ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

In the end, the US election was about despair. Despair over futures that evaporated with deindustrialisation. Despair over the loss of 30 million jobs in mass layoffs.

Despair over austerity programmes and the funneling of wealth upwards into the hands of rapacious oligarchs. Despair over a liberal class that refuses to acknowledge the suffering it orchestrated under neoliberalism or embrace New Deal-type programmes that will ameliorate this suffering.

Despair over the futile, endless wars, as well as the genocide in Gaza, where generals and politicians are never held accountable. Despair over a democratic system that has been seized by corporate and oligarchic power.

This despair has been played out on the bodies of the disenfranchised through opioid and alcoholism addictions, gambling, mass shootings, suicides — especially among middle-aged white males — morbid obesity and the investment of our emotional and intellectual life in tawdry spectacles and the allure of magical thinking, from the absurd promises of the Christian right to the Oprah-like belief that reality is never an impediment to our desires.

These are the pathologies of a deeply diseased culture, what Friedrich Nietzsche
calls an aggressive despiritualised nihilism.

Donald Trump is a symptom of our diseased society. He is not its cause. He is what is vomited up out of decay. He expresses a childish yearning to be an omnipotent god. This yearning resonates with Americans who feel they have been treated like human refuse. But the impossibility of being a god, as Ernest Becker writes, leads to its dark alternative — destroying like a god. This self-immolation is what comes next.

Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, along with the establishment wing of the Republican Party, which allied itself with Harris, live in their own non-reality-based belief system.

Smug, ‘moral’ crusade
Harris, who was anointed by party elites and never received a single primary vote, proudly trumpeted her endorsement by Dick Cheney, a politician who left office with a 13 percent approval rating. The smug, self-righteous “moral” crusade against Trump stokes the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics.

It reduces a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It refuses to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. It allows Democratic politicians to blithely ignore their base — 77 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents support an arms embargo against Israel.

The open collusion with corporate oppression and refusal to heed the desires and needs of the electorate neuters the press and Trump critics. These corporate puppets stand for nothing, other than their own advancement. The lies they tell to working men and women, especially with programmes such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), do far more damage than any of the lies uttered by Trump.

Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West predicted that, as Western democracies calcified and died, a class of “monied thugs,” people such as Trump, would replace the traditional political elites. Democracy would become a sham. Hatred would be fostered and fed to the masses to encourage them to tear themselves apart.

The American dream has become an American nightmare.

The social bonds, including jobs that gave working Americans a sense of purpose and stability, that gave them meaning and hope, have been sundered. The stagnation of tens of millions of lives, the realisation that it will not be better for their children, the predatory nature of our institutions, including education, health care and prisons, have engendered, along with despair, feelings of powerlessness and humiliation. It has bred loneliness, frustration, anger and a sense of worthlessness.

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— Chris Hedges (@ChrisLynnHedges) November 6, 2024

Collective mood to sadness
“When life is not worth living, everything becomes a pretext for ridding ourselves of it . . .,” Émile Durkheim wrote. “There is a collective mood, as there is an individual mood, that inclines nations to sadness. . . .  For individuals are too closely involved in the life of society for it to be sick without their being affected. Its suffering inevitably becomes theirs.”

Decayed societies, where a population is stripped of political, social and economic power, instinctively reach out for cult leaders. I watched this during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The cult leader promises a return to a mythical golden age and vows, as Trump does, to crush the forces embodied in demonised groups and individuals that are blamed for their misery.

The more outrageous cult leaders become, the more cult leaders flout law and social conventions, the more they gain in popularity. Cult leaders are immune to the norms of established society. This is their appeal. Cult leaders seek total power. Those who follow them grant them this power in the desperate hope that the cult leaders will save them.

All cults are personality cults. Cult leaders are narcissists. They demand obsequious fawning and total obedience. They prize loyalty above competence. They wield absolute control. They do not tolerate criticism. They are deeply insecure, a trait they attempt to cover up with bombastic grandiosity. They are amoral and emotionally and physically abusive. They see those around them as objects to be manipulated for their own empowerment, enjoyment and often sadistic entertainment.

All those outside the cult are branded as forces of evil, prompting an epic battle whose natural expression is violence.

We will not convince those who have surrendered their agency to a cult leader and embraced magical thinking through rational argument. We will not coerce them into submission. We will not find salvation for them or ourselves by supporting the Democratic Party.

Whole segments of American society are now bent on self-immolation. They despise this world and what it has done to them. Their personal and political behaviour is willfully suicidal. They seek to destroy, even if destruction leads to violence and death. They are no longer sustained by the comforting illusion of human progress, losing the only antidote to nihilism.

