Fascism in the U.S. has thoroughly bipartisan roots, and I’m grateful to finally hear someone with a national audience acknowledge that. It is also sadly nothing new. The longevity and depravity of America’s history of human rights violations are rivaled only by the public ignorance surrounding them. I ran for Congress—and won a congressional primary in 2020–based on my concerns about the documented complicity of the Democratic party in fascism. Since leaving politics, I wrote at some length about this theme nearly a year ago, and deeply appreciate Hedges bringing a similar analysis to a wider community. https://open.substack.com/pub/shahidbuttar/p/fears-of-a-fascist-future-overlook?r=97w99&utm_medium=ios
The death of 600 thousand Ukrainians due to our desire to remove Putin and gain leverage to bring down Russia, and a genocide either of which could ultimately lead to a third world war was instigated under Biden's presidency, but his name is not mentioned, even though he seeks along with his neocon pals, like Blinken, world control, but Trump's name comes up repeatedly. If I remember correctly only Biden's vice president was mentioned in some off handed way, vapid. Although both parties are guilty in creating a country, a government that enriches the rich and cares nothing, or little, for it's citizenry, no democracy really, in which I don't disagree, but only one president is referenced in this regard clearly, "Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and moral deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner’s novels,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour." Do you think Hedges will provide a balanced and honest perspective of the incoming Trump administration, since I didn't perceive that when Trump was in office. Interesting that even Chomsky who berated the Trump administration repeatedly stated that the only statesman that could put an end to the war in Ukraine was Trump, who of course was no longer in office.
P. S. Even that "piece of art work" has bloody Trump looking vicious and dangerous, emerging from the bloody head of Washington, and it matters not that you say this problem goes beyond Trump, I don't want to listen to, read, the so called liberals spew hate towards Trump with little objectivity which they did during his prior 4 years as president. I hope they remain objective.
Really Vile? You make that assertion in a simple sentence, and you think I'm going to suck that up as truth? Biden was a man who pushed every middle eastern war for the benefit of Israel, and shoved it down the throats of his fellow democrats using his position as the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to do so, and they bought it, although he probably didn't have to push that hard. When it comes to Obama, no liberal was he with his dirty war in Syria and then of cause the utter destruction of Libya based on a lie, and then came the coup in Ukraine, as well the non stop hateful rhetoric when Trump wanted to get along with Russia. Well I don't need to be informed on where that has led us, 600 thousand Ukrainian dead, and it put the doomsday clock some 90 seconds to disaster. I sometimes wonder if the US said no to weaponizing Israel's genocide would Trump follow suit, since it would make it more difficult for him to do so. When it comes to the democratic party you are living in the past.
Let me just add that the democrats tried to oust Trump, an elected president, on the lie of Russia-gate, yet no one held accountable for those baseless lies, or that he instigated a coup on January 6, but no doubt you are a believer since your hate determines the truth.
The United States is finished. We are witnessing its death throes in our lifetime. Something I never thought I would see. All we can do is continue the ride until it is over. The U.S. has integrated itself into so much of the western developed world now that the rest of them will follow the U.S. down into the oblivion it has created.
What will rise from the ashes is not likely to be anything close to what it was, and its allies will disintegrate into warring states. We are starting to see this happen right now, today, starting in the Balkans and eastern Europe with Moldova, Georgia and Serbia.
Once the governments and economies of Germany and France complete their fall, other countries will fall away, and the EU will be no more. NATO will be no more.
There will be very few safe countries for those in the west to escape to once their countries fail. Some counties are already pulling the welcome mat away from their doors for the yanks and western Europeans. This will get worse soon.
Trump is only going to hasten what was already happening. I just hope I can save my family from the worst when it comes.
Thanks! I looked at the entire series. I don't know why Woodbury thought it couldn't happen to the US, but that was in the happy beginning and not now, when we can all see its fall.
I think that there are not many people who want to admit that their country is falling apart around them; that would mean that the world as they know it will disappear.
Those of us who can see it are lucky, because we are forewarned. Or maybe it's because we have been unlucky in this world and are hoping that the new system will work out better for us. At least, with our foreknowledge, we can help those who are overtaken by the change. We can teach them how to cope.
It’s interesting that you should say that. I’ve been convinced since 2007 (before the gfc) that the US empire would not last another 30 years. It’s easy to pontificate, I know. Back then, all the people I shared my view with thought I’d lost my marbles. But there is a simple truism—the US empire = the US dollar. The demise of the US dollar is being accelerated by hubris. There is only one question remaining. Financial capital are the “Wizard of Oz” controlling the show. What will be their core strategy for retaining power and a monopoly over resources? This may become clearer over the next couple of years.
"2) shift from the dollar to bitcoin as US currency" - bitcoin is a deflationary currency. What fuels is US economy is inflation of the dollar diffused over population of the world.
One cannot inflate bitcoin and if successful - bitcoin will collapse.
