There will be no gun control, not only because of the gun lobby and a corrupt political class, but because for many white Americans the idea of the gun is the only power they have left.
Violent riots, cities burning, defunded and demoralized police (scapegoats for the harm caused by decades of failed liberal policies), increased violent crime, activist DAs refusing to prosecute criminals and releasing dangerous convicts, open borders bringing in more criminals, drugs and weapons.
And then the same political class responsible for all of this demands that we give up our constitutional right to protect ourselves and our families.
It appears that legalized cannabis is doing a real number on our left-brained politicos. They are figuratively shooting themselves in both of their left feet.
There is no liberal class at work today in the US. Just culture wars. Mr. Hedges wrote a whole book about it the death of the liberal class. So blaming them is like blaming the boogeyman. They expect to get "news" from a TV or computer screen.
I was just thinking of the similar dismissive invective being delivered at the Neville Chamberlain dinner table during the 1930s. It is really difficult for some people to recognize the true evil threats over their need to belong to something.
Yes, to the dimwit commentator of the Substack Swamp, every situation has something to do with WWII. Every enemy is Hitler (or if they are really smart, Mussolini). The U.S. is Weimar Germany and liberals are the real Nazis. I would be for suppression of free speech if it meant I didn't have to wade though all the shit people post.
except there’s been recent evidence of those in power using such extreme mechanisms against their own people, right to the north of our border. peoples whose only crime was to stand up to mandated heath care using an ineffective medicine. their bank accounts were seized, their lives overturned.
look no further than the western country of australia to see what distance a government is willing to go against an unarmed population. even in california, arrests for simply existing, alone on a beach.
you may not see they tyranny creeping in, but many of us do. and there are a vast majority of us who do not want to raise arms against other people simply due to skin color, but want to extend the availability of arms so they may protect themselves as we face a steep cliff of economic fall off, food shortages we’ve been warned are coming, not to mention energy prices climbing through the roof.
you may not want to admit it, but we’ve been living in soft times. soft times create soft people, which in turn leads to hard times. those hard times are coming, look no further than the nightly news.
Come over to Australia and see what it is like to live virtually free of gun violence. Send your kid to school here without your heart racing in fear. If you come leave your obscene guns behind in your land of crazies. White US is surely the sickest society on earth
there was a time my father suggested I should move to australia. they’re like us, just 20 years behind, he said. now? no thanks. my liberty and individual freedoms (that extend far beyond firearm ownership) are much more important to me.
additionally, you may not have firearm deaths, but homicides grew by 300% after you outlawed guns. tell me again how you’re somehow safer.
How do you explain all the gun violence in black communities in the USA?
The recent school shooter in Uvalde, Texas was hispanicxan. The crime scene was declared a special non-enforcement zone for the Border Patrol. Uvalde is about 50 miles from the Mexico border. The shooter's mother was/is a drug addict, maybe alcoholic.
Was the shooter born a fetal-alcohol-syndrome baby?
No, they're shooting at you...through the young, dispossessed kids both parties have been churning out of our public indoctrination schools we've all been funding for the past 40 some years. If you been made to feel you have nothing to lose, then you will invariably, well, lose it.
Not sure where you are getting defunded police from, maybe Fox brainwashing? The police in this country come at a cost of $200 billion per year and if they were a standing army, would be the sixth largest in the world (right behind Russia).
So take your far-right, Nutzi nonsense elsewhere, we are all filled up here.
Agreed...congress including AOC just voted to give billions to the capitol police. The police in this country are hardly hurting financially...and I am not talking about the extortion money they pull in with tickets.
@Penny Adrian - I am not sure where you are coming from but at face value your screed is spoken like a true-blue virtue signaling liberal that lives in a gated community!!! I am speaking for the downtrodden here! You have completely missed the point. The police stop minorities far more than whites and the stops are pre-textual stops where they are looking for 'gotchas' to corral folks to the prison industrial complex. We are not talking about white folks joy riding in Mommy and Daddy's Tesla toys here. We are talking about the fact that minorities in this country have not only crime and corruption in the cities but they have a mob of enforcers that do nothing but pull them over for anything and everything. Clearly you have NO concept of life in flyover country and what goes on in the inner cities. Ironically the BEST security system folks in the inner cities have are their guns. The very guns limousine liberals want to take away from them...
Let me respond from a left wing secular humanist liberal democracy north of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York. The best way I know how. I am under the care of the Department of Autistic Affairs. They know more of what I am than I do. I only know who I am. I am very inspired and very angered by idiots like yourself who choose nonsense over what you know to be the the truth. The only cure for hatred is love and I understand that is your most inconvenient truth.
We are the only possible future we are about the welfare of the individual in a democratic tyranny. Democracy is hard but unfortunately democracy is far from free it requires tremendous sacrifice.
I love the debate Milton started after his boss Cromwell destroyed English Civilization.
In Quebec race, gender and religion are on the church side of the impenetrable wall between church and state. And it is good.
I'll take Milton, Locke Newton and Edmund Burke and you have a pretty impressive lineup in Chaucer Shakespeare, More, and Johnson.
Of course I have Twain and Frederick Douglas and you have Machiavelli.
makes you wonder if Socrates really existed or Plato had to invent him.
Benjamin Franklin is our George Washington. He was fluently bilingual in the languages of Voltaire and Johnson. He was a light during the enlightenment. He was a scientist, a philosopher a secular humanist (Deist), journalist and satirist when people were reading Swift, and Bonhomme Richard. Gulliver's Travels is in diary form just like Robinson Crusoe and Bonhomme Richard had a daily Almanac.
Oh I forgot only 17% of the population could read and more than half of them weren't fully human.
Revolutionaries have known the exhilaration of being sure that they are instruments of destiny. They feel that, with ridiculous ease, they are sweeping away the delusions of centuries. Now, at last, the world is being made real. Truth is flowering.
But as has almost always been the case, it is the revolutionaries that are the tyrants in waiting. They shroud themselves in branding for being of the benevolent and not the nasty... whether vogue in religious or secular alignment... but it is generally the complete opposite. They are only "virtuous" imposters of virtue pursuing corrupted and corrupt-able self-interest.
Those heroes defeating the tyrants once again have to travail both the trials of the enemy, and the trials of a broken and backwards narrative against the hero. It has always been and it will always be. People like me just see that truth. You should try too.
We had a revolution. The revolution is flourishing and our society is conservative and we like a well run economy by the best experts available under the supervision of ethical philosophers not corporate managers
Mark Twain said it best about politics and we love our Mark Twain. He is our 21st century philosopher. The best defense of freedom is a free and independent press.
"Politicians like diapers need to be changed regularly, for exactly the same reason."
Americans forget Philadelphia and Boston were not Franklin's only home. Our history books tell us that it was Montreal's merchants under Franklin's persuasion that dumped the tea into Boston Harbour. Franklin was fluent in the language of Voltaire.
Poor Richard or Bonhomme Richard was the World's George Washington.
Franklin emancipated his own slaves. Lincoln had no slaves to emancipate.
There is a reason Chris Hedges wrote the forward to Voltaire's Bastard's twentieth anniversary edition.
It subtitle is the The Dictatorship of Reason in the West and is dedicated to Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil.
The intersection of Christianity and Greco/Roman values has not been a great success.
Do you have a friend who can teach you how to fact check?
How do you teach history to those for whom Everything they know is wrong.
Benjamin Franklin was a world renowned ethical humanist liberal enlightenment philosopher. Second only to Voltaire. He was as liberal as liberal got when he started writing Poor Richard's Almanac in 1732.
He was Zelensky not Adams or Jefferson.
"If you want a faithful servant and one that you like--- serve yourself."
Marx wasn't even born and Franklin was very very rich. Maybe even richer than Zelensky when he entered politics with his own media company.
They say it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter paradise.
Franklin not only preached equality for all he freed his slaves and tied his own shoes.
The American revolution was a Marxist revolution long before Marx was born.
Marx studied Franklin and Voltaire before writing his manifesto.
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
Every week I read your articles and say to myself, this is the best one you’ve ever written! Then the next week you come along with one like this which is even better. This is a wonderful article. Hard to use that word because truth is so painful and our history makes me feel so sad.
