Chris Hedges: America is a Tinderbox

[rugger1869]

HEDGES: Now, I should add that in American society we have a long tradition of extremist vigilante right-wing violence, which can be categorized as fascist, where you fuse the language and iconography of the state with the Christian religion, where you demonize the vulnerable--Muslims, undocumented workers, homosexuals, intellectuals, liberals, feminists--they have a long list of people they hate. And those are powerful forces within American society.

The left has been destroyed, especially the radical left, quite consciously in the whole name of anti-communism, and The Death of the Liberal Class really explains the destruction of those movements. But those movements were important, because as Howard Zinn points out in the People's History of the United States, they opened up the democratic space. The people who founded this country were slaveholding, white, male oligarchs who were terrified--and you can see it in the Federalist Papers--of any kind of popular democracy, and so that all of the advances within American society and, you know, within the industrialized world--we had the bloodiest, deadliest labor wars of any country. Hundreds of workers were killed. Thousands were wounded. The violence was quite brutal and quite extreme.

And so you saw with the abolitionists, with the labor movement, with the suffragists, even with the civil rights movement, movements outside the power structure condemned as radical that forced a liberal elite to respond and open up space. Now the radical movements are gone and destroyed. And more importantly, the liberal institutions have been disemboweled to serve corporate interests.

So the result is that we as citizens have through the traditional structures of power been left powerless to respond. The only hope left is to get out in the street and build the kind of mass movements that I saw in countries like East Germany, where you had half a million people showing up in Alexanderplatz in East Berlin or half a million people showing up in the streets of Prague in Wenceslas Square during the Velvet Revolution, which I also covered. I'm not even--I'm not going to--I'm not naive enough to tell you it's going to work, but appealing to the better nature of the Democratic Party, I can assure you is not going to work.

JAY: But doesn't this mass movement need some kind of electoral strategy? Otherwise you wind up in a situation, don't you, like what happened in Egypt, where Mubarak falls but there is no electoral strategy of the left in any place, so it's the Muslim Brotherhood that winds up--.

HEDGES: No. I've covered totalitarian states all over the world, and they all have elections.

[link:http://www.truth-out.org/video/item/17674-chris-hedges-america-is-a-tinderbox-part-4|

[TeeYiYi]

1. k+r ...nt

Last edited Sat Jul 20, 2013, 03:41 PM - Edit history (1)

TYY

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. No offense, but it's tinderbox.

[rugger1869]

3. More offended that this thread has generated two comments about a spelling error...

...and none about the content. *smh*

[randome]

4. More excitable rhetoric from Hedges.

How does he categorize 'vigilante' as 'fascist' and keep a straight face?

In case he doesn't understand the difference between the terms, 'vigilante' refers to a lone individual. 'Fascist' refers to government totalitarianism.

I take issue with 'the radical left has been destroyed'. We are coming out of a 30 year nightmare thanks to the GOP. But their time is passing and something else will replace them. Hopefully, the liberal tide that is building -albeit slowly- will continue.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]

[ForgoTheConsequence]

11. Liberals aren't the radical left.

They never have been and they never will be. Phil Ochs summed it up best. So saying "the radical left has been destroyed" and claiming that there is some sort of "liberal tide building" (which is laughable anyhow) don't contradict each-other.

[randome]

13. Okay.

But a more Progressive mood is entering the public consciousness. It's slow but it's real, as evidenced by the expansion of gay rights, access to birth control, expanded health care, equal pay, etc.

Religious institutions, especially, are taking a hit to the solar plexus on these issues, and that's all for the good.

The GOP is reacting viciously by trying to shut down abortion rights and promoting more gun violence but I think that is part of their dying attempt to cling to relevance.

I don't have hard data to support that, it's only my gut feeling.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesn’t always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one you’re already in.[/center][/font][hr]

[ananda]

16. I see what you mean.

Boy the vocabulary of discourse can be so insidious.

The false memes spread through disinformation and propaganda campaigns
just seem like ordinary parts of commentary now.

It does me a lot of good to have them pointed out. It's always good to
bring something shadowy and nefarious into the light for examination.

[Turbineguy]

36. Indeed

propaganda has come a long way since stuff like "... capitalist imperialist running dogs...".

[Enthusiast]

33. The radical left is as gone as the great tribes of American Indians.

But I would expect no less from you.

[Jackpine Radical]

53. Wrong: "'vigilante' refers to a lone individual."

vig·i·lan·te
noun \ˌvi-jə-ˈlan-tē\
Definition of VIGILANTE
: a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate); broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vigilante

Think Kristallnacht.

[rainy]

58. Could he have meant: taking it upon yourself to rid the world of evil liberals and gays and you

name the hated group to protect their corporatist beliefs(fascism)?

