The Chris Hedges Report with Les Leopold on how corporations and the billionaire class have made war on workers, subverted our democracy and created the conditions for a Christian fascist state.
The Chris Hedges Report with Les Leopold on how corporations and the billionaire class have made war on workers, subverted our democracy and created the conditions for a Christian fascist state.
The country’s major corporations, seeking to crush union organization, have filed legal papers to shut down the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that enforces labor rights and oversees unionization efforts.
The good news is that when these sociopathic mammon chasing monsters are done with the rest of us, they will turn on each other until the proverbial one with the most “toys” wins. The only possibility to stop them is a massive nation wide general strike. But then since they own the government lock stock and barrel they will just bail themselves out with printing endless money which is another form of taxation on the rest of us, so refusing to pay taxes is likely a meaningless gesture. As George Carlin so eloquently put it (paraphrased): They’ve got you by the balls, and they want it all and they will get it in the end. Meanwhile we are all getting it in the end in a different fashion. Just another day in the USA.
Bezos and Musk have the nerve to ask for govt (public) $$$ to help finance their private Mars colony. I'm for it--providing they're on the same rocket. The entertainment value of such inflated egos fighting for dominance would be fun. On Mars, who will grow the plants necessary for food and oxygen? Who will construct and maintain the buildings? Given their egregious superiority complexes, you know they won't get dirty. And they'll p.o. the plebeians. Then the inevitable strike--local 1, Martian Building & Agricultural Trades. With nowhere to find scabs.
I urge everyone to read Les Leopold's //Wall Street's War On Workers//!!!
I was a blue collar union member and labor activist for 25+ years. I also managed local D political campaigns when the party still relied on volunteers. I fought the usurpation of the party by neolibs who ditched the New Deal and abandoned the majority, the working class. Among the preface blurbs to the book is one by Robert Kuttner: "(Leopold) explains the dynamics of mass layoffs and the reality that the white working class did not desert the Democrats--the Democrats deserted them." Which I can attest to from bitter first hand experience. I've witnessed how job loss becomes those deaths of despair. Of course testimony by me and others like me are often dismissed as anecdotal. But Leopold presents the detailed stats that make our case.
Kuttner says "Leopold also offers ingenious and practical solutions to take back our politics from the plutocracy." Exactly. My Wobbly heart rages about the econopathy. I've researched the economic theories of the Austrian and Chicago schools now dominating the system and I know there is little real logic involved; it's a belief system, a cult really. But that won't help suffering people who need help to survive right now. A winning campaign must focus on a few clear objectives--and Leopold has them.
The weaponization of the federal judiciary as a lever to dismantle the administrative state is bad enough. It also coincides, however, with a right wing strategy to take over the courts and degrade fundamental rights from the right to bodily autonomy to even voting rights. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/judges-v-democracy
Thanks Chris and Les. The billionaire class must be dismantled, offshore tax haven bank accounts seized and Wall St Corporate Raiders Frog Marched to prison! Julian Benda's description "The Treason of the Intellectuals" describes both party leaders, MSM rhetoric machines and "experts" like Morning Joe and his guests. Reagan's and Thatcher's removing of the guard rails of Capitalism and Clinton, Tony Blair and Obama's doubling down and sellout of the working class are quite comfortable with a fascist Oligarchy. They forget FDR's warning when his New Deal legislation was introduced and rammed through, its this or the pitch forks for you Robber Barons. All the rules and regulations were brought in after decades of Violent Unionism, fighting Private Corporate armies directed and controlled by Megalomaniacs like Rockefeller, Morgan, Ford, Melon, Carnegie amongst others! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING was gained by respectful negotiations. For at taste read any Upton Sinclair book, Ida Tarbell two of an army of Muck Rakers like Chris and Les. His book "The Jungle" describes the Chicago Slaughter House Industry or "King Coal" describing the dystopian company towns. Tarbell exposed the Rockefeller Standard Oil Monopoly! Bloody Ludlow should be a well known example of brutal capitalism. Eastern Europeans lured to Minnesota, paid in company scrip, only good in company stores. Where they even had to buy there own helmets, wicks and oil. Who paid rent on a piece of land that they were told to build their own shack on. Their first brutally put down strike demand was an honest weigh scale for the coal they dug. They weren't paid anything for shoring up the mines, only for the tonnage they dug, one piece of stone cancelled payment for it all. Ayn Rand and her Atlas supermen are destroying the world!
P.S. Watch Canada's father of Canadian health care Tommy Douglas's "Mouse Land" video on you tube. its vey serious but will still give chuckle, for us mice that can only vote for cats!
I have been reading up on capitalism and finance theory. Ayn Rand was a mediocre version of the Austrian (ie, von Mises, Hayek) and subsequent Chicago (Milton Friedman) schools of economics, aka neoliberalism. For a great explanation, I recommend //Globalists// (2019) by Quinn Slobodian. I was shocked when I figured out there is no real heft to their views at all. No grounding philosophies, no statistical confirmations. Just argument by assertion; assumptions of superiority and the right to be ruling econ and political powers. It's a belief system, a cult really. For alternatives, //Taming the Street (The Old Guard, the New Deal, and FDR's Fight to Regulate American Capitalism)// (2023) by Diana Henriques. And of course Les Leopold's book //Wall Street's War on Workers// (2024.) Sound arguments and real numbers.
Yes I am aware of the Chicago boys Freidman brain washed and let loose on the world. They are all fascists. Many say fascism is merely Capitalism with the gloves off! Ayn Rand's best seller were the seeds, that Mises and Hayek fertilized and made grow!
Corporations are a sham for workers. The profit seeking motive makes them psychopathic. So to find more workers to exploit, they must adopt a human face (and possibly outpay some workers more than competitors to compensate).
Because of their true corporate values and necessary two facedness, the people you see in a corporation show increasing levels of this same pathology the higher you climb in the bureaucracy. And then Forbes or whatever mainstream rag acts surprised that people hate their jobs.
It's interesting to note some founding fathers wondered if corporations would impose a greater tyranny than the Bank of England or the British monarchy.
Yes indeed. And these same corporations embrace DEI and wokeness, because it doesn't actually cost them anything. The DEI/Woke virtue signaling is a mask to hide their rapacity. In a hunger games "meritocracy" (whatever that means) the people running the show don't really mind if there are different colors and sexual orientations etc. mixed in at the top. As long as the 90% at the bottom obey. Increasing surveillance is being put in place to make sure that the plebes really do behave and that dissent is not permitted.
DEI is being used to divide and conquer the working class. It reignites racism and sexism and even creates whole new ism's! Those same rules don't apply to the managerial class and above.
FALSE! Assumptions about "division" keep being repeated because it serves those sure we blue collar types are too stupid to organize ourselves and thus need an elite 'vanguard of the working class." In other words, it's a form of class prejudice!
Read Les Leopold's book--therein are the stats that disprove claims the white working class is sexist, racist, homophobic. So then NOT a way to keep us workers from uniting. But it is an excuse for those who say they oppose the econopathy to dismiss to us lessers and then not have to do the hard work of building coalitions by talking with us.
I note that on this site and elsewhere diversion (or division) is most often repeated by white male armchair intellectuals. People who've never had to fight to be recognized for who they are. And usually have never picked up a tool in their lives.
I'm trans--FtM; I had to live as female for 53 years, including my time as a blue collar union member and activist. I'm gay. I'm reservation raised, a two-spirit. None of which precluded not only working in jobs 95% male and 90% white, but being elected to negotiating committees and doing organizing. It's not either/or!
Ummm TRUE! Did you read what I wrote? Because you basically just agreed with it. It's class warfare.
Corporate DEI is certainly being used to divide and conquer. I've personally worked at two companies already where this is the case. There are plenty of other stories you can find out there.
I seriously doubt you read the book referenced as your reading comprehension appears low. You're arguing a straw man for some odd reason.
Nobody cares at all that you're gay or trans. Which was my whole point that you apparently confirmed as well. All this DEI nonsense is being pushed to sow division that doesn't naturally exist. As you say, directed at lower classes.
You wrote three sentences. Easy to read. You either didn't read my first paragraph very carefully or didn't understand the vanguard reference. I'm saying repetition of the claim at issue happens because those asserting "division" (often the term is distraction) are themselves guilty of class prejudice. Especially true of dogmatic theoretical leftists and their assumption we workers are stupid.
Corporate DEI, mentioned by the OP, is not the same as your assertion about how this supposedly affects the working class. Where is your evidence of how we're so easily duped? Had you read my comments elsewhere on this thread, let alone previously on the Hedges site, you'd know I was a blue collar union member and activist for 25+ years, including doing organizing. And that I managed local D campaigns when the party still relied on volunteers. As for "stories out there," I've seen first hand the way job loss turns into deaths of despair.
Using an ad hominem? How silly. Go look at my comment on this thread urging people to read the book by Les Leopold. Which is the subject of this particular Hedges report. And BTW, Leopold himself can testify that I read the book. And that I know its subject matter both by long experience and by decades of research, including about neoliberalism and finance.
You've also missed my point about identities. That you dismiss this by saying "nobody cares" is telling. it seems to place you in the category of the critique in my 3rd paragraph.-- those refusing to respect issues of identity think it's irrelevant because they've never experienced invisibility. Nor did I anywhere ever say "directed at the lower classes." That you read this into what I said is perilously close to a Freudian slip. I'm saying the very opposite--that some of us can read, write, and think! My own list of identities is evidence that both working class solidarity, which is for me no abstraction, goes with the decades of struggle it took for some semblance of respect. It would be easy to make the case that we can't have one without the other. Do you think we can have workers' rights without civil rights? MLK didn't think so. "Nobody cares?" Are you then fine that we trans people are the right wing enemy du jour? Is a scapegoat acceptable as long as it isn't your group?
LOL. It is fascinating how educated people on the left of everything attempt to swim in deep end of the facts and knowledge pool while still clutching their ideological comfort side of the shallow end.
To connect the Democrat Wall Street-powered globalist corporatocracy to the fake threat of Christian Nationalism... well it is the definition of ideological programmed cognitive dissonance.
There is no threat of Christian Nationalism. Or said another way, the thing that liberals today define as Christian Nationalism is just traditional Americanism... you know, all those baked in core Judea-Christian and strong family values that made America great to begin with.
However, you got the first part right. We are fighting WWIII with those that want to enslave the global population in a global collectivist nightmare. The billionaire boys club and their Wall Street money power and behind it... to generate greater returns for their bank accounts. And it requires that the American working class be made dependent on Universal Basic Income.
Unions are not the solution though. They are just part of the collectivist agenda to reduce economic opportunity for the masses to benefit a smaller cohort at the administrative top.
I have a brother that says the same. He is a malcontent... although too old to have received the campus America-hating Theory indoctrination. He cannot explain why billions would immigrate here if allowed. He also cannot explain why he cannot find anywhere else he would move to.
A meritocracy will always result in losers. The difference with the American system is that there is no real barrier to anyone becoming a winner except what is in their own head.
No, Rafi has not a good job. Again... no examples... no evidence... nothing to back up his and your Maoist fallacies. The reason you are still here is because there is nowhere else better. But that is how malcontents work... they exploit the benefits of the system while denying those benefits exist while complaining of all the unfairness and masturbating to a collectivist totalitarian mix tape.