With the loss of manufacturing and the family farm, the future of anyone without substantial means is limited to the service sector and the building trades. Public schools are understaffed and underfunded unless you are in an upscale, white neighborhood.
A future with an American middle class has disappeared. The only way this imbalance can be sustained is through violence or the threat of violence. Until small scale farming and local manufacturing are rekindled, the future seems untenable. People from around the world want to be in America because this is where everything is still available, for the moment. But it won't last.
It will take a natural or economic catastrophe to bring things back in focus. Guns can't grow food, educate our children or make plowshares.
Fetish is the right word. Asking a gun fetishist to voluntarily give up a gun is going to prove just as silly as asking a billionaire to give up his money. I think the pathology is the same.
Ralph Nader interviewed the great Hazel Henderson just before her recent death, and she referred to the “money meme”. But I think it’s more than that, it’s an irrational attachment to something that often leads to harmful behavior.
Some guys like to snuggle up to women’s shoes, others have more dangerous preferences. But call it a money meme or a gun fetish, it’s surely beyond the power of rational influence. And unfortunately, that usually implies force of some kind.
Fetish is of course the only correct word. I discovered it a long time ago at the Oriental Institute on the campus of the University of Chicago. I never could attend UofC at 74 I am beginning to write. I could only visit and pretend to be a visiting philosopher. I couldn't do elementary school. It is amazing what academics say to visiting philosophers.
Forgive me for rolling 🤣 It is almost as painful as what priests say to visiting priests.
Let me tell you about sleeping at Note Dame.
I sound like Chomsky but I live on Sesame Street and I love Big Bird.
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
Do I real need to cite the Western canon of literature or should I cite today's ersatz flavour of semi intellectual thought. Giraffes have long necks because they have stiff penises not because they want sour grapes. Benjamin Franklin is tomorrow's philosopher and Washington was one of Tennyson's six hundred.
His was not to reason why, his was but to do and die.
Franklin was about reason. Franklin didn't only talk about the philosophy of emancipation. Franklin freed his slaves and fomented revolution. Benjamin Franklin led the Boston Tea Party. It was Franklin's Montreal Merchants who threw the East Indian Company tea into Boston Harbour, it was Bejamin Franklin's Montreal Newspaper that boarded the East Indian Company ships bearing the East Indian Company flag in Boston Harbour. It was Bonhomme Richard who edited the Montreal Gazette that chased the East India Company out of much of British North America.
Parliament had taken control in 1688 and the King had no real power.
In 1773 the East India Company ran the British Colonies and they owned the British Parliament. The London Stock Exchange is late 17th century.
So much for the history you learned in school.
Mark Twain said:
"Politicians like diapers must be changed regularly, for the exact same reason."
In 2022 a well trained militia is called the police, fire and health department. In 1773 the East India Company ran health, education, and welfare as well as police and fire departments and parliaments ran armies.
In 1773 Franklin was about as liberal as a man can get. Franklin was right up there with Voltaire and Burke as far as enlightenment humanist liberal philosophy can get.
How did Orwell lose America to Franco Fascists?
That is what pierce is afraid of.
Orwell fought against the Franco Fascists and lost but retained his sanity.
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
What Chris fails to recognize it that life is vacuous for those living in gated communities and flying private jets that circumvent pedestrian portals. Amongst only themselves, they no longer feel privileged and unique. They have an innate desire to be, at least periodically, immersed in the presence of the peons in order to feel exceptional, elite, and powerful. No contrast; no image.
Some say that the current socioeconomic collapse is being orchestrated by the oligarch class. I disagree. They're just not that smart. Besides, they have the most to lose in a state of overwhelmingly gun fueled anarchy and chaos. It would be their very position of contrast that would make them the targeted bullseye.
The goal of the elites is simply to thin the herd of peons, not separate themselves entirely. The planet is a finite resource. It cannot sustain 10B homo sapiens ravenously culling its resources. Thinning of the herd is what the endless wars and experimental vaccines are haphazardly trying to achieve. Do you see the elite's kids going off to fight these battles for resources? Do you think these folks actually took the MrNA into their own bodies? You say you saw it for yourself on T.V., did you? Of course you did.
Here in Quebec we need one million new Quebec citizens every three year in a world on the cusp of seeing a decline in new human citizens. Revolutionary technological economies and a feudal economic system don't mesh. Its time for American to study Darwin not the fascism Wilson unleashed with his Committee on Public Information the Ministry of Truth.
Wilson was a public intellectual, a fascist and a racist. He was Harvard Yale and Princeton. Maybe he still is.
Where did Mrs Xi go to school? What about the Bin Salmans and Netanyahus? What about the Saudi Jordanian Kings? At least Musk studied engineering at Queen's. The queen is in her 90s maybe they should pre-empt her departure and call it King's but that is in Oxford not in the King's town.
I WAS READING BONHOMME RICHARD BEFORE CHRIS ENTERED KINDERGARTEN.
The last time I could vote for Trudeau his name was Pierre Eliot and he was a Quebec aristocrat. Only residents of Montreal's working class Papineau district vote for Justin Trudeau. That is where he chose to live and teach school until he was 40 and was recruited into politics. He won the liberal leadership in a boxing match against a Conservative Senator who was younger and an accomplished martial artist.
People gave a lot of money to charity to watch pretty boy beaten to a pulp. Don't let pretty boy fool you he is not what you think you see. He is a Ninja.
You can watch the Trudeau Brazeau charity event on youtube.
It was carried on right wing media. There are blood thirsty savages here in Canada you don't own them all. This wasn't WWE this was two martial artists who respected each other and their artistry. You haven't got a monopoly on ignorant louts and we too sometimes elect them to office . Brazeau and Trudeau are honourable and courageous men. It is hard to hate honourable men even those on the other side. I am neither liberal nor conservative I vote strictly for what I consider best policy but I am a member of Canada's NDP social democrats but they are to the right of our conservative Quebec government.
The great linguistic philosopher Samuel Johnson was a classical conservative. His philosophical rival were the classical liberal Edmund Burke and the radical progressive Benjamin Franklin. That is real American history. In 1800 Adams the Federalist never conceded to Thomas Jefferson the Democratic Republican. Adams still hasn't conceded.
People own guns for various reasons. Many of them legitimate. Throughout history, the worst atrocities have been committed by governments against their own citizens. We're witnessing now a global genocide. Owning a gun is not a 'fetish'. Gun violence is the natural outcome of an entire culture losing its way. Please don't demonize people who feel threatened from all sides. Instead, work to create a society where people no longer feel a gun is the only option. Until that time, people do have a right to own a weapon. I am speaking as someone who does not and will not own a gun, but I can now relate to the people who do.
Please share and help educate…
"GUNS AND CONTROL
Turkey established gun control in 1911. Soon after, 1.5 million Armenians unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
The Soviet Union established gun control in 1929. Soon after, about 20 million dissidents unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
China established gun control in 1935. Soon after, 20 million political dissidents unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
Germany established gun control in 1938. Soon after, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
Cambodia established gun control in 1956. Soon after, one million people unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
Guatemala established gun control in 1964. Soon after, 100,000 Mayan Indians unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
Uganda established gun control in 1970. Soon after, 300,000 Christians unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
Australia established gun control in 1996. Right now, Australian citizens are being brutalized and terrorized by their tyrannical government.
Venezuela established Desarma La Violencia to disarm citizens in 2010. Once one of the richest countries in Latin America, Venezuela is currently free falling into violent unrest and extreme poverty.
New Zealand expanded gun control in 2019. Right now, New Zealand citizens are being brutalized and terrorized by their tyrannical government.
Canada expanded gun control in 2020. Right now, Canadian citizens are being brutalized and terrorized by their tyrannical government. "
What is a petulant child supposed to do pretend he doesn't exist?
Fascist pig, hate monger and idiot start loving yourself. That is an order from the Generalissimo. It is hard for him rotting in Hell. In case you weren't aware Dr Castro was a Spaniard who loved Cubans and hated fascists.
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
I understand your fear of the truth but in my world Chomsky bot is about the greatest compliment one could lay at someone's feet. I suspect Chris Hedges feels much the same.