Work essential for human dignity
Pope John Paul II in 1981 issued an encyclical titled Laborem Exercens, or “Through Work.” He attacked the idea, fundamental to capitalism, that work was merely an exchange of money for labour. Work, he wrote, should not be reduced to the commodification of human beings through wages. Workers were not impersonal instruments to be manipulated like inanimate objects to increase profit. Work was essential to human dignity and self-fulfillment. It gave us a sense of empowerment and identity. It allowed us to build a relationship with society in which we could feel we contributed to social harmony and social cohesion, a relationship in which we had purpose.

The Pope castigated unemployment, underemployment, inadequate wages, automation and a lack of job security as violations of human dignity. These conditions, he wrote, were forces that negated self-esteem, personal satisfaction, responsibility and creativity. The exaltation of the machine, he warned, reduced human beings to the status of slaves. He called for full employment, a minimum wage large enough to support a family, the right of a parent to stay home with children, and jobs and a living wage for the disabled. He advocated, in order to sustain strong families, universal health insurance, pensions, accident insurance and work schedules that permitted free time and vacations. He wrote that all workers should have the right to form unions with the ability to strike.

We must invest our energy into organising mass movements to overthrow the corporate state through sustained acts of mass civil disobedience. This includes the most powerful weapon we possess — the strike. By turning our ire on the corporate state, we name the true sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our demise on demonised groups such as undocumented workers, Muslims or Blacks.

We give people an alternative to a corporate-indentured Democratic Party that cannot be rehabilitated. We make possible the restoration of an open society, one that serves the common good rather than corporate profit. We must demand nothing less than full employment, guaranteed minimum incomes, universal health insurance, free education at all levels, robust protection of the natural world and an end to militarism and imperialism.

We must create the possibility for a life of dignity, purpose and self-esteem. If we do not, it will ensure a Christianised fascism and ultimately, with the accelerating ecocide, our obliteration.

Republished from the Chris Hedges X page.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Mediawatch talks to TVNZ’s Simon Power about that, and the culture clash symbolised by this week’s FBoy Island controversy.

The Herald on Sunday’s revelations about the unpleasant backstory of a contestant on a new reality show last weekend jolted TVNZ in more ways than one.

Is FBoy Island responsible — or reprehensible?

“The power in the programme is very much in the hands of the three women involved as contestants. It’s also part of a broader strategy for rangatahi which includes documentaries, factual programming and scripted programming,” Power told Mediawatch.

“I accept the title is provocative, but the show is essentially looking to create some very important conversations — and it may just help equip younger people with tools to navigate a new era of online dating,” Power said (… though most people’s online dates aren’t arranged by TV producers sending FBoys their way on tropical islands)

Some also said FBoy Island was a symbol of commercial culture at TVNZ which means the government’s arranged marriage at first sight with RNZ might end in tears (or on Heartbreak Island, perhaps).

Will the new public media entity air shows like FBoy Island to attract the ad revenue it will still need to supplement public funding?

“That will be a matter for the new entity as to how it wishes to interpret the charter. But for us, it’s an HBO Max format from the US with Dutch, Danish and Swedish versions created to attract younger audiences. It has been picked up by the likes of the BBC for that very reason,” he said.

I’m a commercial TV company. Get me out of here?
At the first of the select committee hearings about the creation of Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media (ANZPM) earlier this month, the Broadcasting and Media Minister Willie Jackson said TVNZ needed to “change its attitude” to the public media entity project.

Some commentators speculated TVNZ was stalling, possibly hoping a change of government in 2023 might scupper the plan.

“No. We’re not even contemplating that. We understand who our shareholders are and that (they) wish to progress with the merger. As I’ve said publicly many times, TVNZ is very supportive and very enthusiastic about the opportunity,” Power told Mediawatch.

He also made that clear at this week’s Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee (EDSI) hearings at Parliament.

Much of TVNZ’s submission on the ANZPM legislation is about possible political interference or editorial influence if ANZPM is set up as an Autonomous Crown Entity (ACE)  — and Power’s claim that could enable “Muldoon-era control” made headlines.

“The ACE model is the wrong model. It allows for direction. The use of media is currency in politics — and the [tension] between media and politics is very different to some of these other (crown) entities,” Power told Mediawatch.

Independence, interference and financial vulnerability

But a more immediate problem is short-term funding. $109 million year was set in Budget 2022 — but only until 2026.

RNZ board member Jane Wrightson told the EDSI committee on Thursday that a commitment of at least five years was essential. Members of the E Tu trade union endorsed that subsequently.

Two previous attempts by Labour-led governments to deliver public service via TVNZ withered and died when funds ran out and the government changed. Opposition parties have repeatedly described ANZPM as wasteful spending which should be cut.

Power was a minister in the National-led government which repealed the TVNZ Charter and discontinued the funding of TVNZ’s non-commercial digital channels established under Labour.

Is history about to repeat?

“It’s for the government of the day to signal any permanency around that funding. That’s democracy at work,” Power said.

“If you want legislation to endure beyond governments, it’s really important you have cross-party understanding of what you’re trying to achieve — but more particularly that the model itself doesn’t allow any future leverage.”

