This cheerful fellow Chris Hedges did it again!

He continues to hammer out and write the inconvenient truth to power the people, who know he is right, but will desperately try to not believe and deny what he is saying and foreseeing.

The Illusion of Freedom

I guess my reaction to his writing is the same I described in my comment here, in which I said, if you can't accept all the wrongs that are done and are embedded in your life, you deny them and find any reason to justify the reasons for such denial.

It's hard to read Chris Hedges. He doesn't leave you with a way out and doesn't offer any hope to be able to right the wrongs. Without hope, one doesn't fight. So, it's not easy to accept his narrative without despairing or resorting to self-delusion. But then, he is still right in what he says. It's us who can't bare to hear it.

A disenfranchised white working class vents its lust for fascism at Trump campaign rallies. Naive liberals, who think they can mount effective resistance within the embrace of the Democratic Party, rally around the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders, who knows that the military-industrial complex is sacrosanct. Both the working class and the liberals will be sold out. Our rights and opinions do not matter. We have surrendered to our own form of wehrwirtschaft. We do not count within the political process.

This truth, emotionally difficult to accept, violates our conception of ourselves as a free, democratic people. It shatters our vision of ourselves as a nation embodying superior virtues and endowed with the responsibility to serve as a beacon of light to the world. It takes from us the “right” to impose our fictitious virtues on others by violence. It forces us into a new political radicalism. This truth reveals, incontrovertibly, that if real change is to be achieved, if our voices are to be heard, corporate systems of power have to be destroyed. This realization engenders an existential and political crisis. The inability to confront this crisis, to accept this truth, leaves us appealing to centers of power that will never respond and ensures we are crippled by self-delusion.

The article is worth reading. The comments are not. I guess my own reaction to his writing is that while I agree with the statement that both, the working class and the liberals will be sold out, I rather try out to mount an effective resistance with the existing system we live in or with any form revolutionary grass root movement, and risk to be sold out, then being paralyzed by hopelessness and accept the verdict that basically "we can't do anything anymore".

Putting the head in the sand? I wonder if the future will prove him right. I fear it will or might. Just that I believe in unintended consequences and the capability for people to adapt to new conditions to change the old ones. Yack, probably I am just hopelessly confused.

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gulfgal98's picture

Hedges is a truth teller and an excellent analyst at identifying problems and issues. But his brutal honesty in doing so often drags me down because he seems to never identify solutions nor find any hope for changes to our current system beyond violent revolution.

While I understand what he is saying in that the only way things can change are through a violent upheaval, violence is beyond my own personal code. Maybe that is why I am one of those neutered liberals, not a real revolutionary. Sadly, he is probably right, but I still continue to hope against hope thinking that people will see the light. My hope lies with the millennials.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

hecate's picture

Lennon said:

The statement in "Revolution" was mine. The lyrics stand today. It's still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. That is what I used to say to Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Count me out if it is for violence. Don't expect me to be on the barricades unless it is with flowers.

I don't feel that much about it anymore. Nixon, Hoffman, it's the same.

Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself. That's what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshiped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be. There's nothing new under the sun. And people cannot provide it for you. I can't wake you up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You can cure you.

What sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that—it's all illusion. Unknown is what what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing.

And if your "hope lies with the millennials," I think you are going to be disappointed. To begin, "generations" are false constructs, created and promoted by marketing people.

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mimi's picture

but he warns that potential violence might not be controllable anymore, and then the violence of the police state will be violently oppressing those who looked for positive changes for more equality and democracy.

What I can't handle is the fact that at this moment he is attacking Bernie Sanders for running. I don't believe that Sanders would have been different in his view points if he had tried to run as an independent. And then reality draws me to thinking there will be a vote for somebody in the next year. Not voting or voting for anyone else than Sanders will not help. Sanders imo should clearly voice his support for other third parties like the Green Party. With Sanders at least there is a hope that he sticks to his guns and pushes for changes we hope to see, even if we know that most probably he will not be able to achieve them against the MIC and international corporate powers and against the international community's support for countries that engage in warfare that I clearly do not want to support.

But what is left if you don't try and hope anymore? Right now I am going to push for Sanders, because anything else means "by-standing to doing nothing". I mean do you expect a German to do that? There will always be time to be more "revolutionary" when the time comes and the next wave of disappointments and betrayals is drowning us into despair. And we can push Sanders to "do the right thing" in foreign policies like "disengaging the US military" from being involved in "job creation for Americans" in foreign countries as "trainers and weapons providers and other assholish stuff" they do, to keep their own folks under "jobs".

Jeez, this is a difficult childbirth. I just remember the nurses calling for "push, push, one more push" ... So, let's push to get this awful primary and election over with. Who knows what kind of baby is coming out of all of it. Smile

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I think Hedges realizes that TPTB will not allow change to the system, will not allow a non-violent revolution. Far from advocating violence, Hedges acknowledges that the 'rulers' will resort to violence to hold on to their power. I agree that is depressing because, as we stand up to power for what is right, we subject ourselves to 'their' violence. Then those among us, who do not have a strong understanding of, and hold to non-violence might react in kind. Violence begets violence.

I agree it is depressing. 'They' will react violently rather than relinquish power.

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mimi's picture

between strong willed resistance and violence. Resistance movements included always actions of boycott and sabotage to hurt those who oppress them. And the rulers always have called those actions as being violent and oppressed those movements, though the resisting people do not engage in violence against persons' lives and their belongings or their property necessary for their survival.

