[R-G] The Hedonists of Power

[Anthony Fenton]

The Hedonists of Power
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080623_the_hedonists_of_power/
Posted on Jun 23, 2008

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.

AP photo / Charles Dharapak, file

Tim Russert is shown speaking last year at the 60th anniversary  
celebration of NBC’s “Meet the Press” in Washington. Russert, 58,  
collapsed and died this month while at work at NBC’s Washington bureau.