American society spawns trauma and this trauma expresses itself in a variety of self-destructive pathologies, including the erosion of democracy and rise of neo-fascism.
Over time, all systems eventually come to be ruled by sociopaths. This is because sociopaths are precisely the people who will do whatever it takes to gain and keep power.
This is why, after some 5,000 years or so of recorded history, there are examples if all kinds of political and economic systems that flourish for a while and then perish, as the sociopaths take over.
We went through something like this before during the gilded age. The sociopaths had taken over. Then we had a giant depression because of all the mistakes the sociopaths made. We got anti-trust legislation passed and fair labor legislation passed. FDR either screwed things up with his New Deal and we were saved by WWII, or he made things better and the war took it to the next level. But for decades the upper class and the middle class were the power and had very similar lives. But they, the sociopaths, looted the cupboard again… extracting the economic benefits to hand to China for payola… and leaving scraps for the American middle class and poor.
And all China gave you was the junk in the trunk, absorbing all the process of manufacturing’s pollution and industrial accidents along the way. It’s all their fault. ‘Good job you have the Vergeltungswaffen en route there to make them pay.
Roland, China gave nothing to the American people but everything to our corporations like access to cheap labor and participation in the most populated market. Our corporations are the ones that need to pay to us.
I believe that any TRULY democratic society doesn't allow sociopaths to grasp the power and besides, with the exemption of some masochists, nobody enjoys being a victim.
It doesn't matter what we believe, what is is, what matters. False religions and the capitalists have worked together for thousands of years to brainwash the sheeple. Trouble is, capitalism does not work when you run out of other people's natural resources and you have destroyed the environment!
Not only a shit hole country, but one that doesn’t have a clue about flushing the toilet - like the bird that continues fouling its nest. Anybody ever hear about the national strike idea? We don’t negotiate with the psychopaths and the cannibals, nor the Trauma Meisters. We just set the terms in - stone, period, and continue from there .
Americans aren’t like the French. Americans have ‘favorite politicians’ and they believe that “yes, maybe one day I can be rich too” while down punching on the poor.
True for the French it's mostly about the Party and we have quite a few choices until just before the election. Mind you the Le Pen nutcases are different.
I lived in France and have family in Italy. I assure you it is worse there in many ways. Its not like the people who run Europe aren't sociopaths also.
They just don’t have mass shooters every two days like do, and if they do, it’s probably CIA activity. I have a Irish passport and family over there. They are shocked what’s happening here. Out of control military spending and public apathy. They enjoy public health care and if those sociopaths try to cut it, they are in the streets shutting shit down.
"Free Market Capitalism" is working as designed: extracting from the bottom 99% and enriching the top 1%. Carnival barkers like Trump and Bannon and the howling jackals on Fox, OAN, and Newsmax are depraved opportunists. Unfortunately the DNC is no better, kneeling before Wall Street and Silicon Valley and both parties and all corporate media kneel before the MIC.
Best bet would be to save the democracy first and vote for Biden and then hope that a real liberal runs for office and not any of the right wing sadists. Voting for Cornell you're going to end up with capitalism and no socialism and 10 times more sadism ,at least. When Trump gets elected or any other GOP. The GOP is not even a political party anymore they are a cult opposed to democracy. The GOP is a terrorist organization now in the present!
I don’t think Biden is some hero saving democracy. His entire history and funding is from the corporate headquarter state, is it not? He was a war hawk for decades. Therein lies the problem on both sides - all the wealth buys all the politics/decisions/laws and we see where that has led. To propose Biden is saving us neglects how he continues to escalate a proxy war against another nuclear-armed sociopath. None of the masses here, in Ukraine or in Russia want that. All parties/governments have lied about every other war - don’t kid yourself on this one, either.
