[Peace-discuss] How Democracy Dies…

[John W.]

Ralph Langenheim informs me that it has.


On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 7:15 PM, John W. <jbw292002 at gmail.com> wrote:

I guess my one question would be this:  If a majority of eligible voters,
> without overt coercion, are complicit in electing tyrants to rule them
> (whether or not said voters are somehow misled by the mass media), has
> democracy died?
>
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>> On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Brussel Morton K. <MKBRUSSEL at comcast.net
>> > wrote:
>>
>> Disgust and rage… Is he wrong? Is this how Thomas Payne wrote?
>>> How Democracy Dies: Lessons From a Master
>>>
>>> Monday 11 October 2010
>>>
>>> by: Chris Hedges  |  *Truthdig | Op-Ed*<http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_democracy_dies_lessons_from_a_master_20101011/>
>>>
>>> [image: photo]
>>> (Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t<http://www.flickr.com/photos/truthout>;
>>> Adapted: Alun Salt <http://www.flickr.com/photos/alun/38029348/>, zphaze<http://www.flickr.com/photos/zphaze/4701919237/>
>>> )
>>>
>>> The ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes <http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc13.htm>spent
>>> his life battling the assault on democracy by tyrants. It is disheartening
>>> to be reminded that he lost. But he understood that the hardest struggle for
>>> humankind is often stating and understanding the obvious. Aristophanes, who
>>> had the temerity to portray the ruling Greek tyrant, Cleon, as a dog, is the
>>> perfect playwright to turn to in trying to grasp the danger posed to us by
>>> movements from the tea party to militias to the Christian right, as well as
>>> the bankrupt and corrupt power elite that no longer concerns itself with the
>>> needs of its citizens. He saw the same corruption 2,400 years ago. He feared
>>> correctly that it would extinguish Athenian democracy. And he struggled in
>>> vain to rouse Athenians from their slumber.
>>>
>>> There is a yearning by tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a
>>> diffuse and fractious movement, to destroy the intellectual and scientific
>>> rigor of the Enlightenment. They seek out of ignorance and desperation to
>>> create a utopian society based on “biblical law.” They want to transform
>>> America’s secular state into a tyrannical theocracy. These radicals, rather
>>> than the terrorists who oppose us, are the gravest threat to our open
>>> society. They have, with the backing of hundreds of millions of dollars in
>>> corporate money, gained tremendous power. They peddle pseudoscience such as
>>> “Intelligent Design” in our schools. They keep us locked into endless and
>>> futile wars of imperialism. They mount bigoted crusades against gays,
>>> immigrants, liberals and Muslims. They turn our judiciary, in the name of
>>> conservative values, over to corporations. They have transformed our liberal
>>> class into hand puppets for corporate power. And we remain meek and supine.
>>>
>>> They want to transform America’s secular state into a tyrannical
>>> theocracy. These radicals, rather than the terrorists who oppose us, are the
>>> gravest threat to our open society.
>>>
>>> The huge amount of taxpayer money doled out to Wall Street, investment
>>> banks, the oil and natural gas industry and the defense industry, along with
>>> the dismantling of our manufacturing sector, is why we are impoverished. It
>>> is why our houses are being foreclosed on. It is why some 45 million
>>> Americans are denied medical care. It is why our infrastructure, from public
>>> schools to bridges, is rotting. It is why many of us cannot find jobs. We
>>> are being fleeced. The flagrant theft of public funds and rise of an
>>> obscenely rich oligarchic class is masked by the tough talk of demagogues,
>>> themselves millionaires, who use fear and bombast to keep us afraid,
>>> confused and enslaved.
>>>
>>> Aristophanes saw the same psychological and political manipulation
>>> undermine the democratic state in ancient Athens. He repeatedly warned
>>> Athenians in plays such as “The Clouds,” “The Wasps,” “The Birds,” “The
>>> Frogs” and “Lysistrata” that permitting political leaders who shout “I shall
>>> never betray the Athenian!” or “I shall keep up the fight in defense of the
>>> people forever!” to get their hands on state funds and power would end with
>>> the citizens enslaved.
>>>
>>> *Get Truthout in your inbox every day! Click here to sign up for free
>>> updates. <http://www.truth-out.org/newsletter>*
>>>
>>> “The truth is, they want you, you see, to be poor,” Aristophanes wrote in
>>> his play “The Wasps.” “If you don’t know the reason, I’ll tell you. It’s to
>>> train you to know who your tamer is. Then, whenever he gives you a whistle
