[Peace-discuss] Obama's America: from amusement to repression

[E.Wayne Johnson]

seems we have advanced from "Bread and Circuses" to
being run around in circles and, uh, "bred",
and as Celente says, without the "happy ending".

Great work, Chris Hedges.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: "Peace-discuss List" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2010 12:40 PM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Obama's America: from amusement to repression


Published on Monday, December 27, 2010 by TruthDig.com
2011: A Brave New Dystopia
by Chris Hedges

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” 
and
Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our
descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, 
as
Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that
used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley 
envisioned,
entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and 
seduced
by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell 
and
Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. 
Orwell
saw the second.

We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley
foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap
mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. 
While we
were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power 
in
check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we
were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working 
class
are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves
transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive
deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward 
bankruptcy.
It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the 
orgy-porgy
and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are
skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly
controlled.

Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world 
where
no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and 
fear.
Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a
state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was
brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied 
by
trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us
frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But 
Huxley,
we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the
process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell 
understood
the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and
defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that 
unfettered
and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits
human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” Orwell wrote in “1984.” 
“We
are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. 
Not
wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What 
pure
power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the
oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, 
even
those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis 
and
the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they 
never
had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they
even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited 
time,
and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would 
be
free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power 
with
the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One 
does
not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes 
the
revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution 
is
persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is 
 power.”

The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin uses the term “inverted 
totalitarianism”
in his book “Democracy Incorporated” to describe our political system. It is 
a
term that would make sense to Huxley. In inverted totalitarianism, the
sophisticated technologies of corporate control, intimidation and mass
manipulation, which far surpass those employed by previous totalitarian 
states,
are effectively masked by the glitter, noise and abundance of a consumer
society. Political participation and civil liberties are gradually 
surrendered.
The corporation state, hiding behind the smokescreen of the public relations
industry, the entertainment industry and the tawdry materialism of a 
consumer
society, devours us from the inside out. It owes no allegiance to us or the
nation. It feasts upon our carcass.

The corporate state does not find its expression in a demagogue or 
charismatic
leader. It is defined by the anonymity and facelessness of the corporation.
Corporations, who hire attractive spokespeople like Barack Obama, control 
the
uses of science, technology, education and mass communication. They control 
the
messages in movies and television. And, as in “Brave New World,” they use 
these
tools of communication to bolster tyranny. Our systems of mass 
communication, as
Wolin writes, “block out, eliminate whatever might introduce qualification,
ambiguity, or dialogue, anything that might weaken or complicate the 
holistic
force of their creation, to its total impression.”

The result is a monochromatic system of information. Celebrity courtiers,
masquerading as journalists, experts and specialists, identify our problems 
and
patiently explain the parameters. All those who argue outside the imposed
parameters are dismissed as irrelevant cranks, extremists or members of a
radical left. Prescient social critics, from Ralph Nader to Noam Chomsky, 
are
banished. Acceptable opinions have a range of A to B. The culture, under the
tutelage of these corporate courtiers, becomes, as Huxley noted, a world of
cheerful conformity, as well as an endless and finally fatal optimism. We 
busy
ourselves buying products that promise to change our lives, make us more
beautiful, confident or successful as we are steadily stripped of rights, 
money
and influence. All messages we receive through these systems of 
communication,
whether on the nightly news or talk shows like “Oprah,” promise a brighter,
happier tomorrow. And this, as Wolin points out, is “the same ideology that
invites corporate executives to exaggerate profits and conceal losses, but
always with a sunny face.” We have been entranced, as Wolin writes, by
“continuous technological advances” that “encourage elaborate fantasies of
individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, actions
measured in nanoseconds: a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and
possibility, whose denizens are prone to fantasies because the vast majority
have imagination but little scientific knowledge.”

Our manufacturing base has been dismantled. Speculators and swindlers have
looted the U.S. Treasury and stolen billions from small shareholders who had 
set
aside money for retirement or college. Civil liberties, including habeas 
corpus
and protection from warrantless wiretapping, have been taken away. Basic
services, including public education and health care, have been handed over 
to
the corporations to exploit for profit. The few who raise voices of dissent, 
who
refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate
establishment as freaks.

Attitudes and temperament have been cleverly engineered by the corporate 
state,
as with Huxley’s pliant characters in “Brave New World.” The book’s 
protagonist,
Bernard Marx, turns in frustration to his girlfriend Lenina:

“Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?” he asks.

“I don’t know that you mean. I am free, free to have the most wonderful 
time.
Everybody’s happy nowadays.”

He laughed, “Yes, ‘Everybody’s happy nowadays.’ We have been giving the 
children
that at five. But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other 
way,
Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else’s way.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she repeated.

The façade is crumbling. And as more and more people realize that they have 
been
used and robbed, we will move swiftly from Huxley’s “Brave New World” to
Orwell’s “1984.” The public, at some point, will have to face some very
unpleasant truths. The good-paying jobs are not coming back. The largest
deficits in human history mean that we are trapped in a debt peonage system 
that
will be used by the corporate state to eradicate the last vestiges of social
protection for citizens, including Social Security. The state has devolved 
from
a capitalist democracy to neo-feudalism. And when these truths become 
apparent,
anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity. The bleakness 
of
our post-industrial pockets, where some 40 million Americans live in a state 
of
poverty and tens of millions in a category called “near poverty,” coupled 
with
the lack of credit to save families from foreclosures, bank repossessions 
and
bankruptcy from medical bills, means that inverted totalitarianism will no
longer work.

We increasingly live in Orwell’s Oceania, not Huxley’s The World State. 
Osama
bin Laden plays the role assumed by Emmanuel Goldstein in “1984.” Goldstein, 
in
the novel, is the public face of terror. His evil machinations and 
clandestine
acts of violence dominate the nightly news. Goldstein’s image appears each 
day
on Oceania’s television screens as part of the nation’s “Two Minutes of 
 Hate”
daily ritual. And without the intervention of the state, Goldstein, like bin
Laden, will kill you. All excesses are justified in the titanic fight 
against
evil personified.

The psychological torture of Pvt. Bradley Manning—who has now been 
imprisoned
for seven months without being convicted of any crime—mirrors the breaking 
of
the dissident Winston Smith at the end of “1984.” Manning is being held as a
“maximum custody detainee” in the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in
Virginia. He spends 23 of every 24 hours alone. He is denied exercise. He 
cannot
have a pillow or sheets for his bed. Army doctors have been plying him with
antidepressants. The cruder forms of torture of the Gestapo have been 
replaced
with refined Orwellian techniques, largely developed by government
psychologists, to turn dissidents like Manning into vegetables. We break 
souls
as well as bodies. It is more effective. Now we can all be taken to Orwell’s
dreaded Room 101 to become compliant and harmless. These “special 
administrative
measures” are regularly imposed on our dissidents, including Syed Fahad 
Hashmi,
who was imprisoned under similar conditions for three years before going to
trial. The techniques have psychologically maimed thousands of detainees in 
our
black sites around the globe. They are the staple form of control in our 
maximum
security prisons where the corporate state makes war on our most politically
astute underclass—African-Americans. It all presages the shift from Huxley 
to
Orwell.

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling,” Winston Smith’s
torturer tells him in “1984.” “Everything will be dead inside you. Never 
again
will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, 
or
curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze 
you
empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era 
of
repression. Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone
records turned over to the government. We are the most monitored and 
spied-on
citizenry in human history. Many of us have our daily routine caught on 
dozens
of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits are recorded on the 
Internet.
Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are patted down at
airports and filmed by scanners. And public service announcements, car
inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to
report suspicious activity. The enemy is everywhere.

Those who do not comply with the dictates of the war on terror, a war which, 
as
Orwell noted, is endless, are brutally silenced. The draconian security 
measures
used to cripple protests at the G-20 gatherings in Pittsburgh and Toronto 
were
wildly disproportionate for the level of street activity. But they sent a 
clear
message—DO NOT TRY THIS. The FBI’s targeting of antiwar and Palestinian
activists, which in late September saw agents raid homes in Minneapolis and
Chicago, is a harbinger of what is to come for all who dare defy the state’s
official Newspeak. The agents—our Thought Police—seized phones, computers,
documents and other personal belongings. Subpoenas to appear before a grand 
jury
have since been served on 26 people. The subpoenas cite federal law 
prohibiting
“providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist
organizations.” Terror, even for those who have nothing to do with terror,
becomes the blunt instrument used by Big Brother to protect us from 
ourselves.

“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?” Orwell 
wrote.
“It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old
reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of
trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more
merciless as it refines itself.”

Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C.
Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from
Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign 
correspondent
for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A
Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most 
recent
book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of 
Spectacle.

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