Empire does not seem to understand that it needs its citizens. It needs good roads, farmers, and manufacturing. It needs to have the ability to provide for its citizens, or it will cease to exist.
At the most cynical level, it needs to have competency, if only so that it can manufacture the weapons it needs.
Once again Mr. Hedges, a brilliant portrait of a dying culture.
For me, the most resonant phrase here was “loss of community”.
But how can we cultivate community when the people themselves are largely against the idea? They resist all attempts to discover common ground. (I blame liberals far more than those on the extremes, on this point. I can easily see Jimmy Dore having a beer with almost any Trump voter.)
But it’s Christmas. I need hope. I hope it’s not naive to find some hope in the coalition of the new administration. Kennedy, Gabbard, (yes, I feel revulsion at their Zionism, but we have to choose our battles.) and Battacharya are truly interesting and inspiring choices, I am terribly curious how this will play out. If we’re lucky enough to be here next year…let’s see. In the meantime, thanks for everything. Thank you for your wisdom, your courage, and your grace. Now I’m off to go kiss a liberal.
Loss of Community is at the root of all our sorrows. Homelessness, is more about loss of community than housing. (do a count of empty bedrooms in your neighborhood, then count the homeless) We need community for our mental health. We need to be known, valued, and loved to be mentally well. We need accurate reflection from people who love us, to provide feedback on our actions and behaviors to be mentally healthy. We need to be told by people who love us, when we hurt other people. We need to be told by people who love us when we are caring, kind, and supportive.
Those who would rule us, to be successful in dominating us, need to destroy community, because a healthy community will instinctively oppose being dominated. A healthy community will instinctively reach out to assist those in need. A healthy community will look to ways to provide for its members. A healthy community will be diverse, because it understands the value of diversity. (It needs plumbers, nurses, doctors, garbage collectors, young people, old people, people who are artistic, people who can fix things, ...)
John, you nailed it. The pathological attention given to "individualism" in America is frightening. As I read the comments which are written in response to the various blogs on line; I see the oversimplification of a Manichean division of the world. This is embedded in a psychological reductionism which diverts our attention away from the kind of social organization which has degraded our lives. A kind of organization which ignores the importance of the community. We human beings are inherently social and we need the loving contact of others. This kind of human experience is, for the most part, trivialized or ignored completely.
If you want to be dispelled of any affinity for Tulsi Gabbard, check out Due Dissidence's latest piece on her. Tulsi is not an honest operator. RFK equally worthless.
Nothing like having Chris putting a little sunshine into everyone's morning, eh? Hedges is a sober version of Hunter S. Thompson, except Thompson had a sense of humor . Mr. Fish and Joe Sacco are Hedges' Ralph Steadman.
All hail our new Grand Inquisitor, brought to you by our sponsors , BlackRock, Elon Musk, The WEF, and now run to the store for more tin foil because we are neck deep into "Eyes Wide Shut" territory. But have no fear, Mother Nature is correcting the error of our ways as we speak.
Splendid essay on our country's moral, economic political and cultural collapse. While you might resist taking credit for your prophetic writings, you should at least feel vindicated. I've read most of your books and take credit for believing them! Now that we've come to the place that your prescience warned us of I'm relying on you to help us understand what comes next.
Your Faulkner analogy and interpretation is very apt!!!
What is remarkable to me (although it perhaps shouldn't be) is that Chris Hedges is the only figure in his position - as a journalist - who has consistently done his job over the past several decades, that of writing about this process of change. There have been a handful of others, in other capacities (mostly from academia, including those whom he lists above) who have written of this reality, and who have offered cautionary warnings. There are a lot of reasons for this (the commercial nature of our media, corporate and those perspectives that fall within the purview of social psychology).
But still, it has been odd to watch the progression of this, over the years, framed within the memory of reading the works listed above. (Those which have been read.) Depending on how it all plays out, I wonder if at some point - i.e. the scenario posited by Mr. O'Domnahnaill - in addition to the Snopes family, we might add the (historic/fictionalized) character of Willi Herold to some regions in the world and the U.S., depending on the degree of regional social breakdown.
And thank you as always to Chris Hedges. With respect to what Mr. White asks: there was a Balkan dictator in the 1980s, I think it was Slovbodan Milosevic, who was clever: he allowed one opposition voice, an academician, to make whatever criticisms he wanted to, Milosevic knew that he presented no threat, and that Milosevic could then claim that he allowed free speech.
I imagine that we will have (and have to some degree already) the most sophisticated and invisible control/self-control (ala Wolin) that history has ever known. The appearance of free speech, anything as long as it doesn't threaten the stable control. I'm thinking (hoping) that Mr. Hedges will be allowed to continue.
He will be effectively be drowned out by great online superhero movies! Virtual reality AI! Feelies! New generations of Taylor Swifts and immersive NFL games! The Empire of Illusion.
The merger of the corporatists with the Christian right is the marrying of Godzilla to Frankenstein.
We are in the grip of what Søren Kierkegaard called “sickness unto death” — the numbing of the soul by despair that leads to moral and physical debasement. All Trump has to do to establish a naked police state is flip a switch. And he will.
Those two excerpts pretty much sum it up for me. I love the Godzilla/Frankenstein analogy. Your mention of Kierkegaard took me back to my Seminary graduate studies, during which Kierkegaard was a subject for discussion, analysis and reflection.
Now 80, I believe I have lived and witnessed the very best years of our country. Growing up in rural farm country may have facilitated that idyllic reflection. I trace the "beginning of the end" back to Ronald Reagan. Reagan was a phony elitist who stabbed a huge dagger into the back of middle America. I am confident someone will pick a time that predates the Reagan assault. Yet, the eighties introduced a powerful Christian right (mostly wrong, by the way) represented by Falwell, Robertson, Bauer, Reed and a whole host of other self-righteous Jesus-panderers. They were the forebears of today's Christo-fascist nationalists. And, let's face it, there is very, very little of Jesus in their community of self-righteous hate and intolerance. Self-proclaiming evangelicals are more into judgmentalism and finger pointing than they are in promoting The Beatitudes. Biblical purists they are not.
And, now, we have an Elon Musk dipping his giant hyper-funded fingers into American politics. I will suffice it to say we are watching Trump's brain at work through the Musk-a-Tron. Our great democratic republic is on the edge of obliteration.
The D party purged the New Deal in the late '70s. Ironically named, these 'New Dems' weren't a revived progressive liberalism; they were tech infatuated neolibs bedazzled by econopathy. At the time, the Rs still had progressives in office. The D push to the right helped enable the Rs to go full out batshit far right. Now made even worse (very possibly lethally so) because of the D party elite's alliance with neocons.
The '80's S&L "scandal" witnessed an enormous transfer of wealth out of the American middle class, but unfortunately the people couldn't see through the media hype to understand that this wasn't a scandal driven by a few bad actors, but a systematic looting overseen by their own government. Mom and Pop's life savings were drained and not returned, while low-level fall guys had their knuckles rapped, and the "steal big" guys laughed all the way to the bank.
I remember the Savings and Loan bailout of President G. H. W. Bush and not that people could not see through the media hype but that the systematic looting of the government by the wealthy financialists, repeated multiple times since then, could not be stopped by citizens. The financing of the wars is another scandal or bailout or theft that cannot be stopped by citizens; but I cannot detail it. Since my experience is limited I think perhaps the United States has been this way forever.
As the first commenter instilled - I doubt the Democrats were ever any good and Hedges seems to imply they were at some time. I received many commentators claiming the New Deal of President F. D. Roosevelt (Democrat) was the defining event to differentiate Democrats from Republicans. But, I see them often changing sides. If Reagan Bush did not do it for the Robber Barons then Clinton did, and that is since I have been an adult.
D apologists claim their party's rightward lurch was necessitated by the Reagan era. Not so. The D party underwent a neolib takeover in the late '70s, probably related to the Powell memo. This elite dumped the New Deal, including financial regulations. Plus they abandoned their own base, the majority working class. Pleasing to their new corporate sponsors and enabling Robber Barons 2.0. I know because i fought them. The decades of econ/pol research I've done confirms my experience.
"Plus. they abandoned their own base, the majority working class."
I have said that for a very long time. While Republicans were "infiltrating" state and local legislatures, the DEMS sat and watched. I also believe that Schumer should have been dumped long ago. He loves to hear himself talk. Pelosi should have bowed out, as well. DEMS also do not know how to fight, especially with this new breed of fascist Republicans. DEMS have yet to learn that politics in its current iteration is a blood sport.
I suspect they know. Like elitists everywhere, they just want it to be other people's. We invisible lessers, the silenced majority, have been reduced to econ cannon fodder. The young adult generation, thanks to the economic draft, gets to "serve" as actual cannon fodder. While $$$ that might have gone to domestic needs are diverted to those expensive endless wars. The rosy aura of the near future is a continuation of that bloody mist of the "Fog of War."
PS--As a blue collar rank and file union activist, I was trained in the late '60s by tough people who'd been 1930s labor organizers (C.I.O.) They told me "liberals are the ones who leave the room when the fight starts." They sure did.
How long before they try to shut you down? It is, I think inevitable. You will be seen as an annoyance that needs to be silenced. As a Canadian I now know how the Austrians felt in 1932.
I fear Canada is not far behind in the facist push into government. All the elements are there; the greed-induced economic hardship (we have a monopoly problem), the out-of-touch elites, and the hatred lurking beneath our veneer of politeness bubbling to the surface (we are just as racist, sexist, and queerphobic as our southern neighbours).
I suspect my province of Alberta will be first. We've tied our sense of identity and stability to oil (see the Oilers), and as the climate crisis accelerates, Alberta will face greater pressure to stop its oil production. This will be seen as an attack on us as a society, and already I see and hear propaganda defending oil/plastic as "necessary" to our way of life.
I have no idea how to respond to these developments. If facists take over, which seems likely, I'll be on the chopping block. I'm not going to just run away or obey. This has been my family's home for generations, and my beliefs are rooted in reality. If we do not cease fossil fuel use ASAP, we will all die. Even then, a great number of us will probably still die.
Hedges has been right about damn near everything, and I believe him when he says things will only worsen. What do we do? I'm only in my 20s, I have so little power in this world.
I've read horrified reactions to the AB situation in "The Narwhal" and in "Hakai" online. It's important to know about the insane assumptions underlying the econ system in order to oppose them. Like defining away devastation of human communities and destruction of ecosystems as irrelevant "externalities." Or requiring endless growth on a finite planet.
Many North Americans dwell disconnected from the living Earth. They live on top of the land with no roots in it. In contrast, trees grow in obligate symbiosis with fungus on their roots. A complex system of connections affectionately known as the Wood Wide Web, it alone makes cooperation the dominant mode of life, not competition. There are also many other symbioses, like those in and on humans.
So then you have the advantage of having roots and heart. That's what will save the world. Or will revive whatever is left of it after the econ system implodes.
I would like to suggest that you read From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr Gene Sharp. It may not help you immediately, but I hope that it will help your generation to change things for yourselves, since I am old and won't live long enough to make the changes.
However, I was one of the 60s generation who did try to change things in our time, and some of our changes stayed.
Expect a revival of fine Euro empire behavior like in BC where they just went in and grabbed whatever resources they wanted. The multinationals and their wholly owned subsidiary N. American govts will exploit climate change as "opportunities." Burns in BC, NT, AB, QC, and ON are for them merely trail blazing.
I believe that we're witnessing the great rush to grab control of the last of the world's dwindling resources, with the technocracy at the helm, and democracy be damned.
IMO - his truth is beyond an annoyance, a direct threat to TPTB who want opinions like his shut-down completely. Here in Blutopia, the majority of folks I know hate and have hated Hedges for years - I love the man for his truth.
This is obviously a dangerous thought, but we might need to consider how the close military, geopolitical and partisan political and even religious relationship between Israel and key institutions of the U.S. establishment has played a role in moving American society toward fascism. Such an argument might have seemed overwrought before Oct. 7 of last year, but now I think the mask is off and the depth, breadth and power of the neocon/neoliberal/zionist alliance is now undeniable and must be faced.
"Until you change the way money works, you change nothing."
Michael Craig Ruppert (February 3, 1951 – April 13, 2014) was an American writer and musician, Los Angeles Police Department officer, investigative journalist, political activist, and peak oil awareness advocate known for his 2004 book Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.[2]
Several good writers mentioned here, but I'd like to see a little more love for guys like C Wright Mills, EE Schattschneider, Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, and Randolph Bourne. All these guys identified and clearly spelled out the hypocrisies of US politics decades before Wolin (although Wolin is very excellent too).
Fascism in the U.S. has thoroughly bipartisan roots, and I’m grateful to finally hear someone with a national audience acknowledge that. It is also sadly nothing new. The longevity and depravity of America’s history of human rights violations are rivaled only by the public ignorance surrounding them. I ran for Congress—and won a congressional primary in 2020–based on my concerns about the documented complicity of the Democratic party in fascism. Since leaving politics, I wrote at some length about this theme nearly a year ago, and deeply appreciate Hedges bringing a similar analysis to a wider community. https://open.substack.com/pub/shahidbuttar/p/fears-of-a-fascist-future-overlook?r=97w99&utm_medium=ios
The death of 600 thousand Ukrainians due to our desire to remove Putin and gain leverage to bring down Russia, and a genocide either of which could ultimately lead to a third world war was instigated under Biden's presidency, but his name is not mentioned, even though he seeks along with his neocon pals, like Blinken, world control, but Trump's name comes up repeatedly. If I remember correctly only Biden's vice president was mentioned in some off handed way, vapid. Although both parties are guilty in creating a country, a government that enriches the rich and cares nothing, or little, for it's citizenry, no democracy really, in which I don't disagree, but only one president is referenced in this regard clearly, "Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and moral deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner’s novels,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour." Do you think Hedges will provide a balanced and honest perspective of the incoming Trump administration, since I didn't perceive that when Trump was in office. Interesting that even Chomsky who berated the Trump administration repeatedly stated that the only statesman that could put an end to the war in Ukraine was Trump, who of course was no longer in office.
P. S. Even that "piece of art work" has bloody Trump looking vicious and dangerous, emerging from the bloody head of Washington, and it matters not that you say this problem goes beyond Trump, I don't want to listen to, read, the so called liberals spew hate towards Trump with little objectivity which they did during his prior 4 years as president. I hope they remain objective.
Trump *is* vicious and dangerous. The evil of the Dems does not counteract that in the slightest.