[MNBrewer]

91. vigilante can refer to a group

[Cleita]

5. Good thought provoking video.

However I don't agree that Occupy is dead. It needs to go underground with a new strategy.

[mick063]

18. Occupy is not dead

It just doesn't exist in the form that you easily recognized two years ago.

They were right. You can't kill an idea.


With respect to the "death" of the far left, one must be able to define it first. The far left of today is very different than the far left of thirty years ago. The entire spectrum has shifted mightily to the right. Just asking to restore the nation to where it once was is now considered "far left".

Finally, with respect to the "death of the far left", it is inevitable that socialist idealism will make a resurgence. Why? Because unchecked capitalism always, without fail, proves to be extremely unstable. Unchecked capitalism will produce another catastrophe, as it always has, and socialistic idealism will provide the solution to clean it all up, as it always has. Unfortunately, we must always hit rock bottom to implement it.

People will always look to government to bring us out of calamity, resulting in expansive government fulfilling more critical roles, providing more work, implementing more regulation to prevent the root causes of the calamity, and taxing the true sources of money to get it all done. Then the cycle begins anew. The corporatists and financial moguls "chipping away", over time, at the restraints placed upon them until finally, we achieve unchecked capitalism once again. It is a natural cycle. In modern times we are approaching the calamity, before socialistic idealism can swoop in to save the day.

It's going to happen, just a matter of when.

[socialist_n_TN]

45. Disagree with some of this....

There's a difference between a relative political spectrum and a objective political spectrum. I've argued this before, but just because you're not a Nazi doesn't make you "far left", no matter how loud the Faux Noise brigade screams it. Far left is an objective political stance with objective political views and goals. Think Syriza in Greece. That is also a radical left movement. Then there's the revolutionary left which is much more prominent in Europe than in the USA, although still not a huge movement. Yet.

I agree that socialism will make a comeback. I would argue that it already IS making a comeback. And yes, it IS because of the depredations of the capitalist system. Socialism is the ONLY true counter to capitalism.

[mick063]

48. You interpret "far left" from a historical, academic perspective

I interpret "far left" from a modern, propaganda perspective.

Perception is reality. Terms change their meaning, over time, because terms are subject to the context of how the majority uses the term in the present. I argue that a large proportion of the population spends far less time reading historical perspective than receiving persistent subliminal messaging from the media they encounter daily. Once the context has changed due to common usage, the academic usage will eventually have to follow suit.

In other words, the common man interprets "far left" in accordance to FOX news more than he does with academic reference simply because the common man is less likely to be exposed to academic reference.

Using that frame of reference, the entire spectrum has indeed shifted to the right. The "far left" is different than it was thirty years ago.

[socialist_n_TN]

88. Then it's up to us on the far left ....

(or revolutionary left as I am) to change the context, which means raising consciousness. Enough folks know enough history to know that the relative context is incorrect and we're not going to make any headway if we use the incorrect, relativist version of terms. Only by calling what is, what is, can we raise consciousness of the masses.

A positive is that people ARE studying the terminology nowdays more than ever. As evidence, I believe that Wiki said recently that "socialism" and "capitalism" were the most "looked up" words for the year (last year?). If you study, you learn and more people are studying. Now we've just got to give them varying groups that match their actual beliefs. Contrary to some modern anarchist thinking, groups and tendencies are not bad things in and of themselves. They give people who are just learning a place to start.

[ProSense]

6. Yeah,

HEDGES: Now, I should add that in American society we have a long tradition of extremist vigilante right-wing violence, which can be categorized as fascist, where you fuse the language and iconography of the state with the Christian religion, where you demonize the vulnerable--Muslims, undocumented workers, homosexuals, intellectuals, liberals, feminists--they have a long list of people they hate. And those are powerful forces within American society.

...the RW sucks. Still, when did "intellectuals" and "liberals" become the "vulnerable"?

HEDGES: That's what I'm saying. But I'm saying that we have to hold--you have to hold fast to that moral imperative. So if you keep conceding--I mean, let's look at what the liberal class has conceded to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party in Europe would be a far-right party. It's pro-war, it's anti-union, it's anti-civil liberties. I mean, Obama's assault on civil liberties is worse than Bush. It's an enemy of the press. It's used the Espionage Act to shut down whistleblowers, which are the lifeblood of a free press. It has assassinated American citizens. I mean, and, you know, at what point do you say enough?

And I think that Nader was correct when he ran for president by saying, if we can get 5, 10, 15 million people to withdraw from the system as a kind of counterweight, we can begin to put pressure from the other side. But right now there is no pressure from the other side, because we are effectively manipulated.

What utter crap.

[octoberlib]

10. I agree with you about the last 2 Hedges paragraphs you posted.

Hyperbole. He's using too broad of a brush. And the stuff about Nader is just bullshit. I thought he made some excellent points about corporate influence though.

