The corporate state, which has emasculated our government, is creating a new form of feudalism

[kpete]

Truthdig / By Chris Hedges
How Our Empire Crushes Opposition
The corporate state does not have a Politburo. It does not dress its Homeland Security agents in jackboots. There is no raving dictator.
February 7, 2011 |

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The narratives we hear are those fabricated for us by the state, Hollywood and the press. These narratives are taught in our schools, preached in our pulpits and celebrated in war documentaries such as “Restrepo.” These narratives humanize and ennoble the enforcers of empire. The government, the military, the police and our intelligence agents are lionized. These control groups, we are assured, are the guardians of our virtues and our protectors. They produce our heroes. And those who challenge this narrative -- who denounce the lies -- become the enemy.

Those who administer empire -- elected officials, corporate managers, generals and the celebrity courtiers who disseminate the propaganda -- become very wealthy. They make immense fortunes whether they deliver the nightly news, sit on the boards of corporations, or rise, lavished with corporate endorsements, within the vast industry of spectacle and entertainment. They all pay homage, even in moments defined as criticism, to the essential goodness of corporate power. They shut out all real debate. They ignore flagrant injustices and abuse. They peddle the illusions that keep us passive and amused. But as our society is reconfigured into an oligarchic system, with a permanent and vast underclass, along with a shrinking and unstable middle class, these illusions lose their power. The language of pleasant deception must be replaced with the overt language of force. It is hard to continue to live in a state of self-delusion once unemployment benefits run out, once the only job available comes without benefits or a living wage, once the future no longer conforms to the happy talk that saturates our airwaves. At this point rage becomes the engine of response, and whoever can channel that rage inherits power. The manipulation of that rage has become the newest task of the corporate propagandists, and the failure of the liberal class to defend core liberal values has left its members with nothing to contribute to the debate.

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All centralized power, once restraints and regulations are abolished, once it is no longer accountable to citizens, knows no limit to internal and external plunder. The corporate state, which has emasculated our government, is creating a new form of feudalism, a world of masters and serfs. It speaks to those who remain in a state of self-delusion in the comforting and familiar language of liberty, freedom, prosperity and electoral democracy. It speaks to the poor and the oppressed in the language of naked coercion. But, here too, all will end up in the same place.

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All tyrannies come endowed with their own peculiarities. This makes it hard to say one form of totalitarianism is like another. There are always enough differences to make us unsure that history is repeating itself. The corporate state does not have a Politburo. It does not dress its Homeland Security agents in jackboots. There is no raving dictator. American democracy -- like the garishly painted train station at the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka -- looks real even as the levers of power are in the hands of corporations. But there is one aspect the corporate state shares with despotic regimes and the collapsed empires that have plagued human history. It too communicates in two distinct languages, that is until it does not have to, at which point it will be too late.

the rest:
http://www.alternet.org/world/149826/how_our_empire_crushes_opposition/?page=entire

[Octafish]

1. Friendly Fascism

The term was coined by Prof. Bertram Gross.

[ixion]

2. Indeed it is.

And with the possible exception of a watershed moment, I believe we will have to go through it now before it will be able to be altered, as the government seems wholly complicit on all levels.

[WCGreen]

3. It's been like that for some time now....

there was that illusion of anyone can make it here if all they had to do was work hard and tow the line.

Well, that ain't the case anymore and I doubt it has been for at least 30-40 years now.

Outside of the few entrepreneurs who discovered something acceptable to the corporate oligarchy, there is no real smooth upward mobility.

I know two guys from high school that made it big but they are in constant worry about falling back, losing all they have.

[jwirr]

4. Years ago I read a "hippie" commune book that said we were at

the point (1970s) where we needed to decide which way we wanted to live - in a feudal system or a tribal system. I don't exactly remember being asked which way I wanted. But I agree we are moving backward toward feudalism. And most of the overlords seem to be criminals.

[leftstreet]

5. K&R

[The Doctor.]

6. It's ugly all right.

And they've raised an army of tea-morons to block any meaningful steps against them.


I still believe that their army will more or less turn on them at some point. They created a monster I doubt they can control.