There is no hope for a correction or a reversal within the formal systems of power

chris hedges decries the hypocrisy and embarrassing devotion to their own self-interests of the thoroughly corrupted and co-opted u.s. liberal class...

The liberal class, despite becoming an object of widespread public scorn, prefers the choreographed charade. It will decry the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or call for universal health care, but continue to defend and support a Democratic Party that has no intention of disrupting the corporate machine. As long as the charade is played, the liberal class can hold itself up as the conscience of the nation without having to act. It can maintain its privileged economic status. It can continue to live in an imaginary world where democratic reform and responsible government exist. It can pretend it has a voice and influence in the corridors of power. But the uselessness and irrelevancy of the liberal class are not lost on the tens of millions of Americans who suffer the indignities of the corporate state. And this is why liberals are rightly despised by the working class and the poor.

The liberal class is incapable of reforming itself. It does not hold within its ranks the rebels and iconoclasts who have the moral or physical courage to defy the corporate state and power elite. And when someone such as Cornel West speaks out, packs of careerist liberals—or perhaps one should call them neoliberals—descend on the apostate like hellhounds, never addressing the truths that are expressed but instead engaging in vicious character assassination. The same thing happened to Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Jeremiah Wright and others who defied the political orthodoxy of corporate capitalism. The corporate forces, which have taken control of the press and which break unions, run the universities, fund the arts and own the Democratic Party, demand the banishment of all who question the good intentions of the powerful. Liberals who comply are tolerated within the system. They are permitted to busy themselves with the boutique activism of political correctness, inclusiveness or multiculturalism. If they attempt to fight for the primacy of justice, they become pariahs.

[...]

To accept that Obama is, as West said, a mascot for Wall Street means having to challenge some frightening monoliths of power and give up the comfortable illusion that the Democratic Party or liberal institutions can be instruments for genuine reform. It means having to step outside the mainstream. It means a new radicalism. It means recognizing that there is no hope for a correction or a reversal within the formal systems of power. It means defying traditional systems of power. And liberals, who have become courtiers to the corporate state, must attempt to silence all those who condemn the ruthlessness and mendacity of these systems of destruction.

the 2008 election was only one of my most recent, desperately futile attempts to put faith in a system run amok... i confess to having convinced myself that justice and a belief in the common good could still hold sway and, with the greatest of personal effort, i was able to forcefully repress not only my reservations but also my ever-present cynicism to vote for the hope that obama claimed to represent... i gave him the benefit of the doubt, something i am perennially wont to do until reality shows me a deeper truth...

nonetheless, i refuse to stop giving the benefit of the doubt to people that may well later prove not to have deserved it... abandoning that level of faith for a mindset of pervasive and all-encompassing distrust is not an option for me... on the other hand, abandoning my all-encompassing desire to see and face the truth is not an option either, so i guess i will just have to continue to ride my own personal tiger...

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