the rule of idiots in the last days of all empires the idiots take over they mirror the collective stupidity of a civilization that has detached itself from reality written by Chris Hedges for the Chris Hedges report chris Hedges narrated by Ununas Wong the last days of dying empires are dominated by idiots the Roman Mayan French Hapsburg Ottoman Romangh Iranian and Soviet dynasties crumbled under the stupidity of their decadent rulers who absented themselves from reality plundered their nations and retreated into echo chambers where fact and fiction were indistinguishable donald Trump and the siccophantic buffoons in his administration are updated versions of the reigns of the Roman Emperor Nero who allocated vast state expenditures to attain magical powers the Chinese emperor Tin Shu Huang who funded repeated expeditions to a mythical island of immortals to bring back a potion that would give him eternal life and a feckless Tsarist court that sat around reading tarot cards and attending seances as Russia was decimated by a war that consumed over two million lives and revolution brewed in the streets in Hitler and the Germans the political philosopher Eric Vogelan dismisses the idea that Hitler gifted an oratory and political opportunism but poorly educated and vulgar mesmerized and seduced the German people the Germans he writes supported Hitler and the grotesque marginal figures surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness vogalin defines stupidity as a loss of reality the loss of reality means a stupid person cannot rightly orient his action in the world in which he lives the demagogue who is always an idiot is not a freak or social mutation the demagogue expresses the society's zeitgeist its collective departure from a rational world of verifiable fact these idiots who promise to recapture lost glory and power do not create they only destroy they accelerate the collapse limited in intellectual ability lacking any moral compass grossly incompetent and filled with rage and established elites who they see as having slighted and rejected them they remake the world into a playground for grifters con artists and megalomaniacs they make war on universities banish scientific research pedal quack theories about vaccines as a pretext to expand mass surveillance and data sharing strip legal residents of their rights and empower armies of goons which is what the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE has become to spread fear and ensure pacivity reality whether the climate crisis or the emiseration of the working class does not impinge on their fantasies the worse it gets the more idiotic they become hannah Arent blames a society that willingly embraces radical evil on this collective thoughtlessness desperate to escape from the stagnation where they and their children are trapped hopeless and in despair a betrayed population is conditioned to exploit everyone around them in a desperate scramble to advance people are objects to be used mirroring the cruelty inflicted by the ruling class a society convulsed by disorder and chaos as Vogelan points out celebrates the morally degenerate those who are cunning manipulative deceitful and violent in an open democratic society these attributes are despised and criminalized those who exhibit them are condemned as stupid a man or woman who behaves in this way Vogelan notes will be socially boycotted but the social cultural and moral norms in a diseased society are inverted the attributes that sustain an open society a concern for the common good honesty trust and self-sacrifice are ridiculed they are detrimental to existence in a diseased society when a society as Plato notes abandons the common good it always unleashes amoral lusts violence greed and sexual exploitation and fosters magical thinking the focus of my book Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle the only thing these dying regimes do well is spectacle these bread and circus acts like Trump's $40 million army parade to be held on his birthday on June 14th keep a distressed population entertained the disification of America the land of eternally happy thoughts and positive attitudes the land where everything is possible is pedled to mask the cruelty of economic stagnation and social inequality the population is conditioned by mass culture dominated by sexual commodification benal and mindless entertainment and graphic depictions of violence to blame itself for failure saurin Kirkagard in the present age warns that the modern state seeks to eradicate conscience and shape and manipulate individuals into a pliable and indoctrinated public this public is not real it is as Kirkagard writes a monstrous abstraction an all embracing something which is nothing a mirage in short we become part of a herd unreal individuals who never are and never can be united in an actual situation or organization and yet are held together as a whole those who question the public those who denounce the corruption of the ruling class are dismissed as dreamers freaks or traitors but only they according to the Greek definition of the polus can be considered citizens thomas Payne writes that a despotic government is a fungus that grows out of a corrupt civil society this is what happened to past societies it is what happened to us it's tempting to personalize the decay as if ridding ourselves of Trump will return us to sanity and sobriety but the rot and corruption has ruined all of our democratic institutions which function in form not in content the consent of the governed is a cruel joke congress is a club on the take from billionaires and corporations the courts are appendages of corporations and the rich the press is an echo chamber of the elite some of whom do not like Trump but none of whom advocate the social and political reforms that could save us from despatism it's about how we dress up despotism not desperatism itself the historian Ramsay McMullen in corruption and the decline of Rome writes that what destroyed the Roman Empire was the diverting of governmental force its misdirection power became about enriching private interests this misdirection renders government powerless at least as an institution that can address the needs and protect the rights of the citizenry our government in this sense is powerless it's a tool of corporations banks the war industry and oligarchs it cannibalizes itself to funnel wealth upwards the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immodderate greatness edward Gibbon writes "Prosperity ripened the principle of decay the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight the story of the ruin is simple and obvious and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted for so long the Roman Emperor Comeodus like Trump was entranced with his own vanity he commissioned statues of himself as Hercules and had little interest in governance he fancied himself a star of the arena staging gladiatorial contests where he was crowned the victor and killing lions with a bow and arrow the empire he renamed Rome the Colonia Commodana colony of Comeodus was a vehicle to satiate his bottomless narcissism and lust for wealth he sold public offices the way Trump sells pardons and favors to those who invest in his cryptocurrencies or donate to his inauguration committee or presidential library finally the emperor's advisers arranged to have him strangled to death in his bath by a professional wrestler after he announced that he would assume the consil ship dressed as a gladiator but his assassination did nothing to halt the decline comeodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax who was assassinated 3 months later the Ptorian guards auctioned off the office of emperor the next emperor Ddius Giulianis lasted 66 days there would be five emperors in 193 AD the year after the assassination of Comeodus like the late Roman Empire our republic is dead our constitutional rights due process habius corpus privacy freedom from exploitation fair elections and disscent have been taken from us by judicial and legislative fiat these rights exist only in name the vast disconnect between the purported values of our faux democracy and reality means our political discourse the words we use to describe ourselves and our political system are absurd walter Benjamin wrote in 1940 amid the rise of European fascism and looming world war a clay painting named Anelus Novice shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating his eyes are staring his mouth is open his wings are spread this is how one pictures the angel of history his face is turned towards the past where we perceive a chain of events he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet the angel would like to stay awaken the dead and make whole what has been smashed but a storm is blowing from paradise it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them the storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned while the pile of debris before him grows skyward this storm is what we call progress our decay our illiteracy and collective retreat from reality was long in the making the steady erosion of our rights especially our rights as voters the transformation of the organs of state into tools of exploitation the emiseration of the working poor and middle class the lies that saturate our airwaves the degrading of public education the endless and futile wars the staggering public debt the collapse of our physical infrastructure mirror the last days of all empires trump the pyromaniac entertains us as we go down that was the rule of idiots written by Chris Hedges narrated by Ununice Wong for the Chris Hedges report chrised hedges.substack.com substack.com [Music]