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Showing Original Post only (View all)The AGE of the DEMAGOGUES -- Chris Hedges -- MUST READ [View all]
http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/the_age_of_the_demagogues_20151129excerpt:
A faux liberal class, epitomized by amoral politicians such as the Clintons and Barack Obama, has led many disenfranchised people, especially the white underclass, to direct a legitimate rage toward liberals and the supposed liberal values they represent. Racism, bigotry, religious intolerance, homophobia, sexism and vigilante violence, condemned by liberal, college-educated elites, are embraced by those who have been betrayed, those who now speak back to liberal elites in words, gestures and acts, sometimes violent, designed to denigrate the core values of a liberal democracy. The hatred is the product of a liberal class that did nothing to halt corporations from driving tens of millions of families into poverty and desperation as it mouthed empty platitudes about rights and economic advancement.
The Republican business elites, which declared war on the liberal class call for cultural diversity, allied themselves with an array of protofascists in the Christian right, the tea party, groups such as the National Rifle Association and The Heritage Foundation, the neo-Confederate movement, the right-to-life movement and right-wing militias. The elites in the Republican Party, who needed an ideological veneer to mask their complicity in the corporate assault, saw these protofascists as useful idiots. They thought, naively, that by demonizing liberals, feminists, African-Americans, Muslims, abortion providers, undocumented workers, intellectuals and homosexuals they could redirect the growing rage of the masses, sending it against the vulnerable, as well as against the only institution that could curb corporate power, the government, while they greedily disemboweled the nation.
But what the Republican elites have done, as they now realize to their horror, is empower a huge swath of the publiclargely whitethat is gripped by magical thinking and fetishizes violence. It was only a matter of time before a demagogue whom these elites could not control would ride the wave of alienation and rage. If Trump fails in his bid to become the GOP presidential nominee, another demagogue will emerge to take his place. Trump is not making a political revolution. He is responding to one.
The corporate state was never threatened by the liberal class myopic preoccupation with cultural diversity or the right wings championing of supposedly Christian values. This was anti-politics masquerading as politics. The culture wars did not challenge imperialism, neoliberalism and globalization. The dictates of the market, the primacy of corporate profit and the military-industrial complex remained sacrosanct. The mounting distress of the underclass was ignored or manipulated during the culture wars. Liberals who embraced cultural diversity did so within a neoliberal framework. Feminism, for example, became about placing individual women in positions of powerthis is Hillary Clintons mantranot about empowering poor, marginalized and oppressed women. Post-racial America became about a black president.....
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well, the important thing is that the McMansion class has money for a second wine cellar
MisterP
Nov 2015
#25
Interesting take on the identity politics which play such a large role in the Democratic Party.
bklyncowgirl
Nov 2015
#4
it's not just an appeal to identitarianism, but a sort of "commerce" or "trafficking" in identity
MisterP
Nov 2015
#13
For any Sanders supporters, who seem to think Hedges supports him too:
muriel_volestrangler
Nov 2015
#39
Great list from Ellison (and you). I really enjoy Bageant's writing - nothing barred. Thx.
erronis
Nov 2015
#36
"Faux liberals," indeed. The "liberals" have been willingly caving to a far-right agenda since 1980
villager
Nov 2015
#26
That atricle is complete insane nonsense with the last paragrapph in complte disagreement with the
Todays_Illusion
Nov 2015
#30
Hedges says it like it is, very true...and we hear the neoliberal nonsense here constantly.
haikugal
Nov 2015
#59
I wonder how many people will love this piece should Hillary win the nomination
Township75
Nov 2015
#52