Paul, we are just trying to buy time. Hopefully Biden and Trump and all the other gops will get sick and won't be able to be in charge anymore. The top leadership of the Democrats party has also been traitorous to the nation along with all the Republicans, especially with free trade and immigration. At least the dems haven't tried insurrection or selling top secret information to the other globalist billionaire autocrats. If Cornel West was running as a Democrat, I would vote for him in the primary. I'm not going to throw my vote away for the billionaire autocrats so they can get a psychopath installed. Any psychopath. If Gore had been elected president we could have avoided the 8 trillion dollar Iraq war and saved millions of lives. And Nader and the Republican supreme Court caused that. West doesn't have a chance unless the gop's who don't support Trump vote for him, and hell would probably freeze over first. Biden not prosecuting or having Garland prosecute about 300 GOP ring leaders causing the Democrats to lose the Congress and supreme Court is unforgivable. I didn't raise the fascists or create the fascists, we just need to buy time so maybe someone with sanity could get elected!
More Democrats voted for George W Bush in Florida than voted for Nader in 2000. Saying that Nader cost Gore the election is an old canard brought to you by the DNC.
Do you know of any of our presidents that have saved democracy? Perhaps those candidates that were rejected by our traditional parties, and thus were not elected, would have restored democracy.
Dictators can starve you and your children, take your guns, torture you, harvest your organs, dissect you in bathrooms, abolish the minimum wage and social security and poison your air food and water with plastics and forever chemicals etc. Plus they could use you and your children as sex slaves as well that's how sadists are. That is what the Russians are doing over in Ukraine. Old people ,women, men, children... The Russian people have been traumatized by capitalism as well.
Corporations are doing all that you attribute to dictators, in the US, now and have been doing so for 50+ years. The Military Industrial congressional complex. BIGPHARMA. The SICKCare INsurance industry. endless wars-death-destruction, and the list goes on. They own the justice system as well. Money rules in the US; it buys anything.
Yes the rich own the government. But right now they can't sell the national parks and we still have due process. If you want a third world banana Republic Nation keep voting for The GOP capitalist fascists.
This is a fine piece, but one thing sticks out to me: “Gender non-conforming people”. In the same way that Gore Vidal claimed that all people are bisexual, all people are also gender nonconforming. To emphasize something about oneself which is actually universal is as divisive as discriminating against it. I don’t need to know if you’re vegan unless we’re going to have dinner, and I don’t need to know what kind of people you like to have sex with unless we’re going to have sex. I don’t care what gender you think you are any more than I care what race you think you’re a part of. These things only separate people. My oldest friend is a woman who lives with another woman and dresses more or less like a man. If you ask her whether she feels like she’s in the “wrong body” she’ll say “How could this even be possible? It’s my body. How could I possibly know what it is like to be a man?” She’s a strong independent human being, and is no more or less gender fluid than anyone else. She just is. She gets all the attention she needs by being a fine artist, nothing else need be discussed in public.
I have lived in 4 different country's and met all kinds of people. I could care less who or what they are as long as they are kind, tolerant and empathetic.
"To emphasize something about oneself which is actually universal is as divisive as discriminating against it."
This isn't really at all true and I don't understand how you could come to this conclusion either, and it goes against current biopsychosocial understanding as well. Human identity involves both individual factors such as personal experience and preference, as well as collective identities based on nationality, family, language, culture, religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, etc. This is all universal and identity in a nutshell, are you saying human identity is inherently divisive? And even if it can be, then so what, are we to eliminate human identity altogether because what forms identity is universal (and thus any emphasis of it apparently discriminatory)? Group identity is both unifying and potentially discriminatory, but whether or not it leads to discrimination (and to what degree) is dependent on many factors.
In the same way Gore Vidal is wrong on everyone being bisexual—if you look into LGBT statistics, very few of even the people who identify as bisexual actually end up in same sex relationships or having it meaningfully affect their lives in any way, as Greenwald has noted, and you'd have to have a very generous definition of the term that's slightly off from being 100% heterosexual and not really at the middle of the Kinsey scale to make such a case—you are also wrong about everyone being "gender nonconforming" and don't really sound like you understand either term (not that it's your fault, it's not like the people who use it are very good at explaining any new terms they want to introduce to anyone), especially if as you imply, you think someone who identifies as that is necessarily doing it for attention, as if it's something restricted entirely to 21st-century liberal class elite circles where it can be trendy.
