[Peace-discuss] Chris Hedges rips Jon Stewart rally

[David Johnson]

Excellent analysis !

I just finished watching Democracy Now and some extended clips from the 
Colbert / Stewart rally and I was not impressed. The same shallow corporate 
liberal feel good message that is as detached from the pain of many 
American's lives at the moment as could possibly be.
Hedges hits the nail squarley on the head with this article.

David J.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 10:47 AM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Chris Hedges rips Jon Stewart rally


"The Rally to Restore Sanity ... ridiculed followers of the tea
party without acknowledging that the pain and suffering expressed by
many who support the movement are not only real but legitimate. It made
fun of the buffoons who are rising up out of moral swamps to take over
the Republican Party without accepting that their supporters were sold
out by a liberal class, and especially a Democratic Party, which turned
its back on the working class for corporate money. Fox News’ Beck
and his allies on the far right can use hatred as a
mobilizing force because there are tens of millions of Americans who
have very good reason to hate. They have been betrayed by the elite who
run the corporate state, by the two main political parties and by the
liberal apologists, including those given public platforms on
television, who keep counseling moderation as jobs disappear, wages drop
and unemployment insurance runs out. As long as the liberal class speaks
in the dead voice of moderation it will continue to fuel the right-wing
backlash. Only when it appropriates this rage as its own, only when it
stands up to established systems of power, including the Democratic
Party, will we have any hope of holding off the lunatic fringe of the
Republican Party."

     The Phantom Left
     Posted on Oct 31, 2010
     By Chris Hedges

The American left is a phantom. It is conjured up by the right wing to
tag Barack Obama as a socialist and used by the liberal class to justify
its complacency and lethargy. It diverts attention from corporate power.
It perpetuates the myth of a democratic system that is influenced by the
votes of citizens, political platforms and the work of legislators. It
keeps the world neatly divided into a left and a right. The phantom left
functions as a convenient scapegoat. The right wing blames it for moral
degeneration and fiscal chaos. The liberal class uses it to call for
“moderation.” And while we waste our time talking nonsense, the engines
of corporate power—masked, ruthless and unexamined—happily devour the state.

The loss of a radical left in American politics has been catastrophic.
The left once harbored militant anarchist and communist labor unions, an
independent, alternative press, social movements and politicians not
tethered to corporate benefactors. But its disappearance, the result of
long witch hunts for communists, post-industrialization and the
silencing of those who did not sign on for the utopian vision of
globalization, means that there is no counterforce to halt our slide
into corporate neofeudalism. This harsh reality, however, is not
palatable. So the corporations that control mass communications conjure
up the phantom of a left. They blame the phantom for our debacle. And
they get us to speak in absurdities.

The phantom left took a central role on the mall this weekend in
Washington. It had performed admirably for Glenn Beck, who used it in
his own rally as a lightning rod to instill anger and fear. And the
phantom left proved equally useful for the comics Jon Stewart and
Stephen Colbert, who spoke to the crowd wearing red-white-and-blue
costumes. The two comics evoked the phantom left, as the liberal class
always does, in defense of moderation, which might better be described
as apathy. If the right wing is crazy and if the left wing is crazy, the
argument goes, then we moderates will be reasonable. We will be nice.
Exxon and Goldman Sachs, along with predatory banks and the arms
industry, may be ripping the guts out of the country, our
rights—including habeas corpus—may have been revoked, but don’t get mad.
Don’t be shrill. Don’t be like the crazies on the left.

“Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution
or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?”
Stewart asked. “We hear every damn day about how fragile our country
is—on the brink of catastrophe—torn by polarizing hate, and how it’s a
shame that we can’t work together to get things done. But the truth is
we do. We work together to get things done every damn day. The only
place we don’t is here [in Washington] or on cable TV.”

The rally delivered a political message devoid of reality or content.
The corruption of electoral politics by corporate funds and lobbyists,
the naive belief that we can somehow vote ourselves back to democracy,
was ignored for emotional catharsis. The right hates. The liberals
laugh. And the country is taken hostage.

