August 1998: Russia’s economy is out of control tonight and it’s causing an international financial crisis. Huge queues in Moscow. There’s a run on the banks. The Rouble’s lost nearly half its value. And prices are soaring. ibid. BBC News
Overnight, the Americans destroyed the civil structure of Iraqi society. But instead of trying to create new institutions ... The country would then be thrown open to international corporations who in return for investing, would take 100% of their profits out of the country untaxed. Only one of Saddam Hussein’s laws remained: the one that restricted trade unions. Out of this was supposed to come spontaneous order. What resulted was chaos. ibid.
What also resulted was corruption on a huge scale: more than $350 billion has been sent to Iraq for reconstruction. ibid.
The whole idea of mass democracy began to be questioned and undermined from inside the political establishment itself. It began almost unnoticed, hidden behind the wave of enthusiasm after the fall of communism. But a political scientist called Peter Mair has argued that what happened in the 1990s was that the old idea of democracy started to disappear in the West. And it was replaced by something else which we haven’t fully comprehended yet or even seen because it is outside the old categories of politics. Western politicians, Meyer said, literally changed their roles: they gave up being representatives of the people and instead they became the agents of a new bureaucracy which was rising up and promising that it could manage the dangerous and unpredictable force of individualism better than the politicians could ... Individualism and its drive to self-actualisation can corrode and eat away at the collective power of mass democracy. Peter Mair said the same was now happening in the West. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head IV: But What if the People are Stupid? BBCiplayer 2021
In Russia the democracy experiment had gone out of control. The President, Boris Yeltsin, had lost all power. It had been seized by a small group called the oligarchs who were using it to loot Russia. There was massive inflation. Millions of people were reduced to selling what they owned on the street. ibid.
Yeltsin responding by dissolving parliament; he cut the phone lines and sealed the building off. But a group of protesters broke through and fighting began around the parliament and then spread to the television station. ibid.
In the early 1990s the western democracies seemed to be the future. The collapse of the Soviet Union meant that their ideas were now going to spread all across the world. But at home in both Britain and America there were still forces deep in the heart of both societies that had little to do with democracy. It seemed that despite all the changes of the last thirty years, that underneath the old structures of power and the corruption and the anger that created were still there. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head V: The Lordly Ones *****
In Russia that same dream seemed to have led to disaster … Russia had been taken over by a small group called the oligarchs who had looted the country of much of its wealth … No-one believed in communism or democracy any longer … They had been promised a democracy but what they got was chaos and corruption on a vast scale. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head VI Are We a Pigeon? Or Are We Dancer? *****
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale. Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia, 2013
We should stop going around babbling about how we’re the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic. The founding fathers hated two things, one was monarchy and the other was democracy, they gave us a constitution that saw to it we will have neither. I don’t know how wise they were. Gore Vidal, interview Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2001
The democratic charade that exists, the political theatre that has replaced our democratic process. And is just one more step towards this corporate totalitarianism which no-one seems willing or able to stop within the ruling elite. Chris Hedges, lecture Seattle University 2018, ‘Corporate Totalitarianism: The End Game’ *****
The diseases of despair that have plagued American society, the patholgies that rise out of a decaying culture. ibid.
At the end of empire as you begin decay they engage – historians call it micro-militarism – they carry out suicidal military fiascos. ibid.
We’re going to tax them at 91% like we used to … [and] destroy the military machine in this country which is the greatest enemy of democracy. ibid.
We lost control of our government, we lost control of our economy, and this isn’t unique to the United States. ibid.
Everything becomes tribal, truth no longer matters, the rights of the citizenry no longer matter. ibid.
The liberal class functions as a kind of safety valve in moment of distress … They never critique the system. ibid.
We have enough cumulative evidence to say that it was stolen from him [Bernie Saunders]. ibid.
We’re going to have to walk out into the wilderness for a long time. ibid.
So we saw that period in the ’70s when corporations organised. ibid.
The system only wants people who will perpetuate it. ibid.
What they are doing is extracting from us. ibid.
It has the capacity to commodify everything. ibid.
They are taking from us our constitutional rights by judicial fiat i.e. re-interpreting the right of unlimited corporate power through a distorted interpretation of the constitution. ibid.
Jesus didn’t come to make us rich. ibid.
There used to be a liberal wing of the Democratic Party but it’s long gone. ibid.
You can’t maintain a democracy in an oligarchy. ibid.
They are playing a very dangerous game by refusing to address the fundamental issues that have distorted our society. ibid.
You’re not going to rationally argue these people out of their world-view. ibid.
He [Trump] is the classic con artist that rises up out of a decayed state. ibid.
You’ve created fertile ground for the rise of American fascism. And our only response now is sustained mass acts of civil disobedience. ibid.
The state will be viscous … They will throw everything at us … We have no time left just from climate change, we have no time left, and in that sense resistance becomes a moral imperative. We have to stop being constrained by the tyranny of the practical. ibid.
Revolution is what I’m calling for … I’m calling for the overthrow of the corporate state. ibid.
But if we don’t stand up, it can’t be seen and we can’t use the word hope. I don’t know if we will win. I don’t even know if we will survive as a species. But these corporate forces have us by the throat and they have my children by the throat. And in the end, I don’t fight fascists because I will win, I fight fascists because they are fascists. ibid.
The disintegration of these social bonds plunges individuals into deep psychological distress. Chris Hedges, Sanctuary for Independent Media lecture New York 2018, ‘American Anomie’, Youtube 2.01.07
Our corporate coup d’etat and failed democracy has freed the oligarchic elite from all legal and moral constraints. ibid.
Mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence ... The electoral process is a facade. ibid.
A third of the American workforce earn less than $12 an hour and most of them do not have access to employer-sponsored health insurance. ibid.
Empires in decay embrace an almost wilful suicide. Blinded by their hubris and unable to face the reality of their diminishing power, they retreat into a fantasy world where hard and unpleasant facts no longer intrude. They replace diplomacy, multilateralism and politics with unilateralism, bombastic threats and the blunt instrument of war. ibid.
An aggressive criminalisation of the poor … The poor are thrown into prison and must forfeit all their property for being caught with small amounts of the same drugs. ibid.
The self-destructive pathologies that plague the United States: opioid addiction, morbid obesity, gambling, suicide, sexual sadism … hate groups and mass shootings, rise out of this anomie. ibid.
Capitalism: you don’t want this greed to dominate society. ibid.
What Samuel Huntington called derisively, ‘America’s excess of democracy’. Those were the rise of popular grass-roots movements. Chris Hedges, interview ‘How Republicans, Democrats and the Media Have Weakened US Democracy’, Youtube 1.07.34 2020
The most expensive election in history costing billions of dollars and bankrolled by a few billionaires. When 400 individuals have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans, and the top 1% donate political money than the bottom 90%, as ask, What’s the price for democracy? Empire: US Democracy: The Power of Money, Al Jazeera 2012
One heartbeat away from the presidency not a single vote cast in my name. Democracy is so overrated. House of Cards US s2e2: Chapter 15, Frank’s swearing in ceremony, Netflix 2014
Maybe the decision about what’s best for everyone should be left for everyone. Game of Thrones s8e6: The Iron Throne, Samwell, HBO 2019