It's not that deep of a term, no need to overthink and nitpick use of it especially when it's not even the point. It's not the same thing as "gender fluid" you're talking about or even "non-binary." I really don't get people's hysteria for fighting the gender culture war, bringing it into everything. Yes, some modern ideas of gender are kind of regressive at times, there's some issues, etc etc, and your friend who doesn't follow gender stereotypes doesn't identify with this term, but what does any of that have to do with anything?
Corporate America, at all levels, is dominated by sociopaths. So is academia. So are churches. So is government. I never framed my feelings of rage and despair as trauma. Chris, this was a great piece. I will read the references you cited. As always, thanks for your insightful opinion.
I've read Chris Hedges' work for a long time and believe he has accurately, and presciently, chronicled the splintering of America as well as the replacement of empathy with indifference and often cruelty. We're nearly a half century down this road of corporate ascendancy, private profit as the sole measure of value, and one only has to look at the political and environmental degradation to realize where it's going. The cruel bent took on steam in the aftermath of 9/11; that was a turning point in my view. Please share Chris's work as widely as you can. We're desperate for sane and honest voices.
“This trauma is as destructive to us personally as it is socially and politically. It leaves us in a state of dysphoria where confusion, agitation, emptiness and loneliness define our lives.… Trauma also drives many to flee into the arms of those who are orchestrating the abuse.”
YES, YES, and YES, again, Chris. What you’ve captured in this salient piece reflects much of what I have been trying to awaken people to since my first Substack essay, “A Primer for the Propagandized: Fear Is the Mind-Killer” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-primer-for-the-propagandized), where I write:
“A textbook example of Problem Reaction Solution, the current tsunami of worldwide hysteria is the latest and potentially most threatening example of mass control in history.
“The recipe is simple. Take a naturally occurring phenomenon, say a seasonal virus, and exaggerate its threat far beyond every imagining—despite exhaustive evidence to the contrary. Suppress, silence, ostracize, and demonize every individual who dares present facts that expose the false mono-narrative.
“Whip up a witches’ brew of anger, envy, and, most importantly, fear, escalating emotions to a boil so as to short-circuit our faculties of reason and logic.
“Isolate us from one another, supplant real-world interactions with virtual feuds, label nonconformists as a threat to the group, and pump the public with a disinformation campaign designed to confuse and atomize. In essence, foster a cultlike mentality that shuts down thought to guarantee assent.
“Cultivate and wield our cognitive biases—especially ingroup bias, conformity bias, and authority bias—against us in a comprehensive divide-and-conquer policy that keeps us too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to recognize and unite against those corralling us into a Matrix-like collective delusion that enables the powerful to extract our resources for their own gain.
“This ideological mass psychosis is religion—not science. If this were about science, the Media–Pharmaceutical–Big-Tech complex would not be memory-holing every dissenting voice, vilifying every thought criminal, and censoring every legitimate inquiry in quest of the truth.”
As you rightly observed, Chris, this collective trauma is not happenstance. It is induced through messaging crafted by behavioral psychologists to corral us into preplanned “solutions” that serve the self-appointed “elites,” corporations, and governments while eviscerating the middle class, poor, small businesses, and local economies so we become increasingly dependent on the State for our subsistence and thus will be coerced into compliance with ever-escalating levels of surveillance, subjugation, and slavery.
