The dynamiting, by the Trump administration, of decayed and corrupt institutions will mark the end of the American experiment and the shift from inverted totalitarianism to dictatorship.
Trumpland USA — Mr. Fish
The Christian fascists and oligarchs gleefully handing Donald Trump his sharpie and executive orders are not making war on the deep state, the radical left or to protect us from “antisemites.”
They are making war on verifiable fact, the rule of law and the transparency and accountability that is only possible with a free press, the right to dissent, a vibrant culture and a separation of powers, including an independent judiciary.
All of these pillars of an open society, as I detail in my book Death of the Liberal Class, were degraded long before Trump. The press, including public broadcasting, academia, the Democratic Party, a corporatized and banal culture, a judiciary that serves the billionaire class and a Congress bought by lobbyists, have been disemboweled.
They are easily picked off. Few want to rise up to defend them. They sold us out. Let them die.
“The loss of the liberal class creates a power vacuum filled by speculators, war profiteers, gangsters, and killers, often led by charismatic demagogues,” I wrote in Death of the Liberal Class in 2010.
“It opens the door to totalitarian movements that rise to prominence by ridiculing and taunting the liberal class and the values it claims to champion. The promises of these totalitarian movements are fantastic and unrealistic, but their critiques of the liberal class are grounded in truth.”
Fascism is birthed by a bankrupt liberalism that has surrendered its traditional role in a capitalist democracy. It no longer ameliorates the worst excesses of the ruling class and the empire by instituting incremental and piecemeal reforms. It scolds and moralizes the disenfranchised workers it betrayed.
Media outlets prioritize access to the powerful more than truth. They amplified lies and propaganda to propel us into a war on Iraq.
They lionized Wall Street and assured us it was prudent to entrust our life savings to a financial system run by speculators and thieves. Life savings were gutted.
They fed us the lies of Russiagate.
They slavishly cater to the Israel lobby, distorting coverage of the genocide and university protests to demonize Palestinians, Muslims and student protestors.
They dance to the tune of their corporate advertisers and sponsors. They render whole sections of the population, whose misery, poverty, and grievances should be the principal focus of journalism, invisible.
Universities have transformed into corporations. Senior administrators, who often have a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, with little or no experience in higher education, along with sports coaches who have the potential to earn the university money, are highly compensated with salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, with prized coaches and college presidents earning in the millions.
A little more than 10 percent of faculty positions are now tenure-track. Nearly 45 percent are contingent part-time employees or adjuncts. One in five are full-time, non-tenure-track positions. Universities, by radically reducing tenure-track and adequately paid positions, have become extensions of the gig economy.
Adjunct professors and graduate workers are often forced to apply for Medicaid, take second jobs teaching at other colleges, driving for Uber or Lyft, working as cashiers, delivering food for Grubhub or DoorDash, walking dogs, house sitting, waiting on tables, bartending and living four or six to an apartment or camping out on a friend’s sofa.
A poorly paid faculty that lacks job security does not raise issues that challenge the dominant narrative, whether about social inequality, predatory corporations, the crimes of empire, Israeli genocide or our state of permanent war. If they do, they are dismissed.
Senior university administrators, meanwhile, are awarded bonuses for “reducing expenses,” by raising tuition and fees, cutting staff and suppressing wages.
This instability assures wealthy donors that the neoliberal ideology that is ravaging the country, along with enabling the genocide in Gaza, will not be questioned by academics fearful of losing their positions.
The rich and the powerful are lauded. The working poor, including those employed by the university, are forgotten.
As Irving Howe pointed out in his 1954 essay “This Age of Conformity,” the “idea of the intellectual vocation —the idea of a life dedicated to values that cannot possibly be realized by a commercial civilization — has gradually lost its allure. And it is this, rather than the abandonment of a particular program, which constitutes our rout.”
The belief that capitalism is the unassailable engine of human progress, Howe writes, “is trumpeted through every medium of communication: official propaganda, institutional advertising, and scholarly writings of people who, until a few years ago, were its major opponents.”
“The truly powerless people are those intellectuals — the new realists — who attach themselves to the seats of power, where they surrender their freedom of expression without gaining any significance as political figures,” Howe noted.
“For it is crucial to the history of the American intellectuals in the past few decades — as well as to the relationship between ‘wealth’ and ‘intellect’ — that whenever they become absorbed into the accredited institutions of society they not only lose their traditional rebelliousness but to one extent or another they cease to function as intellectuals.”
