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<p>Craicer's from Saturday<br>
</p>
<p>I am not alone in my view of whose interests the Biden
administration serves. Nominal Catholicism does not indicate
morality. <br>
</p>
<p>Art<br>
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<td> <span style="display:none !important"> Moderator
posted: "
Original illustration by Mr. Fish
By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost
Don’t be fooled by Joe Biden. He knows his
infrastructure and education bills have as much chance
at becoming law as the $15-dollar minimum wage or the
$2,000 stimulus c" </span>
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style="margin:
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#555; margin:
0; font-size:
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href="https://scheerpost.com/2021/05/03/hedges-dont-be-fooled-by-joe-biden/"
style="color:
#2585B2;
text-decoration:
none;"
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Don’t Be
Fooled By
Joe Biden</a></h2>
<span
style="color:
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href="https://scheerpost.com/?author=14765177" style="color: #2585B2;
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data-attachment-id="8122"
data-permalink="https://scheerpost.com/2021/05/03/hedges-dont-be-fooled-by-joe-biden/sadist/"
data-orig-file="https://scheerpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Sadist.jpg"
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data-image-title="Sadist" data-image-description=""
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illustration by
Mr. Fish</figcaption></figure>
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<p style="direction:
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Neue",
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sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;"><strong>By
Chris Hedges</strong>
/ Original to
ScheerPost</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
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#444; font-family:
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Neue",
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class="has-drop-cap">Don’t be fooled by Joe Biden. He knows his
infrastructure and
education bills
have as much
chance at becoming
law as the
$15-dollar minimum
wage or the $2,000
stimulus checks he
promised us as a
candidate. He
knows his American
Jobs Plan will
never create
“millions of good
paying jobs – jobs
Americans can
raise their
families on” any
more than NAFTA,
which he
supported, would,
as was also
promised, create
millions of good
paying jobs. His
mantra of “buy
American” is
worthless. He
knows the vast
majority of our
consumer
electronics,
apparel, furniture
and industrial
supplies are made
in China by
workers who earn
an average of one
or two dollars an
hour and lack
unions and basic
labor rights. He
knows his call to
lower deductibles
and prescription
drug costs in the
Affordable Care
Act will never be
permitted by the
corporations that
profit from health
care. He knows the
corporate donors
that fund the
Democratic Party
will ensure their
lobbyists will
continue to write
the laws that
guarantee they pay
little or no
taxes. He knows
the corporate
subsidies and tax
incentives he
proposes as a
solution to the
climate crisis
will do nothing to
halt oil and gas
fracking, shut
down coal-fired
plants or halt the
construction of
new pipelines for
gas-fired power
plants. His
promises of reform
have no more
weight than those
peddled by Bill
Clinton and Barack
Obama, who Biden
slavishly served
and who also
promised social
equality while
betraying working
men and women.</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">Biden
is the epitome of
the empty, amoral
creature produced
by our system of
legalized bribery.
His long political
career in Congress
was defined by
representing the
interests of big
business,
especially the
credit card
companies based in
Delaware. He was
nicknamed Senator
Credit Card. He
has always glibly
told the public
what it wants to
hear and then sold
them out. He <a
style="color:
#2585B2;"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/us/joe-biden-crime-laws.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">was a prominent promoter and architect </a>of a
generation of
federal “tough on
crime” laws that
helped militarize
the nation’s
police and more
than doubled the
population of the
world’s largest
prison system with
harsh mandatory
sentencing
guidelines and
laws that put
people in prison
for life for
nonviolent drug
crimes, even as
his son struggled
with addiction. He
was a principal
author of the
Patriot Act, which
began the
stripping away of
our most basic
civil liberties.
And there has
never been a
weapons system, or
a war, he did not
support.</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">Nothing
substantial will
change under
Biden, despite the
hyperventilating
about him being
the next FDR.
Biden’s request
for $715 billion
for the Defense
Department in
fiscal year 2022,
a $11.3 billion
(1.6 percent)
increase over
2021, will support
the disastrous
military
provocations with
China and Russia
he embraces, the
endless wars in
the Middle East
and the bloated
defense industry.
Wholesale
government
surveillance will
not be curbed.
Julian Assange
will remain a
target. The
industries that
were shipped
overseas and the
well-paying
unionized jobs
will not return.
