Tag: corporatism

I fell behind on some of my political reading — grading papers and doing other work — but there is a quotation from Chris Hedges’ Truthdig column last week worth passing along:

The menace we face does not come from the insane wing of the Republican Party, which may make huge inroads in the coming elections, but the institutions tasked with protecting democratic participation. Do not fear Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. Do not fear the tea party movement, the birthers, the legions of conspiracy theorists or the militias. Fear the underlying corporate power structure, which no one, from Barack Obama to the right-wing nut cases who pollute the airwaves, can alter. If the hegemony of the corporate state is not soon broken we will descend into a technologically enhanced age of barbarism.

A scary thought, to be sure. I want to add, by the way, that I agree for the most part — we face a daunting situation. Our elections have lost their democratic luster and become little more than entertainment side shows. Little changes aside from the faces.

(I disagree with Mr. Hedges in his complete abandonment of the system. Like him, I believe we need a third party and have voted for the Greens and other at the national and state level numerous times in the past. There is a danger when doing so, however, of creating an environment in which the worst can come to power. There was a difference between Obama and McCain in 2008, though not as great a difference as we pretend. It is a rhetorical one, to be sure, but at least Obama talks about some of the issues I care about as a populist lefty.)

The election of Barack Obama did not and could not bring change — nor did I expect it to — any more than Al Gore would have given us a better America than George W. Bush. The Bush years were not an aberration and the difference between Bush and Gore was just a matter of degree.

The Iraq War may not have occurred under Gore, but all other things being equal, Afghanistan would have — and it was a series of ill-fated procorporate reforms passed by the Clinton-Gore administration that gave us the financial meltdown from which we continue to dig out.

Hedges’ dismissal of electoral politics notwithstanding, he is correct when he advocates for a radical break with the formal structures of American society,” by which he means corporate-fueled growth and corporate-controlled media and food production.

We must cut as many ties with consumer society and corporations as possible. We must build a new political and economic consciousness centered on the tangible issues of sustainable agriculture, self-sufficiency and radical environmental reform. The democratic system, and the liberal institutions that once made piecemeal reform possible, is dead. It exists only in name. It is no longer a viable mechanism for change. And the longer we play our scripted and absurd role in this charade the worse it will get.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Chris Hedges, author of the important Empire of Illusion, spoke tonight at Labyrinth Books in Princeton, offering a somewhat dark outlook on the direction of the nation, which he views as steeped in illusion and unwilling to face the reality of what has happened and is happening.

The national meltdown — the erosion of the working class and destruction of our manufacturing base, the gambling by the financial sector which packaged and repackaged debt, sold it and created an ugly and unstable Ponzi scheme, our decaying environment and the growth of corporate power and American empire — has created conditions that are ripe for fascism.

The cracks in the illusion can “propel people into this level of desperation” and a “profound personal and economic despair sits at the center of fascist and totalitarian movements,” he said.

Our corporate culture — which “perpetuates a never-ending childishness, an infantilism” — robs everything of its moral value. We have a cult of self, have lost all sense of community or shared sacrifice or understanding that we are all heading toward the same ends. Everything is commodified and, “when everything is commodified, a society commits collective suicide.”