>>> and sets you against an opponent of his, you jump out and tear them to
>>> pieces.”
>>> Our democracy, through years of war, theft and corruption, is also being
>>> diminished. But the example Aristophanes offers is not a hopeful one. He
>>> held up the same corruption to his fellow Greeks. He repeatedly chided them
>>> for not rising up and fighting back. He warned, ominously, that by the time
>>> most citizens awoke it would be too late. And he was right. The appearance
>>> of normality lulls us into a false hope and submission. Those who shout most
>>> loudly in defense of the ideals of the founding fathers, the sacredness of
>>> Constitution and the values of the Christian religion are those who most
>>> actively seek to subvert the principles they claim to champion. They hold up
>>> the icons and language of traditional patriotism, the rule of law and
>>> Christian charity to  demolish the belief systems that give them cultural
>>> and political legitimacy. And those who should defend these beliefs are
>>> cowed and silent.
>>>
>>> “For a considerable length of time the normality of the normal world is
>>> the most efficient protection against disclosure of totalitarian mass
>>> crimes,” Hannah Arendt <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/> wrote
>>> in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” “Normal men don’t know that everything
>>> is possible, refuse to believe their eyes and ears in the face of the
>>> monstrous. ... The reason why the totalitarian regimes can get so far toward
>>> realizing a fictitious, topsy-turvy world is that the  outside
>>> non-totalitarian world, which always comprises a great part of the
>>> population of the totalitarian country itself, indulges in wishful thinking
>>> and shirks reality in the face of real insanity. ...”
>>>
>>> All ideological, theological and political debates with the
>>> representatives of the corporate state, including the feckless and weak
>>> Barack Obama, are useless. They cannot be reached. They do not want a
>>> dialogue. They care nothing for real reform or participatory democracy. They
>>> use the tricks and mirages of public relations to mask a steadily growing
>>> assault on our civil liberties, our inability to make a living and the loss
>>> of basic services from education to health care. Our gutless liberal class
>>> placates the enemies of democracy, hoping desperately to remain part of the
>>> ruling elite, rather than resist. And, in many ways, liberals, because they
>>> serve as a cover for these corporate extremists, are our greatest traitors.
>>>
>>> Aristophanes too lived in a time of endless war. He knew that war always
>>> empowered anti-democratic forces. He saw how war ate away at the insides of
>>> a democratic state until it was hollowed out. His play “Lysistrata,” written
>>> after Athens had spent 21 years consumed by the Peloponnesian War, is a
>>> satire in which the young women refuse to have sex with their men until the
>>> war ends and the older women seize the Acropolis, where the funds for war
>>> are stored. The play called on Athenians to consider radical acts of civil
>>> disobedience to halt a war that was ravaging the state. The play’s heroine,
>>> Lysistrata, whose name means “Disbander of Armies,” was the playwright’s
>>> mouthpiece for the folly and self-destructiveness of war. But Athens, which
>>> would lose the  war, did not listen.
>>>
>>> The tragedy is that liberals and secularists, like Obama, are not viewed
>>> as competitors by the corporate forces that hold power, but as contaminates
>>> that must be eliminated. They have sought to work with forces that will
>>> never be placated. They have abandoned the most basic values of the liberal
>>> class to play a game that in the end will mean their political and cultural
>>> extinction. There will be no swastikas this time but seas of red, white and
>>> blue flags and Christian crosses. There will be no stiff-armed salutes, but
>>> recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance. There will be no brown shirts but
>>> nocturnal visits from Homeland Security. The fear, rage and hatred of our
>>> dispossessed and confused working class are being channeled into currents
>>> that are undermining the last vestiges of the democratic state. These
>>> dangerous emotions, directed against a liberal class that as in ancient
>>> Athens betrayed the population, have a strong appeal. And unless we adopt
>>> the radicalism held by Aristophanes, unless we begin to hinder the
>>> functioning of the corporate state through acts of civil disobedience, we
>>> are finished.
>>>
>>> Let us not stand at the open gates of the city meekly waiting for the
>>> barbarians. They are coming. They are slouching towards Bethlehem. Let us,
>>> if nothing else, like Aristophanes, begin to call our tyranny by its name.
>>>
>>> **
>>>
>>
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