Saturday, September 12, 2020

Chris Hedges: ‘Jesus Didn’t Come to Make Us Rich’ — and Trump’s Popularity Among Evangelicals Exposes Them for What They Really Are

This is a truly excellent, illuminating, and spot on interview with Chris Hedges from last year that remains incredibly important and relevant to today. — Molly


By
 
 
America is a country beset by junk politics. This is one of the main reasons Donald Trump is president. Junk politics is many things. It is an obsession with the “horse race” of campaigns and elections, rather than  a substantive discussion of the real issues that affect the lives of the average American and the country as a whole. Junk politics is a form heavily defined by spectacle, distraction, superficiality and novelty. It is not a space for serious, sustained, and in depth discussion of serious matters of public concern. Junk politics is personality-driven and its preferred mode of communication is short slogans and sound bites.Twitter offers a pre-eminent example of how literacy has been gutted by that platform’s arbitrary limit of 280 characters or less. Junk politics is lived through and enabled by the fact that many Americans lack basic civil literacy and have lost faith in the state’s ability to protect their basic rights and ensure opportunities for upward economic mobility — or even basic economic stability. If the American Dream is dead, junk politics struck one of the lethal blows.
 
Economic precariousness, societal instability and personal loneliness are byproducts of an American society where junk politics rule. They are also preconditions for how junk politics has thrived in the Age of Trump.
In this wide-ranging conversation, I spoke with Chris Hedges about America’s junk politics. He is the author of numerous award winning and bestselling books including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,” “Death of a Liberal Class,” “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,” “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” and “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.”

Hedges has also written for the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He is currently a contributing writer for the political commentary and news analysis website Truthdig. His newest book is “America: The Farewell Tour.”

In our conversation Hedges offered his insights on Michael Cohen’s hearing before the House Oversight Committee, and also on the ways the Democratic Party has been compromised by the same moneyed interests as the Republican Party. He also discussed Donald Trump’s political cult and whether Trump will leave voluntarily if he is removed from office. We also discussed the role of the Christian right in Trump and the plutocrats’ assault on American democracy, the distinctive status of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, and whether Bernie Sanders can overcome his “race problem”

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. You can hear our full conversation on my podcast, “The Chauncey DeVega Show.” 

What was your reaction to Michael Cohen’s testimony before Congress and what he revealed about Donald Trump? Did you believe Cohen?

There is something very interesting about all of these people who go after Trump. Once they’re tossed from his orbit they are as morally impoverished as he is. They all come from the same moral swamp that Trump inhabits. They are not trustworthy figures. The people who circle around Trump do so because they have no moral core. Was Cohen telling the truth? Probably. How remorseful was he? I don’t really trust any of these people. I do not believe that anyone gets close to Trump if they have any moral consistency. This in turn makes everything they say suspect.

Beyond Cohen’s testimony that Trump behaves like a sociopath and is likely a criminal, I found the whole hearing to be an example of how America’s “elites” are a corrupt class. They are shameless about rigging the system to their own advantage. The casual disregard Trump, Cohen and the Republican Party have for the rule of law is obvious.

I would say that is also true of the Democrats as well. The difference is that Trump and his administration are just a naked kleptocracy. The Democrats did it with more finesse. The Clintons are con artists and crooks too — they are just classier versions of it with Ivy League pedigrees.

I think this is the great failing on the part of the Democratic Party. The Democrats do not grasp the very legitimate rage in this country. When you examine the statistics about what happened to the white working class and, of course, African-Americans by the end of the Obama administration, matters were very dire economically. If you are a black person or a brown person you have nowhere else to go in terms of mainstream politics except for the Democratic Party. Donald Trump is mainstreaming the Ku Klux Klan. Nonwhites are trapped in terms of their political options.

The whole system is a con. It’s just not as naked and as crude as it is under the Trump administration. The Democratic Party has not come to terms with the fact that most people have figured this reality out. Trump’s power is that he speaks, of course, with great vulgarity. But Trump is also ridiculing the elites that sold working men and women out in this country. I wrote a column a while ago arguing that you have to look at Trump as a cult leader, not as a political figure. So, what you want from a cult leader is very different from what you want from a political leader.

I saw this in the megachurches that I covered when I wrote my book on the Christian right. I spent two years on the book, and the stories of personal despair and dislocation, bankruptcies, struggle with addictions, domestic abuse, sexual abuse and the like were heartbreaking. These unfortunate people were suckered into an evil  and dangerous system. These megachurch pastors function as cult leaders.

The followers want the cult leader to be omnipotent. You want them to be able to break all the rules, because you identify with them to such an extent that their increase in power is an increase of your own power. You believe that that fealty to the cult leader means that you are protected.

That’s what Trump has going for him. I don’t think people have quite figured it out. It doesn’t really matter how many lists of lies the Washington Post publishes. We cannot look at Donald Trump as though he is a political leader. Trump is a demagogue. Those are different rules. Demagogues have to be fought differently. I am not sure the Democratic Party gets it.

The Democrats cannot defeat Donald Trump unless they accept the fact that he is a cultural force. The Democrats are also wasting time and energy worrying about winning over Trump’s voters. These people are members of a political cult. As such, the more the Democrats go after Trump the more Trump’s cult members are going to support him.  I am very worried about the type of national mental breakdown or violence that will occur when and if Trump is forced from power. 

Well, Trump’s supporters all have weapons. Trump has already incited violence. The financial system is very fragile. We live in a period of relative economic stability, however dispossessed most of the American working class and working poor actually are.

If the United States falls into another economic meltdown like we did in 2007 and 2008, then there will be a kind of incoherent rage on the part of the white, dispossessed working class. They’re all armed, and there will be a rhetorical green-lighting of violence against those people who are made into scapegoats for the decline of the United States.

The homophobia and Islamophobia, overt racism and other vile behavior will become much more pronounced. All cults are personality cults. All cults are really extensions of whoever the cult leader is. So, whatever the prejudices, the worldview and the ideas of the cult leader are they will be chanted back at him by the crowd. Until massive social and economic inequality as well as the betrayal of the country by the elite are confronted and remedied, this yearning for a cult leader will not go away. Desperate people are looking for somebody to save them.              
 
 

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