What we have been witnessing is a straightforward implementation of Biderman’s Chart of Coercion, which you will find in this piece:
I highly recommend you read Laura Dodsworth’s “A State of Fear” as well as her newly released “Free Your Mind,” which provides solutions for helping us overcome the engineered menticide of the populace. It is the book-length version of the 12-step recovery program I outline in this piece:
"We are caught up in pursuits of all kinds that draw us on, not because they are necessary or inspiring or uplifting, or because they enrich or add meaning to our lives, but simply because they obliterate the present"
Because the present is not a good place to be. Look at the preponderance of this thought in the slogans Make America Great Again - Build Back Better
Empty promises to steal hope and continue the status quo
I feel like Hedges is in the minority of leftists who feel immense empathy and compassion for Trump voters and other right wingers. I love this about him. I hear other leftists strongly disparage the notion of mending fences- of forming or maintaining or mending relationships with people who don't share our political beliefs. I suppose they got that attitude by reading other smart leftists from the past. Maybe I'm naive. Maybe I need to read more.
Or, maybe Hedges is right. Perhaps I don't understand the notion of hating poor and working class white people because hating those people is bad strategy (let alone morally bad.) From a numbers perspective, refusing to engage with right wingers makes no sense. It also makes no sense in terms of leftists' compassion for the oppressed. Why is it good to care about Palestinians but hate our own neighbors?
Ideas or norms or systems in economics and politics are often just gobbledy gook bullshit. Words were crafted to make a simple idea appear complicated. The purpose? To make me feel like I'm too dumb to understand something.
That's what makes me think Hedges is correct about unity. Why would I need to read economic or political history and theory to understand why hating my neighbor will lead to effective revolution? Perhaps because it's a stupid idea, and my gut was correct.
Thank you, Chris Hedges, and thank you for everyone who cares to have a civil conversation about tyranny. Merry days might overtake oppressive ways with such efforts.
This is an excellent article. It describes perfectly the trauma inflicted by the Country being under the Domination of big money and ultimately those who insist on their twisted plan . The Federalist Society and those that support the power of big polluters. The six conservative judges who operate from their own perverse and corrupt aggrandizement. Donald Trump supplies more psychosis all by himself, with those ill enough to support him.
I have one disagreement and that is that you portray ALL pornography as abusive and its very existence symptomatic of the decay of society. Yes, some pornography has all those dysfunctional aspects but you should realize that consuming pornography that depicts consensual sexual activity which is tender and loving is not harmful at all. In fact, what I would call 'ethical pornography' can help heal the trauma you describe as a harmless way of satisfying healthy sexual urges. Also, many couples in a committed relationship use pornography to enhance their sex lives and that, surely, is a good thing?
If by gender non-conforming you mean homosexuals then okay, this article is about the Right, but if by gender non- conforming you mean TQ+ and Gender Ideology (GI) then highlighting only the totalitarian takeover by Christian Fascists is one-sided.
The capture of truth and language by GI, and the disappearance of women from public spaces because of GI, is running rampant in the Dem and Progressive camps, while GI is easily likened to the new gay conversion therapy.
Also, men are being housed in women's prisons simply by self id'ing. Maybe I missed the article on that, but I'd like to think you'd be all over it.
Over time, all systems eventually come to be ruled by sociopaths. This is because sociopaths are precisely the people who will do whatever it takes to gain and keep power.
This is why, after some 5,000 years or so of recorded history, there are examples if all kinds of political and economic systems that flourish for a while and then perish, as the sociopaths take over.
We went through something like this before during the gilded age. The sociopaths had taken over. Then we had a giant depression because of all the mistakes the sociopaths made. We got anti-trust legislation passed and fair labor legislation passed. FDR either screwed things up with his New Deal and we were saved by WWII, or he made things better and the war took it to the next level. But for decades the upper class and the middle class were the power and had very similar lives. But they, the sociopaths, looted the cupboard again… extracting the economic benefits to hand to China for payola… and leaving scraps for the American middle class and poor.
And all China gave you was the junk in the trunk, absorbing all the process of manufacturing’s pollution and industrial accidents along the way. It’s all their fault. ‘Good job you have the Vergeltungswaffen en route there to make them pay.
Roland, China gave nothing to the American people but everything to our corporations like access to cheap labor and participation in the most populated market. Our corporations are the ones that need to pay to us.