The two ruling parties sold the con of neoliberalism to deindustrialize the country, impose punishing austerity, eradicate the freedoms to organize and gut regulations to protect the public from exploitation.
They empowered corporations to exploit and consolidate their wealth and power, giving rise to monopoly capitalism and some of the greatest levels of income inequality and wealth inequality in American history.
The banks, communications, oil, arms, agricultural and food industries guarantee profits by fixing prices, skirting or even abolishing financial, health and environmental protections, and exploiting or abusing their workers.
This assault on New Deal regulations, soon to be entirely obliterated under Trump, disenfranchised the working class that in desperation voted in a demagogue to save them.
As funding for the arts dried up, artists, like public broadcasting which was designed to give a voice to those not tethered to corporate interests, were left searching for grants and corporate sponsors. The result was a withering away of artistic and journalistic integrity.
Friedrich Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil holds that only a few people have the fortitude to look into what he calls the molten pit of human reality. Most studiously ignore the pit.
Artists and philosophers, for Nietzsche, are consumed, however, by an insatiable curiosity, a quest for truth and desire for meaning. They venture down into the bowels of the molten pit. They get as close as they can before the flames and heat drive them back.
This intellectual and moral honesty, Nietzsche wrote, comes with a cost. Those singed by the fire of reality become “burnt children,” he wrote, eternal orphans.
Culture in a functioning democracy is radical and transformative. It expresses what lies deep within us. It gives words to our reality. It makes us feel as well as see. It allows us to empathize with those who are different or oppressed. It reveals what is happening around us. It honors mystery.
“The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through the vast forest,” James Baldwin wrote, “so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”
The war on independent intellectual inquiry, art and culture is done to prevent us from looking into the pit, from making the world a more “human dwelling place.”
The “burnt people” have been silenced or marginalized. Some 16,000 books were banned in schools and libraries before Trump took office, bans that are accelerating as more books are purged from schools and libraries.
Culture in authoritarian states celebrates an idealized past that never existed and a present that is self-delusional.
Mass culture feeds the human thirst for illusion, excitement, happiness and hope. It peddles a blind patriotism and the myth of eternal material progress. It urges us to build images of celebrities or ourselves to worship, especially on social media.
The result has been a cultural decay whose apotheosis will be Trump’s Garden of Heroes and the lavish Christmas pageant being planned this winter at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Politicians from the two ruling parties are funded by the dark money provided by billionaires and corporations. These politicians, in our system of legalized bribery, do the bidding of their owners in Congress. The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called this form of government “inverted totalitarianism.”
Inverted totalitarianism retains the institutions, symbols, iconography, and language of the old capitalist democracy, but internally corporations have seized all the levers of power to accrue ever greater profits and political control.
It uses the international legal system to plunder resources in the developing world, including the overthrow of governments that challenge corporate dominance. It prioritizes profit over justice. It weakens labor laws and eviscerates workers’ protections and rights.
The dynamiting, by the Trump administration, of these decayed and corrupt institutions will mark the end of the American experiment and the shift from inverted totalitarianism to dictatorship.
It will usher in a corporate dystopia, which will resemble, albeit in a much crueler form, China’s totalitarian capitalism with its pervasive state surveillance, draconian censorship, unelected and unaccountable ruling class and the crushing of popular movements including labor unions.
We will descend into the world of magical thinking that is the hallmark of all despotisms, one where the language we use to describe ourselves and our society bears no relationship to reality.
It is imperative to the authoritarian project that all independent institutions, no matter how weakened or decayed, be neutered. Trump, Axios reports, has been “lashing out” at “fake polls” showing his sinking approval ratings and calling for the news outlets that publish them to be “investigated for election fraud.”
This is the sentiment of all dictators. Ban inconvenient facts. Once these institutions are silenced or captured, the cracks in the old edifice that allowed a muted dissent will be sealed. Fear will be the glue of social cohesion. Tepid criticism will be criminalized.
Internal security, immigration enforcement and military spending will be lavishly funded, creating Trump’s own version of an unaccountable deep state, while social programs will be defunded or shuttered.
Central to this project will be the great leader cult. The abject servility towards the great leader was on display at Trump’s celebration of his first 100 days with his cabinet, all of whom had navy blue and red baseball caps in front of them bearing the message “Gulf of America.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a typical display of sycophancy at the meeting, gushed: “Mr. President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country ever, ever. [I’ve] never seen anything like it, thank you.”
