Today's Obligatory Reading -- Chris Hedges

By John Ballard

No need for me to do more than spill out a few lines and furnish the link. Chris Hedges (and his terrific Nader quotes) will put enough gas in your tank to get you past the next few days.I have nothing to add. The title says it all: THE LEFT HAS NOWHERE TO GO.

�The more outrageous the Republicans become, the weaker the left becomes,� Nader said when I reached him at his home in Connecticut on Sunday. �The more outrageous they become, the more the left has to accept the slightly less outrageous corporate Democrats.�

Nader fears a repeat of the left�s cowardice in the next election, a cowardice that has further empowered the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, maintained the role of the Democratic Party as a lackey for corporations, and accelerated the reconfiguration of the country into a neo-feudalist state. Either we begin to practice a fierce moral autonomy and rise up in multiple acts of physical defiance that have no discernable short-term benefit, or we accept the inevitability of corporate slavery. The choice is that grim. The age of the practical is over. It is the impractical, those who stand fast around core moral imperatives, figures like Nader or groups such as Veterans for Peace, which organized the recent anti-war rally in Lafayette Park in Washington, which give us hope. If you were one of the millions who backed down in the voting booth in 2008, don�t do it again. If you were one of those who thought about joining the Washington protests against the war where 131 of us were arrested and did not, don�t fail us next time. The closure of the mechanisms within the power system that once made democratic reform possible means we stand together as the last thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration. If we do not engage in open acts of defiance, we will empower a radical right-wing opposition that will replicate the violence and paranoia of the state. To refuse to defy in every way possible the corporate state is to be complicit in our strangulation.

�The left has nowhere to go,� Nader said. �Obama knows it. The corporate Democrats know it. There will be criticism by the left of Obama this year and then next year they will all close ranks and say �Do you want Mitt Romney? Do you want Sarah Palin? Do you want Newt Gingrich?� It�s very predictable. There will be a year of criticism and then it will all be muted. They don�t understand that even if they do not have any place to go, they ought to fake it. They should fake going somewhere else or staying home to increase the receptivity to their demands. But because they do not make any demands, they are complicit with corporate power.

�

�The left has disemboweled itself,� Nader said. �It doesn�t even have a strategy every four years like a good poker player. The best example is Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO. Obama has given them nothing. Therefore, they are demanding nothing. They huff and puff. They make tough speeches. But Trumka hasn�t even made Obama�s campaign pledge of a $9.50 minimum wage by this year an issue. If you want to increase consumer demand, what better way to do it than to unleash $300 billion in wages? The card check for unionization, which Obama pledged as his No. 1 sop to the labor unions, is dead. The unions do not even demand a hearing....

[...]  �Three thousand people rallied to protest the invasion and massacre in Gaza two years ago,� Nader said. �It was held four blocks from The Washington Post. It did not get a single paragraph. People should march over to the Post and say �Fuck you! What are you doing here? You cover every little blip by the right-wing and you don�t cover us?�

�They are afraid of the right-wing because the right-wing bellows, and they have become right-wing,� Nader said of the commercial press. �They have become fascinated by the bias of Fox. And they publicize what Fox is biased on. The coverage of O�Reilly and Beck and their fights is insane. In the heyday of coverage in the 1960s of what we were doing, it was always less than it should have been, but now it is almost zero. Why do we take this? Why do we accept this? Why isn�t Chris Hedges three times a year in the Op-Ed? Why is it always Paul Wolfowitz and Elliott Abrams and all these homicidal maniacs? Why are they there? Why is John Bolton constantly published in The Washington Post and The New York Times? Where is Andrew Bacevich? Bacevich told me he has had five straight Op-Eds rejected by the Post and the Times in the last two years. And he said he is not inclined to send anymore. How many times do you hear Hoover Institution? American Enterprise Institute? Manhattan Institute. These goddamned newspapers should be picketed.�

Just getting warmed up.
Go read the whole thing.
Read it slowly and absorb every phrase.
Then read it again til it sticks.