Really Vile? You make that assertion in a simple sentence, and you think I'm going to suck that up as truth? Biden was a man who pushed every middle eastern war for the benefit of Israel, and shoved it down the throats of his fellow democrats using his position as the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to do so, and they bought it, although he probably didn't have to push that hard. When it comes to Obama, no liberal was he with his dirty war in Syria and then of cause the utter destruction of Libya based on a lie, and then came the coup in Ukraine, as well the non stop hateful rhetoric when Trump wanted to get along with Russia. Well I don't need to be informed on where that has led us, 600 thousand Ukrainian dead, and it put the doomsday clock some 90 seconds to disaster. I sometimes wonder if the US said no to weaponizing Israel's genocide would Trump follow suit, since it would make it more difficult for him to do so. When it comes to the democratic party you are living in the past.
Let me just add that the democrats tried to oust Trump, an elected president, on the lie of Russia-gate, yet no one held accountable for those baseless lies, or that he instigated a coup on January 6, but no doubt you are a believer since your hate determines the truth.
The artwork by Mr. Fish is horrifying, but unfortunately all too apt.
Re Mr. Fish horrifying artwork - We Live in Horrifying Times - thankful for a Fish to show the way.
I think his art work is amazing!
The United States is finished. We are witnessing its death throes in our lifetime. Something I never thought I would see. All we can do is continue the ride until it is over. The U.S. has integrated itself into so much of the western developed world now that the rest of them will follow the U.S. down into the oblivion it has created.
What will rise from the ashes is not likely to be anything close to what it was, and its allies will disintegrate into warring states. We are starting to see this happen right now, today, starting in the Balkans and eastern Europe with Moldova, Georgia and Serbia.
Once the governments and economies of Germany and France complete their fall, other countries will fall away, and the EU will be no more. NATO will be no more.
There will be very few safe countries for those in the west to escape to once their countries fail. Some counties are already pulling the welcome mat away from their doors for the yanks and western Europeans. This will get worse soon.
Trump is only going to hasten what was already happening. I just hope I can save my family from the worst when it comes.
What we are seeing is the transition from republic to empire, sort of like what happened in ancient Rome.
In the case of the Roman Empire, they kept up the facade of republican institutions, the Senate, the SPQR slogan, etc., right up until the very end.
The Course Of Empire
(Thomas Cole, 1833 - 1836)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Course_of_Empire_(paintings)
Thanks! I looked at the entire series. I don't know why Woodbury thought it couldn't happen to the US, but that was in the happy beginning and not now, when we can all see its fall.
Yes, and we see residues of that same insanity and denial today.
I think that there are not many people who want to admit that their country is falling apart around them; that would mean that the world as they know it will disappear.
Those of us who can see it are lucky, because we are forewarned. Or maybe it's because we have been unlucky in this world and are hoping that the new system will work out better for us. At least, with our foreknowledge, we can help those who are overtaken by the change. We can teach them how to cope.
"… Listen to the tide slowly turning
Wash all our heartaches away
We're part of the fire that is burning
And from the ashes we can build another day
… But I'm frightened for your children
And the life that we are living is in vain
And the sunshine we've been waiting for will turn to rain
… When the final line is over
And it's certain that the curtain's gonna fall
I can hide inside your sweet, sweet love forever more
(Moody Blues, Story In Your Eyes (1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se9U6xG_fEM
“Something I never thought I would see.”
It’s interesting that you should say that. I’ve been convinced since 2007 (before the gfc) that the US empire would not last another 30 years. It’s easy to pontificate, I know. Back then, all the people I shared my view with thought I’d lost my marbles. But there is a simple truism—the US empire = the US dollar. The demise of the US dollar is being accelerated by hubris. There is only one question remaining. Financial capital are the “Wizard of Oz” controlling the show. What will be their core strategy for retaining power and a monopoly over resources? This may become clearer over the next couple of years.
"What will be their core strategy for retaining power and a monopoly over resources?"
1) privatize social security - A major cash infusion to Wall Street
2) shift from the dollar to bitcoin as US currency
3) eliminate all economic regulatory agencies
4) eliminate the cap on US debt
5) eliminate Welfare, Food stamps, and all "entitlement" programs
6) defund public education and put Christian Fascists in charge of curriculum
All 6 (and more) have been public announced in Trump's Project 2025 Transition Plan.
I forgot -
7) renew and reduce Trump's corporate tax cuts
8) eliminate the estate tax
"2) shift from the dollar to bitcoin as US currency" - bitcoin is a deflationary currency. What fuels is US economy is inflation of the dollar diffused over population of the world.
One cannot inflate bitcoin and if successful - bitcoin will collapse.
Empire does not seem to understand that it needs its citizens. It needs good roads, farmers, and manufacturing. It needs to have the ability to provide for its citizens, or it will cease to exist.
At the most cynical level, it needs to have competency, if only so that it can manufacture the weapons it needs.