Trump will get his birthday military parade, his two 100-foot high flag poles on the White House lawns, and perhaps, if the proposed bills in Congress pass, his face carved on Mount Rushmore, alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
He will see his birthday become a federal holiday, his face on new $250 bills and Washington’s Dulles International Airport renamed Donald J. Trump International Airport.
He will build his National Garden of American Heroes. And of course, he will get the overturning of the 22nd Amendment to allow him to serve a third term. President-for-life!
“Children will be taught to love America,” the Svengali-like Stephen Miller intoned. “Children will be taught to be patriots. Children will be taught civic values for schools that want federal taxpayer funding. So as we close the Department of Education and provide funding to states, we’re going to make sure these funds are not being used to promote communist ideology.”
Trump’s vipers are snuffing out what is left of our open society, putting the finishing touches on the dirty work begun by billionaires and corporations. This is the end of a process. Not the start. Trump had a lot of help.
There is a word for those who did this to us.
Traitors.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
NOTE TO READERS: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.
This article is from Scheerpost, for which Chris Hedges writes a regular column. Click here to sign up for email alerts.
Views expressed in this interview may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Trump-Vance, Inc., (TV-Inc.), “Trumpland.” Showcasing, “power” tools of US Presidents, 42-27. The “Gemini” doubles-down!!!
…… “Ladies & Gentlemen,” this is the show, the Artist, Mr. Fish, *“has rearranged the Quad’s, 43’s-46’s, faces, under one name.” No doubt, GREED, makes Trump-Vance, Inc., do embarrassing things, i.e., the “Gemini” on Mt. Rushmore?!? “For what “Nobel” cause? A *”Piece” Plan? Double-Dealing? OR “Promoting Peace & Resolving Conflicts?!?
Regardless, 42’s-47’s “legacy” gushes, drips & spatters, everywhere! No doubt, the blood type is “O” Oligarchy Orange. A 100% match between U.S. Presidents 42-47; &, “the evidence found at the crime scenes, from sea to shining sea, from the river to the sea, from the deserts here to the deserts far away!” The ‘bloody bath” began f/years before 2017. The years, January, 2021-January, 2025, *“the US president” [Jo$eph R. Biden] “owns every despicable aspect of the calamity unfolding in Gaza perpetrated by his country’s ever reliable and obedient proxy, Israel.” I$rael, imo, the universal thread, that drives the Butchers, the Bankers, the Haymakers!!! *”Yes. We know them. They’re quite lame.”
“The powers,” [the power to kill, the power to wage war, to spy, to detain, the power to command the largest military and intelligence capabilities in the world and, in turn, “wag the dog] “amassed by each past president and inherited by each successive president—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability.” *John W. Whitehead, Constitutional Attorney, 2.18.19. The owl asks, *“WHO pays the price for the dissolution of the constitutional covenant that holds the government and its agents accountable to the will of the people?” The bird tweets, “We all do.”
…… “Trump’s vipers are snuffing out what is left of our open society, putting the finishing touches on the dirty work begun by billionaires and corporations. This is the end of a process. Not the start. Trump had a lot of help.” Chris Hedges.
“SNUFFING OUT!” AKA a “Demolition Derby,” an event that consists of five or more drivers competing by deliberately,” using Presidential Powers to SNUFF U.S. OUT! No doubt, the “Corporate Canines mantra, “Let’s Get NIMBLE!” Everybody, knows, PAYROLL is a #1 Expense! “The only sound that’s left, after the ambulances go,” is Trump-Vance, Inc.’s “Chainsaw!” A Resolution: “Send in the US Marshals, “Book ‘Em!” ALL Presidents 42-47.”
“Power To The People!!!” Glenn Ford, R.I.P., (November 5, 1949 – July 28, 2021), Founder of Black Agenda Report.
TY, Chris Hedges, Mr. Fish, CN, et al., “Onward & Upwards!” Ciao.
Other, Credible, Incredibly Brillant, Sources:
1) *Bob Dylan, “Desolation Row,”
2) Chris Hedges, “Ceasefire Charade,” Mr. Fish A “Piece Plan,” @ hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2025/01/16/chris-hedges-the-ceasefire-charade/
3) Andrew Mitrovica, 10.19.23 hxxps://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/19/joe-biden-owns-this.
