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marmar

(76,982 posts)
Mon May 4, 2015, 07:10 AM May 2015

Chris Hedges: Make the Rich Panic


from truthdig:


by Chris Hedges


It does not matter to the corporate rich who wins the presidential election. It does not matter who is elected to Congress. The rich have the power. They throw money at their favorites the way a gambler puts cash on his favorite horse. Money has replaced the vote. The wealthy can crush anyone who does not play by their rules. And the political elites—slobbering over the spoils provided by their corporate masters for selling us out—understand the game. Barack and Michelle Obama, as did the Clintons, will acquire many millions of dollars once they leave the White House. And your elected representative in the House or Senate, if not a multimillionaire already, will be one as soon as he or she retires from government and is handed seats on corporate boards or positions in lobbying firms. We do not live in a democracy. We live in a political system that has legalized bribery, exclusively serves corporate power and is awash in propaganda and lies.

If you want change you can believe in, destroy the system. And changing the system does not mean collaborating with it as Bernie Sanders is doing by playing by the cooked rules of the Democratic Party. Profound social and political transformation is acknowledged in legislatures and courts but never initiated there. Radical change always comes from below. As long as our gaze is turned upward to the powerful, as long as we invest hope in reforming the system of corporate power, we will remain enslaved. There may be good people within the system—Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are examples—but that is not the point. It is the system that is rotten. It must be replaced.

“The only way you can get the parties’ attention is if you take votes away from them,” Ralph Nader told me by phone. “So,” he said of Sanders, “How serious is he? He makes Clinton a better phony candidate. She is going to have to agree with him on a number of things. She is going to have to be more anti-Wall Street to fend him off and neutralize him. We know it is bullshit. She will betray us once she becomes president. He is making her more likely to win. And by April he is done. Then he fades away.”

We must build mass movements that are allied with independent political parties—a tactic used in Greece by Syriza and in Spain by Podemos. Political action without the support of radical mass movements inevitably becomes hollow, and that, I think, will be the fate of the Sanders presidential campaign. Only by building militant mass movements that are unrelentingly hostile to the system of corporate capitalism, imperialism, militarism and globalization can we wrest back our democracy. ..................(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/make_the_rich_panic_20150503




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cali

(114,904 posts)
1. I just can't stand most of his stuff. Never liked it. Don't care for him
Mon May 4, 2015, 07:15 AM
May 2015

What really bugs me about Chris is that his burn it all down and then rebuild it from the ground up shit, would destroy many, if not most, of the people he purports to care for so much.

fuck off, Chris.

 

appal_jack

(3,813 posts)
8. I'm with you. Hedges' ideas, if implemented, would get many people killed.
Mon May 4, 2015, 12:16 PM
May 2015

Years ago, I was lucky enough to hear Noam Chomsky in a small group setting. One questioner asked about the apparent pointlessness of voting. Chomsky replied (I'm of course paraphrasing) that as activists, we have a responsibility to grab every lever of power available, beginning with the most peaceful and common. Jumping straight to violent revolution while ignoring other means is idiocy.

Sanders has already proven himself, employing the levers of power available to him as a Senator in the service of the common good. He's now offering all Democrats a chance at an even bigger lever of power, and I intend to help him push it.

If by any chance Sanders' candidacy flames out like Dean before him, or if he should gain office but then renege on too many promises as Obama (and Clinton/Gore before him) did, then we can all agree that it was a 'ruse.' But Hedges is rushing to judgement, and like too many old men, he seems all too willing for young people to die for his ideas. No thanks, Chris.

-app

merrily

(45,251 posts)
2. Nader and Hedges could at least see how Sanders does first. This is their agenda for the 2016
Mon May 4, 2015, 07:25 AM
May 2015

primary, not mine. Besides, let's be real: what are the chances the "system" gets torn down before November 2016? I doubt they are unaware of the odds.

NuttyFluffers

(6,811 posts)
3. it's hard to start big, but grassroots is the way.
Mon May 4, 2015, 08:09 AM
May 2015

getting a socialist on Seattle's board took agitation & grassroots organization. it also took dedication. and it succeeded, along with a minimum wage increase, too.

is that doable so quickly on the national level before 2016? maybe, unlikely, but magic has happened before from agitated people.

attack the system from every angle. this is why the 50 state strategy worked. TPTB cannot defend every assault from every direction upon their castles of sand.

TPTB want to make you think they are omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. challenge them to deliver. authority only works when people obey. thus: disobey.

Erich Bloodaxe BSN

(14,733 posts)
4. There certainly is that risk, but Bernie is a grass-roots kind of guy.
Mon May 4, 2015, 08:29 AM
May 2015

He didn't just take on his stances as camouflage, he's been what he is throughout his political career, working his way up the political food chain. And I simply disagree that he'll make Clinton a 'better candidate'. I think his presence will actually show her up as a phony on economic justice, show folks that she IS simply faking populism while continuing to be the champion of the rich.

JustABozoOnThisBus

(23,282 posts)
5. I doubt the rich would panic
Mon May 4, 2015, 08:39 AM
May 2015

After the revolution, when government is dissolved, we'll have another Constitutional Convention.

Somehow, I think the Koch representatives, the Teabaggers, will be present and influential. They would LOVE a Constitutional Convention.

And if the rich have to buy off Chris Hedges, or otherwise remove his influence, well, they know guys who know guys.

I'm not sure I would use Greece and Spain as shining examples of success, any more than I would use Libya or Syria.

We can do something less radical, maybe. Like elect Democrats to office.

HereSince1628

(36,063 posts)
6. "Successful" militant mass movements have the nasty habit of installing dictators/emperors
Mon May 4, 2015, 08:43 AM
May 2015

I'm not so naïve as to think taking back democracy from the oligarchs and their minions will happen without social conflict. But I don't think that anticipating civil war is the way to initiate the restoration of an authentic republic.

I'd really prefer to not go into the work for significant political change with the political leaders intent on marshalling followers into battalions.

That would seem to greatly bias the likelihood that the leaders will end up behaving as Marshalls and authoritarians. An outcome that would be like too many other 'people's revolutions" that predictably result in decades of authoritarian rule and/or a counter-revolution to overthrow the Marshalls.

I think I'll go with the idea of building widespread/massive support for the notion that the system has reached a point of intolerable corruption...such massive support is the platform required for transformation by democratic action.

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