Image by Metro Centric via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
act.tv on Sep 21, 2020
Julianna welcomes back Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author, Chris Hedges, to discuss how in his current book, America: The Farewell Tour. Hedges takes a close look at the array of pathologies that have arisen out of a profound malaise of hopelessness as the society disintegrates due to the “slow moving [corporate] Coup d’état” instituted by the ruling classes in the ’70s in reaction to the activist movements and reforms of the ’60s. And how this disintegration has resulted in an epidemic of diseases, despair, and a civil society that has ceased to function.
You may know Chris from reading one of his best-selling books including American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, Death of the Liberal Class. Or his weekly interview show On Contact where he interviews “dissident voices” currently missing from the mainstream media, the black sheep of the establishment, leading to discussions that are not easy to find.
From the archives:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and America’s Priestly Class, by Kenn Orphan
How a Pandemic is Destroying the West, by Michael Hudson
The Anti-Social Socialist: How Capitalism Controls You
Chris Hedges: The Signs of the Declining Empire
Chris Hedges: The Capitalist Class Wants To Keep The Working Class In A State Of Constant Distress
Chris Hedges: The Real Looting of America
Chris Hedges: How the Covid-19 Pandemic has Exposed the Weakness of American Society
Dandelion Salad 
Pingback: Michael Hudson: Changes in Superimperialism: The Position of the USA and China in our Global Economic System – Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Michael Hudson: Polarization, Then a Crash – Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Michael Hudson: Financialization and Deindustrialization – Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Chris Hedges: The Politics of Cultural Despair – Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Michael Hudson and Steve Keen: Permanent Inequality? – Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Chris Hedges: This Is The Unraveling Of The US Empire + The Childish Mania of Hope – Dandelion Salad
Pingback: The Dollar Crash Of 2021: The Next Step In Capitalist Collapse + 2020 Will End With The U.S. Moving Much Closer To Dictatorship, by Rainer Shea – Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Phil Rockstroh: The Mythical, the Political and the Sublime – Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Capitalism is the Real Disease, by Finian Cunningham + Richard Wolff: COVID-19 and the End of Capitalism – Dandelion Salad
Lo, your use of the phrase “malaise of hopelessness” reminds me of Mark Fisher’s 2009 book, “Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?” (Full disclosure: I haven’t read the book, I’ve merely read about it.) Fisher wrote about that hopelessness with some insight, but he eventually killed himself (in 2017).
As for myself, I am not hopeless. Partly because personally I am in that part of the middle class that has not yet been destroyed, partly because I am at least a little bit (through my writing) actively engaged in working toward revolution, and partly because psychologically I have accepted and come to terms with the fact that the worst may happen.
Good talk by Hedges. I was fascinated by what he said about war and the rise of fascism. But he said too little about global warming, which is speeding up more than most climatologists have predicted. Capitalism and global warming are both working to kill us; I don’t know which one will become the dominant force. Watch for the price of food to start rising faster, and for the number of refugees to start rising faster.
Lefty, I didn’t write anything on this post. I quoted the description of the video from act.TV.
Thanks for watching.