4) John W. Whitehead @
hxxps://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/rule_by_fiat_national_crises_fake_emergencies_and_other_dangerous_presidential_powers
Capitalism and democracy are incompatible. Any “democracy” allowed under a capitalist system is only a temporary condition as the system evolves into full-blown fascism. This may take a while but the trajectory is clear and terminus inevitable. Like a cancer that metastasizes, excision is the only cure.
I have no disagreement with your basic proposition (and this reply isn’t just to you, but inspired…), just this concern. In the social sciences fuzzy concepts have to be operationalized when studied and competently discussed. Intelligence, motivation, etc. are only made sensible when we make clear the very specific operations in behavior that we intent the terms to represent. The same is true for the many terms of economic and political designs: Northern European socialism isn’t like South American socialism or Southeast Asian socialism; we have to describe the actual policies and social actions. Soviet communism wasn’t like Chinese communism and neither is like Marxism. The term democracy is used and misused to the point that it describes almost nothing with clarity (and to demand only the OED definition is useless).
This creates communication difficulties, but we have to get to the place where we demand operational description rather than only sort of vaguely accepting such terms on emotional content alone. The fact is that all of this language finally has no actionable meaning without clear explication of the operations we are intending.
“What is the essence of Trotskyism? It’s that when Lenin developed his theory’s, he said that the main danger to humanity is Imperialism. Is capitalism has become Imperialism. A global system of monopoly capitalism that is holding back development and impoverishing people all over the world. And the duty of revolutionaries is to oppose Imperialism. And Trotskyism, all of it’s different manifestations and interpretations is always an attempt to say, no, no, it’s not about fighting the Imperialists..”
“…Trotskyism is a way that you can claim to be a Marxist or a Socialist or a Revolutionary but not focus on fighting the Imperialists. Fight some other battle, but not against Imperialism. That is the essence of what Trotskyism is.”
-Caleb Maupin
“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism, because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
-Benito Mussolini
Again, it’s not what you call ‘it’, it’s how ‘what you call it’ performs in action. The desire to slap a name on a series of events and processes has always been a danger to understanding since once a name has been applied much of the form of the action is ignored and the name becomes a ‘thing’ in itself. We must begin to realize that, one, these terms no longer communicate reliably and, two, that they can have no actionable meaning without a clear description of the behaviors being preformed.
Or, in other words, Doctrine is what a politician says, policy is what a politician does.
By Doctrine, Democracy. By policy Fascism.
By Doctrine bringing peace to the world and democracy to all.
By Policy, mass murder and fascism.
“They muddy the water to make it seem deep”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
No, Michael, that is not what I’m saying. I am saying that rather than use terms like democracy, fascism, socialism, etc. as stand alone descriptions, it is necessary to present, at a minimum, a brief sketch of the policies and actions that you intend by those terms: the terms simply do not carry sufficient clarity of meaning in today’s media, propaganda communicating environment. And importantly, that some critical mass of us demand that of people who would prefer to offer the terms as cover for their actions.
And here is your brief sketch:
Democracy: Government by, and for the people.
Fascism: The joining of Business and State
Socialism: The people owning the means of production
There is your simple clarity.
And I just explained Doctrine and Policy.
What a Politician says vs what they do. Doctrine vs Policy. If they are talking, they are lying.
Words have two meanings in politics, their Webster’s Dictionary version, and their political meaning.
Changing the meaning of words is step one in a fascist society. And your facilitating that.
You may also say that democracy is incompatible with humanity, at least on a large scale. It would be more inclusive than your statement.
Writers have to write
Haters have to hate
Dystopic people only see dystopia
and all these people go to dust
Some good lives on and the bad gets beaten down by God (Nature if you want to call it)
But everyone tries to make their mark, even the statues go away.
I have watched my years with wonderment and am amazed at all the bad predictions that did not come true.
We need all these people for balance
It is a wonderful world!
“christian fascists”… W.T.F. !
Do you not know the meaning of fascist ?
“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism, because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
-Benito Mussolini
Add in the church, and you have Nazism.
These are the “christian fascists” Chris is talking about.
One of them is actually named “Dollar”, thinks God wants him to have a Gulf Stream.
h**ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg
IF the Trump regime manages to be around until 2028…it’ll be very hard to recognize our ‘civilization’, our world…or what is left of it.
I disagree.