If people count on you being depressed, then I guess, we can just be stubborn and prove them wrong. Smile

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Pluto's Republic's picture

…(and they won't) there's the RFK solution. Although it will look more like the Howard Dean solution. Same goes for Trump.

I still see, shimmering the future, a Bush vs. Clinton ticket.

I believe it is harmless to have an ersatz election cycle. It's like going to an adult theme park, where no one ever breaks character. The people come away, their belief in democracy intact.

Why would there be any violence?

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Pluto's Republic's picture

Just a few days ago, I participated in a review of a different Chris Hedges essay — The Age of the Demagogues — and arrived at a similar view: After reading a Chris Hedges essay, most folks are left in a light fog of existential despair.

I also wondered whether truth tellers should be responsible for providing solutions for readers. Certainly, they create an opportunity for themselves to do so, but I notice that these days, seasoned truth-telling essayists do not write endings anymore. Like Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning or Julian Assange, they view themselves as whistle blowers, not problem solvers. Because they have a unique ability to see beyond the veils of distraction, and because they understand that their fellowman cannot, they sound a warning and shine light on the "truth."

I think truth-tellers believe, initially, that once people see reality, they will rise up together and act on it. But that doesn't happen in the USA. Denial has helped Americans adapt to the growing social and intellectual carnage in the body politic. They would rather suffer abuses than confront the status quo. They forgot the purpose of government a long time ago. In post-democracy America, they will still go through the motions of voting — a strange communion that partakes of the body and blood of Our Holy Founders; an act of faith where "truth" has no place.

[I was going to paste my writing (mentioned above) here. But I feel like other "truth-tellers" must — "What's the point?" I bore myself.]

Instead, I will tell you something interesting I discovered in my research. It may help answer some questions you have about Hedges.

Chris Hedges graduated from Harvard, and went on to become a war correspondent for the New York Times for a decade or so. He was reported from Kosovo, the Balkans, and the Middle East. In 2000, he returned to New and worked at NYT headquarters with other journalists. In 2002, he won a Pulitzer Prize for NYT series on terrorism.

And then, in late 2002, something happened that would change him. Another NYT journalist, Judith Miller, became the in-house propagandist and mouth-piece for the Neocon-controlled US government. The NYT collaborated and enabled Miller and others to lie the nation into the disastrous Iraq War. Hedges was outraged at the corruption and lies, but the machine of chaos could not hear his protests. Hedges discovered that "truth" doesn't matter.

Hedges resigned from the NYT in 2003, and the NYT continues to be the official mouth-piece for the Neocon war profiteers (the frequently cited "anonymous government sources").

Hedges took a different path.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
mimi's picture

though not the details that Judith Miller played a part in it. Hedges HAS a lot of integrity and character and courage. He said somewhere (forgot where) that his father told him, it's ok for him to write, because it's his church. And his essays sound to me like a preacher's sermons (in a good way out of conviction). I think I seldom can stand what is said by a lot of preachers, but I can stand his words.

Regarding whether one can expect truth tellers to find solutions to the problems they reveal, or even hold them responsible, if they don't, I don't think it would be fair in any way. At least not to those, who are true truth tellers and not propaganda tools in truth teller's clothes. Besides, since a long time I believe that being able to analyze a problem and judge it, is not equal to solving it or expect that others, who do follow the analysis and had their eyes opened, to react as expected, ie. in a spirit of fighting the problems in ways the truth seller might propose.

I think it is never clear that people, who rebel and revolt with their minds and may be some actions, will not come to different conclusions, if their own livelihood is at stake. In that regard, I wouldn't be convinced easily that a solution a truth teller might "sell" or support, is actually ending up in the expected results. May be I am too much of a "non-believer". The only thing that keeps me from being extremely depressed or sarcastic or cynical, is the fact that I believe it's unfair to the next generation to let yourself drawn down to that kind of condition. I mean the goal of getting old and seeing a bit more through the veils, can't be to discourage the young, but rather just to ask them to lift the veils and look through them, no?

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I kept thinking, 'Ya don't hear people talk like that much any more'. People used too, long ago. It didn't surprise me that the room applauded when I applauded at home. I applauded at the end too of course.
Fight fascists because they are fascists.
Hope this isn't redundantly posting this speech. If so, I apologize.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqPubvQcpGM width:420 height:315]

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With their hearts they turned to each others heart for refuge
In troubled years that came before the deluge
*Jackson Browne, 1974, Before the Deluge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SX-HFcSIoU

Mark from Queens's picture

especially in times like these. Like you say, his truth is so penetrating, visceral and sobering. He always straightens me out with a clear-eyedness that is sometimes jarring.

Such a deep wealth and repository of history, philosophy, politics, literature and activism. One of the stories he quotes is that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who in the face of Hitler's vicious atrocities came to believe it would be the Christian thing to do to attempt to assassinate him. It's the kind of moral quandary many righteous folks over the ages have had to face in their lives.

I'd recommend to anyone who wants to find out more about what makes him tick to watch this in-depth and wide ranging interview he did with C-Span a few years ago:

Hedges at Occupy the first week, offers amazing historical context and support for the just-started movement:

There are so many really incredible speeches and appearances (now he's on RT with a show called "On Contact"). Spend a night in YouTube watching him. Well worth it.

Sorry I don't have time to comment specifically about this most recent piece. Just wanted to drop a few things in here for folks.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut