey may make things worse. those being placed now into positions of powerare agents of destruction. betsy devos is moving to defund our system of publiceducation and use government vouchers to expand corporate charter school chains and thoserun by the christian right. scott pruitt is dismantling the environmentalprotection agency.
he has already called for a 25% reduction in the epa's budget, the elimination of 3000 jobs and the slashing of numerous programs including a 70% cut to its climate protection program that oversees cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. bannon was the dark hand behind the ban on muslims entering the united states from seven muslim-majoritycountries -- a ban you can expect to see extended if the trump administration is successfulin removing a stay issued by a district court or issuing a new executive order. bannon was behind the order to the departmentof homeland security to draw up lists of muslim organizations and individuals in the unitedstates that, in the language of the executive
action, have been “radicalized†and“provided material support to terrorism-related organizations in countries that pose a threatto the united states.†such lists will be used to criminalize muslimleaders and the institutions and organizations they built. then, once the muslims are dealt with, therewill be new homeland security lists that will allow the government to target the press,activists, labor leaders, dissident intellectuals and the left. “lenin wanted to destroy the state, andthat’s my goal too,†bannon told the writer ronald radosh in 2013.
“i want to bring everything crashing down,and destroy all of today’s establishment.†this culture of destruction was launched 4 decades ago by corporate forces. the corporate elites, terrified by the mobilizationof the left in the 1960s, or by what political scientist samuel huntington called america’s“excess of democracy,†built and funded counter-institutions to delegitimize and marginalizecritics of corporate capitalism and imperialism. they bought the allegiances of the two mainpolitical parties. they imposed obedience to the neoliberal ideologywithin academia and the press. this campaign, laid out by lewis powell inhis 1971 memorandum titled “attack on american free enterprise system,†was the blueprintfor the creeping corporate coup d’ã©tat
that 45 years later is largely complete. the dismantling of democratic institutions,places where the citizen has agency and a voice, is far graver than the ascendancy tothe white house of the demagogue trump. the coup destroyed our two-party system. labor unions are a spent force. the press is corporatized. universities have been purged of dissidentsand independent scholars who criticize neoliberalism and decry the decay of democratic institutionsand political parties. public broadcasting and the arts -- placeswhere voices not beholden to corporate power
should find a sanctuary -- have been defundedand forced to beg for corporate money, which, comes, of course, with corporate censorship. and it is expected that what little money the government gives to public broadcasting and organizations such as the national endowment for the arts will soon be eliminated under trump. the courts have been stacked with judges whoselegal careers were spent serving corporate power, a trend in appointments that continuedunder barack obama. money has replaced the vote, which is howsomeone as unqualified as betsy devos can buy herself a cabinet seat.
and the democratic party, rather than severits ties to wall street and corporations, is naively waiting in the wings to profitfrom a trump debacle. this coup destroyed more than our democratic institutions. it destroyed the very credibility of liberal democracy. self-identified liberals such as the clintonsand barack obama mouthed the words of liberal democratic values while making war on thesevalues in the service of corporate power. the revolt we see rippling across the countryis a revolt not only against a corporate system that has betrayed workers, but also, for many,the ideas and values espoused by a bankrupt liberal class.
this is very dangerous. the discrediting of liberal democracy willallow the radical right to cement into place in america and much of europe and other parts of the globe a form of fascism. presidential adviser stephen miller, an ardentwhite supremist, in an interview on face the nation on cbs was quite blunt about what toexpect. “we have a judiciary that has taken fartoo much power and become in many cases a supreme branch of government,†he said. “our opponents, the media and the wholeworld will soon see as we begin to take further
actions, that the powers of the presidentto protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.†history may not repeat itself, but it echoes. the framers of our constitution, steeped inthe history of ancient greece and rome, attempted to provide checks and balances to keep theamerican republic from falling, like their ancient counterparts, into oligarchy and tyranny. this kind of historical knowledge – dismissedas frivolous by our consumer culture and business elites – allows us recognize the familiar warningsigns on the road to tyranny. if we studied the collapse of ancient greece,rome, the weimar republic or the former yugoslavia
we would be far more alert to the currentmarch towards despotism. thucydides, who wrote that the tyranny theathenian empire imposed on others it finally imposed on itself, is a better guide to ourfuture than milton friedman or ayn rand. the historian fritz stern in “the politicsof cultural despair,†his book on the rise of fascism in germany, warned repeatedly ofthe danger of a bankrupt liberalism. stern, who saw the same dark, irrational forcesat work today that he watched as a boy in nazi germany, argued that the spirituallyand politically alienated are the prime recruits for a politics centered around cultural hatredsand personal resentments. stern told me that in germany there was a yearningfor fascism before the word fascism was invented.
“they attacked liberalism,†stern wroteof the fascists emerging at the time in germany, “because it seemed to them the principalpremise of modern society; everything they dreaded seemed to spring from it; the bourgeoislife, manchesterism, materialism, parliament and the parties, the lack of political leadership. even more, they sense in liberalism the sourceof all their inner sufferings. theirs was a resentment of loneliness; theirone desire was for a new faith, a new community of believers, a world with fixed standardsand no doubts, a new national religion that would bind all germans together. all this, liberalism denied.
hence, they hated liberalism, blamed it formaking outcasts of them, for uprooting them from their imaginary past, and from theirfaith.†it turns out, 45 years later, that those whotruly hate us for our freedoms are not the array of dehumanized enemies cooked up bythe war machine -- the vietnamese, cambodians, afghanis, iraqis, iranians or even the taliban,al-qaida or isis. they are the financiers, bankers, politicians,public intellectuals and pundits, lawyers, journalists and businesspeople cultivatedin the elite universities and business schools who served as matt taibbi says, as the guardians of the orthodoxy of neoliberalism and empire. in the twilight phase of capitalism, wealthis no longer created by producing or manufacturing.
it is created by manipulating the prices ofstocks and commodities and imposing a crippling debt peonage on the public. our casino capitalism has merged with theactual gambling industry. this is an economic model designed to prey on the desperate -- youngmen and women burdened by student loans, underpaid workers crushed by credit card debt and mortgages, bankrupt towns and cities forced to borrow to maintain municipal services and sell off municipal assets from sewers and water treatment plants to their parking authority to corporations.
casino magnates such as sheldon adelson – whohas advocated attacking iran with nuclear weapons -- and hedge fund managers such aspaul singer – who buys distressed or defaulted bonds at pennies on the dollar and then successfullysues for full repayment -- which is how we trashed the argentine economy -- and robert mercer add nothing of value to society. they do not generate money but instead redistributeit upwards to the 1 percent. they use lobbyists and campaign contributionsto rewrite laws and regulations and build monopolies -- this is how the drug companymylan in the united states raised the price of an epipen used to
treat allergy reactions, from $57 in 2007to $500. they have given themselves the legal powerto carry out a tax boycott, loot the treasury, close factories and send the jobsoverseas, and gut social service programs. these corporate mandarins are, if we speakin the language of god and country, traitors. they are parasites. financial speculation in 17th-century englandwas a crime. speculators were hanged. the heads of most of today’s banks and hedgefunds and the executives of large corporations, such as walmart and gap, that run sweatshopdeath traps for impoverished workers overseas
deserve prison far more than most of the poorstudents of color i teach within the prison system, people who never had a fair trialor a fair chance in life. when a tiny cabal seizes power -- monarchist,communist, fascist or corporate -- it creates a mafia economy and a mafia state. trump is not an anomaly. he is the grotesque visage of our collapseddemocracy. trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals,half-wits, christian fascists, criminals, racists and deviants play the role of the snopes clan in some ofwilliam faulkner’s novels.
the snopes filled the power vacuum of thedecayed south and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated, former slave-holdingaristocratic elites. flem snopes and his extended family -- whichincludes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulateswith a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality-- are fictionalrepresentations of the scum now elevated to the highest level of the federal government. “the usual reference to ‘amorality,’while accurate, is not sufficiently distinctive and by itself does not allow us to place them,as they should be placed, in a historical moment,†the critic irving howe wrote ofthe snopeses.