The grinding
machinery of
predatory
capitalism, and
the sadism that
defines it, will
poison the society
as mercilessly
under Biden as it
did when Donald
Trump was
conducting his
Twitter
presidency.</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">Sadism
now defines nearly
every cultural,
social and
political
experience in the
United States. It
is expressed in
the greed of an
oligarchic elite
that has seen its
wealth increase
during the
pandemic by $1.1
trillion while the
country has
suffered the
sharpest rise in
its poverty rate
in more than 50
years. It is
expressed in
extra-judicial
killings by police
in cities such as
Minneapolis. It is
expressed in our
complicity in
Israel’s wholesale
killing of unarmed
Palestinians, the
humanitarian
crisis engendered
by the war in
Yemen and our
reigns of terror
in Afghanistan,
Iraq and Syria. It
is expressed in
the torture in our
prisons and black
sites. It is
expressed in the
separation of
children from
their undocumented
parents, where
they are held as
if they were dogs
in a kennel.</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">The
historian Johan
Huizinga, writing
about the twilight
of the middle
ages, argued that
as things fall
apart sadism is
embraced as a way
to cope with the
hostility of an
indifferent
universe. No
longer bound to a
common purpose, a
ruptured society
retreats into the
cult of the self.
It celebrates, as
do corporations on
Wall Street or
mass culture
through reality
television shows,
the classic traits
of psychopaths:
superficial charm,
grandiosity and
self-importance; a
need for constant
stimulation; a
penchant for
lying, deception
and manipulation;
and the incapacity
for remorse or
guilt. Get what
you can, as fast
as you can, before
someone else gets
it. This is the
state of nature,
the “war of all
against all,”
Thomas Hobbes saw
as the consequence
of social
collapse, a world
in which life
becomes “solitary,
poor, nasty,
brutish, and
short.” And this
sadism, as
Friedrich
Nietzsche
understood, fuels
a perverted,
sadistic pleasure.</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">The
only way out for
most Americans is
to serve, as Biden
does, the sadistic
machine. The
impoverishment of
the working class
has conditioned
tens of millions
of Americans to
accept being
recruited into the
service of the
militarized police
that function as
lethal armies of
internal
occupation; a
military that
carries out reigns
of terror in
foreign
occupations;
intelligence
agencies that
torture in global
black sites; the
government’s vast
network of spying
on the citizenry;
the theft of
personal
information by
credit agencies
and digital media;
the largest prison
system in the
world; an
immigration
service that hunts
down people who
have never
committed a crime
and separates
children from
their parents to
pack them in
warehouses; a
court system that
condemns the poor
to decades of
incarceration,
often for
nonviolent crimes,
and denies them a
jury trial;
companies that
carry out the
dirty work of
evictions,
shutting off
utilities,
including water,
collecting
usurious debts
that force people
into bankruptcy
and denying health
services to those
that cannot pay;
banks and payday
lenders that
burden the
destitute with
predatory,
high-interest
loans; and a
financial system
designed to keep
most of the
country locked in
a crippling debt
peonage as the
wealth of the
oligarchic elite
swells to levels
unseen in American
history.</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">These
are some of the
few jobs that are
well compensated.
They bring with
them feelings of
omnipotence, for
the victims are
largely powerless.
In service to the
state or
corporations,
employees can
abuse, humiliate
and even kill with
impunity, as the
near daily murder
of unarmed
civilians by the
police
illustrates. This
service to
monolithic centers
of power absolves
people of moral
choice. It imparts
a God-like
omnipotence.</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">We
know what this
sadism looks like.
It looks like
Derek Chauvin
nonchalantly
choking to death
George Floyd as
his police
colleagues watch
impassively. It
looks like Andrew
Brown Jr. shot
five times by
police in North
Carolina,
including once in
the back of the
head. It looks
like Abner Louima,
who had a
broomstick pushed
up his rectum by
police in a
bathroom at the
70th Precinct
station house in
Brooklyn,
requiring three
major operations
to repair the
internal injuries.
It looks like Navy
Seal Special
Operations Chief
Edward Gallagher
randomly shooting
to death unarmed
civilians and
using a hunting
knife to
repeatedly stab to
death an injured,
sedated
17-year-old Iraqi
prisoner and then
photographing
himself with the
corpse. It looks
like Iraqi
civilians, few of
whom had anything
to do with the
insurgency, naked,
bound, beaten and
sexually
humiliated and
raped, and at
times murdered, by
army guards and
private
contractors in Abu
Ghraib. Prisoners
in Abu Ghraib were
routinely dragged
across the prison
floor by a rope
tied to their
penises and
chemical lights
were used to
sodomize them or
snapped open so
the phosphoric
liquid could be
poured over their
naked bodies. It
looks like women
who are tortured,
beaten, degraded
and sexually
violated, often by
numerous men, in
porn films, who
are then discarded
after a few weeks
or months with
severe trauma,
along with
sexually
transmitted
diseases and
vaginal and anal
tears that must be
repaired
surgically.</p>
<p style="direction:
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#444; font-family:
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class="has-drop-cap"> Sadistic societies condemn segments of the
population – in
America these are
poor Blacks,
Muslims, the
undocumented, the
LGBTQ community,
radical
anti-capitalists,
intellectuals – as
human refuse. They
are viewed as
social
contaminants.