"We have robots for that..."
The futurist fantasy of the technocrats.
Humans are herd animals to rival any sheep.
And a very Merry Christmas to you, as well, Mr Hedges.
The death of a civilization based on greed, exploitation and avarice does not depress me. Good riddance.
What will follow? Oddly enough, that's up to us. I would submit, with all due respect, that despair is not an option, but merely complicity.
Once again Mr. Hedges, a brilliant portrait of a dying culture.
For me, the most resonant phrase here was “loss of community”.
But how can we cultivate community when the people themselves are largely against the idea? They resist all attempts to discover common ground. (I blame liberals far more than those on the extremes, on this point. I can easily see Jimmy Dore having a beer with almost any Trump voter.)
But it’s Christmas. I need hope. I hope it’s not naive to find some hope in the coalition of the new administration. Kennedy, Gabbard, (yes, I feel revulsion at their Zionism, but we have to choose our battles.) and Battacharya are truly interesting and inspiring choices, I am terribly curious how this will play out. If we’re lucky enough to be here next year…let’s see. In the meantime, thanks for everything. Thank you for your wisdom, your courage, and your grace. Now I’m off to go kiss a liberal.
Loss of Community is at the root of all our sorrows. Homelessness, is more about loss of community than housing. (do a count of empty bedrooms in your neighborhood, then count the homeless) We need community for our mental health. We need to be known, valued, and loved to be mentally well. We need accurate reflection from people who love us, to provide feedback on our actions and behaviors to be mentally healthy. We need to be told by people who love us, when we hurt other people. We need to be told by people who love us when we are caring, kind, and supportive.
Those who would rule us, to be successful in dominating us, need to destroy community, because a healthy community will instinctively oppose being dominated. A healthy community will instinctively reach out to assist those in need. A healthy community will look to ways to provide for its members. A healthy community will be diverse, because it understands the value of diversity. (It needs plumbers, nurses, doctors, garbage collectors, young people, old people, people who are artistic, people who can fix things, ...)
John, you nailed it. The pathological attention given to "individualism" in America is frightening. As I read the comments which are written in response to the various blogs on line; I see the oversimplification of a Manichean division of the world. This is embedded in a psychological reductionism which diverts our attention away from the kind of social organization which has degraded our lives. A kind of organization which ignores the importance of the community. We human beings are inherently social and we need the loving contact of others. This kind of human experience is, for the most part, trivialized or ignored completely.
I spoke out against the myth of individualism in an ecology class in the 1980s and I was laughed to scorn. Even the teaching assistant laughed at me.
Check out Bandy X Lee on Substack… the sanity and care she is bringing is inspiring. She has been warning about trump contagion since trump 1.0.
If you want to be dispelled of any affinity for Tulsi Gabbard, check out Due Dissidence's latest piece on her. Tulsi is not an honest operator. RFK equally worthless.
I couldn’t find this. It you send post a link I’ll see what they have to say.
Such a great summation of the machinations that have brought us to this ever-growing collapse.
Nothing like having Chris putting a little sunshine into everyone's morning, eh? Hedges is a sober version of Hunter S. Thompson, except Thompson had a sense of humor . Mr. Fish and Joe Sacco are Hedges' Ralph Steadman.
All hail our new Grand Inquisitor, brought to you by our sponsors , BlackRock, Elon Musk, The WEF, and now run to the store for more tin foil because we are neck deep into "Eyes Wide Shut" territory. But have no fear, Mother Nature is correcting the error of our ways as we speak.
Stay calm, and shop on!
Splendid essay on our country's moral, economic political and cultural collapse. While you might resist taking credit for your prophetic writings, you should at least feel vindicated. I've read most of your books and take credit for believing them! Now that we've come to the place that your prescience warned us of I'm relying on you to help us understand what comes next.
Your Faulkner analogy and interpretation is very apt!!!
What is remarkable to me (although it perhaps shouldn't be) is that Chris Hedges is the only figure in his position - as a journalist - who has consistently done his job over the past several decades, that of writing about this process of change. There have been a handful of others, in other capacities (mostly from academia, including those whom he lists above) who have written of this reality, and who have offered cautionary warnings. There are a lot of reasons for this (the commercial nature of our media, corporate and those perspectives that fall within the purview of social psychology).
But still, it has been odd to watch the progression of this, over the years, framed within the memory of reading the works listed above. (Those which have been read.) Depending on how it all plays out, I wonder if at some point - i.e. the scenario posited by Mr. O'Domnahnaill - in addition to the Snopes family, we might add the (historic/fictionalized) character of Willi Herold to some regions in the world and the U.S., depending on the degree of regional social breakdown.
And thank you as always to Chris Hedges. With respect to what Mr. White asks: there was a Balkan dictator in the 1980s, I think it was Slovbodan Milosevic, who was clever: he allowed one opposition voice, an academician, to make whatever criticisms he wanted to, Milosevic knew that he presented no threat, and that Milosevic could then claim that he allowed free speech.
