Chris Hedges: "We never seem to learn. It is time to grab our pitchforks."

[marmar]

from truthdig:


Let’s Get This Class War Started

Posted on Oct 20, 2013
By Chris Hedges


“The rich are different from us,” F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have remarked to Ernest Hemingway, to which Hemingway allegedly replied, “Yes, they have more money.”

The exchange, although it never actually took place, sums up a wisdom Fitzgerald had that eluded Hemingway. The rich are different. The cocoon of wealth and privilege permits the rich to turn those around them into compliant workers, hangers-on, servants, flatterers and sycophants. Wealth breeds, as Fitzgerald illustrated in “The Great Gatsby” and his short story “The Rich Boy,” a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities. Colleagues, associates, employees, kitchen staff, servants, gardeners, tutors, personal trainers, even friends and family, bend to the whims of the wealthy or disappear. Once oligarchs achieve unchecked economic and political power, as they have in the United States, the citizens too become disposable.

The public face of the oligarchic class bears little resemblance to the private face. I, like Fitzgerald, was thrown into the embrace of the upper crust when young. I was shipped off as a scholarship student at the age of 10 to an exclusive New England boarding school. I had classmates whose fathers—fathers they rarely saw—arrived at the school in their limousines accompanied by personal photographers (and at times their mistresses), so the press could be fed images of rich and famous men playing the role of good fathers. I spent time in the homes of the ultra-rich and powerful, watching my classmates, who were children, callously order around men and women who worked as their chauffeurs, cooks, nannies and servants. When the sons and daughters of the rich get into serious trouble there are always lawyers, publicists and political personages to protect them—George W. Bush’s life is a case study in the insidious affirmative action for the rich. The rich have a snobbish disdain for the poor—despite well-publicized acts of philanthropy—and the middle class. These lower classes are viewed as uncouth parasites, annoyances that have to be endured, at times placated and always controlled in the quest to amass more power and money. My hatred of authority, along with my loathing for the pretensions, heartlessness and sense of entitlement of the rich, comes from living among the privileged. It was a deeply unpleasant experience. But it exposed me to their insatiable selfishness and hedonism. I learned, as a boy, who were my enemies.

The inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults. We have been blinded to the depravity of our ruling elite by the relentless propaganda of public relations firms that work on behalf of corporations and the rich. Compliant politicians, clueless entertainers and our vapid, corporate-funded popular culture, which holds up the rich as leaders to emulate and assures us that through diligence and hard work we can join them, keep us from seeing the truth. .........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/lets_get_this_class_war_started_20131020

[indepat]

1. Now some one please tell me the oligarchs have not achieved unchecked economic and

political power, compliments of a corporatist government featuring all three major branches of government including a wholly corrupt majority of justices on the Supreme Court.

[Doctor_J]

2. Mods - can you merge these?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023894641

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Mods do not exist on DU3.

therefore posts cannot be removed, unless by the "self-delete" of the poster.

[Doctor_J]

6. I've seen some lock-dupe from time to time

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Yes. by the Forum/group hosts ( as opposed to site wide Mods)

The threads can be locked ( but not removed)
and dupes, I think, are for the same group. esp. in Breaking News within a 12 hour time slot.
In this specific case, 2 people posted about the same article, in 2 different groups and with 2 different links,
one to Truth Dig and one to Common Dreams.

I did some hosting and some MIRT duties when DU3 was an infant, and this is how it was explained to me at the time.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. "The inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults. "

He says a LOT of truths, as always,
but this one strikes me as critical, if any hope of change is to be had.

[Doctor_J]

5. Yep. I haven't fallen into the "both parties are the same" nonsense,

but I will say that neither of them is working on behalf of the neediest 90% of us, except when they can do so without upsetting the other 10%

[CrispyQ]

8. Wroth the time to read.

“We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are,” Wendell Berry writes. “Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all—by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians—be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us. How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.”

~kick