“perhaps the most important thing to besaid is that they are what comes afterwards: the creatures that emerge from the devastation,with the slime still upon their lips.†“let a world collapse, in the south or russia,and there appear figures of coarse ambition driving their way up from beneath the socialbottom, men to whom moral claims are not so much absurd as incomprehensible, sons of bushwhackers and muzhiks drifting in from nowhere and taking over through the sheer outrageousness of theirmonolithic force,†howe wrote. “they become presidents of local banks andchairmen of party regional committees, and later, a trifle slicked up, they muscle theirway into congress or the politburo.
scavengers without inhibition, they need notbelieve in the crumbling official code of their society; they need only learn to mimicits sounds.†trump and those around him believe in one truth. which is whatever they proclaim at the moment although any such declaration may contradict what they said a few hours before. they are possessed by one idea: conflict. they sanctify violence, misogyny, a disdain for empathy, and the self-appointed right to engage in bouts of frenzied rage. these characteristics, they insist, are a sign of strength and virility.
their highest aesthetic is militarism, violence, and war. without conflict, without enemies real or imagined, their ideological structures and their racism collapse into a heap of contradictions and absurdities. christian fascists are the vanguard ofthis emerging american fascism. they ferret out facts and formulas that buttresstheir peculiar worldview and discard truths that contradict their messianic delusions. they mouth a few biblical clichã©s to justifybigotry, homophobia, chauvinism and repression. it is propaganda masquerading as ideology. these christian fascists are singularly incurious.
they are linguistically, culturally and historicallyilliterate about the muslim world, and about most other foreign cultures, science and intellectualpursuits, yet blithely write off one-fifth of the world’s population – muslims -- asirredeemable and dismiss climate change as a hoax. the inability of white supremacists and christianfascists to recognize the humanity of others springs from their spiritual and intellectual impoverishment. they mistake bigotry for honesty. they mistake their ignorancefor innocence. they cannot separate fantasy from reality. such people are, as author james baldwin said,“moral monsters.â€
evil, for them, is embodied in the dehumanizedother. once the human personification of evil iseradicated, evil itself is supposed to disappear. except, of course, that as soon as one groupof human beings is annihilated, another human embodiment of evil rises to take its place. the nazis began with jews. our fanatics are beginning with muslims andthe undocumented. history has shown where they will go fromhere. “the nationalist is by definition an ignoramus,â€the yugoslav writer danilo kis writer said. “nationalism is the line of least resistance,the easy way.
the nationalist is untroubled, he knows orthinks he knows what his values are, that’s to say national, that’s to saythe values of the nation he belongs to, ethical and political; he is not interested in others,they are no concern of his, hell -- it’s other people, other nations, another tribe. they don’t even need investigating. the nationalist sees other people in his ownimages -- as nationalists.†like all utopians these people believe that their agendais being implemented for our benefit. they are like cardinal robert bellarmine,who oversaw the burning of giordano bruno at the stake and who argued that eradicatingheretics does them a favor because it saves
them from their own damnation. it is impossible to have a rational dialoguewith people who view reality through the binary lens of black and white -- us and them. they do not recognize the right of dissent. dissent is at best obstruction and probablytreason. fanatics, in power, always become inquisitors. trump has no coherent belief systemor coherent ideology. but his ideological vacuum is being filled -- bythe christian right. what comes next, history has shown, will notbe pleasant.
a corrupt and inept ruling elite, backed bythe organs of state security and law enforcement, will transform workers into serfs. the most benign dissent will be criminalized. the ravaging of the ecosystem will propelus ever closer towards extinction. hate talk will, as stagnation and decay continue,call for attacks against muslims, undocumented workers, african-americans, feminists, intellectuals,artist, dissidents, all of whom will be scapegoated for the country’s decline. magical thinking will dominate our airwavesand be taught in our public schools. art and culture will be degraded to nationalistkitsch.
all the cultural and intellectual disciplinesthat allow us to view the world from the perspective of the other, that foster empathy, understandingand compassion, will be replaced by a grotesque and cruel hypermasculinity and hypermilitarism. the language of racism, bigotry, misogynyand homophobia will infect our national discourse. reality and a discourse based on verifiablefact and truth is under assault. verbal confusion reigns. truth and illusion have merged. mental chaos makes it hard to fathom whatis happening. we feel trapped in a hall of mirrors.
revealed lies are answered with new lies. the rational is countered with the irrational. cognitive dissonance prevails. we endure a disquieting shame and even guilt. tens of millions of americans, especiallywomen, undocumented workers, muslims and african-americans, suffer the acute anxiety of being pursuedby a predator. all this is by design. demagogues always infect the governed withtheir own psychosis. the lies pour daily out of the white houselike flocks of pigeons: donald trump’s election
victory was a landslide. he had the largest inauguration crowds inamerican history. 3 million to 5 million undocumented immigrantsvoted illegally. climate change is a hoax. vaccines cause autism. immigrants are carriers of “tremendous infectiousdisease.†the election was rigged—until it wasn’t. we don’t know “who really knocked downâ€the world trade center. torture works.
