The archeological remains of past civilizations, including those of the prehistoric Cahokia temple mound complex in Illinois, are sobering reminders of our fate.
I think I can understand your reasons for always presenting such a bleak prognosis and I often feel just as despairing but I find myself wishing that you would devote more effort to seeking out and articulating the way forward - how we might transcend our present seemingly hopeless plight. You frequently lament the tendency to resort to magical thinking and yet you are a Christian priest. Does your faith suggest a way forward? I wish you would speak more of the ways we may discover faith and hope.
As someone who lives in St. Louis, it’s hard not to think of the constant misfortunes that has befallen here, especially when you place the city’s decline in its proper global and national context. The comparison to Cahokia is obvious to anyone that understands history.
I recommend reading a book called The Broken Heart of America.
I spent three years living in a native encampment in the sub-Arctic. I am an Autistic Semite and my Father was a wandering Aramean. The Dogrib are Dene and Dogrib is the parent language of all the Dene. The Dene are the people and the people are Darwinian. They don't own the land the land owns them.
One upon a time in Lithuania there rose a town called Vilnius where a new understanding of the universe arose. It was called Deism and it came to fruition in Vilnius. Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson were Deists. They believed as did the Dene we don't own the Gods the Gods own us. They rejected all religion and relied on Empirical observations. They understood that life was not linear it was cyclical. It wasn't circular as Harry once sang for us in Regina Saskatchewan. It was cyclical and sometimes we must adapt to the cycles not wait to complete the circle.
We are the people. We must take care of ourselves and let the gods take of themselves. The Greek and Roman gods were crazy just like us. They couldn't take care of themselves and died a tragic death.
We still debate the God of Abraham. Was he god of the Temple or the GOD OF THE UNIVERSE? The Gaon travelled the universe to find out.
The Empires destroyed Vilnius in 1794 after The Declarations of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The Czars did the work but the Kings, Presidents, Caliphs, and Kaisers approved their cousins activities. Dr Johnson mentions the Gaon in his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language and gave us lots of words for liberal democracy. He called Franklin a scoundrel because he was a communist and Johnson was a conservative philosopher.
We saw ten days of liberal democracy in the 19th century in Paris it was a peasant revolt in the Paris Communes.
My forefathers were followers of the Gaon. They believed the laws of the universe were immutable and there was no magic permitted.
What is civilization? Atilla was a wise and benevolent leader . The Romans were BARBARIANS. The Romans were believers in laws not justice just like all the tyrants in History..
I am an independent author and documentary filmmaker. I grew up in Collinsville Illinois and lived on the bluffs above the mounds ( I now live in nearby St Louis). Much has been done to improve the area of this once great native city since I was a child, but I can't think of any greater symbol of our present myopic perspective and obliviousness to the past. Ignorant of the significance of the mound - or perhaps just indifferent, in the early 20th century a local doctor constructed a home on top of Monk's Mound, hence the carved driveway running up the western side. Later on in the 60's, a Grandpa Pidgeon's store was built just down the road and a separate mound was bulldozed to accommodate it. The nearby massive landfill which was started a decade prior now rises higher than the mounds themselves and can be seen in the distance. While the Cahokians toiled to build this amazing city over a century or more, my local predecessors built this giant trash mound full of tires and dirty baby diapers in less than half the time - a beautiful testament to progress.
The counties of St Clair and Madison Illinois that coalesce here are considered to be the two most corrupt counties in the state next to Cook County (Chicago) and because of this, little to nothing was done to preserve the area until the last 40 or 50 years. The contemporary history in this area is a veritable microcosm for the US's short-sighted failures of industrialization, land usage, ignorance of history, racial inequality and corruption. What happened here in East St Louis is a collapse of its own kind. The Ku Klux Klan held a rally on Monks Mound prior the race riots in East St Louis in 1917 which is just west of the site. Turf wars were fought here between gangsters and the KKK over liquor sales to migrants, blacks and Catholics. The once "model city" of ESL now looks akin to a Roman ruin falling into decay when the industry disappeared, the wealthy whites moved east or west and the poor black residents were left with the crumbling infrastructure, devalued property and severe pollution. My dad (a union electrician) worked for Monsanto there in the 70's when they made agent orange and napalm for the Vietnam War. More recent EPA reports showed that the soil around the property is so toxic that the friction from children's bicycle tires started fires in an adjacent dry creek bed. My dad recalled a fire in the 70's when the plant was evacuated. He and other workers ran to the gates as the gas from the production of the phosphorus weapons ignited in the sewers and 200lb manhole covers erupted into the air from the blasts.
