Afrasianet - By: Chris Hedges .American military writer and correspondent - In the last days of all empires, fools take over. They reflect the collective stupidity of a civilization that has detached from reality. The last days of moribund empires are dominated by a handful of fools. The Romans, Mayans, French, Habsburgs, Romanovs, Iranians, and Soviets collapsed under the weight of the folly of their decadent rulers, who broke away from reality, plundered their people, and retreated into chambers of echo that make fact and fiction one thing.
What is happening in America is an updated version of the rule of the Roman emperor Nero, who allocated enormous state expenditures to gain magical powers; the Chinese emperor Qin Shihuang, who financed repeated campaigns to a fairy island to bring the elixir of eternal life; and the court of weak Russian tsars, who sat reading tarot cards and attending necromancy sessions while Russia was drained by a war that killed more than two million people, while revolution was brewing in the streets.
In his book "Hitler and the Germans," the political philosopher Eric Vogelin denies the idea that Hitler—gifted in rhetoric and political opportunism, but ill-educated and rude— had charmed and seduced the German people. Vogelin writes that the Germans supported Hitler and the "ugly marginal figures" who surrounded him because he embodied the ills of a sick society, one that is economically collapsing and hopeless.
Vogelin defines stupidity as a "loss of reality." This loss of reality means that a "stupid" person is unable to "properly direct their actions in the world in which they live." A demagogue, who is always a fool, is not a social monster, but expresses the zeitgeist in society, his collective exit from a rational world governed by verifiable truths. These fools, who promise to regain lost glory and power, create nothing, they only destroy.
They are accelerating the collapse. Mentally limited, lacking any moral compass, grossly incompetent and full of anger at the established elites they see as abusing and rejecting them, they are reshaping the world into a playground for crooks, charlatans, and power maniacs.
They wage war on universities, ban scientific research, promote absurd theories about vaccines as a pretext to expand mass surveillance and data sharing, strip legitimate residents of their rights, and empower armies of thugs — as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become — to spread fear and ensure obedience.
Reality, be it the climate crisis or the misery of the working class, does not break into their illusions. The worse the situation, the more foolish they become. Hannah Arendt blames a society that voluntarily embraces radical evil for this collective "thoughtlessness."
Those desperate for stagnant conditions, trapped in a cycle of hopelessness with no hope for themselves and their children, imbibe the feeling that they have to exploit everyone around them in a desperate race for survival.
People are treated as tools, a reflection of the cruelty exerted on them by the ruling class. Vogelin points out that a society ravaged by chaos and turmoil is finally celebrating decadent immoralists: cunning, cunning, deceitful, violent.
In an open democratic society, these traits are condemned and criminalized. Those who show them are stigmatized as "stupid," and as Vogelin notes, "a man (or woman) who behaves in this way will be socially boycotted." But social, cultural and moral norms in a sick society are turned upside down.
The qualities that underpin an open society—such as concern for the common good, honesty, trust, and self-sacrifice—are ridiculed. These values become detrimental to survival in a sick society. When, as Plato points out, society abandons the common good, it always unleashes immoral lusts—violence, greed, sexual exploitation—and encourages magical thinking, which I address in my book The Empire of Illusion: The End of Culture and the Triumph of Parade.
And the only thing these moribund systems are good at is the show. These festivals of "bread and circus" — such as Trump's lavish $40 million military parade on his June 14 birthday — keep restless residents entertained.
Transforming America into Disneyland, a land of everlasting happy thoughts and positive attitudes, where anything is possible, is a veil that hides the cruelty of economic stagnation and social inequality.
Mass culture, dominated by sexual commodity, trivial and thoughtless entertainment, and violent scenes, programmes the population to blame itself for failure.
In the "present era", Søren Kierkegaard warns that the modern state seeks to eliminate conscience, shape individuals and turn them into an easily manipulative "public opinion." This "public opinion" is not real. It is, as Kierkegaard writes, "an enormous abstraction, something universal nothing, a mirage."
