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How Do You Take Your Poison? by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
September 24, 2012

Poison

Image by Thorius via Flickr

We will all swallow our cup of corporate poison. We can take it from nurse Romney, who will tell us not to whine and play the victim, or we can take it from nurse Obama, who will assure us that this hurts him even more than it hurts us, but one way or another the corporate hemlock will be shoved down our throats. The choice before us is how it will be administered. Corporate power, no matter who is running the ward after January 2013, is poised to carry out U.S. history’s most savage assault against the poor and the working class, not to mention the Earth’s ecosystem. And no one in power, no matter what the bedside manner, has any intention or ability to stop it.

If you insist on participating in the cash-drenched charade of a two-party democratic election at least be clear about what you are doing. You are, by playing your assigned role as the Democratic or Republican voter in this political theater, giving legitimacy to a corporate agenda that means your own impoverishment and disempowerment. All the things that stand between us and utter destitution—Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants, Head Start, Social Security, public education, federal grants-in-aid to America’s states and cities, the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program (WIC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and home-delivered meals for seniors—are about to be shredded by the corporate state. Our corporate oligarchs are harvesting the nation, grabbing as much as they can, as fast as they can, in the inevitable descent.

[…]

via Truthdig

Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His latest books are Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, Death of the Liberal Class, and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.

Copyright © 2012 Truthdig

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23 thoughts on “How Do You Take Your Poison? by Chris Hedges”

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  13. Nader for President and Bernie Sanders vice president.
    All these war criminals need to be voted out.
    A new congress too, fresh new blood, awaynwithnthe old gang,

      • It’s an impossible dilemma, whatever the result the criminal syndicate wins, a tactical vote can blow-back and an even more lethal regime ensues…what to do?

        • Vote Third Party, or don’t vote at all. The strategy I’m using is voting for Gary Johnson since he is on the ballot in my state and Jill Stein isn’t (she is a write-in). There’s not that much difference betw Obama and Romney; whoever wins the opposite side is quelled, unfortunately.

        • I hear what you’re saying Lo, frankly it is a nightmare. If Romney is elected the US will be an international joke. Obama? Mr Squeaky-clean. The system is rigged.

          You may want to flag up this video by Imran Khan about protesting drone attacks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxWLl6jk35g

          Can Americans not empathise with the scale of this atrocity? What if your wife or sister or child or loved one were destroyed in one of these criminal attacks? Are those poor people not human beings? What is the point of the ICC?

          In Britain our politicians seem utterly mesmerised by the “special relationship” that precludes any deep criticism of the US de facto hegemony. We live in the darkest of ages. Shame, shame, shame.

        • I don’t think of Obama as being “squeaky-clean”. I think of him as a war criminal. Romney is a wannabe-war criminal. Either are puppets to the corporations.

          Thanks for the video on Pakistan and the drones. Unfortunately many so-called liberals, so-called anti-war people are still going to vote for Obama regardless of how many he has murdered. They will vote out of fear.

        • Squeaky-clean in irony, as that is how he’s packaged and rolled out by the patsy pushers, the monotheistic Mad-Av pornocracy that are W Street’s super-marketing front line glam-gang. I agree with you of course he is undeniably culpable. It’s iniquitous and deeply tragic. Just think what it must be like for those innocents in Yemen and Pakistan. So might it not be a better option to have an indictable war-criminal rather than a complete lunatic, who might go nuclear on us by supporting Israel as the prophetic “end times” protagonist that will incarnate the Messiah as a political entity? These people are completely crazy and filthy rich, as corrupt and perverted as anything we can imagine…& how can they possibly accommodate Islam when it doesn’t even get a mention in their “sacred books?” Symbolic gestures may simply not be enough to forego catastrophe on a global scale.

  15. Having to select one of these fools has me thinking about writing in Roseanne – she’s 3rd party & way more intelligent than these two. I really wish Nader could have occupied the president’s seat, he always got my write in vote. I like to think this would be a very different existence if folks had paid closer attention to him.

    I thought it was amusing when Romney brought up John Adams in his b.s. sell job on 60 minutes last nite. He said that John Adams didn’t care what was thought of him. Note to the ‘wonderful’ Romney campaign coordinators… Adams supported laws that prevented unproven remarks about a government official. Jefferson supporters were arrested under these laws. Adams cared very much what was said about him. Woodrow Wilson is a more appropriate past president for Romney to align to.

  16. Hedges is a true patriot and man of moral courage who speaks truth to power and truth to us all. I’ll be attending his talk tonight in NYC. I feel very blessed to be able to meet him once again.

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