I imagine that we will have (and have to some degree already) the most sophisticated and invisible control/self-control (ala Wolin) that history has ever known. The appearance of free speech, anything as long as it doesn't threaten the stable control. I'm thinking (hoping) that Mr. Hedges will be allowed to continue.
He will be effectively be drowned out by great online superhero movies! Virtual reality AI! Feelies! New generations of Taylor Swifts and immersive NFL games! The Empire of Illusion.
The merger of the corporatists with the Christian right is the marrying of Godzilla to Frankenstein.
We are in the grip of what Søren Kierkegaard called “sickness unto death” — the numbing of the soul by despair that leads to moral and physical debasement. All Trump has to do to establish a naked police state is flip a switch. And he will.
Those two excerpts pretty much sum it up for me. I love the Godzilla/Frankenstein analogy. Your mention of Kierkegaard took me back to my Seminary graduate studies, during which Kierkegaard was a subject for discussion, analysis and reflection.
Now 80, I believe I have lived and witnessed the very best years of our country. Growing up in rural farm country may have facilitated that idyllic reflection. I trace the "beginning of the end" back to Ronald Reagan. Reagan was a phony elitist who stabbed a huge dagger into the back of middle America. I am confident someone will pick a time that predates the Reagan assault. Yet, the eighties introduced a powerful Christian right (mostly wrong, by the way) represented by Falwell, Robertson, Bauer, Reed and a whole host of other self-righteous Jesus-panderers. They were the forebears of today's Christo-fascist nationalists. And, let's face it, there is very, very little of Jesus in their community of self-righteous hate and intolerance. Self-proclaiming evangelicals are more into judgmentalism and finger pointing than they are in promoting The Beatitudes. Biblical purists they are not.
And, now, we have an Elon Musk dipping his giant hyper-funded fingers into American politics. I will suffice it to say we are watching Trump's brain at work through the Musk-a-Tron. Our great democratic republic is on the edge of obliteration.
I agree that it is with Reagan that this began with his first assault on the New Deal and the Great Society.
👍 I despised him starting when he was the voice-over for "20 Mule Team Borax", the sponsor for the TV series "Death Valley Days".
The D party purged the New Deal in the late '70s. Ironically named, these 'New Dems' weren't a revived progressive liberalism; they were tech infatuated neolibs bedazzled by econopathy. At the time, the Rs still had progressives in office. The D push to the right helped enable the Rs to go full out batshit far right. Now made even worse (very possibly lethally so) because of the D party elite's alliance with neocons.
The '80's S&L "scandal" witnessed an enormous transfer of wealth out of the American middle class, but unfortunately the people couldn't see through the media hype to understand that this wasn't a scandal driven by a few bad actors, but a systematic looting overseen by their own government. Mom and Pop's life savings were drained and not returned, while low-level fall guys had their knuckles rapped, and the "steal big" guys laughed all the way to the bank.
I remember the Savings and Loan bailout of President G. H. W. Bush and not that people could not see through the media hype but that the systematic looting of the government by the wealthy financialists, repeated multiple times since then, could not be stopped by citizens. The financing of the wars is another scandal or bailout or theft that cannot be stopped by citizens; but I cannot detail it. Since my experience is limited I think perhaps the United States has been this way forever.
As the first commenter instilled - I doubt the Democrats were ever any good and Hedges seems to imply they were at some time. I received many commentators claiming the New Deal of President F. D. Roosevelt (Democrat) was the defining event to differentiate Democrats from Republicans. But, I see them often changing sides. If Reagan Bush did not do it for the Robber Barons then Clinton did, and that is since I have been an adult.
D apologists claim their party's rightward lurch was necessitated by the Reagan era. Not so. The D party underwent a neolib takeover in the late '70s, probably related to the Powell memo. This elite dumped the New Deal, including financial regulations. Plus they abandoned their own base, the majority working class. Pleasing to their new corporate sponsors and enabling Robber Barons 2.0. I know because i fought them. The decades of econ/pol research I've done confirms my experience.
Totally agree, and yes, this goes back to the Powell memo, and probably further back to anti-democratic characters such as the Dulles brothers.
"Plus. they abandoned their own base, the majority working class."
I have said that for a very long time. While Republicans were "infiltrating" state and local legislatures, the DEMS sat and watched. I also believe that Schumer should have been dumped long ago. He loves to hear himself talk. Pelosi should have bowed out, as well. DEMS also do not know how to fight, especially with this new breed of fascist Republicans. DEMS have yet to learn that politics in its current iteration is a blood sport.
I suspect they know. Like elitists everywhere, they just want it to be other people's. We invisible lessers, the silenced majority, have been reduced to econ cannon fodder. The young adult generation, thanks to the economic draft, gets to "serve" as actual cannon fodder. While $$$ that might have gone to domestic needs are diverted to those expensive endless wars. The rosy aura of the near future is a continuation of that bloody mist of the "Fog of War."
