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Hope, Real Hope, Is About Doing Something by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
November 29, 2010

On Dec. 16 I will join Daniel Ellsberg, Medea Benjamin, Ray McGovern and several military veteran activists outside the White House to protest the futile and endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of us will, after our rally in Lafayette Park, attempt to chain ourselves to the fence outside the White House. It is a pretty good bet we will all spend a night in jail. Hope, from now on, will look like this.

Hope is not trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama, who, like Herod of old, sold out his people. It is not having a positive attitude or pretending that happy thoughts and false optimism will make the world better. Hope is not about chanting packaged campaign slogans or trusting in the better nature of the Democratic Party. Hope does not mean that our protests will suddenly awaken the dead consciences, the atrophied souls, of the plutocrats running Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil or the government.

[…]

via Truthdig

Copyright © 2010 Truthdig

Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009) and War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2003).

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David Lindorff: Police + Homeland Security = Police State + RT crew arrested in Fort Benning

Power and the Tiny Acts of Rebellion by Chris Hedges

5 thoughts on “Hope, Real Hope, Is About Doing Something by Chris Hedges”

  1. Pingback: Bitter Memories of War on the Way to Jail by Chris Hedges « Dandelion Salad

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  5. How profound.

    No one has every thought of such things! The idea that the whole notion of power belies the idea of relinquishing it has never occurred to me…thanks for the reminder.

    Are you so clueless as a journalist that has reported on Latin America to realize that hope will only come when Americans are deprived of Oprah, ESPN, or a quick cup of Starbucks?

    The only real reform we will ever see in this country at this point – as any historian (and I emphasize historian) with a reformist bent understands – is when the US is taken down a notch, and in a brutal fashion by another invading “super power,” and nothing less.

    Perhaps then the country can rebuild into something equitable for the many after that – that is hope.

    But it was tried twice before in our country and in each case it failed.

    Hope is that people understand this, and not another long-winded narrative on what is repeated ad naseum by someone in every city every day in this country.

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