The Rally to Restore Sanity, held in Washington’s National Mall, was yet
another sad footnote to the death of the liberal class. It was as
innocuous as a Boy Scout jamboree. It ridiculed followers of the tea
party without acknowledging that the pain and suffering expressed by
many who support the movement are not only real but legitimate. It made
fun of the buffoons who are rising up out of moral swamps to take over
the Republican Party without accepting that their supporters were sold
out by a liberal class, and especially a Democratic Party, which turned
its back on the working class for corporate money.

Fox News’ Beck and his allies on the far right can use hatred as a
mobilizing force because there are tens of millions of Americans who
have very good reason to hate. They have been betrayed by the elite who
run the corporate state, by the two main political parties and by the
liberal apologists, including those given public platforms on
television, who keep counseling moderation as jobs disappear, wages drop
and unemployment insurance runs out. As long as the liberal class speaks
in the dead voice of moderation it will continue to fuel the right-wing
backlash. Only when it appropriates this rage as its own, only when it
stands up to established systems of power, including the Democratic
Party, will we have any hope of holding off the lunatic fringe of the
Republican Party.

Wall Street’s looting of the Treasury, the curtailing of our civil
liberties, the millions of fraudulent foreclosures, the long-term
unemployment, the bankruptcies from medical bills, the endless wars in
the Middle East and the amassing of trillions in debt that can never be
repaid are pushing us toward a Hobbesian world of internal collapse.
Being nice and moderate will not help. These are corporate forces that
are intent on reconfiguring the United States into a system of
neofeudalism. These corporate forces will not be halted by funny signs,
comics dressed up like Captain America or nice words.

The liberal class wants to inhabit a political center to remain morally
and politically disengaged. As long as there is a phantom left, one that
is as ridiculous and stunted as the right wing, the liberal class can
remain uncommitted. If the liberal class concedes that power has been
wrested from us it will be forced, if it wants to act, to build
movements outside the political system. This would require the liberal
class to demand acts of resistance, including civil disobedience, to
attempt to salvage what is left of our anemic democratic state. But this
type of political activity, as costly as it is difficult, is too
unpalatable to a bankrupt liberal establishment that has sold its soul
to corporate interests. And so the phantom left will be with us for a
long time.

Politics in America has become spectacle. It is another form of show
business. The crowd in Washington, well trained by television, was
conditioned to play its role before the cameras. The signs —“The Rant is
Too Damn High,” “Real Patriots Can Handle a Difference of Opinion” or “I
Masturbate and I Vote”—reflected the hollowness of current political
discourse and television’s perverse epistemology. The rally spoke
exclusively in the impoverished iconography and language of television.
It was filled with meaningless political pieties, music and jokes. It
was like any television variety program. Personalities were being sold,
not political platforms. And this is what the society of spectacle is about.

The modern spectacle, as the theorist Guy Debord pointed out, is a
potent tool for pacification and depoliticization. It is a “permanent
opium war” which stupefies its viewers and disconnects them from the
forces that control their lives. The spectacle diverts anger toward
phantoms and away from the perpetrators of exploitation and injustice.
It manufactures feelings of euphoria. It allows participants to confuse
the spectacle itself with political action.

The celebrities from Comedy Central and the trash talk show hosts on Fox
are in the same business. They are entertainers. They provide the empty,
emotionally laden material that propels endless chatter back and forth
on supposed left- and right-wing television programs. It is a national
Punch and Judy show. But don’t be fooled. It is not politics. It is
entertainment. It is spectacle. All national debate on the airwaves is
driven by the same empty gossip, the same absurd trivia, the same
celebrity meltdowns and the same ridiculous posturing. It is presented
with a different spin. But none of it is about ideas or truth. None of
it is about being informed. It caters to emotions. It makes us confuse
how we are made to feel with knowledge. And in the end, for those who
serve up this drivel, the game is about money in the form of ratings and
advertising.  Beck, Colbert and Stewart all serve the same masters. And
it is not us.

Chris Hedges, who writes every Monday for Truthdig, is the author of the
new book “Death of the Liberal Class.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_phantom_left_20101031/

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