I believe that any TRULY democratic society doesn't allow sociopaths to grasp the power and besides, with the exemption of some masochists, nobody enjoys being a victim.
It doesn't matter what we believe, what is is, what matters. False religions and the capitalists have worked together for thousands of years to brainwash the sheeple. Trouble is, capitalism does not work when you run out of other people's natural resources and you have destroyed the environment!
"Trouble is,
capitalism does not work
when you run out of other people's natural resources... "
.
oh no Worries!
Harvest the Citizenry!
an Endless supply just Waiting
to be farmed exploited & discarded
.
" ...and you have destroyed the environment!"
.
well there's
Always gonna be
a little Collateral Damage.
.
oops!
If you think sociopaths can't manipulate democratic processes....
Only when the people allow them by ignoring their bribes to the politicians and by listening to their indoctrination thru the media.
The United States is a shithole country
We are The Evil Empire now.
You have been for a long time.
Not only a shit hole country, but one that doesn’t have a clue about flushing the toilet - like the bird that continues fouling its nest. Anybody ever hear about the national strike idea? We don’t negotiate with the psychopaths and the cannibals, nor the Trauma Meisters. We just set the terms in - stone, period, and continue from there .
Americans aren’t like the French. Americans have ‘favorite politicians’ and they believe that “yes, maybe one day I can be rich too” while down punching on the poor.
True for the French it's mostly about the Party and we have quite a few choices until just before the election. Mind you the Le Pen nutcases are different.
I lived in France and have family in Italy. I assure you it is worse there in many ways. Its not like the people who run Europe aren't sociopaths also.
They just don’t have mass shooters every two days like do, and if they do, it’s probably CIA activity. I have a Irish passport and family over there. They are shocked what’s happening here. Out of control military spending and public apathy. They enjoy public health care and if those sociopaths try to cut it, they are in the streets shutting shit down.
Some yes.
Just getting worried now that Europe is going to get bigger! Hmmmmm
Politically and militarily - sure is!
Made up of millions of individuals? What can we do collectively to change that?
"Free Market Capitalism" is working as designed: extracting from the bottom 99% and enriching the top 1%. Carnival barkers like Trump and Bannon and the howling jackals on Fox, OAN, and Newsmax are depraved opportunists. Unfortunately the DNC is no better, kneeling before Wall Street and Silicon Valley and both parties and all corporate media kneel before the MIC.
Orwell was correct, he just got the date wrong.
This is why voting for Biden is wrong as for the Repubs. the same.
Change things by voting for someone like Cornel West. IF all the Biden supporters did this you may have a chance?
Best bet would be to save the democracy first and vote for Biden and then hope that a real liberal runs for office and not any of the right wing sadists. Voting for Cornell you're going to end up with capitalism and no socialism and 10 times more sadism ,at least. When Trump gets elected or any other GOP. The GOP is not even a political party anymore they are a cult opposed to democracy. The GOP is a terrorist organization now in the present!
I don’t think Biden is some hero saving democracy. His entire history and funding is from the corporate headquarter state, is it not? He was a war hawk for decades. Therein lies the problem on both sides - all the wealth buys all the politics/decisions/laws and we see where that has led. To propose Biden is saving us neglects how he continues to escalate a proxy war against another nuclear-armed sociopath. None of the masses here, in Ukraine or in Russia want that. All parties/governments have lied about every other war - don’t kid yourself on this one, either.
Paul, we are just trying to buy time. Hopefully Biden and Trump and all the other gops will get sick and won't be able to be in charge anymore. The top leadership of the Democrats party has also been traitorous to the nation along with all the Republicans, especially with free trade and immigration. At least the dems haven't tried insurrection or selling top secret information to the other globalist billionaire autocrats. If Cornel West was running as a Democrat, I would vote for him in the primary. I'm not going to throw my vote away for the billionaire autocrats so they can get a psychopath installed. Any psychopath. If Gore had been elected president we could have avoided the 8 trillion dollar Iraq war and saved millions of lives. And Nader and the Republican supreme Court caused that. West doesn't have a chance unless the gop's who don't support Trump vote for him, and hell would probably freeze over first. Biden not prosecuting or having Garland prosecute about 300 GOP ring leaders causing the Democrats to lose the Congress and supreme Court is unforgivable. I didn't raise the fascists or create the fascists, we just need to buy time so maybe someone with sanity could get elected!
More Democrats voted for George W Bush in Florida than voted for Nader in 2000. Saying that Nader cost Gore the election is an old canard brought to you by the DNC.
Do you know of any of our presidents that have saved democracy? Perhaps those candidates that were rejected by our traditional parties, and thus were not elected, would have restored democracy.
At least Biden is saving socialism and democracy barely.
You're joking, right?
He's responsible for not allowing student debt to be dischargeable in Bankruptcy. Just one of his many people hateful acts.
Palmer, the GOP supreme Court blocked Biden. They said he overstepped his authority. Google it.
Nope
Dictators can starve you and your children, take your guns, torture you, harvest your organs, dissect you in bathrooms, abolish the minimum wage and social security and poison your air food and water with plastics and forever chemicals etc. Plus they could use you and your children as sex slaves as well that's how sadists are. That is what the Russians are doing over in Ukraine. Old people ,women, men, children... The Russian people have been traumatized by capitalism as well.
Corporations are doing all that you attribute to dictators, in the US, now and have been doing so for 50+ years. The Military Industrial congressional complex. BIGPHARMA. The SICKCare INsurance industry. endless wars-death-destruction, and the list goes on. They own the justice system as well. Money rules in the US; it buys anything.
Really? Russia harvesting Ukrainian organs? That seems a bit out of character.
Yes the rich own the government. But right now they can't sell the national parks and we still have due process. If you want a third world banana Republic Nation keep voting for The GOP capitalist fascists.
This is a fine piece, but one thing sticks out to me: “Gender non-conforming people”. In the same way that Gore Vidal claimed that all people are bisexual, all people are also gender nonconforming. To emphasize something about oneself which is actually universal is as divisive as discriminating against it. I don’t need to know if you’re vegan unless we’re going to have dinner, and I don’t need to know what kind of people you like to have sex with unless we’re going to have sex. I don’t care what gender you think you are any more than I care what race you think you’re a part of. These things only separate people. My oldest friend is a woman who lives with another woman and dresses more or less like a man. If you ask her whether she feels like she’s in the “wrong body” she’ll say “How could this even be possible? It’s my body. How could I possibly know what it is like to be a man?” She’s a strong independent human being, and is no more or less gender fluid than anyone else. She just is. She gets all the attention she needs by being a fine artist, nothing else need be discussed in public.
100% agree.
I have lived in 4 different country's and met all kinds of people. I could care less who or what they are as long as they are kind, tolerant and empathetic.
As to bi-sexual I think all animals are?
"To emphasize something about oneself which is actually universal is as divisive as discriminating against it."
This isn't really at all true and I don't understand how you could come to this conclusion either, and it goes against current biopsychosocial understanding as well. Human identity involves both individual factors such as personal experience and preference, as well as collective identities based on nationality, family, language, culture, religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, etc. This is all universal and identity in a nutshell, are you saying human identity is inherently divisive? And even if it can be, then so what, are we to eliminate human identity altogether because what forms identity is universal (and thus any emphasis of it apparently discriminatory)? Group identity is both unifying and potentially discriminatory, but whether or not it leads to discrimination (and to what degree) is dependent on many factors.