I have always wanted to do a film about the region and I know a great deal about the more contemporary history, but funding such an endeavor is tough. Please contact me if you might be interested in speaking with me about this. Moreover, I have another story you might be very interested in and there are a lot of elite people who do not want this to see the light of day. Lastly I highly respect your work and have read many of your books, listened to many of your speeches and commentaries and I would really appreciate hearing from you sir. I guarantee you will appreciate the information I can share with you.
Yours most respectfully, Lou Baczewski
Author of Louch (A Simple Man's True Story of War, Survival, Life and Legacy & Director / Producer of Path of the Past (The Untold True Story of Fury)
Thank you Chris for giving me another layer to our onion of reality. I've listened to this article a few times already. The onion is big and rotting.. mind blown.
I wrote a comment a day or so ago, after reading this well crafted and informative report. I follow the comments, but could not find mine, so here I go again. My ego persists. I read the Report and waited for one ( possibly near the end ) mention of a modicum of hope. Maybe there isn't one in Mr. Hedges's mind. He has seen too much and has a clear view of the reality of where we are at and how we got there. But it is here and now that we live and to offer up such a bleak picture without offering up a small glimmer of hope, however faint, to help ease our feelings of helplessness, was for me, not helpful. Why should I bother to think about my responsibility, my darker side as well as the collective darker side of this country, if it isn't going to matter much anyhow. Why should I bother to get rid of my lawn and plant wildflowers, recycle, vote well, speak up, try to bridge this divisiveness in my own head and my own community and try to understand the emotions fueling the rage of "the other side". I spent the day staring a bit. Considered a glass of wine in the middle of the day. Ate a pint of ice cream. I lost incentive, just for a day, to participate in my community, and bring my art to the city of Asheville. I hung out, not circling the abyss, but flopping around in it. I read Joseph Campbell's work, and he speaks of the Hero's Journey. Part of that journey is spending time in despair; and it is impossible to not feel despair right now. The danger is in staying there. So maybe that will happen next, because I do see Chris Hedges as a kind of hero. A bringer of information and truth to the people. One who asks us to look in the mirror both personally and as a nation. That is a rare and important request. A report like this, however, would be more easily digested if it was balanced with the mention of the possibility of redemption, however small. Maybe that will come. And today, I am back on it. Doing my work. participating. Killing the grass and not diving into a bottle of cheap wine and looking forward to reading more of his work in the future.
An entire planets resources being destroyed by blind ambition’s greed. I’m very aware that those in power are totally blind and inept to address this problem. They do half measures to placate the population while knowing full well half measures get you nothing. It breaks my heart to see the mess we’ve left for the generation to come.
It's great that the written content is read aloud! I have low vision so reading, even on a big TV screen is difficult these days. The narrator's voice conveys the nuance of the writing beautifully. Thanks for providing this service!
In past human migrations there were always people left behind, maybe 10%, maybe 50%, maybe 99% of the population. The coming migration, after the collapse of the bubbles of the greatest technological and financial expansions in history, will leave 99.9999% of humanity behind, dying quickly from lethal wet bulb temperatures or slowly from starvation after failed grain harvests when RuBisCo activase suffers failure from heat and grain crops are unable to photosynthesize for long periods of time. When the few thousands of our oiligarchs' descendants are able to leave their strongholds in Paraguay and New Zealand they will encounter an impoverished biosphere. No doubt they will find it necessary to believe the narrative handed down from their forefathers that it was the abhorrent, dirty, innumerable masses who destroyed the wonderous biosphere. And no doubt they will find a use for us, the unwashed masses, now defunct, as their forefathers always were able to do. Perhaps they will use our bones as fertilizer, like the bones of the Plains bison in the 1800's.
