Is Chris Hedges right — is the anti-freedom apocalypse here at last?

08 February 2017

Two parts to this blurb

First, is Chris Hedges correct in thinking that the Trump Presidency has pushed the United States to the brink of lost Liberty?

Second, is his prescription for non-violent mass protest sufficient to turn back Autocracy's Tide?

Too hot, too cold — or just right?

The astute Chris Hedges recently published a powerful call to non-violent resistance. The below excerpts do not do his appeal justice:

Donald Trump’s regime is rapidly reconfiguring the United States into an authoritarian state. All forms of dissent will soon be criminalized. Civil liberties will no longer exist.

[Cooperation Jackson founder and activist Kali Akuno said:] “We are talking two to three months before this whole . . . initiative is firmly consolidated.”

In the eyes of the Christian fascists, generals, billionaires and conspiracy theorists around Trump, the laws, the courts and legislative bodies exist only to silence opponents and swell corporate profits.

“Lenin [founder of Soviet communism] wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too,” Bannon told writer Ronald Radosh in 2013.

If nonviolent protest is met with violence, we must never respond with violence.

Violence against the state is used by the authorities to justify greater forms of control and repression.

We can succeed only if we win the hearts and minds of the wider public and ultimately many of those within the structures of power, including the police.

The enemy is . . . not Trump or Bannon, but the corporate state.

Resistance alone, however, is not enough. It must be accompanied by an alternative vision of a socialist and anti-capitalist society.

Two problems with Hedges' formulation

(1) Distinguishing who is "us" from who is "them" is substantially more difficult than Mr. Hedges lets on.

(2) Non-violence has never worked to effectuate a revolt of the magnitude and direction that he envisions.

First problem — what are the protestors going to agree on?

Can we distinguish our supposedly freedom-loving selves from the Liberty-Eaters whom we are marching against?

Though this seems easy, it turns out to be challenging when assessed in light of American history.

Our society has long been evolving into a fascistic manifestation of corporation-owned institutions. It is not as if President Trump pulled a lever somewhere and an anti-democratic deluge suddenly descended from the skies.

This means that the problem is (a) our society and (b) our views of it, not necessarily (c) Trump-liking folks and corporations.

For example, have you noticed that protests against President Trump include hordes of folk, who previously said not a word about President Obama's own autocratic manipulation of government during his reign?

Not a word against his expansion of plutocratic oligarchy.

Not a peep against his irrepressible bombing of 7 Muslim nations, including his escalation of the Middle East Cauldron into virtually complete chaos.

Not a shared phrase about his enthusiastic deepening of the Surveillance State.

No deluge of tweets against his eager deportation of allegedly illegal Mexican aliens.

No angry cacophony against his illegal repression of American whistle-blowers.

Nothing opposed to his drone-murder of collateral innocents.

Nothing at all.

Ever.

Yet suddenly, Trump and Klan are the ultimate bad guys?

Where is the unifying philosophical principle in this sudden awakening of the Obama Clan to governmentally imposed evil?

Is it just that Trump is the less effectively camouflaged hypocrite?

A less concealed barbarian?

A confessed "pussy grabber"?

Is "our" protest just a demand that the Establishment's wrongdoing be more skillfully concealed than President Trump bothers to hide it?

What sort of principle of governance is that?

A look deeper

As a hypothetical, let's pretend that those who have been protesting the Trump Administration were locked in closets somewhere and escaped just after his election to Commander in Chief.

Even under those pretended conditions, separating "us" from "Trump's them" is inordinately difficult.

To see why this is the case . . .

Let's hypothesize that the evil Them group consists only of:

President Trump,

Trumpistas,

Steve Bannon,

his malevolent Machiavellian ilk,

national politicians,

powerful corporations,

and

the entire American Military Industrial Complex.

If you think about the scope of this "them guys" proxy term, it includes a huge plurality of American society.

How are we going to overturn numbers that are surely almost equal to our own?

How are we going to non-violently overthrow evil Thems — who have financial and military resources that outweigh ours by many orders of magnitude?

How are "we" going to overturn a system that the Thems have captured to work to their own interests?

What avenue does non-violent protest successfully take in a System actively rigged against it?

The Us-Them difficulty does not end with just the "which avenue" conundrum

The chief problem, in my estimation, is Americans' shared — Us and Them — hagiographic (meaning haloed, excessively flattering) view of Capitalism.

Satisfying greed is the almost universally accepted goal of our American system.

As such, we usually acquiesce when "successful" people repress "losers".

That, after all, is the tacitly accepted purpose of the capitalistic endeavor. I rake in the goodies, and you have to do without. Because (evidently) you are lazy, inept, or Frowned upon by God. President Trump is an excellent and uncamouflaged manifestation of this thinking.

Our shared capitalism-worshipping reality represents a double-oops for Mr. Hedges' non-violent revolt formula:

Too few us.

Too much disagreement about principles.

Too little idea about how to pull the "revolt" off.

Too much self-important dipshit-ism.

Too little focused ferocity.