America is totalitarian. But you refuse to acknowledge the corporate coup, nor the reality of our tripartite system of ‘governance’. You’d rather get a tingle down your leg when the military flyover before a sporting event takes place. Your simplistic cluelessness can be summed by the He Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins inanity from the 80s.
Finland and Iceland are tiny, resource rich per capita and culturally homogenous... really white... hardly comparable to the US. But I expected those examples as I have a lot of experience debating people with your views, and that is all you can find.
1. The good old days were NOT good for the vast majority, including rural white men and working class white men. At the turn of the 19th to 20th C. only 14% of the U.S. population was middle class, and that precariously because of the boom and bust cycles.
2. As for Christian Nationalism, you don't have to believe Chris Hedges. Read //One Nation Under God (How Corporate America Invented Christian America)// by Kevin Kruse. About the propaganda of business associations to oppose successful New Deal programs. Those idyllic images of the '50s masked deep problems. And what was good, like decent wages, were the results of long battles for union organizing and help from FDR's hard working administration as well as a '30s Congress that wasn't a subsidiary of Wall St. Or read //False White Gospel// by Jim Wallis, an evangelical. Wherein he explicitly confronts what he names as the danger of Christian Nationalism.
3. You obviously know nothing about the history of unions nor about the experiences of those of us who are rank and file blue collar members. Union negotiations come under contract law. Non-union employees come under a provision inherited from English common law; it's called a Master-Servant relationship! Are you asserting that we working people bow to our betters?!
4. Why is your "collectivist" nightmare only about what used to be known as the common good? Truth is any business thrives because of cooperation. Wall St. and corporate collusion is also a "collectivism." Something that occurred repeatedly in them good ol' days and is happening right now. The excesses of the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age, the 1929 crash/Great Depression, the S & L scandals of the '80s, and the Great Recession of 2008. But no, of course none of this needs regulation...that's government! Let's continue without regs and see if this time it will be different.
"1. " This is rewriting history. The industrial revolution significantly raised the standards of living and life expectancy for Americans. But workplace safety was a problem and so was child labor. Collective bargaining for those things made sense.
2. The labels of history don't comport. For example, today a "liberal progressive" is more likely a neoracist Maoist... holding views and values that are illiberal, for example empowering government to eliminate God-given human rights like free speech and expression and treating people differently based on their race or other group labels. Those claimed to be Christian Nationalists today by the left are simply working class and conservative people that hold traditional American values of God, family and country.
3. I worked as a unionized steel worker in a steel galvanizing plant for a couple of years when young. I have significant experience dealing with public sector unions in my job. My history is blue collar work in construction, manufacturing and agriculture until I moved to white collar work. I advocate for improvements in working class economic opportunity and wages. My current job is CEO of two companies... one that works to improve economic circumstances in labor surplus areas. Unions are not the answer. They cause Hostess Corporation. They are just wage extortion terrorism that leads to over-priced labor relative to the market, and fewer jobs. Unions also help fund the workforce automation industry. I think ESOPs are the answer... but the problem is that labor is risk-averse. These workers want more money but don't want the job risk associated with it. Everybody wants more and believes they deserve it. But only those that put themselves in an ownership position and then work to succeed, actually deserve it.
4. Please give me an example of any country or society past or present that represents your model of good. From my inventory everyone of them that adopts collectivism is a nightmare. I will wait.
1. "The Industrial Revolution" caused...is an example of what Whitehead called the 'the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.' Like how "The Market" is used. As if these were living archons and not in reality millions of people--including working people. And do read some about what life was like for people in factories with 12-14 hour days, 6-7 days a week, abusive bosses, unsafe conditions where injuries were common. If a worker was too injured to work, too bad; they starved and so did their families. Organized labor and allies among the Populists, the R. Progressives, and the New Deal are what changed this, not any Robber Baron or financier largesse. Abuses continue today. A common tactic is to cut funds for inspectors, then safety regs don't matter.
2. Another classic logical fallacy--deflection. You don't engage with my actual points but instead engage in a bizarre conflation of political types for which you offer no evidence. "God-given rights" is a trope devised by the the corporate business organizations referred to in the book by Kevin Kruse mentioned above. Do you propose to get rid of the Bill of Rights as redundant? Where in the history of Christianity, both Western and Eastern, are citizens' rights to be found? Look at the history of Geneva for a great example of Calvinist Protestantism as absolute. As for thought during the founding of the U.S. read "The Search for Christian America" (1983) by Mark. A. Noll, an evangelical professor then at Wheaton College, considered the center of evangelical scholarship. His point being the founders weren't very religious. My point being that's why "God-given" or even God at all are not in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
3. A "couple of years" is not a lifetime, nor does it or your other claims prove you have any understanding of what anyone thinks other than yourself. In fact, your individualist presumptions would preclude considering group attitudes at all. That "I advocate" implies that we lessers should wait for people like you to grant favors. Uh, no. Dependency on hierarchy has seldom proven beneficent. Review the list I provided at the end of my #4.
As for"wage extortion terrorism"--here you show both class bigotry and a complete lack of understanding about labor history and the process of negotiations. Companies negotiate with each other no problem. Why no outrage over the ridiculous gap in the U.S. between what big corporate CEOs are paid and what workers make? How about corporate stock buy-backs that divert what could be investments in growth, fuel lay-offs, and manipulate "The Market" so as to personally reward the CEOs with their generous stock awards? Read Les Leopold's book!
About workers as risk averse...oh please. Do a coal miner's job or the work of a high voltage tower electrician. Most egregious is the transportation industry. Where management has all the power and none of the responsibility. Licensed personnel, like airline pilots, ship captains, and train engineers do.
Perhaps you want to be one of those overpaid, monstrous CEOs and therefore nothing any of us say would make a difference. But perhaps you just believe in private enterprise. Then consider this: capitalism and free enterprise are not the same. In biz 101, the basic costs of business are defined as land, labor, and capital. So they can't be the same. Free enterprise is the private production (including by co-ops) of physically real goods and services. Capitalism is the privileging of that abstraction known as money. I'm an artist. I've also done repair work for people. So then that's a form of small business, private enterprise. Nothing wrong with that. But corporations considered to be "people'?! How about the increasing financialization of the econ system whereby the exploiters are gutting what is called the Real Economy?
4. You seem unaware of the term "common good," which dates back to the Greek philosophers. Even Adam Smith, the guru of private enterprise, uses the term--and in a positive way. The good of society as a whole, communitarian concerns, are positives in themselves and the foundation of democracy. You can only dismiss this if you insist on conflating anything you don't like as by definition an evil collectivism. Defining away is another logical fallacy (There are lists online--look them up.) BTW, what was the justification for establishing legal charters for corporations by state governments? They were to serve a public purpose.
If you want to demonstrate some relation of God and rights, and for that matter with what's right, how about NT Acts 4:32-35? "All the believers were of one heart and mind. No one claimed any possession as their own; they shared everything they had..." "...there were no needy persons among them, for as many as had lands and houses sold them, bringing the proceeds and laying them at the feet of the apostles. Who gave to each as any had need."
You failed to provide your example of that utopian system. I see a fantastic malcontent with a lot of time for stewing and criticism of everything and not much to claim as real accomplishment moving anything forward. Because of that you lack credibility as a complete critical thinker on this topic. You cannot achieve status as a great contributor to anything with only criticism combined with a failure to acknowledge anything good.
And you've failed to acknowledge any of my points. So ignoring the need to rebut them. You're the one using scattershot criticisms with nothing but shallow assertions and indulgence in logical fallacies to back them up.
Example: nice use of the fallacy ad hominem. Deploying the word "malcontent" like a banishing ritual. Not that given the illogic I have to answer anything so silly, but I've been active in politics since 1960 plus serving as a labor organizer and negotiator for decades. Also volunteering for all sorts of civic good like sitting with terminally ill people or replanting indigenous species. Real accomplishments in the real world.
"Forward" is a relative term--your idea of it seems to be approval of the Gilded Age and the Roaring '20s; an econ system by and for the very few. Mine is the opposite--a vision of the common good and a more equitable econ system.
What you asked for was "a model of good." Since I did provide some, you now attempt the fallacy of deflection by shifting the frame to "utopia."
I sure don't worry about "status," and especially not when via your attempt at omniscient and infallible authority. Were an objective assessment of this thread to be made, it would be obvious which claimant offered reasoned arguments and verifiable evidence. Go read Les Leopold's book and get back to me. I'll wait.
The simple argument is that every attempt throughout history to implement your socialist, collectivist, Marxist "a vision of the common good and a more equitable econ system" has resulted in massive human suffering, misery and death. They are systems designed by other malcontents because misery loves company.
You, like most malcontent academics I know that make the disingenuous claim of blue-collar work connections, are just unwilling, or otherwise lack the stuff, to compete in the democratic capitalist meritocracy... the profoundly flawed system that is the best ever designed in terms of benefitting the overall human condition. The evidence of those benefits are so clear and profound that it takes either fantastic blindness or pile of lies to deny it.
Yes, inequity exists because that is nature. There is NO SYSTEM that eliminates inequity, again, because nature always wins. The American Great Experiment is a system design that provides reasonable and plentiful equal access to opportunity for everyman if he wants to do the work and demonstrate the persistent self-determination to advance. That is why billions of people on the planet want to migrate to the US... for THAT reason.
The curse and blessing of the human psyche is that we always want more. The blessing explains why we progress. But unfortunately, the less-moral of us tend to measure what we have against others. We care about status and it eats at us when our neighbor seems to do better. There are two ways to respond: to embrace the traditional American way to go out and compete to earn more, or the malcontent collectivist approach to tear down the system that the neighbor thrives in so the malcontent can feel better by comparison.
Now, I am in agreement that we have a corporatist problem today that repeats the ills of the Gilded Age. But those problems were remedied by the very system you advocate tearing down because it is not equitable enough. I might be open to considering a different system design if there were any working examples. The thing is... you are not that smart... neither am I. We have thousands of years of people trying to figure out the puzzles of good system design... good governance to benefit the human condition. For your ideas to have merit there would be examples of merit. There are none.
“Frank Lee” complains of cognitive dissonance while somehow connecting a “global collectivist nightmare” with the intentions of billionaires. What do the billionaires care what the population does so long as they are open to routine advertising persuasion? She says that”There is no threat of Christian Nationalism. Or said another way, the thing that liberals today define as Christian Nationalism is just traditional Americanism... you know, all those baked in core Judea-Christian and strong family values that made America great to begin with.” Jesus was not a nationalist. His “render unto Caesar” teaching clearly distinguishes between the needs of the state and the duty towards God, and may be an attack on the use of what was the equivalent of the dollar at that time. In America now, money has political status as free speech. And someone is offering America all the kingdoms of the world if they will just bow do and worship him.
In America now, and in every point in history of any system, money has power. The question is where is that power directed? Today in the Democrat hive the money is used to promote a political power that serves its moneyed corporatist masters. And then the Democrat hive disingenuously blames Republicans for the "inequity" of it all.
Subtitle:"... how corporations and the billionaire class have made war on workers, subverted our democracy and created the conditions for a Christian fascist state"...
Hedges is being unnecessarily and deliberately divisive here! ... Hedges is - among other things, a professional story-teller ... he knows it is imperative to create an enemy and to "write against" that same enemy to keep us emotionally vested in his work ... Substack reports that his subscriber base here has grown from 60k to 88k since the OCT 7 attacks ... and my instincts are being proven right, nothing good can come from this type of disingenuous story-telling ... the premise of Hedges' primary line of argument is intellectual dishonest - and he knows it!
