The Politics of Cultural Despair

 I don’t usually use texts written by others in this blog, but this article lays out clearly the issues faced by serious Christians in our current toxic religio-political environment. It is both blunt and radical, as is the message of Jesus to his followers.

Below is an excerpt from a talk by Chris Hedges entitled “The Politics of Cultural Despair” transcribed and printed in Scheerpost October 19, 2020.  To read the complete article click <here>.

All fascist movements paper over their squalid belief systems with the veneer of morality. They mouth pieties about restoring law and order, right and wrong, the sanctity of life, civic and family virtues, patriotism and tradition to mask their dismantling of the open society and silencing and persecution of those who dissent. The Christian Right, awash in money from corporations that understand their political intent, will use any tool, no matter how devious, from right-wing armed militias to the invalidation of ballots, to block Biden and Democratic candidates from assuming office.

Capitalism, driven by the obsession to maximizing profit and reduce the cost of production by slashing worker’s rights and wages, is antithetical to the Christian Gospel, as well as the Enlightenment ethic of Immanuel Kant. But capitalism, in the hands of the Christian fascists, has become sacralized in the form of the Prosperity Gospel, the belief that Jesus came to minister to our material needs, blessing believers with wealth and power. The Prosperity Gospel is an ideological cover for the slow-motion corporate coup d’état. This is why large corporations such as Tyson Foods, which places Christian Right chaplains in its plants, Purdue, Wal-Mart, and Sam’s Warehouse, along with many other corporations, pour money into the movement and its institutions such as Liberty University and Patrick Henry Law School. This is why corporations have given millions to groups such as the Judicial Crisis Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to campaign for Barrett’s appointment to the court. Barrett has ruled to cheat gig workers out of overtime, green light fossil fuel extraction and pollution, gut Obamacare and strip consumers of protection from corporate fraud. Barrett, as a circuit court judge, heard at least 55 cases in which citizens challenged corporate abuse and fraud. She ruled in favor of corporations 76 percent of the time.

Our corporate masters do not care about abortion, gun rights or the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. But like the German industrialists who backed the Nazi Party, they know that the Christian Right will give an ideological veneer to ruthless corporate tyranny. These oligarchs view the Christian fascists the same way the German industrialists viewed the Nazis, as buffoons. They are aware that the Christian fascists will trash what is left of our anemic democracy and the natural ecosystem. But they also know they will make huge profits in the process and the rights of workers and citizens will be ruthlessly suppressed.

If you are poor, if you lack proper medical care, if you are paid substandard wages, if you are trapped in the lower class, if you are a victim of police violence, this is because, according to the Prosperity Gospel, you are not a good Christian. In this belief system you deserve what you get. There is nothing wrong, these homegrown fascists preach, with the structures or systems of power. Like all totalitarian movements, followers are seduced into calling for their own enslavement.

As the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels understood: “The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative.” 

Be Afraid - The Imminent Danger of Socialism

Angry attacks against the health care reform bill that just passed Congress and signed into law by President Obama are being fed by wildly-untrue statements by the leadership of the Republican Party and their Tea Party allies, the ignorant buffoons on talk radio and the pundits on Fox News. Among the charges heard time and again are claims that the health care reform bill will (in the words of a letter to the editor published this week) “convert our republic into a socialist, communist or dictatorial nation ….” Wow, that’s scary, I had no idea that one bill could do all that.

But shouldn’t people who make public statements or write public letters have some working knowledge of the subject they write about? People who make such foolish statements as the letter writer demonstrate their ignorance when they obviously do not know the basic facts of political theory or government and, unfortunately, they do not know that they do not know what they are talking about.

Socialism is a theoretical economic structure in which the government owns all business entities (“means of production”). Socialism does not exist anywhere in the world.

Communism is a form of government structure in which all political power is vested in local political committees (communes). It also involves an economic theory that everyone should contribute to society to the extent able, and should receive from society according to need. Unfortunately it is too idealistic and as a practical matter it has failed, primarily because it fails to deal with motivation and self-interest.

A dictatorship is a political structure in which all power resides in one person (or a tightly controlled group). Anyone who thinks that Obama is a dictator or could become a dictator in our dysfunctional government is appallingly ignorant of the realities in the seat of our government—no one is in control in Washington, no person, no party. Just watching the news illustrates that fact.

All Western economies today [U.S., Canada, countries of Europe] are “mixed” economies, with elements of socialism intermingled with primary capitalism. Pure capitalism does not and cannot work as an economic system any more than pure socialism can work, for reasons too complicated to explain in a short essay. Think about the political realities of the economics of nations as a line with capitalism at one end of the line and socialism at the other. All countries are somewhere along that line between the two extremes, some leaning to the left of center, some to the right of center.

The economic issue to sort out in the United States is the proper balance between the two polar extremes and that is what the current dispute is about, although from listening to the angry rhetoric it would be hard to determine that. The discussion about something so essential as health care reform is being held in a very hostile political environment that has been so poisoned by angry partisanship that rational discussion has now become impossible.

It is difficult to carry on an intelligent conversation with people who do not understand the issues in health care reform and yet engage in verbal combat with criticisms of the bill that are not accurate.

Most of the right wing protesters who are so against “socialism” as a concept seem quite happy with the reality when they profit from it. For instance, small business owners like the Small Business Administration, because it invests government money in their businesses. Business owners and homeowners like FEMA because it socializes their business and property losses. Republican governors complain but hold out their hands for stimulus funds to generate new employment and to subsidize their shrinking budgets and unemployment reserves. Republican mayors look for pork projects in their districts, including funds for private athletic stadiums. Republican city councilors in my town are quite happy operating a for-profit power plant competing with free enterprise that subsidizes local taxpayers with funds generated with profits earned from non-residents, as well as operating a profitable marina and several golf courses—all socialist enterprises that compete with free enterprise. Republican bankers and financial institution managers, heads of corporations including GM and AIG, want/need public money to save them from collapse but otherwise believe in free enterprise and want government to leave them alone to do as they please without regulation or interference.

The real objection to government policy under the Obama Administration is not that it is socialist, but rather that it advocates “social programs”—help for the economically disadvantaged, tax relief for the working poor including the “unearned income credit,” unemployment compensation payments, food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance and other social welfare programs. Their objection is that people should not get something for nothing, that there are jobs for all who want them and those that do not have jobs are too lazy to work at menial jobs or to get an education so they could be employed, services go to illegal immigrants who want benefits they have not earned including free health care, that those who cannot carry their own weight in society should not be allowed to take from the “hard working Americans who have jobs and have to pay taxes to support benefits for others.”

Social welfare programs may be a prominent characteristic of socialist states, but there is a big difference between social welfare benefits and socialism as government policy, and these critics do not understand the difference.

They also reject the premise that members of a society have a duty to the less fortunate among them—the social contract theory of economic and community organization. Somehow in kindergarten they did not learn sharing and playing nice with others.

The point is obvious so we offer this advice to the political right: don’t make ignorant statements that government programs you don’t like—including health care reform—are “socialist” while enjoying the benefits of “socialist” programs from which you benefit. It makes you look self-serving, ignorant and foolish.