In the same way Gore Vidal is wrong on everyone being bisexual—if you look into LGBT statistics, very few of even the people who identify as bisexual actually end up in same sex relationships or having it meaningfully affect their lives in any way, as Greenwald has noted, and you'd have to have a very generous definition of the term that's slightly off from being 100% heterosexual and not really at the middle of the Kinsey scale to make such a case—you are also wrong about everyone being "gender nonconforming" and don't really sound like you understand either term (not that it's your fault, it's not like the people who use it are very good at explaining any new terms they want to introduce to anyone), especially if as you imply, you think someone who identifies as that is necessarily doing it for attention, as if it's something restricted entirely to 21st-century liberal class elite circles where it can be trendy.
It's not that deep of a term, no need to overthink and nitpick use of it especially when it's not even the point. It's not the same thing as "gender fluid" you're talking about or even "non-binary." I really don't get people's hysteria for fighting the gender culture war, bringing it into everything. Yes, some modern ideas of gender are kind of regressive at times, there's some issues, etc etc, and your friend who doesn't follow gender stereotypes doesn't identify with this term, but what does any of that have to do with anything?
Regrettably, everybody is told that their worth is measured by how much money they have. It's the best way for the plutocracy to perpetrate itself.
Unfortunately it seems Americans only ever believed in money.
Grassroots activism is what should be happening now IMO.
Corporate America, at all levels, is dominated by sociopaths. So is academia. So are churches. So is government. I never framed my feelings of rage and despair as trauma. Chris, this was a great piece. I will read the references you cited. As always, thanks for your insightful opinion.
I've read Chris Hedges' work for a long time and believe he has accurately, and presciently, chronicled the splintering of America as well as the replacement of empathy with indifference and often cruelty. We're nearly a half century down this road of corporate ascendancy, private profit as the sole measure of value, and one only has to look at the political and environmental degradation to realize where it's going. The cruel bent took on steam in the aftermath of 9/11; that was a turning point in my view. Please share Chris's work as widely as you can. We're desperate for sane and honest voices.
Yes I was there in 9/11 and felt very strongly that it was the beginning of the end for the US.
Patriotism abounded.
“This trauma is as destructive to us personally as it is socially and politically. It leaves us in a state of dysphoria where confusion, agitation, emptiness and loneliness define our lives.… Trauma also drives many to flee into the arms of those who are orchestrating the abuse.”
YES, YES, and YES, again, Chris. What you’ve captured in this salient piece reflects much of what I have been trying to awaken people to since my first Substack essay, “A Primer for the Propagandized: Fear Is the Mind-Killer” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-primer-for-the-propagandized), where I write:
“A textbook example of Problem Reaction Solution, the current tsunami of worldwide hysteria is the latest and potentially most threatening example of mass control in history.
“The recipe is simple. Take a naturally occurring phenomenon, say a seasonal virus, and exaggerate its threat far beyond every imagining—despite exhaustive evidence to the contrary. Suppress, silence, ostracize, and demonize every individual who dares present facts that expose the false mono-narrative.
“Whip up a witches’ brew of anger, envy, and, most importantly, fear, escalating emotions to a boil so as to short-circuit our faculties of reason and logic.
“Isolate us from one another, supplant real-world interactions with virtual feuds, label nonconformists as a threat to the group, and pump the public with a disinformation campaign designed to confuse and atomize. In essence, foster a cultlike mentality that shuts down thought to guarantee assent.
“Cultivate and wield our cognitive biases—especially ingroup bias, conformity bias, and authority bias—against us in a comprehensive divide-and-conquer policy that keeps us too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to recognize and unite against those corralling us into a Matrix-like collective delusion that enables the powerful to extract our resources for their own gain.
“This ideological mass psychosis is religion—not science. If this were about science, the Media–Pharmaceutical–Big-Tech complex would not be memory-holing every dissenting voice, vilifying every thought criminal, and censoring every legitimate inquiry in quest of the truth.”
As you rightly observed, Chris, this collective trauma is not happenstance. It is induced through messaging crafted by behavioral psychologists to corral us into preplanned “solutions” that serve the self-appointed “elites,” corporations, and governments while eviscerating the middle class, poor, small businesses, and local economies so we become increasingly dependent on the State for our subsistence and thus will be coerced into compliance with ever-escalating levels of surveillance, subjugation, and slavery.
