Chris Hedges: We Stand on the Cusp of one of Humanity's Most Dangerous Moments

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Adbusters / By Chris Hedges

We Stand on the Cusp of one of Humanity's Most Dangerous Moments
We will have to resist the temptation to fold in on ourselves and to ignore the cruelty outside our door.

March 18, 2010 |


Aleksandr Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.” All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort.

These communities, if they retreat into a pure survivalist mode without linking themselves to the concentric circles of the wider community, the state and the planet, will become as morally and spiritually bankrupt as the corporate forces arrayed against us. All infrastructures we build, like the monasteries in the Middle Ages, should seek to keep alive the intellectual and artistic traditions that make a civil society, humanism and the common good possible. Access to parcels of agricultural land will be paramount. We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. Resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance, as those who retained their integrity discovered in the long night of 20th-century fascism and communism.

We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/media/146005/we_stand_on_the_cusp_of_one_of_humanity%27s_most_dangerous_moments

[nightrain]

1. greater levels of desperation yet to come... Obama is missing

the opportunity to turn it around, instead he concretizes and perpetuates the actions of the culprits.

[leveymg]

4. Maybe, that was the point.

As a nation, we seem to have lost our usefulness, profit-potential, and will to go on as we have. The last great act of capitalist creative destruction may have been the creation of the Ubermench -- Zed, the last, perfect man -- who broke our illusions, and will lead us irresistibly to destroy ourselves. All this was foretold in an earlier period of gloom.

From Zardoz (1974):

May: Friend, I cannot sanction this violence and destruction.
Friend: It's too late, May. There's no going back.
May: Don't destroy the Vortex! Let us renew it. A better breed could prosper here. Given time...
Friend: Time? Wasn't eternity enough?
Zed: (enters suddenly; May wheels to face him) This place is against life. It must die.
(Zed gently grasps May's pistol hand and raises it so that the weapon points right between his eyes)
May: I have my followers. Inseminate us all, and we'll teach you all we know, give you all we have. Perhaps you can break the Tabernacle. Or be broken.
(Friend advances to place his hand on the others', in a triple pact)
Friend: An end to eternity.
May: A higher form.
Zed: Revenge.

Or, maybe this too shall pass.

[leveymg]

2. Zardoz

Arthur Frayn: I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived three hundred years, and I long to die. But death is no longer possible. I am immortal. I present now my story, full of mystery and intrigue - rich in irony, and most satirical. It is set deep in a possible future, so none of these events have yet occurred, but they *may.* Be warned, lest you end as I. In this tale, I am a fake god by occupation - and a magician, by inclination. Merlin is *my* hero! I am the puppet master. I manipulate many of the characters and events you will see. But *I* am invented, too, for your entertainment - and amusement. And you, poor creatures, who conjured *you* out of the clay? Is God in show business too?

[DemReadingDU]

3. Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand.

from the article...

"Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand. He had almost no experience besides two years in the senate, lacked any moral core and was sold as all things to all people. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertisers want because of how they can make you feel."

[tom_paine]

5. Somebody gets it - unfortunately, there is no solution.

I suppose he had to pretend, even to himself, that there is one.

But no, we are so far down the path of Inverted Totalitarianism that the only question remaining is whether the American Corporatists can remain in full control or suffer the same fate as their German Industrialist antecedents of the 1930s, who lost control of the demons they'd raised in the National Soul and wound up playing, still quite profitably for them, second-banana to Hitler's minions.

This is the choice our society has. I do agree with Hedges that the hothouse flower of Inverted Totalitarianism cannot withstand the brutal realities and wrenching changes that are coming as the last few drops of blood are sucked out of us by our BushoCorporate Masters and THEIR masters...if they have any.

(it is useless to speculate on this, but it is hard to just keep focused on the tip of the spear without making some speculation on who's hands are actually wielding it)

[azul]

7. Maybe something to try:

Tax all corporate advertising and donations in politics and government influence to the tune of funding community and national public media. And outlaw any corporate ownership or influence in news media.

As long as the news narrative can be corrupted and directed by wealth, the real public interests will continue to take a back seat. The media should be the main focus until it is fixed, for it frames all other issues, including itself.

[Doctor_J]

9. In case you haven't noticed, corporations' taxes don't go up

30 years ago they were paying 33% of the nation's taxes. Now they pay 7%. So when you say, "try taxing all corporate advertising", you might as well say, "Flap your arms and fly to the North Pole" both have an equal chance of happening.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Corporate shills go around scaring people and telling them that raising corporate taxes

will 1) cost jobs, 2) make the companies raise prices, and 3) generally bring about the end of the world as we know it.

They count on the fact that most Americans don't know that wages and salaries and all other costs of doing business are paid for out of pre-tax income.

Now if the business is a sole proprietorship (like mine), any profits count as personal income for the owner and are taxed at personal rates, plus the equivalent of FICA, only we pay both the employer's and the employee's portion.

What would help us sole proprietors (and low-income workers, too) is lifting the cap on Social Security/Medicare taxes and raising the threshold at which they start to be levied.

[glitch]

8. Excellent post. nt

[azul]

6. fundamental change in the nature of civilisation?

"The global economy has shattered. The fossil fuels that propelled an industrial revolution are running out and the infrastructure built with these energies is barely clinging to life. Worse, more than two centuries of rising carbon emissions now threaten us with catastrophic climate change.

If that were not enough, we face a massive loss of social trust in economic and political institutions. Everywhere people are venting their frustration and increasingly taking their anger to the streets.

What is happening to our world? The human race is in a twilight zone between a dying civilisation on life support and an emerging one trying to find its legs. Old identities are fracturing while new identities are too fragile to grasp. To understand our situation, we need to step back and ask: what constitutes a fundamental change in the nature of civilisation?"

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/16/business/financialtimes/main6305553.shtml

Putting the same resources into education and fighting poverty that are currently being wasted on killing and suppressing each other?