mexico will pay for the wall. america will be great again. trump, a 70-year-old with orange-tinted skinand hair that penn jillette has likened to “cotton candy made of piss,†is, as trumpoften reminds us, “very good looking.†he does not read. he knows little of history, politics, law,philosophy, art or governance but insists, “my iq is one of the highest -- and youall know it! please don’t feel so stupid or insecure,it’s not your fault.†he goes on to say
of the mediocrities he has installed in his cabinet, that theyhave “by far the highest iq of any cabinet ever assembled.†it is an avalanche of absurdities. and this mendacity would be easier to repulseif the problem was solely embodied in trump. but even in the face of a rising despotism,the democratic party and the liberal class refuses to denounce the corporate forces that eviscerated our democracy, impoverished the country, and created trump. the neoliberal trump demonizes muslims, undocumented workers and the media. the neoliberal democratic party demonizesvladimir putin and fbi director james comey. no one challenges corporate power.
the warring elites pit alternative facts againstalternative facts. all engage in demagoguery. and we will, i fear, be condemned to despotismby trump and by the cowardice and dishonesty of the liberal class. the order for some employees of several federalagencies, including the environmental protection agency, the u.s. department of agriculture’sresearch service, the national park service and the department of health and human services,to restrict or cease communication with the press or members of congress, along with theattempt to impose 10-year felony convictions on six reporters who covered the inaugurationprotests, is part of a campaign to marginalize
reality itself and replace it with fantasy. facts for demagogues depend solely on thosewho have the power to create them. and the goal of the trump administration is tocreate an artificial consistency an absorbing and endless spectacle that advances its warped perception of the world. it must, as it has day after day, dominate our lives as it reconfigures reality. fantastic and absurd assertions are treated seriously, a process that over time erodes the power of the rational. “before they seize power and establish aworld according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistencywhich is more adequate to the needs of the
human mind than reality itself; in which,through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-endingshocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings and their expectations,†hannah arendt wrote. “the force possessed by totalitarian propaganda-- before the movements have the power to drop iron curtains to prevent anyone’s disturbing,by the slightest reality, the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world -- lies inits ability to shut the masses off from the real world.†this assault on fact, on truth, on reality, is empowered by the loss of credibility of our democratic institutions and it has thrown the country into an existential
as well as an economic crisis. the courts, universities and press are nolonger trusted by tens of millions of americans who correctly see them as organs of the corporateelites. these institutions are traditionally the mechanismsby which a society is able to unmask the lies of the powerful, critique ruling ideologiesand promote justice. because americans have been bitterly betrayedby their institutions, the trump regime can attack the press as the “opposition party,â€threaten to cut off university funding, taunt a federal jurist as a “so-called judgeâ€and denounce a court order as “outrageous.†the decay of democratic institutions is theprerequisite for the rise of authoritarian
or fascist regimes. this decay has given credibility to a pathologicalliar. the trump administration, according to anemerson college poll, is considered by 49 percent of registered voters to be truthfulwhile the media are considered truthful by only 39 percent of registered voters. once american democratic institutions no longerfunction, once large sectors of the public believe, as trump says, that the press is“the enemy of the american people,†reality becomes whatever absurdity the white houseissues. most of the rules of democracy are unwritten.
these rules determine public comportment andensure respect for democratic norms, procedures and institutions. trump has, to the delight of his supporters,rejected this political and cultural etiquette. arendt noted that when democratic institutionscollapse it is “easier to accept patently absurd propositions than the old truths whichhave become pious banalities.†the chatter of the liberal ruling elites aboutour democracy is itself an absurdity. “vulgarity with its cynical dismissal ofrespected standards and accepted theories,†she wrote, infects political discourse. this vulgarity is “mistaken for courageand a new style of life.â€
trump’s theatricality works. he forces the press and the public to repeathis lies, inadvertently giving them credibility. he is always moving. he is always on display. he has no fixed belief system. trump, as he consolidates power, and adoptsthe ideology of the christian right seamlessly forges the magical thinking of the christian right with his own magical thinking. idiocy, self-delusion, megalomania, fantasyand government repression will come wrapped in images of the christian cross and the americanflag.