What we have been witnessing is a straightforward implementation of Biderman’s Chart of Coercion, which you will find in this piece:
• “Letter to a Tyrant” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-tyrant)
I highly recommend you read Laura Dodsworth’s “A State of Fear” as well as her newly released “Free Your Mind,” which provides solutions for helping us overcome the engineered menticide of the populace. It is the book-length version of the 12-step recovery program I outline in this piece:
• “Letter to the Menticided: A 12-Step Recovery Program” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-menticided-a-12-step)
I think you would enjoy interviewing Laura as well—let me know if you would like me to connect you with her.
"We are caught up in pursuits of all kinds that draw us on, not because they are necessary or inspiring or uplifting, or because they enrich or add meaning to our lives, but simply because they obliterate the present"
Because the present is not a good place to be. Look at the preponderance of this thought in the slogans Make America Great Again - Build Back Better
Empty promises to steal hope and continue the status quo
Bidenomics.
I feel like Hedges is in the minority of leftists who feel immense empathy and compassion for Trump voters and other right wingers. I love this about him. I hear other leftists strongly disparage the notion of mending fences- of forming or maintaining or mending relationships with people who don't share our political beliefs. I suppose they got that attitude by reading other smart leftists from the past. Maybe I'm naive. Maybe I need to read more.
Or, maybe Hedges is right. Perhaps I don't understand the notion of hating poor and working class white people because hating those people is bad strategy (let alone morally bad.) From a numbers perspective, refusing to engage with right wingers makes no sense. It also makes no sense in terms of leftists' compassion for the oppressed. Why is it good to care about Palestinians but hate our own neighbors?
Ideas or norms or systems in economics and politics are often just gobbledy gook bullshit. Words were crafted to make a simple idea appear complicated. The purpose? To make me feel like I'm too dumb to understand something.
That's what makes me think Hedges is correct about unity. Why would I need to read economic or political history and theory to understand why hating my neighbor will lead to effective revolution? Perhaps because it's a stupid idea, and my gut was correct.
bingo.
Divide AND Conquer.
Thank you, Chris Hedges, and thank you for everyone who cares to have a civil conversation about tyranny. Merry days might overtake oppressive ways with such efforts.
For a superb intellectual history of how we got here, see BBC documentarian Adam Curtis:
The Century of Self
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
Thank you so much for sharing this linked. I have really enjoyed this
Great comments, and "Thank you", Chris Hedges and Mr. Fish. Yep, real community is out the front door.
This is an excellent article. It describes perfectly the trauma inflicted by the Country being under the Domination of big money and ultimately those who insist on their twisted plan . The Federalist Society and those that support the power of big polluters. The six conservative judges who operate from their own perverse and corrupt aggrandizement. Donald Trump supplies more psychosis all by himself, with those ill enough to support him.
Excellent - thank you.
I have one disagreement and that is that you portray ALL pornography as abusive and its very existence symptomatic of the decay of society. Yes, some pornography has all those dysfunctional aspects but you should realize that consuming pornography that depicts consensual sexual activity which is tender and loving is not harmful at all. In fact, what I would call 'ethical pornography' can help heal the trauma you describe as a harmless way of satisfying healthy sexual urges. Also, many couples in a committed relationship use pornography to enhance their sex lives and that, surely, is a good thing?
If by gender non-conforming you mean homosexuals then okay, this article is about the Right, but if by gender non- conforming you mean TQ+ and Gender Ideology (GI) then highlighting only the totalitarian takeover by Christian Fascists is one-sided.
The capture of truth and language by GI, and the disappearance of women from public spaces because of GI, is running rampant in the Dem and Progressive camps, while GI is easily likened to the new gay conversion therapy.
Also, men are being housed in women's prisons simply by self id'ing. Maybe I missed the article on that, but I'd like to think you'd be all over it.