[cantbeserious]

35. I Agree Completely With Hedges - Continuing To Endorse The DLC Democrats Is A Road To Failure

eom

[tsuki]

51. Agreed. I have lived in countries with a left, the US

has a right and hard right.

[octoberlib]

7. Excellent article.

HEDGES: Yes, because we have allowed ourselves to embrace an ideology which, at its core, states that all governance is about maximizing corporate profit at the expense of the citizenry. For what do we have structures of government, for what do we have institutions of state, if not to hold up all the citizenry, and especially the most vulnerable?

You know things are bad when you hear Republicans complaining about corporate influence in their party. And I have. My 70 year old Republican aunt from Kansas City actually asked me why people weren't out in the streets over this. I was floored.

And you can't sustain--first of all, you can't sustain a democracy in an oligarchy. That's not a new idea. Thucydides wrote about that about ancient Athens. But secondly, because there are no self-imposed limits--and in this sense Karl Marx was right, that unfettered, unregulated capitalism, especially on a global scale, is a revolutionary force. They will push and push and push until there is a backlash.

High quality democracies need a large middle class to be sustainable, hence my signature line.

[cali]

8. good grief. histrionic a little?

what crap. I'm sorry, but Hedges used to have some intellectual heft. Here, it's lacking to almost a shocking degree. If all you can see when you see the founding fathers is this: "The people who founded this country were slaveholding, white, male oligarchs who were terrified--and you can see it in the Federalist Papers--of any kind of popular democracy," you're not looking nearly hard enough. They were men of the Enlightenment and they were men of ideas and they sure as shit weren't all about "slaveholding, white male oligarchs who were terrified". That wasn't even the major piece.

And no the country is not a tinderbox.

Honestly, I think this what Hedges in some strange way wishes for.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

12. You underestimate the frustration of the working poor.

The ballot box hasn't worked for them in 30 years.

[cali]

14. oh no I don't. there is no indication that the working poor

are more interested in revolution than watching sitcoms. far from it.

[YoungDemCA]

17. Excuse me?

[cali]

77. the working poor are just as pacified by the distractions

of tv and sports and smart phones as the middle class. which is to say a lot pacified.

[YoungDemCA]

93. Even if that's true, what does pointing that out accomplish?

Other than perhaps making yourself feel superior to other people.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

20. Are you a progressive?

You sound more like a Koch brother. Why are you a democrat or progressive if you don't give a shit about the working poor and lower middle class?


What a disgusting tasteless comment. I wouldn't expect to see such disgusting bigotry towards the working people of America on progressive message board.

[cali]

72. I suggest you read my posts here before passing judgment

first of all, I think the same thing about the middle class. Our cultural opiates are tv, smart phones, apps, etc.

And I am poor. I'm on food stamps and medicaid and I'm recently disabled.

YOU know shit, honeypie.

disgusting, ignorant attack.

[secondvariety]

24. Do you know

any of the working poor? I'm not talking about just saying "Hi" to the hired help.

[cali]

73. hi. I'm on foodstamps and medicaid and recently disabled.

before having a horrible accident that entailed my dragging myself up the dirt to get help with a bone sticking out of my leg, I was the working poor. Now I'm just poor.

[secondvariety]

74. Sorry to hear that.

Maybe you're right. Maybe the working poor will have to get to the point of losing their cable and phones before they wake up. I'll admit I'm amazed at people I know who are barely keeping their head above water singing the praises of the GOP and big business. I don't even try to talk politics with them anymore.

[jtuck004]

37. You are absolutely CORRECT!

They haven't been in the voting booths in years, in any significant numbers. People who make more money vote, those who don't, generally, don't. It's public record, and anyone who wants to suggest otherwise can google it, if their education is so lacking.

In the street? Nope. The leaders of the pathetic little movements we see frighten no one, and instead have spittle and McDonalds applications thrown down on them. They are, generally, white, middle-class folks, many with other jobs that they leave to walk, but not hardly in numbers that the police can't control relatively easily.

Interesting the faux-outrage thrown at you, though why they lash out, stomp their feet and get pissy at you for stating it is telling. Then again, maybe that's why there is better attendance at Black Friday sales at Walmart by low-income workers than at the voting booth. Maybe they feel more welcome.

People should be should be voting, and marching, and perhaps even burning down the house. Go back to 1920's and 30's, when there were hundreds of thousands in the street, hungry children marching past the White house, people gathering across the world,

They aren't today, haven't been in a long time, regardless of those who want desperately to believe otherwise.