the corporate state, hostile or indifferentto the plight of the citizens, has no emotional pull among the public. it has long presented political candidates as celebrities. campaigns eschew issues to make people feelgood about candidates and themselves. ideas are irrelevant. emotional euphoria is paramount. the voter is only a prop in the politicaltheater. politics is anti-politics. it is reality television.
trump proved better at this game than hisopponents. it is a game in which fact and knowledge donot matter. politicians, like celebrities, are manufacturedpersonalities. reality is what you create. entertainment is paramount. the skillful manipulation of emotion is confusedwith knowledge. we were conditioned for a trump. the lies create a climate in which everyoneis assumed to be lying. the truth becomes suspect and obscured.
narratives begin to be believed not becausethey are true, or even sound true, but because they are emotionally appealing. the aim of systematic lying, as arendt wrote,is the “transformation of human nature itself.†the lies eventually foster somnambulism amonga population that surrenders to the magical thinking and ceases to care. it checks out. it becomes cynical. it only asks to be entertained and given avent for its frustration and rage. demagogues produce enemies the way a magicianpulls rabbits out of a hat.
they wage constant battles against nonexistentdangers, rapidly replacing one after the other to keep the rhetoric at a fever pitch. “practically speaking, the totalitarianruler proceeds like a man who persistently insults another man until everybody knowsthat the latter is his enemy, so that he can, with some plausibility, go out and kill himin self-defense,†arendt wrote. “this certainly is a little crude, but itworks -- as everybody will know who has watched how certain successful careeristseliminate competitors.†to recover our mental balance we must respondto trump the way victims of trauma respond to abuse.
we must build communities where we can findunderstanding and solidarity. we must allow ourselves to mourn. we must name the psychosis that afflicts us. we must carry out acts of civil disobedienceand steadfast defiance to re-empower others and ourselves. we must fend off the madness and engage indialogues based on truth, literacy, empathy and reality. we must invest more time in activities suchas finding solace in nature, or focusing on music, theater, literature, art and even worship-- activities that hold the capacity for renewal
and transcendence. this is the only way we will remain psychologicallywhole. building an outer shell or attempting to hidewill exacerbate our psychological distress and depression. we cannot, as the democratic party appearsto be doing, hope that the 2018 or 2020 elections will solve our dilemma. these reactionary forces, which have beenplotting for four decades for this moment, extend far beyond the trump white house. their tentacles reach across national borders,meaning no country, including canada, is immune.
as the state increases the levels of violenceagainst nonviolent dissent we must never respond with violence. the use of violence, including property destruction,and taunting the police is a gift to the security and surveillance state. it allows the state to demonize and isolatea mass movement. it drives away the bulk of the population. violence against the state is used by theauthorities to justify greater forms of control and repression. the corporate state understands and welcomesthe language of force.
this is a game the government will alwayswin and we will always lose. if we are perceived as a flag-burning, rock-throwing,angry mob that embraces violence, we will be easily crushed. we can succeed only if we win the hearts andminds of the wider public and ultimately many of those within the structures of power, includingthe police. when violence is used against nonviolent protestersdemanding basic forms of justice it exposes the weakness of the state. it delegitimizes those in power. it prompts a passive population to respondwith active support for the protesters.
it creates internal divisions within the structuresof power that, as i witnessed in the revolutions in eastern europe, paralyze and defeat thosein authority. martin luther king jr. held marches in birmingham,ala., rather than albany, ga., because he knew birmingham public safety commissioner“bull†connor would overreact and expose the city’s racist structures. the acts of resistance -- including the massivestreet protests the day after the inauguration and later the demonstrations that grew outof the ban on muslims, the department of energy’s refusal to give the trump administration alist of employees that worked on climate change, acting attorney general sally yates’ refusalto enforce the travel ban and hundreds of
state department staff members’ signingof a memo opposing the immigration restrictions -- terrify those around trump. we have the power to make any country ungovernable. but we do not have much time. corporate power is global it will make it harder and harderto organize, get into the streets to carry out the nationwide strikes, including withinthe federal bureaucracy. and this resistance must also be accompanied by an alternative visionof a socialist and anti-capitalist society.
because the enemy is, in the end, not trump or bannon, it is corporate power. and if we do not dismantle corporate power wewill never stop fascism’s seduction of the white working class and unemployed. now is the time not to cooperate. now is the time to shut down the systems ofpower. now is the time to resist. it is our last chance. the fanatics are moving with lightning speed. so should we.