Until Congress actually manages to push through some of Trump’s legislation, nothing he has done thus far is permanent. As Barack Obama, Trump 45, and Biden learned … ‘live by the pen and phone, die by the pen and phone’. Executive Orders are easily rolled back by future administrations. POTUS 48 can undo all the Trump 47 executive orders on day one, just as Biden did to all the Trump 45 EOs.
Numerous people are pointing this out but Trump seems oblivious to it. He’s definitely not playing the long game. Why?
Is he the last “president” to be (s)elected before the dictatorship? Or is Trump just not playing with a full deck?
He’s not playing the long game because he can’t. Congress still has a rump caucus of old school ‘country club’ and ‘neocon’ Republican representatives and senators, and the GOP’s margins are thin enough that they can stymie any attempts to pass Trump policies. Just like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell stonewalled Trump 45 (except for judicial nominations, which they largely controlled through Leonard Leo), the new Congress is going to stonewall Trump 47. A prime example is the five Republican senators currently holding up Trump’s nominee for US Attorney for DC.
We were told about this in the eighties with The New World Order. Those who questioned were marginalized. It’s been a long slow con. At least the sixties threw a monkey wrench into the works to give us a little breathing room.
Incremental reform is the problem. What we need is socialist revolution and the overthrown of capitalism. This is why the liberal bourgeoisie are the enemy of any social advancement for the vast majority of humanity.
Yes, incremental reform could be the death of us all. Why DOES Hedges have to trash China?
Aside from a fringe minority of over-educated, well-off, mostly white people, nobody in America wants any part of a ‘socialist revolution’ or to ‘overthrow capitalism’. They wax philosophically about socialism and revolution while sipping on their lattes at Starbucks, banging away on their iPhones, then drive away in the Rivian to the local Whole Foods to get ingredients for the vegan meal without ever once stopping to consider what such a thing would actually look like or that they might be the ones bleeding out in the streets or put up against the wall and handed a blindfold and cigarette after the revolution is over.
Most working Americans don’t want socialism or to overthrow capitalism. They want the capitalism their parents and grandparents had in the 20th century, where a single-income blue-collar family could afford a home, a modest vacation every now and then, and be able to save enough to put their kids through college without going bankrupt.
Your idealized 20th century capitalism required the exploitation of humans both domestically and in the global south. Capitalism cannot continue without war of which the 20th century had more than its share. It wasn’t and still isn’t kind to the natural world on which life depends either. It’s not sustainable on any level.
Actually, by all competent polling the majority of the American people (and people generally) want many of the policies of socialism…and want to call it by some other name. The time that Americans generally are most desirous of ‘returning’ to, the three decades following WW2 (the time you refer to in your comment!) had the most extensive socialist policies in place of any time in US history.
You are conflating socialism with a strong social safety net.
The United States is and always has been a market-driven capitalist society. So are the Nordic countries that are often cited by armchair socialists as the gold standard for social safety nets. Social safety nets ONLY work when coupled with a market-based economy, because only capitalism can provide the economic wealth to sustain them in the long-term.
hxxps://www.britannica.com/money/socialism
Steve, no conflation. It is the policy that must define the term, not slippery and arbitrary definition.
We have Socialism.
Capitalism is Socialism for the rich.
Less than a quarter of the population would support a real socialist revolution.
A great majority of us however would support a robust, competent government, strongly progressive income tax, strong oversight on corporate power, Medicare for all as a baseline, expanded social security, and a large reduction in overseas wars and “defense” waste.
The ironies never cease, the mentally-ill emperor, like his D counterparts, unconditionally supports Israel, and the genocide. Giving Israel 10s of billions of dollars to mass murder children is considered “patriotic”. Stealing the public resources of the nation and giving them away to support genocide, while the US has no health care system, is “patriotic”. This is supported by both parties and every single major institution of power in the US, public and private.
Arresting and/or terrorizing folks who protest this, while calling them “anti-Semites” and “self-hating Jews”, is considered supporting “free speech”. SCOTUS formalizing unlimited political bribery is considered “free speech”.
A system that offers only two “choices”, both fully support genocide, is considered “democracy”. A legal system, rigged to favor the super wealthy, is called “the justice system”. Bombing countries into the Stone Age is considered, “defense”. I guess it’s still not Orwellian enough yet. How obvious does it have to be?
Even at this stage, I see many still focused on partisan politics and still believe that we can vote our way out of this. Good luck with that.