Laws, institutions
and bureaucratic
structures are
built in sadistic
societies that
function, in the
words of Max
Weber, as an
“inanimate
machine.” The
machine forces
most people into
the mass, but it
allows some
willing to do its
dirty work to rise
above the
multitude. Those
that carry out the
sadism on behalf
of the power elite
fear being pushed
back into the
mass. For this
reason, they
energetically
carry out the
degradation,
cruelty and sadism
the machine
demands. The more
they insult,
persecute,
torture, humiliate
and kill, the more
they seem to
magically widen
the divide between
themselves and
their victims.
This is why Black
police and
corrections
officers can be as
cruel, and
sometimes crueler,
than their white
counterparts.</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">The
sadism eradicates,
at least
momentarily, the
sadist’s feelings
of worthlessness,
vulnerability and
susceptibility to
pain and death. It
imparts pleasure.
I was beaten by
Saudi military
police and later
by Saddam
Hussein’s secret
police when I was
taken prisoner
after the first
Gulf War. The
goons carrying out
my beatings
clearly enjoyed
them. Israel’s
abuse of the
Palestinians, the
assaults of
Muslims and girls
and women in India
and the
denigration of
Muslims in the
countries we
occupy are part of
a global breakdown
that extends
beyond the United
States. Wilhelm
Reich in “The Mass
Psychology of
Fascism” and Klaus
Theweleit in “Male
Fantasies” argue
that sadism, along
with a grotesque
hyper-masculinity,
rather than any
coherent belief
system, is the
core of fascism,
although communist
regimes in China
and the Soviet
Union could be as
murderous and
sadistic as their
fascist
counterparts.</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">Jean
Amery, who was in
the Belgian
resistance in
World War II and
who was captured
and tortured by
the Gestapo in
1943, defines
sadism “as the
radical negation
of the other, the
simultaneous
denial of both the
social principle
and the reality
principle. In the
sadist’s world,
torture,
destruction, and
death are
triumphant: and
such a world
clearly has no
hope of survival.
On the contrary,
he desires to
transcend the
world, to achieve
total sovereignty
by negating fellow
human beings –
which he sees as
representing a
particular kind of
‘hell.’”</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">Amery’s
point is
important. A
sadistic society
is about
collective
self-destruction.
It is the
apotheosis of a
society deformed
by overwhelming
experiences of
loss, alienation
and stasis. The
only way left to
affirm yourself in
failed societies
is to destroy.
Johan Huizinga in
his book “Waning
of the Middle
Ages” noted that
that the
dissolution of
medieval society
provoked “the
violent tenor of
life.” Today, this
“violent tenor of
life” drives
people to carry
out police
murders, evictions
of families,
court-ordered
bankruptcies, the
denial of medical
care to the sick,
suicide bombings
and mass
shootings. As the
sociologist Emil
Durkheim
understood, those
who seek the
annihilation of
others are driven
by desires for
self-annihilation.
Sadism imparts the
rush and pleasure,
often with heavy
sexual overtones,
which lures us
towards what
Sigmund Freud
called the death
instinct, the
instinct to
destroy all forms
of life, including
our own. When
enveloped by a
death-saturated
world death,
ironically, is
embraced as the
cure.</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">Corporate
capitalism, which
has perverted the
values of American
society to
commodify its
every aspect,
including human
beings and the
natural world, and
teaching us that
the dictates of
the market should
govern every
aspect of our
existence, is
infused with
sadism. It is
about the pleasure
derived from
exploiting others,
as Frederick
Nietzsche wrote in
“On the Genealogy
of Morals:”</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">[T]he
creditor is given
a kind of pleasure
as repayment and
compensation – the
pleasure of being
allowed to
discharge his
power on a
powerless person …
the delight in ‘<em>de
fair le mal pour
le plaisir de le
faire</em>’
[doing wrong for
the pleasure of
it], the enjoyment
of violation. This
enjoyment is more
highly prized the
lower and baser
the debtor stands
in the social
order, and it can
easily seem to the
creditor a
delicious
mouthful, even a
foretaste of a
higher rank. By
means of the
‘punishment’ of
the debtor, the
creditor
participates in a
right belonging to
the masters. … The
compensation thus
consist of a
permission for and
right to
crueltyEnron
energy traders, in
a dialogue that
could have come
from any large
corporation, were
caught on tape in
2000 discussing
“stealing” from
California,
sticking it to
“Grandma Millie.”