PS--As a blue collar rank and file union activist, I was trained in the late '60s by tough people who'd been 1930s labor organizers (C.I.O.) They told me "liberals are the ones who leave the room when the fight starts." They sure did.
How long before they try to shut you down? It is, I think inevitable. You will be seen as an annoyance that needs to be silenced. As a Canadian I now know how the Austrians felt in 1932.
I fear Canada is not far behind in the facist push into government. All the elements are there; the greed-induced economic hardship (we have a monopoly problem), the out-of-touch elites, and the hatred lurking beneath our veneer of politeness bubbling to the surface (we are just as racist, sexist, and queerphobic as our southern neighbours).
I suspect my province of Alberta will be first. We've tied our sense of identity and stability to oil (see the Oilers), and as the climate crisis accelerates, Alberta will face greater pressure to stop its oil production. This will be seen as an attack on us as a society, and already I see and hear propaganda defending oil/plastic as "necessary" to our way of life.
I have no idea how to respond to these developments. If facists take over, which seems likely, I'll be on the chopping block. I'm not going to just run away or obey. This has been my family's home for generations, and my beliefs are rooted in reality. If we do not cease fossil fuel use ASAP, we will all die. Even then, a great number of us will probably still die.
Hedges has been right about damn near everything, and I believe him when he says things will only worsen. What do we do? I'm only in my 20s, I have so little power in this world.
I've read horrified reactions to the AB situation in "The Narwhal" and in "Hakai" online. It's important to know about the insane assumptions underlying the econ system in order to oppose them. Like defining away devastation of human communities and destruction of ecosystems as irrelevant "externalities." Or requiring endless growth on a finite planet.
Many North Americans dwell disconnected from the living Earth. They live on top of the land with no roots in it. In contrast, trees grow in obligate symbiosis with fungus on their roots. A complex system of connections affectionately known as the Wood Wide Web, it alone makes cooperation the dominant mode of life, not competition. There are also many other symbioses, like those in and on humans.
So then you have the advantage of having roots and heart. That's what will save the world. Or will revive whatever is left of it after the econ system implodes.
I would like to suggest that you read From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr Gene Sharp. It may not help you immediately, but I hope that it will help your generation to change things for yourselves, since I am old and won't live long enough to make the changes.
However, I was one of the 60s generation who did try to change things in our time, and some of our changes stayed.
Expect a revival of fine Euro empire behavior like in BC where they just went in and grabbed whatever resources they wanted. The multinationals and their wholly owned subsidiary N. American govts will exploit climate change as "opportunities." Burns in BC, NT, AB, QC, and ON are for them merely trail blazing.
I believe that we're witnessing the great rush to grab control of the last of the world's dwindling resources, with the technocracy at the helm, and democracy be damned.
I doubt Mr. Hedges has enough influence.
IMO - his truth is beyond an annoyance, a direct threat to TPTB who want opinions like his shut-down completely. Here in Blutopia, the majority of folks I know hate and have hated Hedges for years - I love the man for his truth.
How dare he call out the well educated and well off professional and administrative elite D faithful for their refusal to see their own culpability!
Unless and until he is able to affect the decisionmaking process, nobody of influence abnd authority knows or cares.
FF You underestimate their vanity.
I doubt they even notice.
You said that twice already in your comments on this article alone.
It's something you've also said repeatedly in comments on other articles.
Yet here you still are...
This is obviously a dangerous thought, but we might need to consider how the close military, geopolitical and partisan political and even religious relationship between Israel and key institutions of the U.S. establishment has played a role in moving American society toward fascism. Such an argument might have seemed overwrought before Oct. 7 of last year, but now I think the mask is off and the depth, breadth and power of the neocon/neoliberal/zionist alliance is now undeniable and must be faced.
Yes absolutely correct Chris. Same is now happening in the UK. A dire situation.
"Until you change the way money works, you change nothing."
Michael Craig Ruppert (February 3, 1951 – April 13, 2014) was an American writer and musician, Los Angeles Police Department officer, investigative journalist, political activist, and peak oil awareness advocate known for his 2004 book Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.[2]
But is it the end of the Age of Oil or do they want you to think it is?
"When all the stars are falling down
Into the sea and on the ground
And angry voices carry on the wind
A beam of light will fill your head
And you'll remember what's been said
By all the good men this world's ever known
Another man is what you'll see
Who looks like you and looks like me
And yet, somehow he will not feel the same
His life caught up in misery
He doesn't think like you and me
'Cause he can't see what you and I can see"
(Moody Blues, Melancholy Man (1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxMXDwP7lqM
Several good writers mentioned here, but I'd like to see a little more love for guys like C Wright Mills, EE Schattschneider, Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, and Randolph Bourne. All these guys identified and clearly spelled out the hypocrisies of US politics decades before Wolin (although Wolin is very excellent too).