I think I can understand your reasons for always presenting such a bleak prognosis and I often feel just as despairing but I find myself wishing that you would devote more effort to seeking out and articulating the way forward - how we might transcend our present seemingly hopeless plight. You frequently lament the tendency to resort to magical thinking and yet you are a Christian priest. Does your faith suggest a way forward? I wish you would speak more of the ways we may discover faith and hope.
As someone who lives in St. Louis, it’s hard not to think of the constant misfortunes that has befallen here, especially when you place the city’s decline in its proper global and national context. The comparison to Cahokia is obvious to anyone that understands history.
I recommend reading a book called The Broken Heart of America.
I spent three years living in a native encampment in the sub-Arctic. I am an Autistic Semite and my Father was a wandering Aramean. The Dogrib are Dene and Dogrib is the parent language of all the Dene. The Dene are the people and the people are Darwinian. They don't own the land the land owns them.
One upon a time in Lithuania there rose a town called Vilnius where a new understanding of the universe arose. It was called Deism and it came to fruition in Vilnius. Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson were Deists. They believed as did the Dene we don't own the Gods the Gods own us. They rejected all religion and relied on Empirical observations. They understood that life was not linear it was cyclical. It wasn't circular as Harry once sang for us in Regina Saskatchewan. It was cyclical and sometimes we must adapt to the cycles not wait to complete the circle.
We are the people. We must take care of ourselves and let the gods take of themselves. The Greek and Roman gods were crazy just like us. They couldn't take care of themselves and died a tragic death.
We still debate the God of Abraham. Was he god of the Temple or the GOD OF THE UNIVERSE? The Gaon travelled the universe to find out.
The Empires destroyed Vilnius in 1794 after The Declarations of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The Czars did the work but the Kings, Presidents, Caliphs, and Kaisers approved their cousins activities. Dr Johnson mentions the Gaon in his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language and gave us lots of words for liberal democracy. He called Franklin a scoundrel because he was a communist and Johnson was a conservative philosopher.
We saw ten days of liberal democracy in the 19th century in Paris it was a peasant revolt in the Paris Communes.
My forefathers were followers of the Gaon. They believed the laws of the universe were immutable and there was no magic permitted.
What is civilization? Atilla was a wise and benevolent leader . The Romans were BARBARIANS. The Romans were believers in laws not justice just like all the tyrants in History..
Mr. Hedges,
I am an independent author and documentary filmmaker. I grew up in Collinsville Illinois and lived on the bluffs above the mounds ( I now live in nearby St Louis). Much has been done to improve the area of this once great native city since I was a child, but I can't think of any greater symbol of our present myopic perspective and obliviousness to the past. Ignorant of the significance of the mound - or perhaps just indifferent, in the early 20th century a local doctor constructed a home on top of Monk's Mound, hence the carved driveway running up the western side. Later on in the 60's, a Grandpa Pidgeon's store was built just down the road and a separate mound was bulldozed to accommodate it. The nearby massive landfill which was started a decade prior now rises higher than the mounds themselves and can be seen in the distance. While the Cahokians toiled to build this amazing city over a century or more, my local predecessors built this giant trash mound full of tires and dirty baby diapers in less than half the time - a beautiful testament to progress.
The counties of St Clair and Madison Illinois that coalesce here are considered to be the two most corrupt counties in the state next to Cook County (Chicago) and because of this, little to nothing was done to preserve the area until the last 40 or 50 years. The contemporary history in this area is a veritable microcosm for the US's short-sighted failures of industrialization, land usage, ignorance of history, racial inequality and corruption. What happened here in East St Louis is a collapse of its own kind. The Ku Klux Klan held a rally on Monks Mound prior the race riots in East St Louis in 1917 which is just west of the site. Turf wars were fought here between gangsters and the KKK over liquor sales to migrants, blacks and Catholics. The once "model city" of ESL now looks akin to a Roman ruin falling into decay when the industry disappeared, the wealthy whites moved east or west and the poor black residents were left with the crumbling infrastructure, devalued property and severe pollution. My dad (a union electrician) worked for Monsanto there in the 70's when they made agent orange and napalm for the Vietnam War. More recent EPA reports showed that the soil around the property is so toxic that the friction from children's bicycle tires started fires in an adjacent dry creek bed. My dad recalled a fire in the 70's when the plant was evacuated. He and other workers ran to the gates as the gas from the production of the phosphorus weapons ignited in the sewers and 200lb manhole covers erupted into the air from the blasts.