Two traders,
identified as
Kevin and Bob,
dismissed demands
by California
regulators for
refunds because of
the company’s
constant
price-gouging.</p>
<pre class="wp-block-verse" style="font-family: inherit; overflow: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kevin: So the rumor's true? They're fucking takin' all the money back from you guys? All those money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?</pre>
<pre class="wp-block-verse" style="font-family: inherit; overflow: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bob: Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. But she's the one who couldn't figure out how to fucking vote on the butterfly ballot.</pre>
<pre class="wp-block-verse" style="font-family: inherit; overflow: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kevin: Yeah, now she wants her fucking money back for all the power you've charged for fucking $250 a megawatt hour.</pre>
<pre class="wp-block-verse" style="font-family: inherit; overflow: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bob: You know – you know – you know, Grandma Millie, she's the one that Al Gore's fightin' for, you know?</pre>
<pre class="wp-block-verse" style="font-family: inherit; overflow: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;">Later in the same conversation, Kevin and Bob denigrate Californians.</pre>
<pre class="wp-block-verse" style="font-family: inherit; overflow: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kevin: Oh, best thing that could happen is fucking an earthquake, let that thing float out to the Pacific and put 'em fucking candles.</pre>
<pre class="wp-block-verse" style="font-family: inherit; overflow: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bob: I know. Those guys – just cut 'em off.</pre>
<pre class="wp-block-verse" style="font-family: inherit; overflow: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kevin: They're so fucked and they're so like totally – –</pre>
<pre class="wp-block-verse" style="font-family: inherit; overflow: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bob: They are so fucked.</pre>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;"
class="has-drop-cap">We will not extract ourselves from predatory
capitalism and its
culture of sadism
with meager
government
handouts. We will
not extract
ourselves because
Biden’s slick
speech writers and
public relations
specialists, who
use polls and
focus groups to
feed back to us
what we want to
hear, can make us
feel the
administration is
on our side. There
is no good will in
the Biden White
House, the
Congress, the
courts, the media
– which has become
an echo chamber of
the privileged
classes – or
corporate
boardrooms. They
are the enemy.</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">We
will extract
ourselves from
this culture of
sadism the way the
dispossessed
extracted
themselves from
the stranglehold
of crony
capitalism during
the Great
Depression, by
organizing,
protesting and
disrupting the
system until the
ruling elites are
forced to grant a
measure of social
and economic
justice. The Bonus
Army, World War I
veterans who had
been denied
pension payments,
set up huge
encampments in
Washington, which
were violently
dispersed by the
army. Neighborhood
groups, many of
them members of
the Wobblies or
the Communist
Party, in the
1930s physically
prevented sheriff
departments from
evicting families.
In 1936 and 1937,
the United Auto
Workers union
carried out a
sit-down strike
inside factories
that crippled
General Motors,
forcing the
company to
recognize the
union, raise wages
and meet union
demands for job
protection and
safe working
conditions. It was
one of the most
important labor
victories in
American history
and led to the
entire automobile
industry in the
United States
becoming
unionized.
Farmers, forced
into bankruptcy
and foreclosures
by the big banks
and Wall Street,
founded the
Farmer’s Holiday
Association to
protest the
seizure of family
farms, one of the
reasons bank
robbers such as
John Dillinger,
Bonnie and Clyde
and the Barker
Gang were folk
heroes. The
farmers blocked
roads and
destroyed
mountains of farm
products, reducing
supply and raising
prices. The
farmers, like
unionized auto
workers, endured
widespread
government
surveillance and
violent attacks
from the FBI,
company goons,
hired gun thugs,
militias and
sheriff’s
departments. But
the militancy
worked. The
farmers forced the
state to accept a
de facto
moratorium on farm
foreclosures. Mass
demonstrations
outside state
capitals at the
same time
pressured state
legislatures to
block the
collection of
overdue mortgage
payments. Tenant
farmers and
sharecroppers in
the south
unionized. The
Department of
Labor called their
collective action
a “miniature civil
war.” The
unemployed and the
hungry throughout
the country
squatted in vacant
homes and on
vacant land
forming
shantytowns that
were known as
Hoovervilles. The
destitute took
over public
buildings and
public utilities.
This constant
pressure, not the
good will of FDR,
created the New
Deal. He and his
fellow oligarchs <a
style="color:
#2585B2;"
href="https://lithub.com/howard-zinn-how-fdr-forestalled-a-second-american-revolution/"
moz-do-not-send="true">eventually understood</a> that if there was not
reform there would
be revolution,
something
Roosevelt
acknowledged in
his private
correspondence.</p>
<p style="direction:
ltr; font-size:
14px; line-height:
1.4em; color:
#444; font-family:
"Helvetica
Neue",
Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;
margin: 0 0 1em;">It
is not until
people are
reintegrated into
the society, not
until corporate
and oligarchic
control over our
educational,
political and
media systems are
removed, not until
we recover the
ethic of the
common good, that
we have any hope
of rebuilding the
positive social
bonds that foster
a healthy society.
History has amply
illustrated how
this process
works. It is a
game of fear. And
until we make them
afraid, until a
terrified Joe
Biden and the
oligarchs he
serves look out on
a sea of
pitchforks, we
will not blunt the
culture of sadism
they have
engineered.</p>
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