Thoughts to Ponder from Chris Hedges (U.S. Foreign War correspondent).
In no particular order and without comment are some interesting thoughts to ponder from Chris Hedges.
Thoughts on students in wealthy private schools: “I saw how obscene wealth and privilege fostered a repugnant elitist, a lack of empathy for others and a sense of entitlement.”
“This is what it means to be poor in America. You don’t get a chance while the rich get chance after chance after chance. …they know how to take care of their own. And it does not matter how mediocre they are.”
“Friendship for the rich is defined as “what’s in it for me”.
As a reporter “I consciously put myself in places where I could amplify the voices of the oppressed.”
“There is a class of reporters—they show up in every war—who rarely go into the field. They dutifully report what the US Embassy and the military feed them. These courtiers made up the vast bulk of the press during the First Gulf War. They go where the military tells them to go. They report what the military tells them to report. They want press restrictions. The more the better.”
Israel lies: “They lied. Constantly. They claimed not to target civilians while using their air force, tanks, naval gunshots and heavy artillery to obliterate civilian neighborhoods. Their dishonesty is quite breathtaking.”
“Truth is always the first casualty in war.”
“Hemingway was blinded by his celebrity. He was a terrible reporter. His journalism during the Spanish Civil war was centered on his ‘manly’ experiences in combat….He was a victim of his own propaganda. He never grew up. He was a perpetual adolescent.”
“The moment you need adulation you’re finished.”
On Bernie Sanders: “He restored the good name of ‘socialism’ to our political vocabulary. He spoke openly about income inequality and corporate greed. He did not toe the rigid party line on Israel. And defied the corporate financing of campaigns. These are important steps forward.”
“If we don’t get control of the military spending we’re finished. We’re being hollowed out from the inside like every other empire. We have expanded beyond our capacity to sustain ourselves. Our infrastructure, our public educational system, our social services—everything is crumbling for a reason, we don’t have any money for it. It is being consumed by the war machine.”
“Even if Sanders had somehow become president, his hands would be completely tied. The centers of power lie outside the system of electoral politics.”
“The least worse paves the way for the worst”
“Plato warned that a failed democracy lays the foundations for a ‘democratic’ despotism.”
“Ninety percent of the American electorate did not vote in the primaries.”
‘The desire for good paying jobs leads to a Christianized fascism”
When”there is high unemployment and hyperinflation, rage ripples through a country. Scapegoats are sought. That’s when you get ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’.
Alabama being filled with Confederate memorials: “You know, most of these statues and what not went up in the last ten years, in other words during the economic decline. You lose hope and you retreat into a mythic narrative of the glorious and tragic past.”
“We are not immune. When a society disintegrates, as ours is disintegrating, when you acculturate people to speak in the language of violence, you eventually get violence. I don’t know how far it will go. But it will get worse.”
“Trump didn’t create this reign of intolerance. He made it more blatant.”
Is massive blood shed inevitable in this country? “Something of this magnitude would only occur in the midst of a huge crisis, one caused by the total collapse of the economy, severe effects from climate change, catastrophic cases of domestic terrorism, something of that nature. Once we have system breakdowns, anything is possible.”
Can Trump’s constituents be won over to the left? “No. Trump does what all fascists do. He blames the vulnerable—Muslims, undocumented workers, feminists, liberals, and intellectuals. It is not a tactic the Left can co-opt.”
“These people on the far right have migrated to a non-reality based belief system. We will not argue them out of it.”
“I argue that the only way too top the rise of fascism here is to re-integrate these people economically into the life of the country. Otherwise we are doomed. When you disempower people, then the only power they feel is embodied in a self-constructed mythology and state violence.”
“When it comes to this kind of violence, we’re not really talking about blue-collar workers. We’re talking about the dispossessed underclass.”
“Every totalitarian regime understands the violent potential of those cast aside by society.”
“We see this today, in the way that the self-identified liberal establishment deifies the US military. They sacralize our war machine and our ‘fighting men and women. It’s a big mistake. They’re flirting with their own destruction.”
“No revolution is successful unless large sections of the security apparatus defect or refuse to defend the elites. The Right has retreated into Christian fascism. It celebrates the gun culture.”
Prerequisites for revolution (Crane Brinton): “discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a crisis, usually economic.”
Last gasp policy in Vietnam War: “Kill anything that moves”
“The sexualized images in porn, or from Abu Ghraib, reflect the wider racism, callousness and perversion that define our predatory, capitalist culture. It is the language of absolute control, total domination, racial stereotypes and humiliating submission. it is, in short, about reducing human beings to commodities, to objects. Corporate culture, neoliberal ideology, imperialism and colonialism strip people of their human attributes and celebrate domination. They banish equality, tenderness, compassion and love. This is also the goal of rape. Absolutely power over another, as I saw in war, expresses itself through dehumanization, violence and sexual sadism.”
“We can serve justice and truth or privilege and power. The more we make compromises with those who serve privilege and power, the more we diminish our capacity for justice and truth. Better, as an intellectual or an artist, to always be a heretic.”