I have always wanted to do a film about the region and I know a great deal about the more contemporary history, but funding such an endeavor is tough. Please contact me if you might be interested in speaking with me about this. Moreover, I have another story you might be very interested in and there are a lot of elite people who do not want this to see the light of day. Lastly I highly respect your work and have read many of your books, listened to many of your speeches and commentaries and I would really appreciate hearing from you sir. I guarantee you will appreciate the information I can share with you.
Yours most respectfully, Lou Baczewski
Author of Louch (A Simple Man's True Story of War, Survival, Life and Legacy & Director / Producer of Path of the Past (The Untold True Story of Fury)
Thank you Chris for giving me another layer to our onion of reality. I've listened to this article a few times already. The onion is big and rotting.. mind blown.
Any thoughts about this information? https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/there-is-no-variant-not-novel-no-pandemic-dr-david-martin-with-reiner-fuellmich/
I read this twice and listened to it 3 times. Wow scary reality. Thanks again Chris for keeping it real.
I wrote a comment a day or so ago, after reading this well crafted and informative report. I follow the comments, but could not find mine, so here I go again. My ego persists. I read the Report and waited for one ( possibly near the end ) mention of a modicum of hope. Maybe there isn't one in Mr. Hedges's mind. He has seen too much and has a clear view of the reality of where we are at and how we got there. But it is here and now that we live and to offer up such a bleak picture without offering up a small glimmer of hope, however faint, to help ease our feelings of helplessness, was for me, not helpful. Why should I bother to think about my responsibility, my darker side as well as the collective darker side of this country, if it isn't going to matter much anyhow. Why should I bother to get rid of my lawn and plant wildflowers, recycle, vote well, speak up, try to bridge this divisiveness in my own head and my own community and try to understand the emotions fueling the rage of "the other side". I spent the day staring a bit. Considered a glass of wine in the middle of the day. Ate a pint of ice cream. I lost incentive, just for a day, to participate in my community, and bring my art to the city of Asheville. I hung out, not circling the abyss, but flopping around in it. I read Joseph Campbell's work, and he speaks of the Hero's Journey. Part of that journey is spending time in despair; and it is impossible to not feel despair right now. The danger is in staying there. So maybe that will happen next, because I do see Chris Hedges as a kind of hero. A bringer of information and truth to the people. One who asks us to look in the mirror both personally and as a nation. That is a rare and important request. A report like this, however, would be more easily digested if it was balanced with the mention of the possibility of redemption, however small. Maybe that will come. And today, I am back on it. Doing my work. participating. Killing the grass and not diving into a bottle of cheap wine and looking forward to reading more of his work in the future.
An entire planets resources being destroyed by blind ambition’s greed. I’m very aware that those in power are totally blind and inept to address this problem. They do half measures to placate the population while knowing full well half measures get you nothing. It breaks my heart to see the mess we’ve left for the generation to come.
It's great that the written content is read aloud! I have low vision so reading, even on a big TV screen is difficult these days. The narrator's voice conveys the nuance of the writing beautifully. Thanks for providing this service!
In past human migrations there were always people left behind, maybe 10%, maybe 50%, maybe 99% of the population. The coming migration, after the collapse of the bubbles of the greatest technological and financial expansions in history, will leave 99.9999% of humanity behind, dying quickly from lethal wet bulb temperatures or slowly from starvation after failed grain harvests when RuBisCo activase suffers failure from heat and grain crops are unable to photosynthesize for long periods of time. When the few thousands of our oiligarchs' descendants are able to leave their strongholds in Paraguay and New Zealand they will encounter an impoverished biosphere. No doubt they will find it necessary to believe the narrative handed down from their forefathers that it was the abhorrent, dirty, innumerable masses who destroyed the wonderous biosphere. And no doubt they will find a use for us, the unwashed masses, now defunct, as their forefathers always were able to do. Perhaps they will use our bones as fertilizer, like the bones of the Plains bison in the 1800's.
Thank you Chris. On point as always.