Kevin I am autistic and it would take me the rest of my life to explain the joke. I invited pierce to visit almost a year ago and rather than accept the invitation he is giving himself reason to not visit one of the world's great tourist regions. Two of our local inns are for those who easily spend 20,000 USD a day for food lodging and being with the right people at the right time at the right place. I eat better and I tell better jokes and share better times and all I ask is help with the dishes for my wife and I . We are one hundred and fifty nine years of living among you the les sauvages the people outside the walls of the city.
My wife is a graduate of the world's finest universities and I failed kindergarten. We are an odd couple and my friends well what can I say? Anyone for when Eastern Orthodoxy turned away from the Holy Roman Empire or why is the music of French Speaking Appalachia sound so much like Robbie Burns?
I love Orwell and pierce is a Franco Fascist. You know pierce has nothing new to say.
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
I just talked with my brother Jesus yesterday. He told me the USA is beyond even his pay grade and he didn't just postpone his visit ; he cancelled and cancelled his visa request.
I believe the issues around gun control are more complex than the usually perspicacious pen of Chris Hedges reveals in this article. As counterpoint to his notion that guns are the last refuge of the weakened rural underclass, read this substack article by long time liberal Naomi Wolf defending the Second Amendment (https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/rethinking-the-second-amendment?s=r). Also Ole Dammegard has contributed a lot of research into the area of false flag operations (https://lightonconspiracies.com) revealing that a lot of domestic attacks are orchestrated if not perpetrated by the CIA or other government operatives who are using the violence to advance political agenda items. While no-one is arguing in favor of gun violence, and the argument that it is a "mental health" crisis, not a gun availability crisis is a weak one, the shenanigans of our government, first and foremost tricking or arm-twisting millions of Americans to inject themselves with poison does make one wonder to what extent the government is a legitimate threat for which we need to be fully prepared. Paranoid as this may sound, it didn't seem paranoid to the Founders in 1776 and we would not be here if they had failed to arm themselves. Yes, I hear you say, but this is 2022, not 1776. And, I would ask, you would then argue that history does not repeat itself?
Naomi Wolf is no liberal. One might define what she has always been, at best, is neoliberal but really, to be accurate, libertarian. Her feminism was not feminism but a regressive form of individualism. Her anti-vaxx propaganda and paranoia are truly dangerous--but no more dangerous than her outlandish article referred to here that purports to defend the right to guns afforded by the Second Amendment. She resorts to specious grammatical analysis of the amendment that any sophomore could parse. Nor does she make any distinctions between her right to carry her beloved pistol and the right for Americans (mostly white men murderers) to buy and deploy semi-automatic and automatic weaponry against innocent men, women, and children. We are not in the 18th century in terms of the kind of technology that affords an individual uncanny powers of mayhem. Sure, let Naomi keep her little lady pistol she is so fond of because she feels it will protect her. And probably won't, but that's another story, given how those carrying weapons often find themselves victims of others' weaponry. But let's rid this country of the kind of gun sales that put weapons of mass destruction into the hands of individuals who are arming themselves against fantasies, in their madness, in their paranoia, their racist narcissism.
Sanctimoniousness and condescension are not arguments, they are attitudes deployed to belittle another's perspective. If you have a point to make, you should make it, not speak in disparaging tones about those who are not there to defend themselves.
@Susan - You must me one of those folks that live behind a gate and live a life of luxury. You have no clue what it is like out here in the hinterlands. As Chris points out, the pathologies are all out in the open. You have completely overlooked the two main drivers for the high gun deaths in this country. 1) Most white men murder themselves. White male suicide rate is through the roof. 2) Most mass murders happen in the US inner cities - black on black crime. The folks in the inner cities (and I know them) use guns to protect themselves from the craziness as the police cannot be everywhere. Children are killed in droves from drive-by shootings and just horrible situations where gang violence just erupts instantaneously. You are looking at this from a white woman perspective and it is a privileged perspective. You completely discount the experience that folks in the inner city experience. You completely discount the hopelessness in American hinterland...no jobs, no future, nothing. Maybe you have some of that racist narcissism that you need to address?
It was so hard for me to finally accept that those who perpetuate this gun culture are absolutely onboard with more kids dying. I used to think they just didn’t understand the devastation being done to children but then I realized that in fact they do. Not only do they totally understand they will use it as a marketing tool to sell even more guns in the guise of protection. It’s such a harsh reality to accept that that is exactly who they are. Your article points out every piece of propaganda they use to keep the masses in constant fear and willing to execute each other rather than address the real culprits. This is absolute madness and is speeding up our demise as a country.
It is difficult for me to understand the drive to power of the Republicans (with the connivance of Democrats and their accompanying decision to abandon of the working class). It seems obvious to me that if half the population is disenfranchised, their hope destroyed, their jobs lost that they will eventually turn on the elites and the rich and the country will descend into open violence. In the process the country itself will be destroyed, carved up into fiefdoms each fighting the others. It is not possible for me to intellectually conceive of a large group of people coming together to intentionally do that while having no awareness of the repercussions (history is full of examples).
Nevertheless, I see it happening all around me and getting worse month by month by month. Like so many others, I am terribly frightened. And like so many others, I feel abandoned by my country, betrayed by the people who are supposed to govern wisely for all the people.
A major trauma for the Jews in Germany, the ones who survived anyway, was the abandonment by those to whom they had given their trust. They kept believing that normal would return but it never did. Instead, bit by bit more laws were passed, more court decisions made, and soon there was nothing left for them at all. Many of those who survived were never able to restore their trust for their government and its various departments. I see that same process playing out here. Day by day, as the Supreme Court destroys decades of protections for the weakest among us, as Republicans in Congress refuse to pass any laws to help but rather become ever more complicit in the betrayal all of us are experiencing, as Democrats actively undo the compact FDR made with America and take the things Republicans have done even further, I see hope dying, see trust in government eroding. So many people walk around now with a look in their eyes that I have only ever seen in those who have suffered extreme trauma.
It is not hard to see what the future holds for us; it is as grim as any time we have ever faced as a nation. At the founding, in the years before the civil war, during the depression . . . it is like all of those rolled into one. I see no people of the caliber of the Founders, no Washington, no Lincoln, no FDR. All I can see is systemic collapse, riots, severe economic depression, and war. I grieve for my country and what could have been.
You must have been locked up in a psych ward or otherwise lost in an echo chamber for all of the decades since the 1960s that 100s/1000s of people have been working on a reboot of (western) civilization in a variety of ways.
Here is one entry point into one of the many networks of those kinds of people:
We'll be back. Ass kicked and back for more fun with Ronnies Kids, until the place is gone someone will put up a fight. It might be pretty hard now, since there is no such thing as truth anymore, we get maybes instead. Americans are going to keep their god awful weapons collections, not for sustenance, only for proof of what they don't have to put up with no matter what. It's the dying duck holding onto the reed at the bottom of the lake, I might die but you can't eat me. Compromise with them and cheat like they do.
Chris closes this essay with a stark and startling truth, "We don’t matter." We are trained to believe we live in a civilized culture, and that the civilization is what makes the culture livable; but the civilization we have is based and dependent upon domination, above all else. This belief is what allowed the Europeans to view this land as a place of endless potential; perfect for seeding a new Europe. All that was needed was to dominate and eradicate the uncooperative indigenous inhabitants, who didn't matter; and then to bring in indentured servants (dominated serfs and peasants) and dominated slaves, who also didn't matter; to clear and work the lands on behalf of the feudal masters. Nothing has changed, other than that the industrial revolution created technologies that allow for much easier and more efficient domination. The bulk of the population is descended from the serfs, peasants, and slaves who were brought in to clear and work the lands. That many of us may now have college degrees means nothing. From the perspective of the ruling class, we are still here to perform tasks on their behalf. The mindset of the ruling class of this civilization is domination, domination, and domination. It has not changed, and never will. We don't matter.
Every civilization is based on domination and caste systems. Many/most "indigenous" cultures engage in genocide when the opportunity presents.
The evolution of "classic liberalism" in the NW European gene pool is why the USA was able to dominate pre-liberal, pre-modern and pre-literate cultures, including those based on caste systems, with superior technology.
Liberal societies banned slavery for the first time in history.
Toxic leftism is ILLIBERAL and totalitarian.
You are brainwashed with narratives from the SOROS TROLL FARM.
More kids died from side effects of the mRNA vaccine SO FAR THIS YEAR than in all the years since Columbine. If we want to save children, let's don't poison them.
A different perspective offered by Bret Weinstein, and one that resonates with me after the last 2+ years, having seen what an initial descent into tyranny could look like. Very different to my opinions 2 years ago. https://unherd.com/2021/11/the-liberal-case-for-gun-ownership-1/
Yes, Bret Weinstein was viciously threatened with violence by some insane, radical, extremists on the totalitarian, neomarxist, radical "left" at Evergreen College.
Other evolutionary theorists were attack by the totalitarians on the "left" starting in the 1970s because their scientific research contradicted the flawed, utopian models of human nature that are the foundation of leftist ideology.
Continue the good work Chris. It would seem there is a direct connection to the amoral Pentagon military budget that is supported by both the Democratic and Republican parties, the violence we see in our domestic shootings all tied together neatly by the Dave Grossman types that promote the philosophy of killology to our ever growing military police departments?
I agree. We live in a country where violence and guns/weapons are encouraged both domestically and internationally as the best way to solve problems. We need more cooperation instead of confrontation.
Boy, the conservatives are going to love this one Chris. I haven’t even started reading the comments, but I’m sure there will be something about how taking away the guns will mean only criminals have guns. The unspoken part being, they’re afraid only urban blacks and latinos will have the guns, but they couldn’t care less if a white teenager can walk into a local gun store and load up with an AR-15 and go shoot up a school, that’s of course freedom.
Then of course there will be the people parsing your gun terminology and pedantically pointing out that most civilian AR-15s are chambered for the 223 cartridge not the 5.56. It’s endless how the gun proponents fetishize the particulars in this regard as a way to idealize themselves as gun intellectuals that know better than some journalist, no matter how many guns he has fired.
There will be the idiots that declare they and their guns are what keep government overreach in check. If they understood history at all, they would realize that is completely absurd. Waco? Anyone that sets up a little compound and declares themself in defiance of USA law will get taken down by the feds. The feds can listen in on every piece of communication in the USA with no real restrictions. The only thing that will stop the USA government from annihilating a rebellion instantly is whether the public is watching and then the propaganda machine will have anyone dumb enough to join labeled as domestic terrorists such that even if they live they’ll find themselves being waterboarded in some hellhole while people forget that they exist.
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” is a phrase attributed to Communist leader Mao Zedong. The irony is that gun zealots agree with that and yet everything good about the USA is in opposition to that idea and to the very structure it entails. Democracy cannot be sustained with violence and endless war, we’ve tried that in dozens of countries and never succeeded.
Pay people a living wage. Stop funneling trillions to arms manufacturers to sustain foreign wars while people go hungry and homeless here in the USA.
I live in a liberal democracy. Arms are still weapons of war and guns well the second amendment being about guns; in a slave owning 83% illiterate rural society is simply shit coming out of Scalia's ass.
As Dickens said. "The law is an ass---an idiot."
Of course Dickens' family were miscreants and deserved to live in debtor's prison but poor farms were so much more humane than poor houses.
I love Chris but I wish he did satire. Rolling on the floor laughing and dying with tears in one's eyes or singular in my case is an awfully good way to go.
Anyone understand why pierce followed me here? I followed Chris since before he left the Newspaper of Record. Pierce is not exactly a Chris aficionado. Chris makes Aaron Matte look like a conservative.
Listen Humpty!!! Your words mean nothing they are labels that suit your purpose. Why don't you read Alice's Adventure's Through the Looking Glass and what she found there. Charles Dodgson was the Oxford Don of the Logic Department.
I know you know what you want your words to mean; but they are meaningless in any meaningful discussion. Finish High School and decide where you go from there.
In my humble opinion this world already has too many crazy psychologists, too many professors of law and far too many ideological lunatics.
Maybe some things need to be conserved and some things need to be changed it is all scientific THEORY.
It took me almost 70 years to find a way to write.
I fear many things but I never feared clowns or the truth.
Clowns are not funny, the are not scary they are just effing clowns just like all of us . We put on our make-up before we go out into the world.
Fools step in where wise men fear to tread.
I don't know who said what.
"I am standing on the shoulders of giants." Issac Newton who doesn't need my citation. He is a measure of mass and energy
Violent riots, cities burning, defunded and demoralized police (scapegoats for the harm caused by decades of failed liberal policies), increased violent crime, activist DAs refusing to prosecute criminals and releasing dangerous convicts, open borders bringing in more criminals, drugs and weapons.
And then the same political class responsible for all of this demands that we give up our constitutional right to protect ourselves and our families.
It appears that legalized cannabis is doing a real number on our left-brained politicos. They are figuratively shooting themselves in both of their left feet.
Your entire comment is a purile collection of propagandistic, neo-fascistic fallacies.
There is no liberal class at work today in the US. Just culture wars. Mr. Hedges wrote a whole book about it the death of the liberal class. So blaming them is like blaming the boogeyman. They expect to get "news" from a TV or computer screen.
The totalitarians on the cultural-left are ILLIBERAL.
Silly word games are neither meaningful, interesting or useful.
I was just thinking of the similar dismissive invective being delivered at the Neville Chamberlain dinner table during the 1930s. It is really difficult for some people to recognize the true evil threats over their need to belong to something.
Yes, to the dimwit commentator of the Substack Swamp, every situation has something to do with WWII. Every enemy is Hitler (or if they are really smart, Mussolini). The U.S. is Weimar Germany and liberals are the real Nazis. I would be for suppression of free speech if it meant I didn't have to wade though all the shit people post.
except there’s been recent evidence of those in power using such extreme mechanisms against their own people, right to the north of our border. peoples whose only crime was to stand up to mandated heath care using an ineffective medicine. their bank accounts were seized, their lives overturned.
look no further than the western country of australia to see what distance a government is willing to go against an unarmed population. even in california, arrests for simply existing, alone on a beach.
you may not see they tyranny creeping in, but many of us do. and there are a vast majority of us who do not want to raise arms against other people simply due to skin color, but want to extend the availability of arms so they may protect themselves as we face a steep cliff of economic fall off, food shortages we’ve been warned are coming, not to mention energy prices climbing through the roof.
you may not want to admit it, but we’ve been living in soft times. soft times create soft people, which in turn leads to hard times. those hard times are coming, look no further than the nightly news.
Come over to Australia and see what it is like to live virtually free of gun violence. Send your kid to school here without your heart racing in fear. If you come leave your obscene guns behind in your land of crazies. White US is surely the sickest society on earth
there was a time my father suggested I should move to australia. they’re like us, just 20 years behind, he said. now? no thanks. my liberty and individual freedoms (that extend far beyond firearm ownership) are much more important to me.
additionally, you may not have firearm deaths, but homicides grew by 300% after you outlawed guns. tell me again how you’re somehow safer.
Why is there such a high level of crime and violence in South Africa?
How many black (people of African descent) communities do you have in Australia?
How do you explain all the gun violence in black communities in the USA?
The recent school shooter in Uvalde, Texas was hispanicxan. The crime scene was declared a special non-enforcement zone for the Border Patrol. Uvalde is about 50 miles from the Mexico border. The shooter's mother was/is a drug addict, maybe alcoholic.
Was the shooter born a fetal-alcohol-syndrome baby?
https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/large-study-indicates-left-wing-authoritarianism-exists-and-is-a-key-predictor-of-psychological-and-behavioral-outcomes-61318
The totalitarians/ILLIBERALS on the cultural-left main tactics include psychological violence and gaslighting.
AGAIN:
The totalitarians on the cultural-left (PMC, etc.) are ILLIBERAL.
The totalitarians on the cultural-left are puppets, their puppet-masters are various power elites inside and outside the corporate-state.
Silly word games are neither meaningful, interesting or useful.
Yes, but we have to listen to your bullshit and insults anyway. Go fuck yourself with an RPG.
@John inglis - Can you be more specific? Just making comments without specifics is kind of purile in itself. If you have something to say, say it!
The totalitarians/ILLIBERALS on the cultural-left main tactics include psychological violence and gaslighting.
Your entire comment is a purile expression of totalitarian cultural marxism.
TROLL
Psychotic asshole troll.