[rugger1869]

66. Maybe they just feel they have more to lose in taking a stand now...

n/t

[jtuck004]

71. OK, sure. But first, "they" is us.

Now, just for a moment, think back to life on the plantations for black folk. The one's in the field, that was hard. But what about the ones in the house? They had three square meals, slept in a bed, rarely were whipped, sometimes they even got to do the whipping.

Should those who lived in the house have left, even though they had the most to lose?

Harriet Tubman used to go try to free the slaves, and often as not had the most trouble with the people Malcom X called the "house negro". One of her quotes was "I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves".

Now, move forward a hundred fifty years or so. Single parent, working at McDonalds, life controlled by corporations, trying to make it on $15,000 a year or less, most likely has shit for job security, and little hope of anything else happening. Or maybe it's a guy that works at Walmart, on that same $15,000. If he has a kid he may well get food stamps. And if there are two adults and a couple of kids, even a job teaching for the state might qualify, especially if one of the parents is unemployed, which is all too common these days. Even if he tries to take some college classes over half of all the people now graduating from college are not being hired, and a hell of a lot more are never finishing, yet they now have a large debt that will follow them to their grave.

Jobs? Our last jobs report was considered a good one, yet 70,000 of the 195,000 jobs that were created pay slightly less than $15,000 a month. And they forgot to highlight that 326,000 full-time jobs were lost, later in the same report, and that part-time employment is increasingly replacing full-time work. Health care? Neither one of those people have any that will cover much more than a broken arm, and given that they can't hardly make it on the salary they have now, what is coming is highly unlikely to make it substantially better. Even if it does, doesn't do much good if they can't eat every day. Take a look at the food stamp roles - they started increasing in 2008, and now sit at about 47 million people. If things are improving, why are they not going down. (Note: Aramark, the private prison company, posts that they spend $1.75 per meal, 3x a day. That is MORE than we give people on foods stamps).

So what is their future? What have they got to lose? How is it better than the plantation? Many don't even have the comforts of the above-mentioned "house negro".

If it were 1880, it would be easier to see, and you don't even have to look at Southern plantations, there are plenty elsewhere. Back then they had rail cars outfitted with guns, sheriffs and police would ride with them as they rode through mining camps in the East, shot and killed men, women, and children in labor camps, or in the West they locked them up in open-air cages and violated their wives in front of them when they brought food. Today one might have a place to live for which they pay rent to a landlord who bought it after the banks screwed us in 2006-2008, and perhaps some food stamps, and maybe they only get shot at by bald-headed guys who carry guns around to "protect" the neighborhood. So it looks a little better, but is it?

This is what they are afraid of losing?

But you have got a point. If just one person does it, or just a few do it, they will pay full freight. But if 100 million people say "screw this" and refuse to live on the corporate plantation we have placed them on for at least the next 30 or 40 years (show me some real evidence that there is anything else other than hopes and dreams - I mean a real plan, not this phony crap of creating $8 an hour jobs on which one is expected to support a home, family, college for the kids, health care, retirement, and government employees on. (just ask Detroit how that works).

And that's what Cali was saying. They aren't getting together. Frankly, they attend the Black Friday sale at Walmart in greater numbers and with greater passion than they show up at the ballot box.

And until that changes, none of this other stuff will.

[Skeeter Barnes]

49. What about the fast food workers going on strike? That is an obvious indication.

[leftstreet]

52. Maybe watching sitcoms IS the revolution n/t

[LuvNewcastle]

9. K&R

[Bonhomme Richard]

15. Me.? I think he nails it other than a few comments.

But then I realized a long time ago that we are being played.

[certainot]

19. the difference the last 25 years: the left completely ignored the right's best weapon- talk radio-

and analysts and commentators and critics like hedges and so many liberals and progressives who criticize dems and the lack of progress analyze as if it doesn't exist or is some kind of handmaiden to fox TV, instead of the other way around. they can't read what's being blasted out from the think tanks from 1200 coordinated radio stations by professional liars like limbaugh and it gives them a headache or there's no time to listen to it so they ignore it. they analyze in a talk radio vacuum. and the activists would rather listen to music. so the collective left cannot say it's getting their reps' backs and we all end up playing catchup, expecting our reps to stick their necks out while the right gets a free speech free ride to take pot sots at them all day long.

talk radio kicks internet ass.

how much more time is the left going to waste playing catch up, pretending like we're going through some cyclical political RW emergence, when all it is is the 1%'s think tanks blasting 50 mil a week with well-designed PR operations, creating an alternate reality and made-to-order constituencies to enable their corrupt and loony politicians and media.

how can we have national scale fact-based discussions on any issue without it being easily distorted by those radio stations, averaging 20 per state and often piggybacking our university sports teams for community credibility and ad dollars? why isn't racism and fascism acceptable if 100 blowhards get to blast the country with racism and fascism all day and no one gets in their face? (the only exception being the stoprush flushrush boycott.)

the left better wake the fuck up fast. global warming is here..

[randome]

21. I think climate change will herald the death knell of the right.

We will reach a point -very soon- where it cannot be denied. The right has put a tremendous amount of effort into obfuscating on this issue. I don't think people will easily forget that.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesn’t always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one you’re already in.[/center][/font][hr]

[certainot]

43. i hope you're right, but when we get to that point their 'supreme scientists' like limbaugh

will be told to admit they're wrong and point out that it's too late unless we go all out on centralized solutions like nuclear and climate modification.

[randome]

47. Supreme scientist Limbaugh. I wish that was hyperbole.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]

[roamer65]

22. John F Kennedy...

"Those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

[ucrdem]

23. Hedges: "Who was the last liberal president we had? It was Richard Nixon"

I think he means it too. Hedges is a very canny RW fear-monger and his mission is to demoralize Dems and discourage them from voting. That's why he pushes Occupy, which has essentially the same mission. That's been clear to me from the start. I guess others don't catch on as quickly but come on, he's been at it for five years.



p.s. JMHO, YMMV

[ForgoTheConsequence]

25. You forgot the rest of the quote.

The last liberal President we had was Richard Nixon. He signed the Mine Health and Safety Act, and he agreed to create OSHA and the EPA, not because he was a liberal but because we still had the remnants of movements that scared him.

[randome]

28. Fear is never a good position from which to govern.

Neither is it a good position for the governed. We don't need fear. We need less adherence to corporations and power structures.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesn’t always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one you’re already in.[/center][/font][hr]

[polichick]

32. "When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people...

there is liberty." Thomas Jefferson

[randome]

34. Yeah, yeah, I get tired of trying to live our lives according to 18th century politicians.

Fear is not good. For anyone. That's actually the same philosophy encompassed by corporations. You will work harder and show more loyalty if you fear losing your job.

I disagree.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesn’t always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one you’re already in.[/center][/font][hr]

[ucrdem]

29. The rest of the quote is worse. He's saying elections are meaningless if not actually dangerous:

JAY: But doesn't this mass movement need some kind of electoral strategy? Otherwise you wind up in a situation, don't you, like what happened in Egypt, where Mubarak falls but there is no electoral strategy of the left in any place, so it's the Muslim Brotherhood that winds up--.

HEDGES: No. I've covered totalitarian states all over the world, and they all have elections.

JAY: No I didn't--I said doesn't it need an electoral strategy.

HEDGES: I'm not sure that it does. I think that the problem is--you know, and Karl Popper writes this in The Open Society and Its Enemies. He said the question is not how do you get good people to rule. Popper says that's the wrong question. Most people, Popper writes, attracted to power are at best mediocre, which is Obama, or venal, which is Bush. The question is: how do you make the power elite frightened of you? Who was the last liberal president we had? It was Richard Nixon--not because he was a liberal, but because he was frightened of movements. And there's a scene--I think it's in Kissinger's memoirs, 1971, huge antiwar demonstration surrounding the White House, and Nixon has put empty buses, city buses end-to-end as a kind of barricade, and he's standing at the window wringing his hands, going, Henry, they're going to break through the barricades and get us. And that's just where you want power, people in power to be. And that's why Sarkozy, who was a cretin, was unable to do too much damage to France, because if you got up in France and told French university students that they were going to pay $50,000 a year to go to college, they'd shut the damn country down.

Basically what he's getting at is that a) elections are irrelevant, or downright pernicious, because they tend to produce "weak" heads of state, like Obama, whom he reviles constantly, and Hollande, current socialist president of France, implied in his bit about Sarkozy, a neocon who was humiliated at the French polls a year ago. So Nixon and Sarkozy are peachy, and elections are totalitarian because they put Democrats and Socialists in power. That's Hedges in a nutshell.

[Bonhomme Richard]

39. They really are irrelevant in an accurate sense.

As far as the 1% are concerned.
They may stave off total destruction of the middle class, near term, but the way it works now it is eventually going to be a losing game. It's no different than an environmental group that negotiates with developers and end up giving away 30% of what they are trying to protect to save the rest. The developers only come back later for another 30%...eventually they have it all. It only takes patience on their part.
Vote Repug they get a whole lot of goodies.
Vote Democratic and the complainers are satisfied and they don't get as many goodies but the system stays intact.
The solution as I see it is to continue to support democratic candidate because that is the only option we have while, at the same time, agitating the system.
We really need to make them afraid of us.
I am done with being played.

[struggle4progress]

44. "Dear Mr Lincoln: I joined the Union Army to end slavery, not to fight over some silly cornfields

in Pennsylvania. Screw you! I'm done with this shit! Very sincerely yours, &c &c"

[Bonhomme Richard]

46. ? n/t

[struggle4progress]

57. It doesn't make sense either to regard elections as the whole struggle or as completely unrelated

to the struggle: we need to win elections as part of the fight for the political power to obtain certain objectives, but winning elections doesn't ensure automatic achievement of greater objectives -- it's just strategic high ground we need to hold; losing elections is a set-back; winning elections is a step-forward

[chervilant]

79. Now, see,

I read Hedges -- and reread what you quoted -- and I don't leap to the same conclusions.

hmm...

[Warren Stupidity]

89. No really that is not what he is getting at.

That is you creating a position for him that you can easily attack. "Nixon and Sarkozy are peachy". No, not what he said at all. Is "cretin" a variety of peach?

His point is that if the ruling class does not have a healthy fear of the people they will run roughshod over us, loot the treasury for their benefit, remove all the obstacles to their obsessive wealth accumulation, and do so with contemptuous arrogance. See for example this country for the last 30 years.

[randome]

26. Good call!

[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesn’t always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one you’re already in.[/center][/font][hr]

[ucrdem]

30. thanks!

[roamer65]

27. I disagree with him on that one.

The last liberal president was Jimmy Carter. November 1980 was where the shift to the right wing supply side poison took place. As Bill Maher very accurately stated, "Ronald Reagan was patient zero for the teabagger movement."

[grasswire]

55. Hedges is right wing????

Oh brother. Nutty, nutty.

[sufrommich]

84. Hedges is an Alex Jones favorite.More and more

you see the extremes nodding their addled heads at each other and way too often being celebrated here on DU.

[Enthusiast]

31. It is no coincidence that the enemies of the Reich

are today's enemies of the American far right.

[geek tragedy]

38. More impotent calls for a revolution while disdaining the

notion of engaging the great unwashed masses.

[struggle4progress]

40. "Philosophers have SOLVED the world -- but the real problem is to CHANGE it"

Last edited Sat Jul 20, 2013, 08:19 PM - Edit history (2)

Theses On Feuerbach (1845)

I own several of Mr Hedges' books, and in parts I find them excellent. I do not find them excellent in their entirety, however, and the quote above, from the Theses on Feuerbach, summarizes rather well some of my disappointments with Hedges

Hedges originally trained in seminary and afterwards opted for a career as a war-correspondent. Such work is dangerous, of course, and Hedges himself has discussed in print the curious addiction to excitement and danger that prevented many of his fellow war-reporters from changing careers before their luck fatally changed. His political views, I think, often show limitations plausibly associated with his background: he sometimes exhibits a quasi-religious absolutism, together with a continuing need for the excitement of life-and-death struggles. If he had a poetic temperament, and a good ear for popular moods, such tendencies might have produced a brilliant rhetorician, with the ability to stir people to action. And if his substantial analytical ability were not so derailed by his tendency to absolutism and his craving for excitement, he might have become a substantial commentator on current events

I tend to read Hedges because, from a purely philosophical PoV, I frequently rather agree with him. But here, precisely, is the danger. One of the characteristics of popular culture in America -- I say America, because I really cannot speak of other places -- is that political action is routinely confused with personal opinion: people (for example) claim to "support" something when they mean only that in some vague emotional manner they agree philosophically with the position they think is being discussed, while in reality they do nothing whatsoever material to support any definite political organizing around the issue. That is, as remarked in the Theses on Feuerbach:

... reality .. is considered only as the object of contemplation, but not as .. human activity ... Man must prove the truth .. of his thinking in practice ...

This American habit -- of believing we have "supported" something once we stated our opinions about it -- safeguards the status quo, because it ensures that we feel satisfied merely to think and discuss issues without inconveniencing ourselves by any dedication to concrete activity. In accordance with this tendency, we find ourselves arguing about the "meaning" of "news" stories that quote only two words from extensive remarks, or that provide only an incomplete and superficial background to some event -- conditions under which, of course, we actually learn nothing at all about the real world

Hedges at his worst plays into this habit, with "analyses" that are actually mere slogans without much content, such as "Obama's assault on civil liberties is worse than Bush" or "it's just a game, because whether it's Bush or whether it's Obama, Goldman Sachs wins always"

Like many people, Hedges' view of political action does not extend further than -- expressing an opinion. He has no background trying to organize people to do anything for a concrete result, and so his political views are not tethered to any particular reality by any experiment. He wants "to SOLVE the world" and has not sullied himself in the dull and tedious work of trying "to CHANGE it."

Unsurprisingly, he has no strategy beyond "make the power elite terrified of us." And his tactics are completely disconnected from this extraordinarily simplistic strategy: "I wrote Nader's major policy speeches for him in 2008 and voted for Jill Stein in the last election .. as a .. protest vote." But something much more sophisticated than that is needed

[randome]

41. Damn! That's well written!

[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]

[struggle4progress]

60. thanx

[mick063]

61. Perhaps unrelated to your post, but it inspired some thinking

Two forms of "concrete activity" are not given their proper due.

Conveying ideas to a large group. Easier to do now than in anytime in history.

Reaching consensus and voting as a block. Easier to do now, than in anytime in history.

I don't underestimate the power that induced the Arab Spring or coordinated Occupy. Modern technology has rendered old style politics obsolete. Indeed, politics have not kept up with technology, especially on the GOP side, and the most recent Presidential campaign indicated that the campaign which was the most "tech savvy" was at least on equal footing with the campaign that featured unparalleled campaign spending by conservative "SuperPACs", saturating every available media.

The argument should be about if the intended audience is being reached. For example, if the purpose is to persuade others, DU is not the appropriate place. Most here are fairly aligned.

Establishing networks can now be done at the speed of a keyboard. Talent to make a persuasive argument without putting an audience on the defensive remains the same "difference maker" talent, whether it is campaigning done the old or new ways.

There are parallels to be drawn. One can argue that if someone were to visit DU, for example, they have already reached a verdict on how they will vote. On the other hand, the same can be said about someone that would fight traffic and crowds to see a candidate in person. If they were willing to endure the inconvenience, they are likely to vote for that person. In both cases, it is more a case of "rallying troops" as opposed to expanding reach.

In the end, it will simply take dissatisfaction on a large scale to sway the vote. We can all "organize" ourselves into exhaustion, but there must be a catalyst to tempt folks to lend an ear. One can go as far as to say that in good times, apathy rules the day. Large swaths of the population will not demand change when their standard of living is comfortable. It is the reason why incumbency is so incredibly powerful. There are, however, enough "ALEC style" policies in place where impending economic calamity is almost a certainty. The progressive movement must be ready to pounce when that time arrives. Unfortunately, if this impending calamity occurs before the current administration is out of power, the Democratic party will be set back by a significant margin.

The final piece of the puzzle is of voters weighting a narrow band of issues. "Guns and God" is an incredibly powerful asset in many regions of the country. Only when economic disparity gains equal footing, will conservative influence be significantly diminished. Hedges makes this argument. Hedges puts emphasis on the proper message for change. The message that must be elevated to find a place in the narrow "issue set" that is dominating modern politics.

[Bobbie Jo]

90. Excellent post. nt

[NickB79]

42. I clicked on this thinking it was about wildfires

Political tinderbox, literal tinderbox.

Either way, we're going up in flames.

[KoKo]

50. Recommend...It's an interesting watch, for sure.

[madrchsod]

54. oh well, i guess we are really fucked

i guess

"..i`ll just sit here and watch the river flow..."

[RagAss]

56. How comical....

We're a nation of couch sitting, obese pumpkins who do nothing but talk and bang on keyboards. Thre will be no great uprising, be it facist, radical left or anything else. It will all end in a wimper. A dying fart.

[Narkos]

59. Anyone get sick of this guy?

I mean, it is just a constant barrage of the sky is falling, I find it hard to take him seriously.

[malokvale77]

78. Maybe for some...

the sky is falling, seriously.

[rrneck]

62. We aren't even close yet.

Still too fat and slick.

[Skip Intro]

63. Oh good Lord. I couldn't get through the first paragraph.

What the hell is he talking about?

[cali]

80. it's sad to me. It's not even a decent polemic

and the writing is almost like a parody. Once the guy could write. Hedges is so off base about where people in this country are at as well as that nonsense about the founding fathers. Does anyone actually think that's the whole truth? Yet that's how he presents it.

[Warren DeMontague]

65. Hedges is a fucking goober.

I wrote Nader's major policy speeches for him in 2008 and voted for Jill Stein in the last election

Blah blah blah fart blah blah

[bhikkhu]

67. Having achieved decent standards of equality, working and living conditions...

it might be more sensible to say that those outrages that moved people to protest have generally been won. The goal isn't to march around protesting, and one shouldn't despair that people aren't marching around protesting. Most people have jobs, families, houses, lives to live, etc.

Not that things couldn't be better - the recent repug assualts on women's rights and poverty relief are definitely steps back, and income inequality is definitely an issue. But for the most part we have far far better conditions of equality, better standards of living, better health, better working conditions, and overall better lives than people in the 19th century and the early 20th.

Its not so much that the radical left has been destroyed, its that the radical left won. And then it went home to get on with enjoying what it worked so hard for.

[marions ghost]

68. "the radical left won"

fail

[bhikkhu]

69. Women's rights, child labor laws, the weekend, a 40 hour work week, civil rights protections,

environmental standards, workplace safety regulations, and so on..."radical left" is subject to interpretation, but we have come a very very long way from the way things were.

[marions ghost]

70. You can go ahead and celebrate

the gains of the early 20th century over and over. So we don't have children in factory sweatshops, or women held as politically voiceless chattel, or minorities abused worse than dogs. Environmental standards -- they are a joke they are so inadequate, and it's one step forward, two steps back there.

And that is "progress" for the later 20th and early 21st century? Have you noticed that many of the hard won gains that have been made are targeted and assaulted as we speak?

Your standards are really low if you think we are making progress.

"The left has won" is one of the most ridiculous & disingenuous statements I've seen put forth in quite a while. (Let's not debate "left"--I think we all know what liberal progressive values are, and they have been completely trashed in this country).

Progress..........................you & I have different ideas of what that looks like.

[Douglas Carpenter]

75. excellent interview with one of the great iconoclastic thinkers and real journalist

[cali]

81. I can't take him seriously most of the time anymore and

here's why:

the people who founded this country were slaveholding, white, male oligarchs who were terrified--and you can see it in the Federalist Papers--of any kind of popular democracy

I'm not someone who views the founders of this country with adulation, but that statement is just a piece of the truth and Hedges presents it as the whole truth- it's a habit of his to do that, and I don't think it's an admirable one. furthermore, not all of the founders, by any means, were slaveholding and to characterize them as "terrified" is just sloppy.

Hedges writes polemics these days and not very well thought out or original ones.

[Douglas Carpenter]

82. I would not use the words uplifting to describe his writings - But I do think they are for the most

part brutally truthful.

[cali]

83. I don't care about uplifting. I do care about facts and truth- the

latter, of course, is largely subjective.

That's my problem with the Hedges of these days (and I was a longtime reader and admirer), he too often strays from facts and his conclusions- or truth, if you will- doesn't dovetail with most of mine.

And I just have trouble reading someone who uses polemics to the extent he does. It's like he's lost his voice.

[Douglas Carpenter]

85. well his background as you know is as a seminary graduate training to be a minister

He is giving his conclusions which I believe to be pretty much accurate although with no doubt a more polemic style than he had when he worked as a mainstream journalist. Although I see where he is polemical I don't see where he is factually wrong. Even what he said about the founding fathers was pretty much the case. The 17th and 18th Century Age of Enlightenment was pretty much an enlightenment by and for the upper classes. I don't see a lot of evidence that the founding fathers genuinely believed in the universal franchise or the kind of egalitarianism that is now assumed to be part of modern democracy. In regards to the current state of affairs, I believe he has actually arrived at some of the same fundamental conclusions about the nature of American politics and the nature of the Democratic Party that you have also arrived at.

I think Mr. Hedges is even more correct when he speaks of the need to have those in authority afraid of the people. All the great social changes came - not just because the right people won the elections - They came when government needed to pacify the people. With the end of the kind of popular protest that we once saw coupled with the end of the need for capitalism to prove its superiority to a competing ideology - we now see little need for authority to be responsive to the demands of the masses of people.

[cali]

87. no, it's actually not true

Have you read Peter Gay's book on the subject?

http://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Science-Freedom-Vol-v/dp/0393313662/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374416032&sr=1-2

And no, of course the founding fathers didn't believe in the kind of egalitarianism that is sort of kinda maybe part of modern democracy, but they sure believed in extending beyond the upper class. It's a mistake, I believe, to apply 20th and 21st century thought and values to 18th century people. It just doesn't make any sense.

I think Hedges and I have arrived at some of the same conclusions, sure, but I don't feel a kinship with his detestation of liberals as a group and I disagree with his conclusions about where we are as far as the working class rising up.

On another note, I always enjoy discussing things with you, Douglas. Whether we agree or disagree, you always provide food for thought, well stated.

Btw, have you ever read E.M. Forster's Two Cheers for Democracy? The political essays in it were written as a liberal polemic in the years between 1936 and 1950. Remarkably prescient and so beautifully written.

[Skeeter Barnes]

92. It's not just Hedges.

If Howard Zinn were here, he'd tell you the function of liberals has always been to prevent meaningful change, to funnel working class anger into the ballot box where it can be calmed and directed away from the 1%.

Obamacare is a good example. The President had a mandate from the people to do something great after advocating for a "strong public option" but he let the insurance lobbyists write the bill. Now we've got a mandate to pay for what we've always had, what has led countless people to financial ruin, corporate controlled insurance. Whether you get affordable healthcare or not is still up to them.

The founding fathers certainly were enlightened. They realized they needed a buffer between themselves and the poor. That was the extent of their concern for economic equality. It was all for the preservation of their own wealth and power.

[Berlum]

76. k and r

nt

[Paladin]

86. K&R. (nt)