Listen now | This episode is the first of a two-part series called A Long Road Home, looking at what happens to those in the United States who leave prison and struggle to reenter society.
An obedience-demanding empire makes examples of those most easily exploitable for this purpose, namely those whose presence is deemed a nuisance that must be tolerated (i.e., the poor, those of races and ethnic origins considered to be "lesser" in the imperial hierarchy, etc.). The purposeful messages are clear: 1) be thankful if you are not one of these, and 2) always be on your best and most obedient behavior, for what can be done to these, can just as easily be done to you. The enemy is not be found out there, in some foreign land; the enemy is the very system that we have been trained to believe that "we, the people" designed.
I am a Jewish by birth male with a PhD vocabulary with an genius in abstract mathematics.
I type on a large multicolour keyboard with the middle finger of my right hand. I was reading Leaves of Grass when I was four and I failed Kindergarten. I was 12 when the school authorities told my parents I was a lazy lazy genius who was too lazy for school. Maybe they thought my listening would frighten me into action.
I spent a decade in a Chicago ghetto, and a decade in Aboriginal Communities. I've slept in cars, shacks , tents, coaches, on floors and in palaces.
I don't understand what it means to not feel empathy. I worked with children who did not feel empathy. I know what it means to never eat of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil.
I understand prison; Charles Dicken's wrote
"The Law is an ass--an idiot"
Dickens family was in debtor's prison when he went to school.
I love John Ralston Saul and Mark Twain. My wife on my recommendation has just finished Voltaire's and The Gilded Age. Eighty four is a wonderful age to start reading Twain but someone with a Uof C education and a UofC PhD should have realized Twain was the greatest journalist the English language had ever known..
Swift was a master satirist , he wrote A Modest Proposal before Ireland grew potatoes. That is why A modest Proposal is considered the greatest essay ever written.
Twain's United States of Lyncherdom was published in 1929 and was never meant to be published. It is about Moral courage and it is about 2022 and 70,000 years of evolution just like Voltaire's Bastards.
I'm sure that one person from another country, who learns about the relative percentages of incarceration shown in this podcast, will immediately jump to the conclusion that our America is the most rotten country in the world that need so many criminals deprived of freedom to be able to function. Of course he is not acquainted with our sad reality: the prison system is a very profitable industry to the corporations that manage it, as well as to the municipalities that exploit the labor of this new type of modern slavery. And worst of all, most of these people are actually the victims. Victims of belonging to groups of people despised and feared by a society that designed ways to deprive them of their right to vote. If we really were interested in the safety and wellbeing of the nation, we should put more emphasis in punishing the people who defraud the taxpayers and shareholders that cause much bigger damage than the petty street criminals.
I don’t know if Chris Hedges or anybody from his team is reading the comments. If you do: could you please give attention to the case of Jessica Reznicek and all the political and legal implications of her case?! Thank you very much! (I know this is not the best place to put this commentary ... I just don’t know a better one.)
Thank you so much! I’ve been trying to get word about her to you or Cornel West for such a long time. So glad I finally found a way. Fitting news for Pentecost. Bless you and greetings from Germany!
While I a good with giving people a second chance after paying their debt to society; I am wary of the the tendency to never stop and thus take it too far... and making a mess of unintended consequences. Clearly Democrats are trying to adopt the incarcerated as another victim group. Clearly Democrats want to give that group the right to vote. So we will just blow past rational policy moves to help reduce recidivism and end up giving "equity" benefits to convicted criminals.
We continue to need significant disincentives for a life of crime. How about we work on the root causes for why people become criminals instead of attempting to sugar coat the situation?
Maybe Chris should squeeze some training on how to answer parole board questions into his training for the Rutgers program; also, does the man who was dismissed from his job once the background checks department re-opened, not have a case under the doctrine of personal bar “homologation”, that having employed him without incident for several months, the employer can’t turn around and say they can’t employ him?
I don't understand how to listen to this episode. Substack has pages of pasting urls onto private audio players with warnings that Substack doesn't support private audio players...love you Chris but can I just click the link and listen?
I had some problems too (same method as mentioned here) ... I think there was a glitch - after 2 hours it worked fine ... I just clicked on the Chris Hedges Banner in the email notification ...
An obedience-demanding empire makes examples of those most easily exploitable for this purpose, namely those whose presence is deemed a nuisance that must be tolerated (i.e., the poor, those of races and ethnic origins considered to be "lesser" in the imperial hierarchy, etc.). The purposeful messages are clear: 1) be thankful if you are not one of these, and 2) always be on your best and most obedient behavior, for what can be done to these, can just as easily be done to you. The enemy is not be found out there, in some foreign land; the enemy is the very system that we have been trained to believe that "we, the people" designed.
I guess we have our own little story to tell.
I am 74 autistic and finally able to write.
I am a Jewish by birth male with a PhD vocabulary with an genius in abstract mathematics.
I type on a large multicolour keyboard with the middle finger of my right hand. I was reading Leaves of Grass when I was four and I failed Kindergarten. I was 12 when the school authorities told my parents I was a lazy lazy genius who was too lazy for school. Maybe they thought my listening would frighten me into action.
I spent a decade in a Chicago ghetto, and a decade in Aboriginal Communities. I've slept in cars, shacks , tents, coaches, on floors and in palaces.
I don't understand what it means to not feel empathy. I worked with children who did not feel empathy. I know what it means to never eat of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil.
I understand prison; Charles Dicken's wrote
"The Law is an ass--an idiot"
Dickens family was in debtor's prison when he went to school.
I love John Ralston Saul and Mark Twain. My wife on my recommendation has just finished Voltaire's and The Gilded Age. Eighty four is a wonderful age to start reading Twain but someone with a Uof C education and a UofC PhD should have realized Twain was the greatest journalist the English language had ever known..
Swift was a master satirist , he wrote A Modest Proposal before Ireland grew potatoes. That is why A modest Proposal is considered the greatest essay ever written.
Twain's United States of Lyncherdom was published in 1929 and was never meant to be published. It is about Moral courage and it is about 2022 and 70,000 years of evolution just like Voltaire's Bastards.
I'm sure that one person from another country, who learns about the relative percentages of incarceration shown in this podcast, will immediately jump to the conclusion that our America is the most rotten country in the world that need so many criminals deprived of freedom to be able to function. Of course he is not acquainted with our sad reality: the prison system is a very profitable industry to the corporations that manage it, as well as to the municipalities that exploit the labor of this new type of modern slavery. And worst of all, most of these people are actually the victims. Victims of belonging to groups of people despised and feared by a society that designed ways to deprive them of their right to vote. If we really were interested in the safety and wellbeing of the nation, we should put more emphasis in punishing the people who defraud the taxpayers and shareholders that cause much bigger damage than the petty street criminals.
I don’t know if Chris Hedges or anybody from his team is reading the comments. If you do: could you please give attention to the case of Jessica Reznicek and all the political and legal implications of her case?! Thank you very much! (I know this is not the best place to put this commentary ... I just don’t know a better one.)
Thanks Andre. I will do this. Chris
I don’t know if you had the chance to get into her case yet but fastingforjessica.com may be a good hook to get into it. Greetings from Germany!!
Thank you so much! I’ve been trying to get word about her to you or Cornel West for such a long time. So glad I finally found a way. Fitting news for Pentecost. Bless you and greetings from Germany!
While I a good with giving people a second chance after paying their debt to society; I am wary of the the tendency to never stop and thus take it too far... and making a mess of unintended consequences. Clearly Democrats are trying to adopt the incarcerated as another victim group. Clearly Democrats want to give that group the right to vote. So we will just blow past rational policy moves to help reduce recidivism and end up giving "equity" benefits to convicted criminals.
We continue to need significant disincentives for a life of crime. How about we work on the root causes for why people become criminals instead of attempting to sugar coat the situation?
Maybe Chris should squeeze some training on how to answer parole board questions into his training for the Rutgers program; also, does the man who was dismissed from his job once the background checks department re-opened, not have a case under the doctrine of personal bar “homologation”, that having employed him without incident for several months, the employer can’t turn around and say they can’t employ him?
I don't understand how to listen to this episode. Substack has pages of pasting urls onto private audio players with warnings that Substack doesn't support private audio players...love you Chris but can I just click the link and listen?
I had some problems too (same method as mentioned here) ... I think there was a glitch - after 2 hours it worked fine ... I just clicked on the Chris Hedges Banner in the email notification ...
Thank you.