No, they're shooting at you...through the young, dispossessed kids both parties have been churning out of our public indoctrination schools we've all been funding for the past 40 some years. If you been made to feel you have nothing to lose, then you will invariably, well, lose it.
Not sure where you are getting defunded police from, maybe Fox brainwashing? The police in this country come at a cost of $200 billion per year and if they were a standing army, would be the sixth largest in the world (right behind Russia).
So take your far-right, Nutzi nonsense elsewhere, we are all filled up here.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/05/politics/defund-the-police-democrats/index.html
Look at police budgets in "far left cities".
Facts. Evidence.
Rational, objective, systematic thinking and analysis.
Try it some time.
https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/large-study-indicates-left-wing-authoritarianism-exists-and-is-a-key-predictor-of-psychological-and-behavioral-outcomes-61318
The totalitarians/ILLIBERALS on the cultural-left main tactics include psychological violence and gaslighting.
Agreed...congress including AOC just voted to give billions to the capitol police. The police in this country are hardly hurting financially...and I am not talking about the extortion money they pull in with tickets.
@Penny Adrian - I am not sure where you are coming from but at face value your screed is spoken like a true-blue virtue signaling liberal that lives in a gated community!!! I am speaking for the downtrodden here! You have completely missed the point. The police stop minorities far more than whites and the stops are pre-textual stops where they are looking for 'gotchas' to corral folks to the prison industrial complex. We are not talking about white folks joy riding in Mommy and Daddy's Tesla toys here. We are talking about the fact that minorities in this country have not only crime and corruption in the cities but they have a mob of enforcers that do nothing but pull them over for anything and everything. Clearly you have NO concept of life in flyover country and what goes on in the inner cities. Ironically the BEST security system folks in the inner cities have are their guns. The very guns limousine liberals want to take away from them...
Let me respond from a left wing secular humanist liberal democracy north of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York. The best way I know how. I am under the care of the Department of Autistic Affairs. They know more of what I am than I do. I only know who I am. I am very inspired and very angered by idiots like yourself who choose nonsense over what you know to be the the truth. The only cure for hatred is love and I understand that is your most inconvenient truth.
We are the only possible future we are about the welfare of the individual in a democratic tyranny. Democracy is hard but unfortunately democracy is far from free it requires tremendous sacrifice.
I love the debate Milton started after his boss Cromwell destroyed English Civilization.
In Quebec race, gender and religion are on the church side of the impenetrable wall between church and state. And it is good.
I'll take Milton, Locke Newton and Edmund Burke and you have a pretty impressive lineup in Chaucer Shakespeare, More, and Johnson.
Of course I have Twain and Frederick Douglas and you have Machiavelli.
makes you wonder if Socrates really existed or Plato had to invent him.
Benjamin Franklin is our George Washington. He was fluently bilingual in the languages of Voltaire and Johnson. He was a light during the enlightenment. He was a scientist, a philosopher a secular humanist (Deist), journalist and satirist when people were reading Swift, and Bonhomme Richard. Gulliver's Travels is in diary form just like Robinson Crusoe and Bonhomme Richard had a daily Almanac.
Oh I forgot only 17% of the population could read and more than half of them weren't fully human.
!!! *** ANOTHER MOE-GASM *** !!!
MOE is a Known SuperTroll that emits enormous, galaxy size clouds of intellectual flatulence and mental diarrhea.
-----
Facts. Evidence.
Rational, objective, systematic thinking and analysis.
Try it some time.
https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/large-study-indicates-left-wing-authoritarianism-exists-and-is-a-key-predictor-of-psychological-and-behavioral-outcomes-61318
The totalitarians/ILLIBERALS on the cultural-left main tactics include psychological violence and gaslighting.
Revolutionaries have known the exhilaration of being sure that they are instruments of destiny. They feel that, with ridiculous ease, they are sweeping away the delusions of centuries. Now, at last, the world is being made real. Truth is flowering.
But as has almost always been the case, it is the revolutionaries that are the tyrants in waiting. They shroud themselves in branding for being of the benevolent and not the nasty... whether vogue in religious or secular alignment... but it is generally the complete opposite. They are only "virtuous" imposters of virtue pursuing corrupted and corrupt-able self-interest.
Those heroes defeating the tyrants once again have to travail both the trials of the enemy, and the trials of a broken and backwards narrative against the hero. It has always been and it will always be. People like me just see that truth. You should try too.
We had a revolution. The revolution is flourishing and our society is conservative and we like a well run economy by the best experts available under the supervision of ethical philosophers not corporate managers
Mark Twain said it best about politics and we love our Mark Twain. He is our 21st century philosopher. The best defense of freedom is a free and independent press.
"Politicians like diapers need to be changed regularly, for exactly the same reason."
Americans forget Philadelphia and Boston were not Franklin's only home. Our history books tell us that it was Montreal's merchants under Franklin's persuasion that dumped the tea into Boston Harbour. Franklin was fluent in the language of Voltaire.
Poor Richard or Bonhomme Richard was the World's George Washington.
Franklin emancipated his own slaves. Lincoln had no slaves to emancipate.
There is a reason Chris Hedges wrote the forward to Voltaire's Bastard's twentieth anniversary edition.
It subtitle is the The Dictatorship of Reason in the West and is dedicated to Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil.
The intersection of Christianity and Greco/Roman values has not been a great success.
Not
Que sera sera,
Do you have a friend who can teach you how to fact check?
How do you teach history to those for whom Everything they know is wrong.
Benjamin Franklin was a world renowned ethical humanist liberal enlightenment philosopher. Second only to Voltaire. He was as liberal as liberal got when he started writing Poor Richard's Almanac in 1732.
He was Zelensky not Adams or Jefferson.
"If you want a faithful servant and one that you like--- serve yourself."
Marx wasn't even born and Franklin was very very rich. Maybe even richer than Zelensky when he entered politics with his own media company.
They say it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter paradise.
Franklin not only preached equality for all he freed his slaves and tied his own shoes.
The American revolution was a Marxist revolution long before Marx was born.
Marx studied Franklin and Voltaire before writing his manifesto.
https://whocanceledroland.com
Who Canceled Roland Fryer?
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
FROM THE ARCHIVE OF PSYCHOTIC SUPERTROLL "MOE"'s LIES, SMEARS AND ABSURD BULLSHIT
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/americas-gun-fetish/comment/6967422
!!! *** ANOTHER MOE-GASM *** !!!
MOE is a Known SuperTroll that emits enormous, galaxy size clouds of intellectual flatulence and mental diarrhea.
-----
Facts. Evidence.
Rational, objective, systematic thinking and analysis.
Try it some time.
https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/large-study-indicates-left-wing-authoritarianism-exists-and-is-a-key-predictor-of-psychological-and-behavioral-outcomes-61318
The totalitarians/ILLIBERALS on the cultural-left main tactics include psychological violence and gaslighting.
https://whocanceledroland.com
Who Canceled Roland Fryer?
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
FROM THE ARCHIVE OF PSYCHOTIC SUPERTROLL "MOE"'s LIES, SMEARS AND ABSURD BULLSHIT
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/americas-gun-fetish/comment/6967422
Every week I read your articles and say to myself, this is the best one you’ve ever written! Then the next week you come along with one like this which is even better. This is a wonderful article. Hard to use that word because truth is so painful and our history makes me feel so sad.
With the loss of manufacturing and the family farm, the future of anyone without substantial means is limited to the service sector and the building trades. Public schools are understaffed and underfunded unless you are in an upscale, white neighborhood.
A future with an American middle class has disappeared. The only way this imbalance can be sustained is through violence or the threat of violence. Until small scale farming and local manufacturing are rekindled, the future seems untenable. People from around the world want to be in America because this is where everything is still available, for the moment. But it won't last.
It will take a natural or economic catastrophe to bring things back in focus. Guns can't grow food, educate our children or make plowshares.
Fetish is the right word. Asking a gun fetishist to voluntarily give up a gun is going to prove just as silly as asking a billionaire to give up his money. I think the pathology is the same.
Ralph Nader interviewed the great Hazel Henderson just before her recent death, and she referred to the “money meme”. But I think it’s more than that, it’s an irrational attachment to something that often leads to harmful behavior.
