How does one differentiate between Bush's 8 years and Obama's first 4? It is seamless, you can't tell where one ended and the other began.
Scott > Excellent article. > > This is also well timed, after the illusions put forth by > the Republican and Democratic Conventions. > > Scott > ********** > http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/90/hedges-american-psychosis.html > > > American Psychosis > What happens to a society that cannot distinguish between reality and > illusion? > Chris Hedges , 17 Jun 2010 > > > > Image on left by TOM MIHALEK/AFP, on right by LOE RUSSELL > This article is available in: > English > German > The United States, locked in the kind of twilight disconnect that grips > dying empires, is a country entranced by illusions. It spends its > emotional > and intellectual energy on the trivial and the absurd. It is captivated by > the hollow stagecraft of celebrity culture as the walls crumble. This > celebrity culture giddily licenses a dark voyeurism into other peoples > humiliation, pain, weakness and betrayal. Day after day, one lurid saga > after another, whether it is Michael Jackson, Britney Spears or John > Edwards > enthralls the country despite bank collapses, wars, mounting poverty or > the criminality of its financial class. > The virtues that sustain a nation-state and build community, from honesty > to > self-sacrifice to transparency to sharing, are ridiculed each night on > television as rubes stupid enough to cling to this antiquated behavior are > voted off reality shows. Fellow competitors for prize money and a chance > for > fleeting fame, cheered on by millions of viewers, elect to disappear the > unwanted. In the final credits of the reality show Americas Next Top > Model, > a picture of the woman expelled during the episode vanishes from the group > portrait on the screen. Those cast aside become, at least to the > television > audience, nonpersons. Celebrities that can no longer generate publicity, > good or bad, vanish. Life, these shows persistently teach, is a brutal > world > of unadulterated competition and a constant quest for notoriety and > attention. > Our culture of flagrant self-exaltation, hardwired in the American > character > permits the humiliation of all those who oppose us. We believe, after > all, > that because we have the capacity to wage war we have a right to wage war. > Those who lose deserve to be erased. Those who fail, those who are deemed > ugly, ignorant or poor, should be belittled and mocked. Human beings are > used and discarded like Styrofoam boxes that held junk food. And the > numbers > of superfluous human beings are swelling the unemployment offices, the > prisons and the soup kitchens. > It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has > within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, > grandiosity > and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for > lying, > deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. > Michael > Jackson, from his phony marriages to the portraits of himself dressed as > royalty to his insatiable hunger for new toys to his questionable > relationships with young boys, had all these qualities. And this is also > the > ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. > It > is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, > mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. It is the > nationwide celebration of image over substance, of illusion over truth. > And > it is why investment bankers blink in confusion when questioned about the > morality of the billions in profits they made by selling worthless toxic > assets to investors. > We have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We > can > do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our > friends, to make money, to be happy and to become famous. Once fame and > wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own > morality > How one gets there is irrelevant. It is this perverted ethic that gave us > investment houses like Goldman Sachs that willfully trashed the global > economy and stole money from tens of millions of small shareholders who > had > bought stock in these corporations for retirement or college. The heads of > these corporations, like the winners on a reality television program who > lied and manipulated others to succeed, walked away with hundreds of > millions of dollars in bonuses and compensation. The ethic of Wall Street > is > the ethic of celebrity. It is fused into one bizarre, perverted belief > system and it has banished the possibility of the country returning to a > reality-based world or avoiding internal collapse. A society that cannot > distinguish reality from illusion dies. > The tantalizing illusions offered by our consumer culture, however, are > vanishing for most citizens as we head toward collapse. The ability of the > corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing > cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The jobs we are shedding > are > not coming back, as the White House economist Lawrence Summers tacitly > acknowledges when he talks of a jobless recovery. The belief that > democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the accumulation > of vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others is exposed as a > fraud. Freedom can no longer be conflated with the free market. The > travails > of the poor are rapidly becoming the travails of the middle class, > especially as unemployment insurance runs out. And class warfare, once > buried under the happy illusion that we were all going to enter an age of > prosperity with unfettered capitalism, is returning with a vengeance. > America is sinking under trillions in debt it can never repay and stays > afloat by frantically selling about $2 billion in Treasury bonds a day to > the Chinese. It saw 2.8 million people lose their homes in 2009 to > foreclosure or bank repossessions nearly 8,000 people a day and stands > idle as they are joined by another 2.4 million people this year. It > refuses > to prosecute the Bush administration for obvious war crimes, including the > use of torture, and sees no reason to dismantle Bushs secrecy laws or > restore habeas corpus. Its infrastructure is crumbling. Deficits are > pushing > individual states to bankruptcy and forcing the closure of everything from > schools to parks. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have squandered > trillions of dollars, appear endless. There are 50 million Americans in > real > poverty and tens of millions of Americans in a category called near > poverty > One in eight Americans and one in four children depend on food > stamps > to eat. And yet, in the midst of it all, we continue to be a country > consumed by happy talk and happy thoughts. We continue to embrace the > illusion of inevitable progress, personal success and rising prosperity. > Reality is not considered an impediment to desire. > When a culture lives within an illusion it perpetuates a state of > permanent > infantilism or childishness. As the gap widens between the illusion and > reality, as we suddenly grasp that it is our home being foreclosed or our > job that is not coming back, we react like children. We scream and yell > for > a savior, someone who promises us revenge, moral renewal and new glory. It > is not a new story. A furious and sustained backlash by a betrayed and > angry > populace, one unprepared intellectually, emotionally and psychologically > for > collapse, will sweep aside the Democrats and most of the Republicans and > will usher America into a new dark age. It was the economic collapse in > Yugoslavia that gave us Slobodan Milosevic. It was the Weimar Republic > that > vomited up Adolf Hitler. And it was the breakdown in Tsarist Russia that > opened the door for Lenin and the Bolsheviks. A cabal of proto-fascist > misfits, from Christian demagogues to loudmouth talk show hosts, whom we > naïvely dismiss as buffoons, will find a following with promises of > revenge > and moral renewal. And as in all totalitarian societies, those who do not > pay fealty to the illusions imposed by the state become the outcasts, the > persecuted. > The decline of American empire began long ago before the current economic > meltdown or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It began before the first > Gulf > War or Ronald Reagan. It began when we shifted, in the words of Harvard > historian Charles Maier, from an empire of production to an empire of > consumption. By the end of the Vietnam War, when the costs of the war ate > away at Lyndon Johnsons Great Society and domestic oil production began > its > steady, inexorable decline, we saw our country transformed from one that > primarily produced to one that primarily consumed. We started borrowing to > maintain a level of consumption as well as an empire we could no longer > afford. We began to use force, especially in the Middle East, to feed our > insatiable thirst for cheap oil. We substituted the illusion of growth and > prosperity for real growth and prosperity. The bill is now due. Americas > most dangerous enemies are not Islamic radicals but those who sold us the > perverted ideology of free-market capitalism and globalization. They have > dynamited the very foundations of our society. In the 17th century these > speculators would have been hung. Today they run the government and > consume > billions in taxpayer subsidies. > As the pressure mounts, as the despair and desperation reach into larger > and > larger segments of the populace, the mechanisms of corporate and > government > control are being bolstered to prevent civil unrest and instability. The > emergence of the corporate state always means the emergence of the > security > state. This is why the Bush White House pushed through the Patriot Act > (and > its renewal), the suspension of habeas corpus, the practice of > extraordinary rendition, warrantless wiretapping on American citizens > and > the refusal to ensure free and fair elections with verifiable > ballot-counting. The motive behind these measures is not to fight > terrorism > or to bolster national security. It is to seize and maintain internal > control. It is about controlling us. > And yet, even in the face of catastrophe, mass culture continues to assure > us that if we close our eyes, if we visualize what we want, if we have > faith > in ourselves, if we tell God that we believe in miracles, if we tap into > our > inner strength, if we grasp that we are truly exceptional, if we focus on > happiness, our lives will be harmonious and complete. This cultural > retreat > into illusion, whether peddled by positive psychologists, by Hollywood or > by > Christian preachers, is magical thinking. It turns worthless mortgages and > debt into wealth. It turns the destruction of our manufacturing base into > an > opportunity for growth. It turns alienation and anxiety into a cheerful > conformity. It turns a nation that wages illegal wars and administers > offshore penal colonies where it openly practices torture into the > greatest > democracy on earth. And it keeps us from fighting back. > Resistance movements will have to look now at the long night of slavery, > the > decades of oppression in the Soviet Union and the curse of fascism for > models. The goal will no longer be the possibility of reforming the system > but of protecting truth, civility and culture from mass contamination. It > will require the kind of schizophrenic lifestyle that characterizes all > totalitarian societies. Our private and public demeanors will often have > to > stand in stark contrast. Acts of defiance will often be subtle and > nuanced. > They will be carried out not for short term gain but the assertion of our > integrity. Rebellion will have an ultimate if not easily definable > purpose. > The more we retreat from the culture at large the more room we will have > to > carve out lives of meaning, the more we will be able to wall off the flood > of illusions disseminated by mass culture and the more we will retain > sanity > in an insane world. The goal will become the ability to endure. > Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, is > the author of several books including the best sellers War Is a Force That > Gives Us Meaning and Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the > Triumph of Spectacle. > > > > ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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