In short, we become a herd of "unreal individuals who cannot come together in a real position or organization – yet remain together as a unit." Those who question "public opinion," those who denounce the corruption of the ruling class, are dismissed as dreamers, homosexuals or traitors. But only they, according to the Greek definition of "police" (state/city), can be considered true citizens.
Thomas Payne writes that authoritarian government is a mushroom that grows from a corrupt civil society. This is what happened to previous societies, and it is what happened to us. It is tempting to blame this decline on one person, as if getting rid of Trump would return us to reason and sobriety. But rot and corruption have destroyed all our democratic institutions, which no longer function only nominally, not fundamentally.
"Convict consent" is a cruel joke. Congress is a club in the pockets of billionaires and corporations. Courts are extensions for corporations and wealthy people. The press is an echo chamber for elites; some don't like Trump, but none advocate social and political reforms that can save us from tyranny. It's all about how to decorate tyranny, not confront it.
Historian Ramsey McMullen, in his book Corruption and the Decline of Rome, writes that what destroyed the Roman Empire was "the transformation of government power, and its wrong direction."
Power has become a means of enriching vested interests. This erroneous directive renders the government powerless – at least as an institution capable of meeting the needs of citizens and protecting their rights. In this sense, our government is powerless.
It is a tool in the hands of corporations, banks, the war industry and oligarchs. It preys on itself to pour wealth upwards. Edward Gibbon writes: "Rome's decline was the natural and inevitable consequence of its excessive greatness. Welfare matured the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied as conquests expanded; and once accidents or time removed artificial supports, enormous construction was subjected to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the devastation is simple and clear: instead of questioning why the Roman Empire was destroyed, it is worth marveling that it lasted so long."
The Roman emperor Commodus was fascinated by himself. He ordered statues of him to be made portraying Hercules, and was not concerned with matters of government. He saw himself as a star on the battlefield, organizing gladiator battles in which he was always crowned, and showing off his skills in killing lions with a bow and arrow. The empire—renamed the "colony of Commodus"—turned into a means of nurturing his insatiable narcissism and boundless ambition for wealth.
He sold positions and privileges publicly, just as some leaders of the age who confuse the state with their own interests, promote their business projects from within the office, and grant privileges to those who give well in their campaigns or presidential libraries.
Eventually, Emperor Commodus' advisers arranged for his assassination to be strangled in his bath by a professional wrestler after he announced his intention to take over the consulate dressed as a gladiator. But his assassination did not stop the decline. He was succeeded by Pertinx, who was assassinated three months later. The Praetorian Guard sold the emperor's post at auction. The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted only 66 days.
In 193 AD, after the assassination of Commodus, five different emperors ruled. Like the late Roman Empire, our republic is dead. Our constitutional rights – such as due process and the Habiyas Corpus principle, which represented protection against arbitrary detention, privacy, and freedom of election and protest – were robbed of us by judicial and legislative decisions.
These rights exist in name only. The enormous chasm between the purported values of our pseudo-democracy and reality makes our political discourse, and the words we use to describe ourselves and our political system, pure vain.
Walter Benjamin wrote in 1940, amid the rise of European fascism and the approach of World War: "A painting called 'The New Angel' depicts an angel who seems to be about to move away from something staring at him. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are outstretched. This is how one imagines the angel of history. His face is directed towards the past. We see a series of events, but he sees one catastrophe, piling on top of a catastrophe, throwing debris in front of his feet.
The angel wants to stay, to awaken the dead, and to repair what has been broken. But a storm blows from heaven, and it gets stuck in his wings so violently that he can no longer close them. The storm forcibly pushes him into the future, while his back is towards him, and the rubble of debris rises in front of him towards the sky. This storm is what we call progress." Our decline, our illiteracy, our collective retreat from reality was the result of a long process.
The continuous erosion of our rights, especially our rights as voters; the transformation of state institutions into instruments of exploitation; the misery of the poor and middle class; the lies that fill our media spaces; the deterioration of public education; the endless absurd wars; the horrific public debt; and the collapse of infrastructure... all reflect the last days of decline of all empires. Trump, in the midst of that, amuses us as we fall.