Some guys like to snuggle up to women’s shoes, others have more dangerous preferences. But call it a money meme or a gun fetish, it’s surely beyond the power of rational influence. And unfortunately, that usually implies force of some kind.
Fetish is of course the only correct word. I discovered it a long time ago at the Oriental Institute on the campus of the University of Chicago. I never could attend UofC at 74 I am beginning to write. I could only visit and pretend to be a visiting philosopher. I couldn't do elementary school. It is amazing what academics say to visiting philosophers.
Forgive me for rolling 🤣 It is almost as painful as what priests say to visiting priests.
Let me tell you about sleeping at Note Dame.
I sound like Chomsky but I live on Sesame Street and I love Big Bird.
https://whocanceledroland.com
Who Canceled Roland Fryer?
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
FROM THE ARCHIVE OF PSYCHOTIC SUPERTROLL "MOE"'s LIES, SMEARS AND ABSURD BULLSHIT
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/americas-gun-fetish/comment/6967422
!!! *** ANOTHER MOE-GASM *** !!!
MOE is a Known SuperTroll that emits enormous, galaxy size clouds of intellectual flatulence and mental diarrhea.
-----
Facts. Evidence.
Rational, objective, systematic thinking and analysis.
Try it some time.
https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/large-study-indicates-left-wing-authoritarianism-exists-and-is-a-key-predictor-of-psychological-and-behavioral-outcomes-61318
The totalitarians/ILLIBERALS on the cultural-left main tactics include psychological violence and gaslighting.
Do I real need to cite the Western canon of literature or should I cite today's ersatz flavour of semi intellectual thought. Giraffes have long necks because they have stiff penises not because they want sour grapes. Benjamin Franklin is tomorrow's philosopher and Washington was one of Tennyson's six hundred.
His was not to reason why, his was but to do and die.
Franklin was about reason. Franklin didn't only talk about the philosophy of emancipation. Franklin freed his slaves and fomented revolution. Benjamin Franklin led the Boston Tea Party. It was Franklin's Montreal Merchants who threw the East Indian Company tea into Boston Harbour, it was Bejamin Franklin's Montreal Newspaper that boarded the East Indian Company ships bearing the East Indian Company flag in Boston Harbour. It was Bonhomme Richard who edited the Montreal Gazette that chased the East India Company out of much of British North America.
Parliament had taken control in 1688 and the King had no real power.
In 1773 the East India Company ran the British Colonies and they owned the British Parliament. The London Stock Exchange is late 17th century.
So much for the history you learned in school.
Mark Twain said:
"Politicians like diapers must be changed regularly, for the exact same reason."
In 2022 a well trained militia is called the police, fire and health department. In 1773 the East India Company ran health, education, and welfare as well as police and fire departments and parliaments ran armies.
In 1773 Franklin was about as liberal as a man can get. Franklin was right up there with Voltaire and Burke as far as enlightenment humanist liberal philosophy can get.
How did Orwell lose America to Franco Fascists?
That is what pierce is afraid of.
Orwell fought against the Franco Fascists and lost but retained his sanity.
Of course I am just an autistic literary critic.
https://whocanceledroland.com
Who Canceled Roland Fryer?
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
FROM THE ARCHIVE OF PSYCHOTIC SUPERTROLL "MOE"'s LIES, SMEARS AND ABSURD BULLSHIT
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/americas-gun-fetish/comment/6967422
You could not "cite" the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground.
Your inability to understand Orwell is classically Orwellian!!!!!!!!!!!!
You are a grossly incompetent, brain damaged, psychotic, delusional LIAR and idiot that is seeking disgusting EGO GRATIFICATION.
Your public intellectual masturbation is revolting and disgusting.
Your apparent glee at intellectually masturbating in front of a bunch of other psychotic, low IQ leftists is appalling, but not surprising.
https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/large-study-indicates-left-wing-authoritarianism-exists-and-is-a-key-predictor-of-psychological-and-behavioral-outcomes-61318
What Chris fails to recognize it that life is vacuous for those living in gated communities and flying private jets that circumvent pedestrian portals. Amongst only themselves, they no longer feel privileged and unique. They have an innate desire to be, at least periodically, immersed in the presence of the peons in order to feel exceptional, elite, and powerful. No contrast; no image.
Some say that the current socioeconomic collapse is being orchestrated by the oligarch class. I disagree. They're just not that smart. Besides, they have the most to lose in a state of overwhelmingly gun fueled anarchy and chaos. It would be their very position of contrast that would make them the targeted bullseye.
The goal of the elites is simply to thin the herd of peons, not separate themselves entirely. The planet is a finite resource. It cannot sustain 10B homo sapiens ravenously culling its resources. Thinning of the herd is what the endless wars and experimental vaccines are haphazardly trying to achieve. Do you see the elite's kids going off to fight these battles for resources? Do you think these folks actually took the MrNA into their own bodies? You say you saw it for yourself on T.V., did you? Of course you did.
Here in Quebec we need one million new Quebec citizens every three year in a world on the cusp of seeing a decline in new human citizens. Revolutionary technological economies and a feudal economic system don't mesh. Its time for American to study Darwin not the fascism Wilson unleashed with his Committee on Public Information the Ministry of Truth.
Wilson was a public intellectual, a fascist and a racist. He was Harvard Yale and Princeton. Maybe he still is.
Where did Mrs Xi go to school? What about the Bin Salmans and Netanyahus? What about the Saudi Jordanian Kings? At least Musk studied engineering at Queen's. The queen is in her 90s maybe they should pre-empt her departure and call it King's but that is in Oxford not in the King's town.
I WAS READING BONHOMME RICHARD BEFORE CHRIS ENTERED KINDERGARTEN.
I'm glad "here" for you is Quebec. I can now see why Trudeau gets re-elected.
The last time I could vote for Trudeau his name was Pierre Eliot and he was a Quebec aristocrat. Only residents of Montreal's working class Papineau district vote for Justin Trudeau. That is where he chose to live and teach school until he was 40 and was recruited into politics. He won the liberal leadership in a boxing match against a Conservative Senator who was younger and an accomplished martial artist.
People gave a lot of money to charity to watch pretty boy beaten to a pulp. Don't let pretty boy fool you he is not what you think you see. He is a Ninja.
You can watch the Trudeau Brazeau charity event on youtube.
It was carried on right wing media. There are blood thirsty savages here in Canada you don't own them all. This wasn't WWE this was two martial artists who respected each other and their artistry. You haven't got a monopoly on ignorant louts and we too sometimes elect them to office . Brazeau and Trudeau are honourable and courageous men. It is hard to hate honourable men even those on the other side. I am neither liberal nor conservative I vote strictly for what I consider best policy but I am a member of Canada's NDP social democrats but they are to the right of our conservative Quebec government.
Change is the only constant in the universe.
The great linguistic philosopher Samuel Johnson was a classical conservative. His philosophical rival were the classical liberal Edmund Burke and the radical progressive Benjamin Franklin. That is real American history. In 1800 Adams the Federalist never conceded to Thomas Jefferson the Democratic Republican. Adams still hasn't conceded.
People own guns for various reasons. Many of them legitimate. Throughout history, the worst atrocities have been committed by governments against their own citizens. We're witnessing now a global genocide. Owning a gun is not a 'fetish'. Gun violence is the natural outcome of an entire culture losing its way. Please don't demonize people who feel threatened from all sides. Instead, work to create a society where people no longer feel a gun is the only option. Until that time, people do have a right to own a weapon. I am speaking as someone who does not and will not own a gun, but I can now relate to the people who do.
Please share and help educate…
"GUNS AND CONTROL
Turkey established gun control in 1911. Soon after, 1.5 million Armenians unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
The Soviet Union established gun control in 1929. Soon after, about 20 million dissidents unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
China established gun control in 1935. Soon after, 20 million political dissidents unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
Germany established gun control in 1938. Soon after, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
Cambodia established gun control in 1956. Soon after, one million people unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
Guatemala established gun control in 1964. Soon after, 100,000 Mayan Indians unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
Uganda established gun control in 1970. Soon after, 300,000 Christians unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
Australia established gun control in 1996. Right now, Australian citizens are being brutalized and terrorized by their tyrannical government.
Venezuela established Desarma La Violencia to disarm citizens in 2010. Once one of the richest countries in Latin America, Venezuela is currently free falling into violent unrest and extreme poverty.
New Zealand expanded gun control in 2019. Right now, New Zealand citizens are being brutalized and terrorized by their tyrannical government.
Canada expanded gun control in 2020. Right now, Canadian citizens are being brutalized and terrorized by their tyrannical government. "
WHO’S NEXT?
Please stop linking to Amazon.
I petulantly demand that you stop making petulant demands.
What is a petulant child supposed to do pretend he doesn't exist?
Fascist pig, hate monger and idiot start loving yourself. That is an order from the Generalissimo. It is hard for him rotting in Hell. In case you weren't aware Dr Castro was a Spaniard who loved Cubans and hated fascists.
https://whocanceledroland.com
Who Canceled Roland Fryer?
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
FROM THE ARCHIVE OF PSYCHOTIC SUPERTROLL "MOE"'s LIES, SMEARS AND ABSURD BULLSHIT
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/americas-gun-fetish/comment/6967422
*** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL *** PSYCHOTIC *** LYING *** ASSHOLE *** TROLL ***
*** HACK *** HACK *** HACK *** HACK *** HACK *** HACK ***
*** GASLIGHT *** GASLIGHT *** GASLIGHT *** GASLIGHT ***
*** BOMBSHELL *** BOMBSHELL *** BOMBSHELL *** BOMBSHELL ***
*** MADCOW *** MADCOW *** MADCOW *** MADCOW ***
*** MORE COWBELL *** MORE COWBELL *** MORE COWBELL ***
*** MORE CHOMSKY BOT AT RUBBER DUCKY ***
---
"MoRe" SPUTTERING, BLUBBERING, BLABBERING.
You wouldn't know "logic" if it bit you in the Aspergers.
I understand your fear of the truth but in my world Chomsky bot is about the greatest compliment one could lay at someone's feet. I suspect Chris Hedges feels much the same.
Kevin I am autistic and it would take me the rest of my life to explain the joke. I invited pierce to visit almost a year ago and rather than accept the invitation he is giving himself reason to not visit one of the world's great tourist regions. Two of our local inns are for those who easily spend 20,000 USD a day for food lodging and being with the right people at the right time at the right place. I eat better and I tell better jokes and share better times and all I ask is help with the dishes for my wife and I . We are one hundred and fifty nine years of living among you the les sauvages the people outside the walls of the city.
My wife is a graduate of the world's finest universities and I failed kindergarten. We are an odd couple and my friends well what can I say? Anyone for when Eastern Orthodoxy turned away from the Holy Roman Empire or why is the music of French Speaking Appalachia sound so much like Robbie Burns?
I love Orwell and pierce is a Franco Fascist. You know pierce has nothing new to say.
https://whocanceledroland.com
Who Canceled Roland Fryer?
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
https://whocanceledroland.com
Who Canceled Roland Fryer?
Roland Fryer was an unlikely Harvard superstar. Abandoned by his mom at birth and raised by an alcoholic dad, Fryer became the youngest black professor to ever secure tenure at Harvard and won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, the prize for the best economist under 40 in the world.
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FROM THE ARCHIVE OF PSYCHOTIC SUPERTROLL "MOE"'s LIES, SMEARS AND ABSURD BULLSHIT
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/americas-gun-fetish/comment/6967422
No one is coming. It’s up to us.
I just talked with my brother Jesus yesterday. He told me the USA is beyond even his pay grade and he didn't just postpone his visit ; he cancelled and cancelled his visa request.
I believe the issues around gun control are more complex than the usually perspicacious pen of Chris Hedges reveals in this article. As counterpoint to his notion that guns are the last refuge of the weakened rural underclass, read this substack article by long time liberal Naomi Wolf defending the Second Amendment (https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/rethinking-the-second-amendment?s=r). Also Ole Dammegard has contributed a lot of research into the area of false flag operations (https://lightonconspiracies.com) revealing that a lot of domestic attacks are orchestrated if not perpetrated by the CIA or other government operatives who are using the violence to advance political agenda items. While no-one is arguing in favor of gun violence, and the argument that it is a "mental health" crisis, not a gun availability crisis is a weak one, the shenanigans of our government, first and foremost tricking or arm-twisting millions of Americans to inject themselves with poison does make one wonder to what extent the government is a legitimate threat for which we need to be fully prepared. Paranoid as this may sound, it didn't seem paranoid to the Founders in 1776 and we would not be here if they had failed to arm themselves. Yes, I hear you say, but this is 2022, not 1776. And, I would ask, you would then argue that history does not repeat itself?
Naomi Wolf is no liberal. One might define what she has always been, at best, is neoliberal but really, to be accurate, libertarian. Her feminism was not feminism but a regressive form of individualism. Her anti-vaxx propaganda and paranoia are truly dangerous--but no more dangerous than her outlandish article referred to here that purports to defend the right to guns afforded by the Second Amendment. She resorts to specious grammatical analysis of the amendment that any sophomore could parse. Nor does she make any distinctions between her right to carry her beloved pistol and the right for Americans (mostly white men murderers) to buy and deploy semi-automatic and automatic weaponry against innocent men, women, and children. We are not in the 18th century in terms of the kind of technology that affords an individual uncanny powers of mayhem. Sure, let Naomi keep her little lady pistol she is so fond of because she feels it will protect her. And probably won't, but that's another story, given how those carrying weapons often find themselves victims of others' weaponry. But let's rid this country of the kind of gun sales that put weapons of mass destruction into the hands of individuals who are arming themselves against fantasies, in their madness, in their paranoia, their racist narcissism.
Sanctimoniousness and condescension are not arguments, they are attitudes deployed to belittle another's perspective. If you have a point to make, you should make it, not speak in disparaging tones about those who are not there to defend themselves.
@Susan - You must me one of those folks that live behind a gate and live a life of luxury. You have no clue what it is like out here in the hinterlands. As Chris points out, the pathologies are all out in the open. You have completely overlooked the two main drivers for the high gun deaths in this country. 1) Most white men murder themselves. White male suicide rate is through the roof. 2) Most mass murders happen in the US inner cities - black on black crime. The folks in the inner cities (and I know them) use guns to protect themselves from the craziness as the police cannot be everywhere. Children are killed in droves from drive-by shootings and just horrible situations where gang violence just erupts instantaneously. You are looking at this from a white woman perspective and it is a privileged perspective. You completely discount the experience that folks in the inner city experience. You completely discount the hopelessness in American hinterland...no jobs, no future, nothing. Maybe you have some of that racist narcissism that you need to address?
This what she needs to "address"
https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/large-study-indicates-left-wing-authoritarianism-exists-and-is-a-key-predictor-of-psychological-and-behavioral-outcomes-61318
The totalitarians/ILLIBERALS on the cultural-left main tactics include psychological violence and gaslighting.
Facts. Evidence.
Rational, objective, systematic thinking and analysis.
Try it some time.
https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/large-study-indicates-left-wing-authoritarianism-exists-and-is-a-key-predictor-of-psychological-and-behavioral-outcomes-61318
The totalitarians/ILLIBERALS on the cultural-left main tactics include psychological violence and gaslighting.
It was so hard for me to finally accept that those who perpetuate this gun culture are absolutely onboard with more kids dying. I used to think they just didn’t understand the devastation being done to children but then I realized that in fact they do. Not only do they totally understand they will use it as a marketing tool to sell even more guns in the guise of protection. It’s such a harsh reality to accept that that is exactly who they are. Your article points out every piece of propaganda they use to keep the masses in constant fear and willing to execute each other rather than address the real culprits. This is absolute madness and is speeding up our demise as a country.
It is difficult for me to understand the drive to power of the Republicans (with the connivance of Democrats and their accompanying decision to abandon of the working class). It seems obvious to me that if half the population is disenfranchised, their hope destroyed, their jobs lost that they will eventually turn on the elites and the rich and the country will descend into open violence. In the process the country itself will be destroyed, carved up into fiefdoms each fighting the others. It is not possible for me to intellectually conceive of a large group of people coming together to intentionally do that while having no awareness of the repercussions (history is full of examples).
Nevertheless, I see it happening all around me and getting worse month by month by month. Like so many others, I am terribly frightened. And like so many others, I feel abandoned by my country, betrayed by the people who are supposed to govern wisely for all the people.
A major trauma for the Jews in Germany, the ones who survived anyway, was the abandonment by those to whom they had given their trust. They kept believing that normal would return but it never did. Instead, bit by bit more laws were passed, more court decisions made, and soon there was nothing left for them at all. Many of those who survived were never able to restore their trust for their government and its various departments. I see that same process playing out here. Day by day, as the Supreme Court destroys decades of protections for the weakest among us, as Republicans in Congress refuse to pass any laws to help but rather become ever more complicit in the betrayal all of us are experiencing, as Democrats actively undo the compact FDR made with America and take the things Republicans have done even further, I see hope dying, see trust in government eroding. So many people walk around now with a look in their eyes that I have only ever seen in those who have suffered extreme trauma.
It is not hard to see what the future holds for us; it is as grim as any time we have ever faced as a nation. At the founding, in the years before the civil war, during the depression . . . it is like all of those rolled into one. I see no people of the caliber of the Founders, no Washington, no Lincoln, no FDR. All I can see is systemic collapse, riots, severe economic depression, and war. I grieve for my country and what could have been.
You must have been locked up in a psych ward or otherwise lost in an echo chamber for all of the decades since the 1960s that 100s/1000s of people have been working on a reboot of (western) civilization in a variety of ways.
Here is one entry point into one of the many networks of those kinds of people:
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Main_Page
Also see:
The problem and the solution:
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
We'll be back. Ass kicked and back for more fun with Ronnies Kids, until the place is gone someone will put up a fight. It might be pretty hard now, since there is no such thing as truth anymore, we get maybes instead. Americans are going to keep their god awful weapons collections, not for sustenance, only for proof of what they don't have to put up with no matter what. It's the dying duck holding onto the reed at the bottom of the lake, I might die but you can't eat me. Compromise with them and cheat like they do.
TOXIC ECHO CHAMBER.
"leftist"
worse than liberal I hope.
Chris closes this essay with a stark and startling truth, "We don’t matter." We are trained to believe we live in a civilized culture, and that the civilization is what makes the culture livable; but the civilization we have is based and dependent upon domination, above all else. This belief is what allowed the Europeans to view this land as a place of endless potential; perfect for seeding a new Europe. All that was needed was to dominate and eradicate the uncooperative indigenous inhabitants, who didn't matter; and then to bring in indentured servants (dominated serfs and peasants) and dominated slaves, who also didn't matter; to clear and work the lands on behalf of the feudal masters. Nothing has changed, other than that the industrial revolution created technologies that allow for much easier and more efficient domination. The bulk of the population is descended from the serfs, peasants, and slaves who were brought in to clear and work the lands. That many of us may now have college degrees means nothing. From the perspective of the ruling class, we are still here to perform tasks on their behalf. The mindset of the ruling class of this civilization is domination, domination, and domination. It has not changed, and never will. We don't matter.
Every civilization is based on domination and caste systems. Many/most "indigenous" cultures engage in genocide when the opportunity presents.
The evolution of "classic liberalism" in the NW European gene pool is why the USA was able to dominate pre-liberal, pre-modern and pre-literate cultures, including those based on caste systems, with superior technology.
Liberal societies banned slavery for the first time in history.
Toxic leftism is ILLIBERAL and totalitarian.
You are brainwashed with narratives from the SOROS TROLL FARM.
Let people tell you who and what they are. You can fight, just listen first, bob and weave. Are you deep green?
More kids died from side effects of the mRNA vaccine SO FAR THIS YEAR than in all the years since Columbine. If we want to save children, let's don't poison them.
Yes! If only the Lockdown Left would pull their collective heads out of their asses and listen. News flash - One can be anti-vax and hate Trump!
A different perspective offered by Bret Weinstein, and one that resonates with me after the last 2+ years, having seen what an initial descent into tyranny could look like. Very different to my opinions 2 years ago. https://unherd.com/2021/11/the-liberal-case-for-gun-ownership-1/
Yes, Bret Weinstein was viciously threatened with violence by some insane, radical, extremists on the totalitarian, neomarxist, radical "left" at Evergreen College.
Other evolutionary theorists were attack by the totalitarians on the "left" starting in the 1970s because their scientific research contradicted the flawed, utopian models of human nature that are the foundation of leftist ideology.
https://quillette.com/2019/10/05/the-dangerous-life-of-an-anthropologist/
Continue the good work Chris. It would seem there is a direct connection to the amoral Pentagon military budget that is supported by both the Democratic and Republican parties, the violence we see in our domestic shootings all tied together neatly by the Dave Grossman types that promote the philosophy of killology to our ever growing military police departments?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PwEYhIX4cbM
I agree. We live in a country where violence and guns/weapons are encouraged both domestically and internationally as the best way to solve problems. We need more cooperation instead of confrontation.
@Jiim Brasile - Absolutely right! Our government murders therefore our culture murders and our people murder. It all starts at the top.
Boy, the conservatives are going to love this one Chris. I haven’t even started reading the comments, but I’m sure there will be something about how taking away the guns will mean only criminals have guns. The unspoken part being, they’re afraid only urban blacks and latinos will have the guns, but they couldn’t care less if a white teenager can walk into a local gun store and load up with an AR-15 and go shoot up a school, that’s of course freedom.
Then of course there will be the people parsing your gun terminology and pedantically pointing out that most civilian AR-15s are chambered for the 223 cartridge not the 5.56. It’s endless how the gun proponents fetishize the particulars in this regard as a way to idealize themselves as gun intellectuals that know better than some journalist, no matter how many guns he has fired.
There will be the idiots that declare they and their guns are what keep government overreach in check. If they understood history at all, they would realize that is completely absurd. Waco? Anyone that sets up a little compound and declares themself in defiance of USA law will get taken down by the feds. The feds can listen in on every piece of communication in the USA with no real restrictions. The only thing that will stop the USA government from annihilating a rebellion instantly is whether the public is watching and then the propaganda machine will have anyone dumb enough to join labeled as domestic terrorists such that even if they live they’ll find themselves being waterboarded in some hellhole while people forget that they exist.
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” is a phrase attributed to Communist leader Mao Zedong. The irony is that gun zealots agree with that and yet everything good about the USA is in opposition to that idea and to the very structure it entails. Democracy cannot be sustained with violence and endless war, we’ve tried that in dozens of countries and never succeeded.
Pay people a living wage. Stop funneling trillions to arms manufacturers to sustain foreign wars while people go hungry and homeless here in the USA.
I live in a liberal democracy. Arms are still weapons of war and guns well the second amendment being about guns; in a slave owning 83% illiterate rural society is simply shit coming out of Scalia's ass.
As Dickens said. "The law is an ass---an idiot."
Of course Dickens' family were miscreants and deserved to live in debtor's prison but poor farms were so much more humane than poor houses.
I love Chris but I wish he did satire. Rolling on the floor laughing and dying with tears in one's eyes or singular in my case is an awfully good way to go.
Anyone understand why pierce followed me here? I followed Chris since before he left the Newspaper of Record. Pierce is not exactly a Chris aficionado. Chris makes Aaron Matte look like a conservative.
https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/large-study-indicates-left-wing-authoritarianism-exists-and-is-a-key-predictor-of-psychological-and-behavioral-outcomes-61318
The totalitarians/ILLIBERALS on the cultural-left main tactics include psychological violence and gaslighting.
Listen Humpty!!! Your words mean nothing they are labels that suit your purpose. Why don't you read Alice's Adventure's Through the Looking Glass and what she found there. Charles Dodgson was the Oxford Don of the Logic Department.
I know you know what you want your words to mean; but they are meaningless in any meaningful discussion. Finish High School and decide where you go from there.
In my humble opinion this world already has too many crazy psychologists, too many professors of law and far too many ideological lunatics.
Maybe some things need to be conserved and some things need to be changed it is all scientific THEORY.
It took me almost 70 years to find a way to write.
I fear many things but I never feared clowns or the truth.
Clowns are not funny, the are not scary they are just effing clowns just like all of us . We put on our make-up before we go out into the world.
Fools step in where wise men fear to tread.
I don't know who said what.
"I am standing on the shoulders of giants." Issac Newton who doesn't need my citation. He is a measure of mass and energy