New services? Give us a clue . . .
The FBoy Island controversy inadvertently highlighted a gap that a joined-up public media outfit could fill.

Earlier this year the Ministry for Social Development proposed engaging an offshore publisher for media content about safe relationships for young people. That angered local producers, including The Spinoff which broke that story.

If New Zealand had a public broadcaster that reached younger people, perhaps they wouldn’t have had to look elsewhere in the first place.

RNZ’s proposed youth service didn’t happen after a backlash over the impact it would have had on RNZ Concert in 2020.  A pared-back online service based on streaming music — Tahi — was later launched instead. TVNZ has an online service for a younger audience — Re: — but there is still no comprehensive national service for younger people.

When the select committee asked TVNZ’s head of content Cate Slater how she would deploy public funding if given a free hand, she identified that as the outstanding opportunity.

But the ANZPM Bill currently before Parliament does not oblige the new media entity to provide any specific services beyond the commercial-free ones already provided by RNZ.

That makes it impossible for the public to know what public service they’re likely to get from ANZPM — or what it will offer that commercial broadcasters cannot provide.

Yet TVNZ is calling for a “less prescriptive” charter.

“My view is that legislation works best when it’s principle-based rather than highly prescriptive, because it’s easy with prescription to omit by error. Whereas in a principle based approach, you end up debating at the margins rather than ‘what’s in’ and ‘out’.

“As things change, as markets change, as viewer trends change the way people use media changes. If the legislation is too prescriptive, it can become out of date,” Power said.

“It’s not RNZ or TVNZ that’s designed this legislation. We’re just trying to make it work. We’re doing our best to try and assist with getting the right tension in those discussions to make sure we get the right outcome.”

Power told the EDSI committee that ANZPM would “create a new culture” of its own. But media academic and public broadcasting advocate Dr Peter Thompson said in his submission the previous public service TVNZ Charter introduced in 2002 “was opposed by many within the company.”

”There is no obvious reason to suppose the ANZPM initiative will be different. Changes in organisational culture and identity requires more than legislation and a public charter stuck on the wall,” he wrote.

Commercial clout

Reporting of this week’s ANZPM hearings zeroed in on the main mutual concern of their own executives — the commercial clout ANZPM could carry.

The legislation does not limit the commercial activities ANZPM might undertake or revenue it might attract — and rival media companies fear it could corner the market in content, advertising and staff.

“The opportunity to be as commercially strong as possible is one that should be taken,” Power told Mediawatch.  

“The new organisation has been described as not-for-profit (but) that doesn’t mean an operating surplus wouldn’t be available — and there’s an opportunity to reinvest in local content, infrastructure and platforms that other listeners and viewers might use to access content from the new entity,” he said.

“If that at some point manages to help relieve the burden on taxpayers, then that’s something that the drafters of the legislation should think about,” he said.

TVNZ’s submission notes that when Budget 2022 was unveiled, the government estimated ANZPM to be a $400 million a year operation, with roughly half the funding from public sources and half from commercial revenue.

TVNZ’s submission said that was “unambitious”

“I’d be worried if somebody had worked that out in advance, because this should be a matter for the new entity to work out,” Power told Mediawatch.

Work in progress — or fait accompli?
“Advertising agencies and media agencies represent 900 businesses across New Zealand who have used TVNZ to access their customers to sell the goods and services to employ people and make a contribution to the economy. This is not something that you can just put a box around and put a number across,” he said.

That relationship is important to TVNZ staff. The recently-released annual report says 300 of TVNZ’s 733 full-time staff earn six-figure salaries.

But many Kiwis will care more about the public service they get from the state-owned media they pay for.

“I think that’s a slightly negative lens to put on the potential here. The legislation is clear that the primary driver of this new organisation is the public media outcomes,” Power told Mediawatch.

“If the commercial arm of the new entity can aid in gaining more revenue to reinvest into local content and to reinvest into public media outcomes, all the better.”

Another flaw in the plan came to light recently when the government’s broadcasting funding agency NZ on Air announced it was “urgently reshaping” its funding policies after being told on September 7 that more than half of its current budget would in future go to ANZPM.

This development had been foreseen long ago, and should have been highlighted by the consultants who worked on the business case and the minister officials overseeing the government’s Strong Public Media programme.

Dr Peter Thompson pointed out that the Joint Innovation Fund run by NZ on Air and RNZ in the past was a precedent that showed co-ordination was possible.

“I think the silence around NZ on Air is one of the things where clarification needs to be sought pretty quickly,” Power said.

The ANZPM plan was hatched behind closed doors and without public input — until the select committee process and this week’s hearings aired concerns.

Does TVNZ believe the government will make any significant changes to the legislation — or the plan cabinet has approved?

“I think all good policy makers  … want the public policy and legislation to endure. There are some changes that need to be made to the legislation to ensure that, and I sincerely hope those with the ability to influence that listen carefully and make some of those changes,” Power said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz