By Chris Hedges
Washington has become
Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The
popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are
courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated
by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped
of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being
had.
The past week was a good
one if you were a courtier. We were instructed by the high priests on
television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show
host, who made $5 million a year and who gave a platform to the powerful
and the famous so they could spin, equivocate and lie to the nation.
We were repeatedly told by these television courtiers, people like Tom
Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer, that this talk show host was one of our nation’s
greatest journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and
chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with journalism.
No journalist makes $5
million a year. No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with
the powerful. No journalist believes that acting as a conduit, or a
stenographer, for the powerful is a primary part of his or her calling.
Those in power fear and dislike real journalists. Ask Seymour Hersh and Amy Goodman how often Bush or Cheney has
invited them to dinner at the White House or offered them an interview.
All governments lie,
as I.F. Stone pointed out, and it is the job of the journalist to do
the hard, tedious reporting to shine a light on these lies. It is the
job of courtiers, those on television playing the role of journalists,
to feed off the scraps tossed to them by the powerful and never question
the system. In the slang of the profession, these television courtiers
are “throats.” These courtiers, including the late Tim Russert,
never gave a voice to credible critics in the buildup to the war against
Iraq. They were too busy playing their roles as red-blooded American
patriots. They never fought back in their public forums against the
steady erosion of our civil liberties and the trashing of our Constitution.
These courtiers blindly accept the administration’s current propaganda
to justify an attack on Iran. They parrot this propaganda. They dare
not defy the corporate state. The corporations that employ them make
them famous and rich. It is their Faustian pact. No class of courtiers,
from the eunuchs behind Manchus in the 19th century to the Baghdad
caliphs of the Abbasid caliphate, has ever transformed itself
into a responsible elite. Courtiers are hedonists of power.
Our Versailles was busy
this past week. The Democrats passed the FISA bill, which provides immunity for
the telecoms that cooperated with the National Security Agency’s illegal
surveillance over the past six years. This bill, which when signed means
we will never know the extent of the Bush White House’s violation
of our civil liberties, is expected to be adopted by the Senate. Barack
Obama has promised to sign it in the name of national security. The
bill gives the U.S. government a license to eavesdrop on our phone calls
and e-mails. It demolishes our right to privacy. It endangers the work
of journalists, human rights workers, crusading lawyers and whistle-blowers
who attempt to expose abuses the government seeks to hide. These private
communications can be stored indefinitely and disseminated, not just
to the U.S. government but to other governments as well. The bill, once
signed into law, will make it possible for those in power to identify
and silence anyone who dares to make public information that defies
the official narrative.
Being a courtier, and
Obama is one of the best, requires agility and eloquence. The most talented
of them can be lauded as persuasive actors. They entertain us. They
make us feel good. They convince us they are our friends. We would like
to have dinner with them. They are the smiley faces of a corporate state
that has hijacked the government and is raping the nation. When the
corporations make their iron demands, these courtiers drop to their
knees, whether to placate the telecommunications companies that fund
their campaigns and want to be protected from lawsuits, or to permit
oil and gas companies to rake in obscene profits and keep in place the
vast subsidies of corporate welfare doled out by the state.
We cannot differentiate
between illusion and reality. We trust courtiers wearing face powder
who deceive us in the name of journalism. We trust courtiers in our
political parties who promise to fight for our interests and then pass
bill after bill to further corporate fraud and abuse. We confuse how
we feel about courtiers like Obama and Russert with real information,
facts and knowledge. We chant in unison with Obama that we want change,
we yell “yes we can,” and then stand dumbly by as he coldly votes
away our civil liberties. The Democratic Party, including Obama, continues
to fund the war. It refuses to impeach Bush and Cheney. It allows the
government to spy on us without warrants or cause. And then it tells
us it is our salvation. This is a form of collective domestic abuse.
And, as so often happens in the weird pathology of victim and victimizer,
we keep coming back for more.
Chris Hedges, who
was a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York
Times, says he will vote for Ralph Nader for president.