Chris Hedges: Territorial Gangsters [governments] Cannibalize their own country and pillage the natural resources of other countries

From [Chris Hedges] The ruling class of the United States, severed from a fact-based universe and blinded by idiocy, greed and hubris, has immolated the internal mechanisms that prevent dictatorship, and the external mechanisms designed to protect against a lawless world of colonialism and gunboat diplomacy.

U.S. democratic institutions are moribund. They are unable or unwilling to restrain the ruling gangster class. The lobby-infested Congress is a useless appendage. It surrendered its constitutional authority, including the right to declare war and pass legislation, long ago.

It sent a paltry 38 bills to Donald Trump’s desk to be signed into law last year. Most were “disapproval” resolutions rolling back regulations enacted during the Biden administration. Trump governs by imperial decree through executive orders.

The media, owned by corporations and oligarchs, from Jeff Bezos to Larry Ellison, is an echo chamber for the crimes of state, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinians; attacks on Iran, Yemen and Venezuela; and the pillage by the billionaire class. Money-saturated elections are a burlesque.

The diplomatic corps, tasked with negotiating treaties and agreements, preventing war and building alliances, has been dismantled. The courts, despite some rulings by courageous judges, including blocking National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago, are lackeys to corporate power and overseen by a Department of Justice whose primary function is silencing Trump’s political enemies.

The corporate-indentured Democratic Party, the purported opposition, blocks the only mechanism that can save Americans — popular mass movements and strikes — knowing its corrupt and despised party leadership will be swept aside.

Democratic Party leaders treat New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — a flicker of light in the darkness — as if he has leprosy. Better to let the whole ship go down than surrender their status and privilege.

Dictatorships are one-dimensional. They reduce politics to its simplest form: Do what I say or I will destroy you.

Nuance, complexity, compromise, and of course empathy and understanding, are beyond the tiny emotional bandwidth of gangsters, including the Gangster-in-Chief.

Dictatorships are a thug’s paradise. Gangsters, whether on Wall Street, Silicon Valley or in the White House, cannibalize their own country and pillage the natural resources of other countries.

Dictatorships invert the social order. Honesty, hard work, compassion, solidarity, self-sacrifice are negative qualities. Those who embody these qualities are marginalized and persecuted. The heartless, corrupt, mendacious, cruel and mediocre thrive.

Dictatorships empower goons to keep their victims — at home and abroad — immobilized. Goons from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Goons from Delta Force, Navy Seals and Black Ops C.I.A. teams, which as any Iraqi or Afghan can tell you are the most lethal death squads on the planet.

Goons from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) and Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.) — seen escorting a hand-cuffed President Nicolás Maduro in New York — the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and police departments.

Can anyone seriously make the argument that the U.S. is a democracy? Are there any democratic institutions that function? Is there any check on state power?

Is there any mechanism that can enforce the rule of law at home, where legal residents are snatched by masked thugs from our streets, where a phantom “radical left” is an excuse to criminalize dissent, where the highest court in the land bestows king-like power and immunity on Trump? [MORE]