hope comes from the numerous protests thathave been mounted in the streets, at town halls led by first nations people, held by members of congress and at flash points such as standing rock. it may also come from the 2.5 million civilservants within the u.s. federal government if a significant number refuse to cooperate. “the new president is clearly aware of thepower wielded by civil servants, who swear an oath of allegiance to the u.s. constitution,not to any president or administration,†we must engage in these battles on the localand the national level. we must, in our own community, mobilize toprevent the deportation of undocumented workers, the evictions from homes of the unemployed,those with disabilities, the elderly or those
living on small, fixed incomes. the reclaiming of our democracy will onlyhappen only when we make our physical presence felt in public spaces. we once had within our capitalist democracyliberal institutions -- the press, labor, third parties, civic and churchgroups, public broadcasting, well-funded public universities that were capable of responding to outside pressure from movements. they did so imperfectly. they provided only enough reforms to savethe capitalist system from widespread unrest
or, with the breakdown of capitalism in the1930s, from revolution. they never addressed white supremacy and institutionalracism, misogyny, or the cruelty that is endemic to capitalism. but they had the ability to ameliorate thesuffering of the poor and working men and women. these liberal institutions exist now onlyin name. they are props in the democratic facade. there are, as the political philosopher sheldonwolin wrote, no institutions certainly left in america that can authentically be called democratic. we will have to build new, radical movementsand, most importantly, new, parallel institutions that challenge the hegemony of corporate power.
it will not be easy. it will take time. we must not be seduced by foundation money and grants from established institutions that blunt the radical restructuring of society trusting in the system to carry out reform and wrest back our democracy ensures our enslavement. we will have to pit power against power. we will have to defy the rules.
we cannot be predictable. we must disrupt the machinery of governance. and none of this will come by forming flash mobson the internet. it will come by building real and enduringrelationships within our communities the old way – person by person. it will come when we take time to listen. and we have to surprise those in authority. and these kinds of protests – not the choreographedboutique activism where you stay within free a free space area or are politely taken to sit ina jail cell for a few hours -- are greeted
with real anger by the state. if we are to succeed we will have to makealliances with people and groups whose professed political stances are different from oursand at times unpalatable to us. we will have to shed our ideological purity. the chicago organizer saul alinsky arguedthat the ideological rigidity of the left -- sometimes that can be epitomized in identity politicsand political correctness -- effectively severed it from the lives of working men and women. this was especially true during the vietnamwar when college students led the anti-war protests and the sons of the working classdid the fighting and dying in vietnam.
but it is true today as liberals and the leftdismiss trump supporters as irredeemable racists and bigots and ignore their legitimate feelingsof betrayal and very real suffering. condemning all those who support trump is politicalsuicide. alinsky detested such moral litmus tests. he insisted that there were “no permanentenemies, no permanent allies, only permanent power.†we must also acknowledge our own failureson the left, our elitism, our arrogance, our own misoygny, our refusal to root our politics locally in our communities. rosa luxemburg understood that unless we firstaddress the most pressing economic and physical
needs of the destitute – something understoodby vancouver rape relief & women’s shelter and asian women coalition ending prostitution-- we will never gain credibility or build an effective resistance movement. revolt surges up from below. politics is a game of fear. those who do not have the ability to makepower elites afraid do not succeed. the movements that opened up the democraticspace in america -- the abolitionists, the suffragists, the labor movement, the communists, socialists, anarchists, the civil rights and labor movements -- developed a critical mass and a militancy that forcedthe centers of power to respond.
the platitudes about justice, equality anddemocracy are just that. only when power is threatened does it react. appealing to its better nature is useless. it doesn’t have one. the days ahead will be dark and frightening. but as immanuel kant reminded us, “if justiceperishes, human life on earth has lost its meaning.†the moment we rise up to defy radical evilwe are victorious. the moment we stand alongside the oppressed,and accept being treated like the oppressed,
we are victorious. the moment we hold up a flickering light inthe darkness for others to see another narrative, another way of being, we are victorious. the moment we reopen a public library or savea public school or provide a sanctuary to a battered woman or affordable housing -- the moment we thwart the building of a pipelineor a fracking site, we are victorious. and the moment those in power fear us, weare victorious. if nothing else let those who come after us say we tried.
let them say that we kept hope alive. let our lives be an example of the empathyand justice that all authoritarian regimes and dictatorships seek to eradicate. let us love our neighbors as ourselves. thank you.
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