Until

Until a monstrous plurality of Americans come to recognize that Rampant Avarice constitutes a problematic formulation for any arguably fair system of governance, Mr. Hedges' desired socialistic society will not be forthcoming.

Under our autocracy-encroaching circumstances, it really does matter whether the Philosophical Chicken fostered the Egg of Circumstance, or the reverse.

Until the Philosophical American Chicken decides that it is community-oriented — rather than avariciously and individualistically motivated — our Egg of Serf-ish Circumstances is likely to stay as it is.

Problem 1 — conclusion

There are two key problems with Hedges' recruiting recipe for resistance:

Where are the resistors going to come from?

And how is anyone going to persuade them to agree on enough substance to maintain focused discipline?

The enemy is ourselves. Americans belief systems do not accord with the realties that most of us live.

Until we understand this, it is highly unlikely that enough of "us" are going to organize effectively enough to get much done against the allegedly evil "thems".

Problem 2 — non-violence does not work under circumstances like ours

I am already on record as thinking that non-violence is a non-productive means of genuine social upheaval.

History's successful revolts against reigning Establishments have all been situationally violent. Powerful people do not yield their repressive influence, until it appears that they might lose their heads (so to speak) in trying to keep it.

In my estimation, Mr. Hedges' recommendation for non-violent resistance too casually hypothesizes that:

(a) the Establishment will tolerate effective protests,

(b) meaningful public resistance will endure longer than it ever has before,

and

(c) these mass protests will successfully wield enough influence to persuade "them guys" — with all their money and armaments — to voluntarily give both up for Sweet Conscience's sake.

Historically speaking, this is a losing bet.

If you are not convinced, assess how far the civil rights movement got in according long-lasting, meaningful economic and political justice to the cheated and oppressed.

Consider whether Gandhi would have been successful in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia, the American Confederacy, or even President Obama's United States.

Just how far did Black Lives Matter take us?

Did you see any Murder Cops swing for their crimes?

Any courts actually dispensing fair-minded justice?

Any reduction in the number of innocent black folk being executed?

No.

Instead we got the (intentionally missing the racial bias point) All Lives Matter movement.

How about Occupy Wall Street?

Any meaningful "pay for your crimes" prosecution of the criminals who concocted the 2008 global economic collapse?

Any attempt to repay ordinary citizens' loss of wealth due to this knowing criminality?

Any reduction in the Financial Sector's continuing predation?

The list goes on. And on.

Unfavorable resistance mechanics

The United States is in the mess that it is because We the People are characteristically ignorant, intellectually lazy, easily diverted, and all too willing to buy simplistic philosophies that are (upon even the slightest examination) dumb.

And the larger the society, the more difficult it is to keep it on a track that requires the reverse of these traits.

If President Trump's Administration axes American democracy and civil rights, it will be only as a symbolic last hacking of the Founding Chicken's decades-long — apathetically acquiesced — stretched neck.

The public cowardice that:

(a) welcomed losing the Fourth Amendment's privacy and seizure protections (during the "global war on terrorism")

and

(b) simultaneously eagerly condones killing allegedly terroristic Muslim people abroad —

is the same yellow streak that is likely to continue voluntarily giving up the Liberty gift of 1776.

Perpetually fearful people do not stay free.

Mechanistically speaking, if the United States eventually succeeds in gaining equitably protected Liberty and Happiness, it will be because a comparatively small group of people rises up to impose their experiment on incrementally larger segments of the public.

That is History's way. Why today would be different than our nation's own founding beats me.

Consequently, I put little stock in anti-Trumpism's suddenly hysterical calls for a massively non-violent uprising of our supposedly harmonious Rabble.

The United States is in the state it is in because so few Americans have thought beyond clichés about anything of substance with regard to governance and political economics.

Now characterized by an apathetic (but demanding) cowardice, the American public constitutes a poor foundation for anything that requires a combination of energy and courage.

The time for successful "societal redirection" is not here yet. Commitment and numbers are lacking.

We will see whether the Trump Administration lights the fire necessary to kindle a turn.

In my historian's view, there is little that distinguishes President Trump from his immediate predecessors — save in his frequently crass willingness not to hide his plutocratic-autocratic tendencies.

If revolt does come now, it will be an interesting and repeated comment about American Culture's inability to see facts, until face-down and out-bleeding into them.

The moral? — Noticeable change based on non-violent resistance? — Don't hold your breath

I am not opposing Chris Hedges' call for resistance to plutocratic theft and oppression.

I just am not as optimistic as he is about the allegedly Liberty-loving sensibleness and upstanding courage of the Rabble to which I belong.

Cartoonist Walt Kelly was correct in 1970:

"We have met the enemy and he is us."

Until bunches of "us" recognize reality and are willing to bleed (and make others bleed) for a more equitably balanced and ethically principled society — "Ain't nuthin' gonna get done."

Note

Translated from American slang, that last phrase means, "Nothing worthwhile will take place."

PeteFree.com

Is Chris Hedges right — is the anti-freedom apocalypse here at last?