Chris Hedges has articulated and illustrated in detail for years what George Carlin summed up in his own way, using Plain English that everyone understands. “They don’t give a fk about you, at all/!” And still folks don’t want to hear it. They can’t handle the truth, denial is much easier. So which genocidal liar will you vote for in the “midterms”?
I’m going to print this out and post it to my cork board. Perfect description of the corruptions covered.
My first thought is that Hedges’ predictions are what are likely to happen “if things go well”; a sort of bleakness compounded with bleakness. But, mine is a biological optimism tempered with the reality of population dynamics; terrible times are coming, the species has exceeded its capacities of adaptation and a new and incredible, vast floundering is upon us. We are well past the details of political and economic events and into the dominating movements of biophysical cycles and organismic responses to adversity. But…there is the living out of the life as best we can — it has always been so. Yes, devote to overcoming through one’s own personal action the most addressable adversities, very little for some and greater amounts for others, and so make the life lived function within some degree of purpose. Not a grand vision of eventual salvation, only a design to allow that option should such opportunities occur.
Christian fascists are not running the Trump regime. If they were, we would be seeing a serious push to outlaw all forms of abortion throughout the entire nation.
Hedges totally neglects to mention in his entire article who’s truly dictating things in the Oval Office: it’s the billionaire pro-Israel fanatics who are in charge with dangerous anti-Beijing zealots right along side them.
For an intellectual of Hedges stature to fail to name today’s genuine power structure in Washington is concerning.
I think he’s staying away from your realistic statement so as not to be cancelled. The irony is that he’s figuratively very close to almost 90% cancelled. By not mentioning that reality, the bi-partisan corrupting powers that be will certainly stay in power for a very long time. It’s now too late, we are occupied.
sorry, Chris, you have a way with words to emotionally polarise, but again offer no solution to the sordid state of affairs the US in particular finds itself in, the falling apart stage of the US colonial empire taking over from the British..what is curious to me is your statement that “China’s totalitarian capitalism with its pervasive state surveillance, draconian censorship, unelected and unaccountable ruling class and the crushing of popular movements including labor unions.” Even if this statement was reality based and supported by contemporary evidence, what has the Chinese system got to do with the rotten US system? Are you suggesting the Chinese current system as a template for the US system that you so passionately deplore in this article? In particular, I would be more careful with making rather outrageously sweeping statements like that about a system that could not be more different from the US oligarchic system as it is! It tarnishes your intellectual prowess any which way unfortunately.
I also don’t agree with some of Hedges’ positions regarding China, Russia, Serbia… but the bulk of what he has been reporting and writing about for years should not be thrown out with the bathwater. I do agree with the major points he makes, that the current state of affairs is a result of decades of institutionalized corruption and rot. It’s not just a few bad apples…
The young journalist, Ben Norton, lives in China with his family. He has quite a different opinion, for example.
Entirely agreed! The countries the neolibs and neocons call ‘authoritarian’ are the ones where the government controls the oligarchs. Step out of line and even the walthiest oligarch can get shot or fall out of a window.
Whereas in the ‘democracies’ the oligarchs call the shots and the government obeys orders. A politician who steps out of line ends up like Olaf Palme or Paul Wellstone.
Thank you. I agree. Hedges is not alone in posing as progressive while still trying to demonize China simply because China has outdone the U.S. on almost every level.
Yes, I’m also somewhat surprised by his comments on China. It shows how successful propaganda and lies have been in the US coupled with a profound ignorance that should be inexcusable from someone who purports to champion truth in journalism. Shame on you, Chris.
“Are you suggesting the Chinese current system as a template for the US system that you so passionately deplore in this article?”
The CCP is an order of magnitude worse than Washington. The SE US (minimum) has embraced ChiCom grade facial recognition. Fact.
They are determined to increase throughput of the police/courthouse/jail/prison industrial complex. I don’t doubt that other states are following their example. SE Alabama scares me to the point that I am am hesitant to travel there. The police “training” I’ve observed there leads me to believe that DHS has a massive presence there. We also have unmarked, camo-painted helicopters with camo-dressed pilots doing low level runs on rural farms and properties. Bad scene. This is not the America I was born into.
Our political leadership has somehow been contaminated by the foreign, zionist, death cult and they are freely participating in the genocide and crimes-against-humanity currently underway in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Yemen. Iran is in the crosshairs because zionist corruption hates any force that opposes their takeover. This is far worse than ChiCom control. This is mafia control. I do not and will not comply, even if it costs me.
Visceral!