Ever notice? ... Hedges will always single-out the corporations and the billionaire class, but never even mention the "globalist" movement, let alone mention their leaders by name ... he is deliberately deflecting our attention away from those people behind UN Agenda 21 aka The Great Reset and placing the blame squarely on the Christian right, Trump and MAGA ...
The Christian right DID NOT orchestrate the COVID lock downs; the Christian right did not impose the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports; the Christian right did not exploit COVID tyranny as pretext for pushing big tech censorship ... the Christian right is not the driving force behind endless war ... and Hedges knows it!
I'm an independent progressive just as Hedges once was ... and in tough times like these, I could easily follow Kari Lake's principles before taking seriously anything Hedges says in the heat of battle.
-------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND
Chris Hedges has deserted the U.S. working class! ...
HEDGES: "Let us stand up and resist so future generations will at least say ‘they tried.’ We cannot do this alone ... together we have a chance" ...
But he has refused to comment on THE GREAT RESET, The World Economic Forum and the proposed tyrannical amendments to the WHO Pandemic Treaty ...
Hedges abandoned the U.S. working class and the U.S. Constitution in an AUG 27, 2021 interview with Jimmy Dore, and he has now brazenly hidden behind ASSANGE and Gaza for the past 6 months ... his predictable decision to once again leave us all hangin' here with no hope on GAZA has become his trademark ... Chris Hedges is deliberately misdirecting our attention here ...
His relentless recounting of the horrors of the Gaza genocide for the past 6 months has passed the point of diminishing marginal returns for the marginalized millions in HIS U.S. working class ...
I now count over 70 pieces he has posted here since OCT 7, with only 8 addressing issues OTHER THAN the Gaza genocide, none of which really strike at the heart of the problems now facing Americans ... we are the people who bought his books, attended the his public signings, smashed THUMBS UP and always commented accordingly ... and we deserve much, much more from this once good man ...
------------------
DIVISIVENESS
Hedges is deceptively divisive and he obviously has no problem with it ...
Rather than comment on the ominous threats posed to our freedoms by the WEF and the WHO, he would also have us believe the problem is TRUMP-MAGA ... just listen to the extremely divisive, out-of-context comment he makes here in his otherwise terrific AMERICAN SADISM speech ... listen as he blames the MSM for splitting us into "warring factions" and then demeans those of us who question the motives and tactics of our elected officials as "members of the lunatic fringe and conspiracy theorists" ...
Start at the 43:10 mark and then listen very closely to him at the 44:32 mark:
Many times, Hedges has been quick to point out the problems of our binary reaction to political reporting but once again, he chooses to deftly demonize and conflate law-abiding Christians with fringe MAGA types ...
I happen to believe that 9/11 was an inside job ... so does that make me a member of his lunatic fringe? ... well guess what, Hedges has actually admitted as much ... after a 2014 speech he was asked to comment on 9/11 and insulted our collective intelligence by saying "I don't want to get into conspiracy theories, Bush was probably just asleep at the wheel" ...
Hedges' words do not empower us, his pessimism demoralizes us ...
Here's a few more head-scratching comments that now have even more meaning since the March 2020 lock downs:
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ON THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
He says all the right things here:
“We cannot be paralyzed by fear. We will be stripped, if we do not resist, of our few remaining rights. To resist, while there is still time, is not only the highest form of spirituality but the highest form of patriotism. It is, if you care about what is worth protecting in this country, a moral imperative."
And on another occasion: "The Constitution remains a sacred document."
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ON THE MANDATES & PASSPORTS
But then, after the lock downs ...
He threw us AND the Constitution under the bus with COVID in an interview with Jimmy Dore ... just listen him equivocate and watch him dance to avoid a direct answer when asked about the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports before sheepishly blowing it off by saying: "that was a decision that I made."
Jimmy: “I’d like to get your thoughts on the vaccine mandates and passports”:
Hedges: “So I got the vaccine … the fact is these things were rolled out without proper vetting, that’s real … but I understand how people are weary about it, because they were turbo-charged … but that was a decision I made to get it … I am quite certain, in the history of pharmaceuticals that they work very hard to bury the negative consequences … that was a decision that I made”
TRANSLATION: He temporarily suspended his principles because things just got too hot in his kitchen.
And on USEFUL IDIOTS on SEP 21, 2021
Go to the 1:50 mark ...
Another less-than-passionate, half-hearted response ...
The FDA was compelled by a court ruling to release Phizer's vax trial data that revealed 1,223 post-jab deaths and 34,762 adverse events in the first 10 weeks of its trial ... The FDA attempted to delay the full release of this data for 75 years! ...
This proved that the COVID vax was not "safe & effective"!
"I don't think we're going to stop the pandemic and mutations until everybody gets vaccinated" ...
Chris Hedges DID NOT have to take sides on this issue ... He could have said it's a personal decision, but no ... most people would never tell another person to "walk the plank" if they knew better, but that's exactly what Hedges did here ... he knew the VAX was rushed to market after only one year (the average is 10 years), he knew about the explosive FDA FOIA release and he had to have seen the many videos of vax-injured people ... but he chose to push the "safe & effective" narrative on us anyway! ... and then about 2m after making that same comment during the interview above, Hedges rubbed our nose in it by openly admitting that he "does not trust Moderna or Phizer" ... livelihoods and lives can hang in the balance of reckless, irresponsible comments like this but clearly, this man did not give a hoot about the consequences.
Of course, Hedges is free to write about any topic he chooses ... but although the 2024 PRES election is 8 months away, we've only got 2 months to stop the WHO from implementing those scary amendments to the pandemic treaty ...
But Hedges won't go there ... ya see, it's just too risky, he's cutting too close to the bone ... this has become his post-pandemic trademark ...
Read about James Roguski and the Amendments to the W.H.O.'s International Pandemic Treaty here on Substack ... Hedges should be front and center on this ... in tough times like these, why won't he even mention this topic? ... WTF is his problem?
This is a very timely topic, Mr Hedges ... but you still have some explaining to do ...
This is THE first post you've made here since the OCT 7 attacks that really strikes at the heart of U.S. working class problems ... by my count, you have made only about 10 other posts here addressing issues other than the ISR-Palestinian conflict since OCT 7 ... that's 6 months and 181 days! ... those other 10 posts merely danced around the edges of our problems here in the U.S.
Why Mr Hedges? ... eagerly awaiting your reply ...
And what happens next week, Mr Hedges? ... it's back to Gaza, right?
What about us Americans? ... we don't matter so much anymore, do we Mr Hedges?
I simply benchmark his spoken and written words and promises against his actions to demonstrate how he has turned his back on the U.S. working class since the lock downs ...
I got it all ... if you want details here, all ya gotta do is ask ...
I don’t need to ask; I’ve sporadically noted your obsession with accusing Chris of ‘turning his back on the working class’, and consider it as disingenuous as those who accuse Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald of selling out to the right wing with their criticism of Democratic Party malfeasance/stupidity, be it on Ukraine or the censorship industrial complex. You are most certainly a troll, as you spew the same critique, regardless of topic. Not saying you don’t have right to channel your inner Jimmy Dore on lock down mistakes, just that I find the repeated same old trolling diatribe boring. You most certainly don’t got it all; were that the case, you’d understand you’re blowing smoke here. But carry on; your keyboard, your time.
I've included a clip below of Jimmy Dore asking Hedges to comment on the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports ... just watch him dance to avoid a direct question to a very important topic ... do you think Jimmy was out of line to ask him that question?
This is Hedges' first post here in the last 6 months that really strikes at the heart of U.S. working class problems ... why?
I miss the old, pre-pandemic Chris Hedges ... there was a time when he would not have dodged commentary on hard news ... he would have called out the culprits out by name, set the record straight and pointed us in the right direction ... but not anymore ...
Here's an excerpt from the intro to his March 8th interview with author John Valaint: "... if left unchecked, (the excavation of the Fort McMurray tar sands) will SOON render the planet uninhabitable" ...
Oh really? ... how soon Mr. Hedges, WHEN? ... handicap it for us, give us a time window ... you've actually said this many times Mr Hedges, but this old world just keeps on turning! ... yes, we are in fact in the midst of a climate crisis, but Hedges continues to push a hoax on us, the easily disproven notion that global warming actually poses an existential threat to our species ...
Why was Hedges diverting our attention to a Canadian fire that occurred 8 years ago while Texas is in the midst of the worst fires in its history?
CBS reported 7,000 cattle had been killed, so we know that figure is probably larger ... this area accounts for nearly 90% of the beef production in the U.S ... the WEF is on record as saying that the global livestock population must be reduced because of its supposed role in global warming ... ya see, TPTB are just trying to save us, right? ...
But he has refused to comment on THE GREAT RESET, The World Economic Forum and the proposed tyrannical amendments to the WHO Pandemic Treaty ...
Hedges abandoned the U.S. working class and the U.S. Constitution in an AUG 27, 2021 interview with Jimmy Dore, and he has now brazenly hidden behind ASSANGE and Gaza for the past 6 months ... his predictable decision to once again leave us all hangin' here with no hope on GAZA has become his trademark ... Chris Hedges is deliberately misdirecting our attention here ...
His relentless recounting of the horrors of the Gaza genocide for the past 6 months has passed the point of diminishing marginal returns for the marginalized millions in HIS U.S. working class ...
I now count over 70 pieces he has posted here since OCT 7, with only 8 addressing issues OTHER THAN the Gaza genocide, none of which really strike at the heart of the problems now facing Americans ... we are the people who bought his books, attended the his public signings, smashed THUMBS UP and always commented accordingly ... and we deserve much, much more from this once good man ...
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DIVISIVENESS
Hedges is deceptively divisive and he obviously has no problem with it ...
Rather than comment on the ominous threats posed to our freedoms by the WEF and the WHO, he would also have us believe the problem is TRUMP-MAGA ... just listen to the extremely divisive, out-of-context comment he makes here in his otherwise terrific AMERICAN SADISM speech ... listen as he blames the MSM for splitting us into "warring factions" and then demeans those of us who question the motives and tactics of our elected officials as "members of the lunatic fringe and conspiracy theorists" ...
Start at the 43:10 mark and then listen very closely to him at the 44:32 mark:
Many times, Hedges has been quick to point out the problems of our binary reaction to political reporting but once again, he chooses to deftly demonize and conflate law-abiding Christians with fringe MAGA types ...
I happen to believe that 9/11 was an inside job ... so does that make me a member of his lunatic fringe? ... well guess what, Hedges has actually admitted as much ... after a 2014 speech he was asked to comment on 9/11 and insulted our collective intelligence by saying "I don't want to get into conspiracy theories, Bush was probably just asleep at the wheel" ...
Hedges' words do not empower us, his pessimism demoralizes us ...
Here's a few more head-scratching comments that now have even more meaning since the March 2020 lock downs:
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ON THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
He says all the right things here:
“We cannot be paralyzed by fear. We will be stripped, if we do not resist, of our few remaining rights. To resist, while there is still time, is not only the highest form of spirituality but the highest form of patriotism. It is, if you care about what is worth protecting in this country, a moral imperative."
And on another occasion: "The Constitution remains a sacred document."
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ON THE MANDATES & PASSPORTS
But then, after the lock downs ...
He threw us AND the Constitution under the bus with COVID in an interview with Jimmy Dore ... just listen him equivocate and watch him dance to avoid a direct answer when asked about the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports before sheepishly blowing it off by saying: "that was a decision that I made."
Jimmy: “I’d like to get your thoughts on the vaccine mandates and passports”:
Hedges: “So I got the vaccine … the fact is these things were rolled out without proper vetting, that’s real … but I understand how people are weary about it, because they were turbo-charged … but that was a decision I made to get it … I am quite certain, in the history of pharmaceuticals that they work very hard to bury the negative consequences … that was a decision that I made”
TRANSLATION: He temporarily suspended his principles because things just got too hot in his kitchen.
And on USEFUL IDIOTS on SEP 21, 2021
Go to the 1:50 mark ...
Another less-than-passionate, half-hearted response ...
The FDA was compelled by a court ruling to release Phizer's vax trial data that revealed 1,223 post-jab deaths and 34,762 adverse events in the first 10 weeks of its trial ... The FDA attempted to delay the full release of this data for 75 years! ...
This proved that the COVID vax was not "safe & effective"!
"I don't think we're going to stop the pandemic and mutations until everybody gets vaccinated" ...
Chris Hedges DID NOT have to take sides on this issue ... He could have said it's a personal decision, but no ... most people would never tell another person to "walk the plank" if they knew better, but that's exactly what Hedges did here ... he knew the VAX was rushed to market after only one year (the average is 10 years), he knew about the explosive FDA FOIA release and he had to have seen the many videos of vax-injured people ... but he chose to push the "safe & effective" narrative on us anyway! ... and then about 2m after making that same comment during the interview above, Hedges rubbed our nose in it by openly admitting that he "does not trust Moderna or Phizer" ... livelihoods and lives can hang in the balance of reckless, irresponsible comments like this but clearly, this man did not give a hoot about the consequences.
Of course, Hedges is free to write about any topic he chooses ... but although the 2024 PRES election is 8 months away, we've only got 2 months to stop the WHO from implementing those scary amendments to the pandemic treaty ...
But Hedges won't go there ... ya see, it's just too risky, he's cutting too close to the bone ... this has become his post-pandemic trademark ...
Read about James Roguski and the Amendments to the W.H.O.'s International Pandemic Treaty here on Substack ... Hedges should be front and center on this ... in tough times like these, why won't he even mention this topic? ... WTF is his problem?
The fear of a Trump presidency with its belief of a rising authoritarianism, belies the fundamental dynamic of a fully oligarchical, captured, government, such as we currently are experiencing. It’s obvious that Biden is a sacrificial lamb, and was from the beginning. The party leaders could have run any number of candidates that could have definitely defeated Trump. But that would have forced the party to adopt progressive issues in order to contrast and defeat Trump. The oligarchs know the country, out of desperation, is becoming increasingly Progressive. So they opted for a weaker version of Trump, the non-threatening (to their interests) Mr Dementia. The oligarchs have chosen the easily manipulated and mentally unstable Trump as our next President. The agenda of the oligarchs, regardless of whose president, is pro-empire and anti-Labor, anti-environment, anti-regulation. Etc. This agenda is diametrically opposed to solving, or even coping, with the entire list of severe crisis that our country and the world with which we are all struggling. In my opinion, we, as a country, desperately, desperately, desperately, need is a truly functional democracy. I trust the People far more than a small group of psychopathic wealth-hoarders.
“Frank Lee” describes the democratic capitalist meritocracy as “the profoundly flawed system that is the best ever designed in terms of benefitting the overall human condition.” I bet the Chinese that are sewing notes asking to be rescued from their factories into the garments they produce would love that one. “Frank” should go for a walk on the former Ho Chi Minh trail and see if her argument gets support from all those with their legs blown off by previous exponents of her beliefs trying to prove her same point. And look at what all that scorned risk-avoidance in the labour market has still managed to do for for the climate, putting us all at the ultimate risk of extinction. Most telling is the critique of Rafi’s status as a commentator, as if that were a competition as well. It’s just a dog-fighting pit to Frank, her dog has to get in the most bites. Because to conservatives, reason is the slave of the passions and you’re going to do what you’re going to do anyway, but you see yourself as passionate, so you have to meet quota on biting the opposition with your reasons to believe.
‘Hope nobody’s businesses are being neglected meantime.
"Corporations and the billionaire class have made war on workers, subverted our democracy."
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Is any creature on this, our mother earth, truly surprised?
The war on workers--the hireling and slave--by corporations and the 'moneyed' class being established by instituting a 'subservient' governing body and calling it a 'democracy'; while creating the conditions for a Christian fascist state is absolutely what the usa was founded on...Proudly ensconced in plain sight.
Where to start??
Start with the usa national anthem.
.
…No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave…
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This, the usa, national anthem, We, the people–the hirelings–proudly proclaim with enthusiastic vigor in song and dance. And with war to the death we defend.
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The star spangled banner:
…No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O’er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave…
.
Archaically (obsolete) brave as a noun stood for bully, assassin, a man daring ‘beyond discretion’
*…After all this poem was written in ‘old (obsolete) english style’ and with ‘sovereign’ logic.
Who at that time were regarded as free-men?
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Knowing and understanding the above. The below, as above, connotes a different logic:
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Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto—“In God is our Trust;”
And the star-spangled Banner in triumph shall wave,
O’er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
.
…In god ‘We The People’ trust as a medium of economic exchange!
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This, usa. How proud are ‘We’ hireling and slave–United–to be an example to the world???
Is it not time ‘WE’–as a nation of hirelings–learn from, address and redress the entire united states 'governing’ anthem? And possibly decide and sing our own founding!??
...Roosevelt once wrote that killing the bison was something of a necessary evil because it was “the only way of solving the Indian question”: The buffalo’s disappearance, was the “only method” of forcing Native Americans “to at least partially abandon their savage mode of life.”
What Did Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X Say About The ‘Alyssa Milano’ Liberals? Written by Isheka N. Harrison
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Suggestion: Read Federal Anti-Indian Law. The legal entrapment of Indigenous peoples By Peter P.d'Errico.
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Today as it was yesterday; The us people today care more about the antics of other countries than they do their own leaders; their monied gods!
The list of examples of the true usa is endless.
Knowledge then Acknowledge
Again:
This, usa. How proud are ‘We’ hireling and slave–United–to be an example to the world???
Is it not time ‘WE’–as a nation of hirelings–learn from, address and redress the entire united states 'governing’ anthem? And possibly decide and sing our own founding!??
People used to go to jail in America for trying to buy votes. You say that money has power at every point in history in any system but in all systems it is recognised that money is or can be a corrupting element in the system, and that money represents inequitable political advantage. Take the selling of the Stormy Daniels story to a newspaper that kills it in the expectation of a greater
reward from the sleazy marital cheat who gets to become President while misrepresenting his finances. That’s where money in a party which takes full advantage of its advantageous inequitable position in society is directed.
You appear to rejoice in coming to this site to bait people who are looking for solutions, I think because you believe that inequity is the natural order of things and that you are perhaps a realist for understanding this and therefore in a good position to teach this truth to misguided libs who are presumptious enough to think they can vote your money, however hard or easily won in the stacked lottery of social spending power, towards causes such as feeding and housing the poor.
You are baiting Chris’s readership with terms like the “Democrat hive”. So democrats are insects that swarm out of a hive, are they? Unlike a Trump truck convoy that tries to push a bus full of Democrats off the road. They wouldn’t be insects, insects can be individually vulnerable, and you despise vulnerability, it’s a term you’ve derided in a reply to me before. Your language seeks to stir things, not to smooth them out, because you believe yourself to be on the winning side of history, and history itself is a game of winners and losers. This is where the American gambling culture, of which the Republican get-rich-quick, devil-take-the-hindmost persuasion is a subset, departs from Christianity, which I suppose I’ll be obliged to define as the teachings of Jesus. He taught that “the poor will always be with you”, but the right wing will be damned if they’re having that. On Kamala Harris’ front lawn maybe, but not in their back yard. Women are to be prevented from aborting children, but what is to be spent on their upkeep while their time is devoted to the child and they don’t have a husband who can earn enough from three jobs or a Republican Bank of Mum and Dad to see them through? Does anyone care, they should have thought of that before they presumed to get pregnant and expected you to pay for it, would be the Republican default position, am I right? Meanwhile the State is running all kinds of military exercises, more and more subtle surveillance, and is heavily invested in secrecy and in its own acts of exterminating people like Assange who merely found a route to truth which is not the government’s narrative. Why don’t you save money on those? In French there are two words for power; puissance, which equates to mightiness, and pouvoir, which equates to the ability and authority to act. We make no such distinction. Thus with 700+ overseas bases, the US has plenty of might but little ability to deploy it. Biden can’t even command a no-fly zone over Gaza, he’s so owned by the MIC corporations and the fear of the Jewish vote. What are you doing about that to save paying the coming bill for shiny weapons? Billions are spent on promoting a default value system displayed by every influencer in every advertisement for the benefit of the maintenance of the primacy of capital. How is that the proper direction for spending power? It directs spending artificially to the private sector instead of spending it on infrastructure and communities, and takes a chunk of your disposable income to persuade you that you need something you may not. Like protection from swarming liberals. J. K. Galbraith taught all this in his book “The Affluent Society” many decades ago, where he also teaches how to recognise sheep in Brookes Brothers clothing who intone the absolute demands of the corporate class as issues of personal righteousness for the poor.
Billionaires have the money other people should have.
The good news is that when these sociopathic mammon chasing monsters are done with the rest of us, they will turn on each other until the proverbial one with the most “toys” wins. The only possibility to stop them is a massive nation wide general strike. But then since they own the government lock stock and barrel they will just bail themselves out with printing endless money which is another form of taxation on the rest of us, so refusing to pay taxes is likely a meaningless gesture. As George Carlin so eloquently put it (paraphrased): They’ve got you by the balls, and they want it all and they will get it in the end. Meanwhile we are all getting it in the end in a different fashion. Just another day in the USA.
Maybe that’s why Bezos buying up that barrier island near Miami will turn it into an island fortress lol
Bezos and Musk have the nerve to ask for govt (public) $$$ to help finance their private Mars colony. I'm for it--providing they're on the same rocket. The entertainment value of such inflated egos fighting for dominance would be fun. On Mars, who will grow the plants necessary for food and oxygen? Who will construct and maintain the buildings? Given their egregious superiority complexes, you know they won't get dirty. And they'll p.o. the plebeians. Then the inevitable strike--local 1, Martian Building & Agricultural Trades. With nowhere to find scabs.
On this train of thought when societies collapse then warlords often create fiefdoms
Could be interesting times in USA if our central government collapses
lol
But they have to compete with the Trotskyites like Obama so it will get bloody
Why do you think Obama building his fortress on south side of Chicago
I urge everyone to read Les Leopold's //Wall Street's War On Workers//!!!
I was a blue collar union member and labor activist for 25+ years. I also managed local D political campaigns when the party still relied on volunteers. I fought the usurpation of the party by neolibs who ditched the New Deal and abandoned the majority, the working class. Among the preface blurbs to the book is one by Robert Kuttner: "(Leopold) explains the dynamics of mass layoffs and the reality that the white working class did not desert the Democrats--the Democrats deserted them." Which I can attest to from bitter first hand experience. I've witnessed how job loss becomes those deaths of despair. Of course testimony by me and others like me are often dismissed as anecdotal. But Leopold presents the detailed stats that make our case.
Kuttner says "Leopold also offers ingenious and practical solutions to take back our politics from the plutocracy." Exactly. My Wobbly heart rages about the econopathy. I've researched the economic theories of the Austrian and Chicago schools now dominating the system and I know there is little real logic involved; it's a belief system, a cult really. But that won't help suffering people who need help to survive right now. A winning campaign must focus on a few clear objectives--and Leopold has them.
The weaponization of the federal judiciary as a lever to dismantle the administrative state is bad enough. It also coincides, however, with a right wing strategy to take over the courts and degrade fundamental rights from the right to bodily autonomy to even voting rights. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/judges-v-democracy
People might also appreciate calls for Sotomayor to step down in order to avoid her seat being lost to a potential Trump nominee, as Ginsburg’s was lost to Amy Coney Barrett. https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/01/for-the-sake-of-all-of-us-sonia-sotomayor-needs-to-retire-from-the-us-supreme-court
Thanks Chris and Les. The billionaire class must be dismantled, offshore tax haven bank accounts seized and Wall St Corporate Raiders Frog Marched to prison! Julian Benda's description "The Treason of the Intellectuals" describes both party leaders, MSM rhetoric machines and "experts" like Morning Joe and his guests. Reagan's and Thatcher's removing of the guard rails of Capitalism and Clinton, Tony Blair and Obama's doubling down and sellout of the working class are quite comfortable with a fascist Oligarchy. They forget FDR's warning when his New Deal legislation was introduced and rammed through, its this or the pitch forks for you Robber Barons. All the rules and regulations were brought in after decades of Violent Unionism, fighting Private Corporate armies directed and controlled by Megalomaniacs like Rockefeller, Morgan, Ford, Melon, Carnegie amongst others! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING was gained by respectful negotiations. For at taste read any Upton Sinclair book, Ida Tarbell two of an army of Muck Rakers like Chris and Les. His book "The Jungle" describes the Chicago Slaughter House Industry or "King Coal" describing the dystopian company towns. Tarbell exposed the Rockefeller Standard Oil Monopoly! Bloody Ludlow should be a well known example of brutal capitalism. Eastern Europeans lured to Minnesota, paid in company scrip, only good in company stores. Where they even had to buy there own helmets, wicks and oil. Who paid rent on a piece of land that they were told to build their own shack on. Their first brutally put down strike demand was an honest weigh scale for the coal they dug. They weren't paid anything for shoring up the mines, only for the tonnage they dug, one piece of stone cancelled payment for it all. Ayn Rand and her Atlas supermen are destroying the world!
P.S. Watch Canada's father of Canadian health care Tommy Douglas's "Mouse Land" video on you tube. its vey serious but will still give chuckle, for us mice that can only vote for cats!
I have been reading up on capitalism and finance theory. Ayn Rand was a mediocre version of the Austrian (ie, von Mises, Hayek) and subsequent Chicago (Milton Friedman) schools of economics, aka neoliberalism. For a great explanation, I recommend //Globalists// (2019) by Quinn Slobodian. I was shocked when I figured out there is no real heft to their views at all. No grounding philosophies, no statistical confirmations. Just argument by assertion; assumptions of superiority and the right to be ruling econ and political powers. It's a belief system, a cult really. For alternatives, //Taming the Street (The Old Guard, the New Deal, and FDR's Fight to Regulate American Capitalism)// (2023) by Diana Henriques. And of course Les Leopold's book //Wall Street's War on Workers// (2024.) Sound arguments and real numbers.
Yes I am aware of the Chicago boys Freidman brain washed and let loose on the world. They are all fascists. Many say fascism is merely Capitalism with the gloves off! Ayn Rand's best seller were the seeds, that Mises and Hayek fertilized and made grow!
Corporations are a sham for workers. The profit seeking motive makes them psychopathic. So to find more workers to exploit, they must adopt a human face (and possibly outpay some workers more than competitors to compensate).
Because of their true corporate values and necessary two facedness, the people you see in a corporation show increasing levels of this same pathology the higher you climb in the bureaucracy. And then Forbes or whatever mainstream rag acts surprised that people hate their jobs.
It's interesting to note some founding fathers wondered if corporations would impose a greater tyranny than the Bank of England or the British monarchy.
Yes indeed. And these same corporations embrace DEI and wokeness, because it doesn't actually cost them anything. The DEI/Woke virtue signaling is a mask to hide their rapacity. In a hunger games "meritocracy" (whatever that means) the people running the show don't really mind if there are different colors and sexual orientations etc. mixed in at the top. As long as the 90% at the bottom obey. Increasing surveillance is being put in place to make sure that the plebes really do behave and that dissent is not permitted.
DEI is being used to divide and conquer the working class. It reignites racism and sexism and even creates whole new ism's! Those same rules don't apply to the managerial class and above.
FALSE! Assumptions about "division" keep being repeated because it serves those sure we blue collar types are too stupid to organize ourselves and thus need an elite 'vanguard of the working class." In other words, it's a form of class prejudice!
Read Les Leopold's book--therein are the stats that disprove claims the white working class is sexist, racist, homophobic. So then NOT a way to keep us workers from uniting. But it is an excuse for those who say they oppose the econopathy to dismiss to us lessers and then not have to do the hard work of building coalitions by talking with us.
I note that on this site and elsewhere diversion (or division) is most often repeated by white male armchair intellectuals. People who've never had to fight to be recognized for who they are. And usually have never picked up a tool in their lives.
I'm trans--FtM; I had to live as female for 53 years, including my time as a blue collar union member and activist. I'm gay. I'm reservation raised, a two-spirit. None of which precluded not only working in jobs 95% male and 90% white, but being elected to negotiating committees and doing organizing. It's not either/or!
Ummm TRUE! Did you read what I wrote? Because you basically just agreed with it. It's class warfare.
Corporate DEI is certainly being used to divide and conquer. I've personally worked at two companies already where this is the case. There are plenty of other stories you can find out there.
I seriously doubt you read the book referenced as your reading comprehension appears low. You're arguing a straw man for some odd reason.
Nobody cares at all that you're gay or trans. Which was my whole point that you apparently confirmed as well. All this DEI nonsense is being pushed to sow division that doesn't naturally exist. As you say, directed at lower classes.
You wrote three sentences. Easy to read. You either didn't read my first paragraph very carefully or didn't understand the vanguard reference. I'm saying repetition of the claim at issue happens because those asserting "division" (often the term is distraction) are themselves guilty of class prejudice. Especially true of dogmatic theoretical leftists and their assumption we workers are stupid.
Corporate DEI, mentioned by the OP, is not the same as your assertion about how this supposedly affects the working class. Where is your evidence of how we're so easily duped? Had you read my comments elsewhere on this thread, let alone previously on the Hedges site, you'd know I was a blue collar union member and activist for 25+ years, including doing organizing. And that I managed local D campaigns when the party still relied on volunteers. As for "stories out there," I've seen first hand the way job loss turns into deaths of despair.
Using an ad hominem? How silly. Go look at my comment on this thread urging people to read the book by Les Leopold. Which is the subject of this particular Hedges report. And BTW, Leopold himself can testify that I read the book. And that I know its subject matter both by long experience and by decades of research, including about neoliberalism and finance.
You've also missed my point about identities. That you dismiss this by saying "nobody cares" is telling. it seems to place you in the category of the critique in my 3rd paragraph.-- those refusing to respect issues of identity think it's irrelevant because they've never experienced invisibility. Nor did I anywhere ever say "directed at the lower classes." That you read this into what I said is perilously close to a Freudian slip. I'm saying the very opposite--that some of us can read, write, and think! My own list of identities is evidence that both working class solidarity, which is for me no abstraction, goes with the decades of struggle it took for some semblance of respect. It would be easy to make the case that we can't have one without the other. Do you think we can have workers' rights without civil rights? MLK didn't think so. "Nobody cares?" Are you then fine that we trans people are the right wing enemy du jour? Is a scapegoat acceptable as long as it isn't your group?
Please don't comment on my comments
LOL. It is fascinating how educated people on the left of everything attempt to swim in deep end of the facts and knowledge pool while still clutching their ideological comfort side of the shallow end.
To connect the Democrat Wall Street-powered globalist corporatocracy to the fake threat of Christian Nationalism... well it is the definition of ideological programmed cognitive dissonance.
There is no threat of Christian Nationalism. Or said another way, the thing that liberals today define as Christian Nationalism is just traditional Americanism... you know, all those baked in core Judea-Christian and strong family values that made America great to begin with.
However, you got the first part right. We are fighting WWIII with those that want to enslave the global population in a global collectivist nightmare. The billionaire boys club and their Wall Street money power and behind it... to generate greater returns for their bank accounts. And it requires that the American working class be made dependent on Universal Basic Income.
Unions are not the solution though. They are just part of the collectivist agenda to reduce economic opportunity for the masses to benefit a smaller cohort at the administrative top.
You’re sinking in the deep end, Frank. America has never been great.
But you are still here. Why?
I have a brother that says the same. He is a malcontent... although too old to have received the campus America-hating Theory indoctrination. He cannot explain why billions would immigrate here if allowed. He also cannot explain why he cannot find anywhere else he would move to.
A meritocracy will always result in losers. The difference with the American system is that there is no real barrier to anyone becoming a winner except what is in their own head.
Rafi has done a good job below in exposing your devotion to the logical fallacy, so no need for me to respond to your continued use of same.
Why am I still here? The same reason most people reside in their birth nation.
As to your own head barrier diagnosis, that’s about the trope analysis I’d expect from someone masturbating to a social Darwinism mix tape.
No, Rafi has not a good job. Again... no examples... no evidence... nothing to back up his and your Maoist fallacies. The reason you are still here is because there is nowhere else better. But that is how malcontents work... they exploit the benefits of the system while denying those benefits exist while complaining of all the unfairness and masturbating to a collectivist totalitarian mix tape.
Finland is better. Iceland is better.
America is totalitarian. But you refuse to acknowledge the corporate coup, nor the reality of our tripartite system of ‘governance’. You’d rather get a tingle down your leg when the military flyover before a sporting event takes place. Your simplistic cluelessness can be summed by the He Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins inanity from the 80s.
By the way, those Scandinavian people love capitalism..
Finland and Iceland are tiny, resource rich per capita and culturally homogenous... really white... hardly comparable to the US. But I expected those examples as I have a lot of experience debating people with your views, and that is all you can find.
1. The good old days were NOT good for the vast majority, including rural white men and working class white men. At the turn of the 19th to 20th C. only 14% of the U.S. population was middle class, and that precariously because of the boom and bust cycles.
2. As for Christian Nationalism, you don't have to believe Chris Hedges. Read //One Nation Under God (How Corporate America Invented Christian America)// by Kevin Kruse. About the propaganda of business associations to oppose successful New Deal programs. Those idyllic images of the '50s masked deep problems. And what was good, like decent wages, were the results of long battles for union organizing and help from FDR's hard working administration as well as a '30s Congress that wasn't a subsidiary of Wall St. Or read //False White Gospel// by Jim Wallis, an evangelical. Wherein he explicitly confronts what he names as the danger of Christian Nationalism.
3. You obviously know nothing about the history of unions nor about the experiences of those of us who are rank and file blue collar members. Union negotiations come under contract law. Non-union employees come under a provision inherited from English common law; it's called a Master-Servant relationship! Are you asserting that we working people bow to our betters?!
4. Why is your "collectivist" nightmare only about what used to be known as the common good? Truth is any business thrives because of cooperation. Wall St. and corporate collusion is also a "collectivism." Something that occurred repeatedly in them good ol' days and is happening right now. The excesses of the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age, the 1929 crash/Great Depression, the S & L scandals of the '80s, and the Great Recession of 2008. But no, of course none of this needs regulation...that's government! Let's continue without regs and see if this time it will be different.
"1. " This is rewriting history. The industrial revolution significantly raised the standards of living and life expectancy for Americans. But workplace safety was a problem and so was child labor. Collective bargaining for those things made sense.
2. The labels of history don't comport. For example, today a "liberal progressive" is more likely a neoracist Maoist... holding views and values that are illiberal, for example empowering government to eliminate God-given human rights like free speech and expression and treating people differently based on their race or other group labels. Those claimed to be Christian Nationalists today by the left are simply working class and conservative people that hold traditional American values of God, family and country.
3. I worked as a unionized steel worker in a steel galvanizing plant for a couple of years when young. I have significant experience dealing with public sector unions in my job. My history is blue collar work in construction, manufacturing and agriculture until I moved to white collar work. I advocate for improvements in working class economic opportunity and wages. My current job is CEO of two companies... one that works to improve economic circumstances in labor surplus areas. Unions are not the answer. They cause Hostess Corporation. They are just wage extortion terrorism that leads to over-priced labor relative to the market, and fewer jobs. Unions also help fund the workforce automation industry. I think ESOPs are the answer... but the problem is that labor is risk-averse. These workers want more money but don't want the job risk associated with it. Everybody wants more and believes they deserve it. But only those that put themselves in an ownership position and then work to succeed, actually deserve it.
4. Please give me an example of any country or society past or present that represents your model of good. From my inventory everyone of them that adopts collectivism is a nightmare. I will wait.
1. "The Industrial Revolution" caused...is an example of what Whitehead called the 'the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.' Like how "The Market" is used. As if these were living archons and not in reality millions of people--including working people. And do read some about what life was like for people in factories with 12-14 hour days, 6-7 days a week, abusive bosses, unsafe conditions where injuries were common. If a worker was too injured to work, too bad; they starved and so did their families. Organized labor and allies among the Populists, the R. Progressives, and the New Deal are what changed this, not any Robber Baron or financier largesse. Abuses continue today. A common tactic is to cut funds for inspectors, then safety regs don't matter.
2. Another classic logical fallacy--deflection. You don't engage with my actual points but instead engage in a bizarre conflation of political types for which you offer no evidence. "God-given rights" is a trope devised by the the corporate business organizations referred to in the book by Kevin Kruse mentioned above. Do you propose to get rid of the Bill of Rights as redundant? Where in the history of Christianity, both Western and Eastern, are citizens' rights to be found? Look at the history of Geneva for a great example of Calvinist Protestantism as absolute. As for thought during the founding of the U.S. read "The Search for Christian America" (1983) by Mark. A. Noll, an evangelical professor then at Wheaton College, considered the center of evangelical scholarship. His point being the founders weren't very religious. My point being that's why "God-given" or even God at all are not in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
3. A "couple of years" is not a lifetime, nor does it or your other claims prove you have any understanding of what anyone thinks other than yourself. In fact, your individualist presumptions would preclude considering group attitudes at all. That "I advocate" implies that we lessers should wait for people like you to grant favors. Uh, no. Dependency on hierarchy has seldom proven beneficent. Review the list I provided at the end of my #4.
As for"wage extortion terrorism"--here you show both class bigotry and a complete lack of understanding about labor history and the process of negotiations. Companies negotiate with each other no problem. Why no outrage over the ridiculous gap in the U.S. between what big corporate CEOs are paid and what workers make? How about corporate stock buy-backs that divert what could be investments in growth, fuel lay-offs, and manipulate "The Market" so as to personally reward the CEOs with their generous stock awards? Read Les Leopold's book!
About workers as risk averse...oh please. Do a coal miner's job or the work of a high voltage tower electrician. Most egregious is the transportation industry. Where management has all the power and none of the responsibility. Licensed personnel, like airline pilots, ship captains, and train engineers do.
Perhaps you want to be one of those overpaid, monstrous CEOs and therefore nothing any of us say would make a difference. But perhaps you just believe in private enterprise. Then consider this: capitalism and free enterprise are not the same. In biz 101, the basic costs of business are defined as land, labor, and capital. So they can't be the same. Free enterprise is the private production (including by co-ops) of physically real goods and services. Capitalism is the privileging of that abstraction known as money. I'm an artist. I've also done repair work for people. So then that's a form of small business, private enterprise. Nothing wrong with that. But corporations considered to be "people'?! How about the increasing financialization of the econ system whereby the exploiters are gutting what is called the Real Economy?
4. You seem unaware of the term "common good," which dates back to the Greek philosophers. Even Adam Smith, the guru of private enterprise, uses the term--and in a positive way. The good of society as a whole, communitarian concerns, are positives in themselves and the foundation of democracy. You can only dismiss this if you insist on conflating anything you don't like as by definition an evil collectivism. Defining away is another logical fallacy (There are lists online--look them up.) BTW, what was the justification for establishing legal charters for corporations by state governments? They were to serve a public purpose.
If you want to demonstrate some relation of God and rights, and for that matter with what's right, how about NT Acts 4:32-35? "All the believers were of one heart and mind. No one claimed any possession as their own; they shared everything they had..." "...there were no needy persons among them, for as many as had lands and houses sold them, bringing the proceeds and laying them at the feet of the apostles. Who gave to each as any had need."
You failed to provide your example of that utopian system. I see a fantastic malcontent with a lot of time for stewing and criticism of everything and not much to claim as real accomplishment moving anything forward. Because of that you lack credibility as a complete critical thinker on this topic. You cannot achieve status as a great contributor to anything with only criticism combined with a failure to acknowledge anything good.
https://socialmisfit.substack.com/p/the-dangerous-corruptors-of-capitalism
And you've failed to acknowledge any of my points. So ignoring the need to rebut them. You're the one using scattershot criticisms with nothing but shallow assertions and indulgence in logical fallacies to back them up.
Example: nice use of the fallacy ad hominem. Deploying the word "malcontent" like a banishing ritual. Not that given the illogic I have to answer anything so silly, but I've been active in politics since 1960 plus serving as a labor organizer and negotiator for decades. Also volunteering for all sorts of civic good like sitting with terminally ill people or replanting indigenous species. Real accomplishments in the real world.
"Forward" is a relative term--your idea of it seems to be approval of the Gilded Age and the Roaring '20s; an econ system by and for the very few. Mine is the opposite--a vision of the common good and a more equitable econ system.
What you asked for was "a model of good." Since I did provide some, you now attempt the fallacy of deflection by shifting the frame to "utopia."
I sure don't worry about "status," and especially not when via your attempt at omniscient and infallible authority. Were an objective assessment of this thread to be made, it would be obvious which claimant offered reasoned arguments and verifiable evidence. Go read Les Leopold's book and get back to me. I'll wait.
Your family must think you are hoot at the party.
The simple argument is that every attempt throughout history to implement your socialist, collectivist, Marxist "a vision of the common good and a more equitable econ system" has resulted in massive human suffering, misery and death. They are systems designed by other malcontents because misery loves company.
You, like most malcontent academics I know that make the disingenuous claim of blue-collar work connections, are just unwilling, or otherwise lack the stuff, to compete in the democratic capitalist meritocracy... the profoundly flawed system that is the best ever designed in terms of benefitting the overall human condition. The evidence of those benefits are so clear and profound that it takes either fantastic blindness or pile of lies to deny it.
Yes, inequity exists because that is nature. There is NO SYSTEM that eliminates inequity, again, because nature always wins. The American Great Experiment is a system design that provides reasonable and plentiful equal access to opportunity for everyman if he wants to do the work and demonstrate the persistent self-determination to advance. That is why billions of people on the planet want to migrate to the US... for THAT reason.
The curse and blessing of the human psyche is that we always want more. The blessing explains why we progress. But unfortunately, the less-moral of us tend to measure what we have against others. We care about status and it eats at us when our neighbor seems to do better. There are two ways to respond: to embrace the traditional American way to go out and compete to earn more, or the malcontent collectivist approach to tear down the system that the neighbor thrives in so the malcontent can feel better by comparison.
Now, I am in agreement that we have a corporatist problem today that repeats the ills of the Gilded Age. But those problems were remedied by the very system you advocate tearing down because it is not equitable enough. I might be open to considering a different system design if there were any working examples. The thing is... you are not that smart... neither am I. We have thousands of years of people trying to figure out the puzzles of good system design... good governance to benefit the human condition. For your ideas to have merit there would be examples of merit. There are none.
BS
“Frank Lee” complains of cognitive dissonance while somehow connecting a “global collectivist nightmare” with the intentions of billionaires. What do the billionaires care what the population does so long as they are open to routine advertising persuasion? She says that”There is no threat of Christian Nationalism. Or said another way, the thing that liberals today define as Christian Nationalism is just traditional Americanism... you know, all those baked in core Judea-Christian and strong family values that made America great to begin with.” Jesus was not a nationalist. His “render unto Caesar” teaching clearly distinguishes between the needs of the state and the duty towards God, and may be an attack on the use of what was the equivalent of the dollar at that time. In America now, money has political status as free speech. And someone is offering America all the kingdoms of the world if they will just bow do and worship him.
In America now, and in every point in history of any system, money has power. The question is where is that power directed? Today in the Democrat hive the money is used to promote a political power that serves its moneyed corporatist masters. And then the Democrat hive disingenuously blames Republicans for the "inequity" of it all.
Subtitle:"... how corporations and the billionaire class have made war on workers, subverted our democracy and created the conditions for a Christian fascist state"...
Hedges is being unnecessarily and deliberately divisive here! ... Hedges is - among other things, a professional story-teller ... he knows it is imperative to create an enemy and to "write against" that same enemy to keep us emotionally vested in his work ... Substack reports that his subscriber base here has grown from 60k to 88k since the OCT 7 attacks ... and my instincts are being proven right, nothing good can come from this type of disingenuous story-telling ... the premise of Hedges' primary line of argument is intellectual dishonest - and he knows it!
Ever notice? ... Hedges will always single-out the corporations and the billionaire class, but never even mention the "globalist" movement, let alone mention their leaders by name ... he is deliberately deflecting our attention away from those people behind UN Agenda 21 aka The Great Reset and placing the blame squarely on the Christian right, Trump and MAGA ...
The Christian right DID NOT orchestrate the COVID lock downs; the Christian right did not impose the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports; the Christian right did not exploit COVID tyranny as pretext for pushing big tech censorship ... the Christian right is not the driving force behind endless war ... and Hedges knows it!
I'm an independent progressive just as Hedges once was ... and in tough times like these, I could easily follow Kari Lake's principles before taking seriously anything Hedges says in the heat of battle.
-------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND
Chris Hedges has deserted the U.S. working class! ...
HEDGES: "Let us stand up and resist so future generations will at least say ‘they tried.’ We cannot do this alone ... together we have a chance" ...
https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/11/hedges-the-pimps-of-war/
But he has refused to comment on THE GREAT RESET, The World Economic Forum and the proposed tyrannical amendments to the WHO Pandemic Treaty ...
Hedges abandoned the U.S. working class and the U.S. Constitution in an AUG 27, 2021 interview with Jimmy Dore, and he has now brazenly hidden behind ASSANGE and Gaza for the past 6 months ... his predictable decision to once again leave us all hangin' here with no hope on GAZA has become his trademark ... Chris Hedges is deliberately misdirecting our attention here ...
His relentless recounting of the horrors of the Gaza genocide for the past 6 months has passed the point of diminishing marginal returns for the marginalized millions in HIS U.S. working class ...
I now count over 70 pieces he has posted here since OCT 7, with only 8 addressing issues OTHER THAN the Gaza genocide, none of which really strike at the heart of the problems now facing Americans ... we are the people who bought his books, attended the his public signings, smashed THUMBS UP and always commented accordingly ... and we deserve much, much more from this once good man ...
------------------
DIVISIVENESS
Hedges is deceptively divisive and he obviously has no problem with it ...
Rather than comment on the ominous threats posed to our freedoms by the WEF and the WHO, he would also have us believe the problem is TRUMP-MAGA ... just listen to the extremely divisive, out-of-context comment he makes here in his otherwise terrific AMERICAN SADISM speech ... listen as he blames the MSM for splitting us into "warring factions" and then demeans those of us who question the motives and tactics of our elected officials as "members of the lunatic fringe and conspiracy theorists" ...
Start at the 43:10 mark and then listen very closely to him at the 44:32 mark:
https://scheerpost.com/2021/06/29/chris-hedges-speaks-on-american-sadism/
Many times, Hedges has been quick to point out the problems of our binary reaction to political reporting but once again, he chooses to deftly demonize and conflate law-abiding Christians with fringe MAGA types ...
I happen to believe that 9/11 was an inside job ... so does that make me a member of his lunatic fringe? ... well guess what, Hedges has actually admitted as much ... after a 2014 speech he was asked to comment on 9/11 and insulted our collective intelligence by saying "I don't want to get into conspiracy theories, Bush was probably just asleep at the wheel" ...
Hedges' words do not empower us, his pessimism demoralizes us ...
Here's a few more head-scratching comments that now have even more meaning since the March 2020 lock downs:
------------------
ON THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
He says all the right things here:
“We cannot be paralyzed by fear. We will be stripped, if we do not resist, of our few remaining rights. To resist, while there is still time, is not only the highest form of spirituality but the highest form of patriotism. It is, if you care about what is worth protecting in this country, a moral imperative."
And on another occasion: "The Constitution remains a sacred document."
------------------
ON THE MANDATES & PASSPORTS
But then, after the lock downs ...
He threw us AND the Constitution under the bus with COVID in an interview with Jimmy Dore ... just listen him equivocate and watch him dance to avoid a direct answer when asked about the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports before sheepishly blowing it off by saying: "that was a decision that I made."
AUG 27, 2021 ...
Go to the 8:12 mark ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NusQH0pnX7Y&t=509s
Jimmy: “I’d like to get your thoughts on the vaccine mandates and passports”:
Hedges: “So I got the vaccine … the fact is these things were rolled out without proper vetting, that’s real … but I understand how people are weary about it, because they were turbo-charged … but that was a decision I made to get it … I am quite certain, in the history of pharmaceuticals that they work very hard to bury the negative consequences … that was a decision that I made”
TRANSLATION: He temporarily suspended his principles because things just got too hot in his kitchen.
And on USEFUL IDIOTS on SEP 21, 2021
Go to the 1:50 mark ...
Another less-than-passionate, half-hearted response ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ZGT8raQS8
“It’s a hard question, I guess”
------------------
ON THE COVID VAX
On DEC 2, 2021 ...
The FDA was compelled by a court ruling to release Phizer's vax trial data that revealed 1,223 post-jab deaths and 34,762 adverse events in the first 10 weeks of its trial ... The FDA attempted to delay the full release of this data for 75 years! ...
This proved that the COVID vax was not "safe & effective"!
https://yandex.com/search/?text=FDA+FOIA+release+1223+deaths+phizer+covid+vaccine+december+2%2C+2021&lr=21504&search_source=yacom_desktop_common
But then, just 30 days later ...
On JAN 1, 2022 ...
Chris Hedges made this comment on the Krystal Kyle & Friends Podcast (Episode #54):
Go to the 1:08:47 mark:
https://krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com/p/episode-54-audio-chris-hedges#details
"I don't think we're going to stop the pandemic and mutations until everybody gets vaccinated" ...
Chris Hedges DID NOT have to take sides on this issue ... He could have said it's a personal decision, but no ... most people would never tell another person to "walk the plank" if they knew better, but that's exactly what Hedges did here ... he knew the VAX was rushed to market after only one year (the average is 10 years), he knew about the explosive FDA FOIA release and he had to have seen the many videos of vax-injured people ... but he chose to push the "safe & effective" narrative on us anyway! ... and then about 2m after making that same comment during the interview above, Hedges rubbed our nose in it by openly admitting that he "does not trust Moderna or Phizer" ... livelihoods and lives can hang in the balance of reckless, irresponsible comments like this but clearly, this man did not give a hoot about the consequences.
Of course, Hedges is free to write about any topic he chooses ... but although the 2024 PRES election is 8 months away, we've only got 2 months to stop the WHO from implementing those scary amendments to the pandemic treaty ...
But Hedges won't go there ... ya see, it's just too risky, he's cutting too close to the bone ... this has become his post-pandemic trademark ...
Read about James Roguski and the Amendments to the W.H.O.'s International Pandemic Treaty here on Substack ... Hedges should be front and center on this ... in tough times like these, why won't he even mention this topic? ... WTF is his problem?
This is a very timely topic, Mr Hedges ... but you still have some explaining to do ...
This is THE first post you've made here since the OCT 7 attacks that really strikes at the heart of U.S. working class problems ... by my count, you have made only about 10 other posts here addressing issues other than the ISR-Palestinian conflict since OCT 7 ... that's 6 months and 181 days! ... those other 10 posts merely danced around the edges of our problems here in the U.S.
Why Mr Hedges? ... eagerly awaiting your reply ...
And what happens next week, Mr Hedges? ... it's back to Gaza, right?
What about us Americans? ... we don't matter so much anymore, do we Mr Hedges?
You poor, poor Americans. Upset about the Gaza pitch count. That’s some Elaine Benes dancing you’ve got going there.
Her name is Phyllis Benes
No, it’s Elaine. But not surprising a Hedges troll would be deficient in pop culture awareness. Dance on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsl3IBAsEH4
BTW, I am not a troll ...
I simply benchmark his spoken and written words and promises against his actions to demonstrate how he has turned his back on the U.S. working class since the lock downs ...
I got it all ... if you want details here, all ya gotta do is ask ...
I don’t need to ask; I’ve sporadically noted your obsession with accusing Chris of ‘turning his back on the working class’, and consider it as disingenuous as those who accuse Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald of selling out to the right wing with their criticism of Democratic Party malfeasance/stupidity, be it on Ukraine or the censorship industrial complex. You are most certainly a troll, as you spew the same critique, regardless of topic. Not saying you don’t have right to channel your inner Jimmy Dore on lock down mistakes, just that I find the repeated same old trolling diatribe boring. You most certainly don’t got it all; were that the case, you’d understand you’re blowing smoke here. But carry on; your keyboard, your time.
I've included a clip below of Jimmy Dore asking Hedges to comment on the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports ... just watch him dance to avoid a direct question to a very important topic ... do you think Jimmy was out of line to ask him that question?
I don't give a hoot if it bores you ... of course it bores you ...
You're not here to be enlightened or empowered, you're just here to be entertained ...
You just don't get it! ... I'm not here for you ...
-------------------------------------------------------
This is Hedges' first post here in the last 6 months that really strikes at the heart of U.S. working class problems ... why?
I miss the old, pre-pandemic Chris Hedges ... there was a time when he would not have dodged commentary on hard news ... he would have called out the culprits out by name, set the record straight and pointed us in the right direction ... but not anymore ...
Here's an excerpt from the intro to his March 8th interview with author John Valaint: "... if left unchecked, (the excavation of the Fort McMurray tar sands) will SOON render the planet uninhabitable" ...
Oh really? ... how soon Mr. Hedges, WHEN? ... handicap it for us, give us a time window ... you've actually said this many times Mr Hedges, but this old world just keeps on turning! ... yes, we are in fact in the midst of a climate crisis, but Hedges continues to push a hoax on us, the easily disproven notion that global warming actually poses an existential threat to our species ...
Why was Hedges diverting our attention to a Canadian fire that occurred 8 years ago while Texas is in the midst of the worst fires in its history?
GO HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pz9gvdvWmU&t=334s
CBS reported 7,000 cattle had been killed, so we know that figure is probably larger ... this area accounts for nearly 90% of the beef production in the U.S ... the WEF is on record as saying that the global livestock population must be reduced because of its supposed role in global warming ... ya see, TPTB are just trying to save us, right? ...
10 Reasons Global Warming is a hoax ...
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-06-27-top-10-reasons-climate-change-is-a-complete-hoax-ponzi-scheme.html
This one is even better ...
https://eartheclipse.com/environment/climate-change/10-reasons-climate-change-is-hoax.html
-------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND
Chris Hedges has deserted the U.S. working class! ...
HEDGES: "Let us stand up and resist so future generations will at least say ‘they tried.’ We cannot do this alone ... together we have a chance" ...
https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/11/hedges-the-pimps-of-war/
But he has refused to comment on THE GREAT RESET, The World Economic Forum and the proposed tyrannical amendments to the WHO Pandemic Treaty ...
Hedges abandoned the U.S. working class and the U.S. Constitution in an AUG 27, 2021 interview with Jimmy Dore, and he has now brazenly hidden behind ASSANGE and Gaza for the past 6 months ... his predictable decision to once again leave us all hangin' here with no hope on GAZA has become his trademark ... Chris Hedges is deliberately misdirecting our attention here ...
His relentless recounting of the horrors of the Gaza genocide for the past 6 months has passed the point of diminishing marginal returns for the marginalized millions in HIS U.S. working class ...
I now count over 70 pieces he has posted here since OCT 7, with only 8 addressing issues OTHER THAN the Gaza genocide, none of which really strike at the heart of the problems now facing Americans ... we are the people who bought his books, attended the his public signings, smashed THUMBS UP and always commented accordingly ... and we deserve much, much more from this once good man ...
------------------
DIVISIVENESS
Hedges is deceptively divisive and he obviously has no problem with it ...
Rather than comment on the ominous threats posed to our freedoms by the WEF and the WHO, he would also have us believe the problem is TRUMP-MAGA ... just listen to the extremely divisive, out-of-context comment he makes here in his otherwise terrific AMERICAN SADISM speech ... listen as he blames the MSM for splitting us into "warring factions" and then demeans those of us who question the motives and tactics of our elected officials as "members of the lunatic fringe and conspiracy theorists" ...
Start at the 43:10 mark and then listen very closely to him at the 44:32 mark:
https://scheerpost.com/2021/06/29/chris-hedges-speaks-on-american-sadism/
Many times, Hedges has been quick to point out the problems of our binary reaction to political reporting but once again, he chooses to deftly demonize and conflate law-abiding Christians with fringe MAGA types ...
I happen to believe that 9/11 was an inside job ... so does that make me a member of his lunatic fringe? ... well guess what, Hedges has actually admitted as much ... after a 2014 speech he was asked to comment on 9/11 and insulted our collective intelligence by saying "I don't want to get into conspiracy theories, Bush was probably just asleep at the wheel" ...
Hedges' words do not empower us, his pessimism demoralizes us ...
Here's a few more head-scratching comments that now have even more meaning since the March 2020 lock downs:
------------------
ON THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
He says all the right things here:
“We cannot be paralyzed by fear. We will be stripped, if we do not resist, of our few remaining rights. To resist, while there is still time, is not only the highest form of spirituality but the highest form of patriotism. It is, if you care about what is worth protecting in this country, a moral imperative."
And on another occasion: "The Constitution remains a sacred document."
------------------
ON THE MANDATES & PASSPORTS
But then, after the lock downs ...
He threw us AND the Constitution under the bus with COVID in an interview with Jimmy Dore ... just listen him equivocate and watch him dance to avoid a direct answer when asked about the illegal and unconstitutional mandates and passports before sheepishly blowing it off by saying: "that was a decision that I made."
AUG 27, 2021 ...
Go to the 8:12 mark ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NusQH0pnX7Y&t=509s
Jimmy: “I’d like to get your thoughts on the vaccine mandates and passports”:
Hedges: “So I got the vaccine … the fact is these things were rolled out without proper vetting, that’s real … but I understand how people are weary about it, because they were turbo-charged … but that was a decision I made to get it … I am quite certain, in the history of pharmaceuticals that they work very hard to bury the negative consequences … that was a decision that I made”
TRANSLATION: He temporarily suspended his principles because things just got too hot in his kitchen.
And on USEFUL IDIOTS on SEP 21, 2021
Go to the 1:50 mark ...
Another less-than-passionate, half-hearted response ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ZGT8raQS8
“It’s a hard question, I guess”
------------------
ON THE COVID VAX
On DEC 2, 2021 ...
The FDA was compelled by a court ruling to release Phizer's vax trial data that revealed 1,223 post-jab deaths and 34,762 adverse events in the first 10 weeks of its trial ... The FDA attempted to delay the full release of this data for 75 years! ...
This proved that the COVID vax was not "safe & effective"!
https://yandex.com/search/?text=FDA+FOIA+release+1223+deaths+phizer+covid+vaccine+december+2%2C+2021&lr=21504&search_source=yacom_desktop_common
But then, just 30 days later ...
On JAN 1, 2022 ...
Chris Hedges made this comment on the Krystal Kyle & Friends Podcast (Episode #54):
Go to the 1:08:47 mark:
https://krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com/p/episode-54-audio-chris-hedges#details
"I don't think we're going to stop the pandemic and mutations until everybody gets vaccinated" ...
Chris Hedges DID NOT have to take sides on this issue ... He could have said it's a personal decision, but no ... most people would never tell another person to "walk the plank" if they knew better, but that's exactly what Hedges did here ... he knew the VAX was rushed to market after only one year (the average is 10 years), he knew about the explosive FDA FOIA release and he had to have seen the many videos of vax-injured people ... but he chose to push the "safe & effective" narrative on us anyway! ... and then about 2m after making that same comment during the interview above, Hedges rubbed our nose in it by openly admitting that he "does not trust Moderna or Phizer" ... livelihoods and lives can hang in the balance of reckless, irresponsible comments like this but clearly, this man did not give a hoot about the consequences.
Of course, Hedges is free to write about any topic he chooses ... but although the 2024 PRES election is 8 months away, we've only got 2 months to stop the WHO from implementing those scary amendments to the pandemic treaty ...
But Hedges won't go there ... ya see, it's just too risky, he's cutting too close to the bone ... this has become his post-pandemic trademark ...
Read about James Roguski and the Amendments to the W.H.O.'s International Pandemic Treaty here on Substack ... Hedges should be front and center on this ... in tough times like these, why won't he even mention this topic? ... WTF is his problem?
Thought you were referring to Phyllis Bennis ...
She wrote books about the ISR-Palestnian conflict.
The fear of a Trump presidency with its belief of a rising authoritarianism, belies the fundamental dynamic of a fully oligarchical, captured, government, such as we currently are experiencing. It’s obvious that Biden is a sacrificial lamb, and was from the beginning. The party leaders could have run any number of candidates that could have definitely defeated Trump. But that would have forced the party to adopt progressive issues in order to contrast and defeat Trump. The oligarchs know the country, out of desperation, is becoming increasingly Progressive. So they opted for a weaker version of Trump, the non-threatening (to their interests) Mr Dementia. The oligarchs have chosen the easily manipulated and mentally unstable Trump as our next President. The agenda of the oligarchs, regardless of whose president, is pro-empire and anti-Labor, anti-environment, anti-regulation. Etc. This agenda is diametrically opposed to solving, or even coping, with the entire list of severe crisis that our country and the world with which we are all struggling. In my opinion, we, as a country, desperately, desperately, desperately, need is a truly functional democracy. I trust the People far more than a small group of psychopathic wealth-hoarders.
“Frank Lee” describes the democratic capitalist meritocracy as “the profoundly flawed system that is the best ever designed in terms of benefitting the overall human condition.” I bet the Chinese that are sewing notes asking to be rescued from their factories into the garments they produce would love that one. “Frank” should go for a walk on the former Ho Chi Minh trail and see if her argument gets support from all those with their legs blown off by previous exponents of her beliefs trying to prove her same point. And look at what all that scorned risk-avoidance in the labour market has still managed to do for for the climate, putting us all at the ultimate risk of extinction. Most telling is the critique of Rafi’s status as a commentator, as if that were a competition as well. It’s just a dog-fighting pit to Frank, her dog has to get in the most bites. Because to conservatives, reason is the slave of the passions and you’re going to do what you’re going to do anyway, but you see yourself as passionate, so you have to meet quota on biting the opposition with your reasons to believe.
‘Hope nobody’s businesses are being neglected meantime.
See:
https://peterderrico.substack.com/p/extermination-of-the-buffalo-and
"Corporations and the billionaire class have made war on workers, subverted our democracy."
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Is any creature on this, our mother earth, truly surprised?
The war on workers--the hireling and slave--by corporations and the 'moneyed' class being established by instituting a 'subservient' governing body and calling it a 'democracy'; while creating the conditions for a Christian fascist state is absolutely what the usa was founded on...Proudly ensconced in plain sight.
Where to start??
Start with the usa national anthem.
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…No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave…
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This, the usa, national anthem, We, the people–the hirelings–proudly proclaim with enthusiastic vigor in song and dance. And with war to the death we defend.
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The star spangled banner:
…No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O’er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave…
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Archaically (obsolete) brave as a noun stood for bully, assassin, a man daring ‘beyond discretion’
*…After all this poem was written in ‘old (obsolete) english style’ and with ‘sovereign’ logic.
Who at that time were regarded as free-men?
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Knowing and understanding the above. The below, as above, connotes a different logic:
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Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto—“In God is our Trust;”
And the star-spangled Banner in triumph shall wave,
O’er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
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…In god ‘We The People’ trust as a medium of economic exchange!
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This, usa. How proud are ‘We’ hireling and slave–United–to be an example to the world???
Is it not time ‘WE’–as a nation of hirelings–learn from, address and redress the entire united states 'governing’ anthem? And possibly decide and sing our own founding!??
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Contemplate:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/wheres-debate-francis-scott-keys-slave-holding-legacy-180959550/
And:
Native Bidaské with Mark Charles (Diné) on Abraham Lincoln and the Narrative of White Messiahship
https://youtu.be/GbmBP3OdiC0
...Roosevelt once wrote that killing the bison was something of a necessary evil because it was “the only way of solving the Indian question”: The buffalo’s disappearance, was the “only method” of forcing Native Americans “to at least partially abandon their savage mode of life.”
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Along with: (x3)
1)
https://www.propublica.org/article/states-tribes-water-rights-history-repeating-itself
2)
https://project1492.org/navajo-livestock-relocation/
3)
What Did Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X Say About The ‘Alyssa Milano’ Liberals? Written by Isheka N. Harrison
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Suggestion: Read Federal Anti-Indian Law. The legal entrapment of Indigenous peoples By Peter P.d'Errico.
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Today as it was yesterday; The us people today care more about the antics of other countries than they do their own leaders; their monied gods!
The list of examples of the true usa is endless.
Knowledge then Acknowledge
Again:
This, usa. How proud are ‘We’ hireling and slave–United–to be an example to the world???
Is it not time ‘WE’–as a nation of hirelings–learn from, address and redress the entire united states 'governing’ anthem? And possibly decide and sing our own founding!??
People used to go to jail in America for trying to buy votes. You say that money has power at every point in history in any system but in all systems it is recognised that money is or can be a corrupting element in the system, and that money represents inequitable political advantage. Take the selling of the Stormy Daniels story to a newspaper that kills it in the expectation of a greater
reward from the sleazy marital cheat who gets to become President while misrepresenting his finances. That’s where money in a party which takes full advantage of its advantageous inequitable position in society is directed.
You appear to rejoice in coming to this site to bait people who are looking for solutions, I think because you believe that inequity is the natural order of things and that you are perhaps a realist for understanding this and therefore in a good position to teach this truth to misguided libs who are presumptious enough to think they can vote your money, however hard or easily won in the stacked lottery of social spending power, towards causes such as feeding and housing the poor.
You are baiting Chris’s readership with terms like the “Democrat hive”. So democrats are insects that swarm out of a hive, are they? Unlike a Trump truck convoy that tries to push a bus full of Democrats off the road. They wouldn’t be insects, insects can be individually vulnerable, and you despise vulnerability, it’s a term you’ve derided in a reply to me before. Your language seeks to stir things, not to smooth them out, because you believe yourself to be on the winning side of history, and history itself is a game of winners and losers. This is where the American gambling culture, of which the Republican get-rich-quick, devil-take-the-hindmost persuasion is a subset, departs from Christianity, which I suppose I’ll be obliged to define as the teachings of Jesus. He taught that “the poor will always be with you”, but the right wing will be damned if they’re having that. On Kamala Harris’ front lawn maybe, but not in their back yard. Women are to be prevented from aborting children, but what is to be spent on their upkeep while their time is devoted to the child and they don’t have a husband who can earn enough from three jobs or a Republican Bank of Mum and Dad to see them through? Does anyone care, they should have thought of that before they presumed to get pregnant and expected you to pay for it, would be the Republican default position, am I right? Meanwhile the State is running all kinds of military exercises, more and more subtle surveillance, and is heavily invested in secrecy and in its own acts of exterminating people like Assange who merely found a route to truth which is not the government’s narrative. Why don’t you save money on those? In French there are two words for power; puissance, which equates to mightiness, and pouvoir, which equates to the ability and authority to act. We make no such distinction. Thus with 700+ overseas bases, the US has plenty of might but little ability to deploy it. Biden can’t even command a no-fly zone over Gaza, he’s so owned by the MIC corporations and the fear of the Jewish vote. What are you doing about that to save paying the coming bill for shiny weapons? Billions are spent on promoting a default value system displayed by every influencer in every advertisement for the benefit of the maintenance of the primacy of capital. How is that the proper direction for spending power? It directs spending artificially to the private sector instead of spending it on infrastructure and communities, and takes a chunk of your disposable income to persuade you that you need something you may not. Like protection from swarming liberals. J. K. Galbraith taught all this in his book “The Affluent Society” many decades ago, where he also teaches how to recognise sheep in Brookes Brothers clothing who intone the absolute demands of the corporate class as issues of personal righteousness for the poor.