Chris Hedges: The Diseases of Despair at the End of Empire

Image by Mary Crandall via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

acttv on Feb 15, 2019

Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Chris Hedges sits down with us to talk about his new book, America: The Farewell Tour. In it he goes deep into how the opioid crisis; the retreat into gambling to cope with economic distress; the pornification of culture; the rise of magical thinking; the celebration of sadism, hate, and plagues of suicides are the physical manifestations of a society that is being ravaged by corporate pillage and a failed democracy. Where do we, as a people and a planet, go next?

Throw Off the Yoke of Indoctrination!

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The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
February 11, 2019

We say we want change. So every few years, we elect new officials, and they continue to churn out more of the same policies, legislation, and rhetoric. The rich continue to get richer. The poor slide deeper into poverty. Corporations and the wealthy see pet projects and sweet deals passed through Congress. The People receive yet another bitter slap in the face.

Michael Parenti: The Culture Struggle

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with Michael Parenti
Writer, Dandelion Salad
January 31, 2019

“But you can’t do that with Class. By definition, you can’t say we’ll have a society where the rich capitalists and workers are equal together.”

Anything War Can Do, Peace Can Do Better by David Swanson

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Note: David’s piece contains many pictures, so you may wish to read it in full on his website.

by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
January 9, 2019

William James’ idea of the need to create a moral equivalent of war first struck me, decades ago, when I read about it, as about as sensible an idea as inventing a new way to punch yourself in the face. This was not purely because times have changed, because weapons have become more powerful, because the earth’s climate is collapsing, or because nonviolent activism has become widely understood as requiring courage, sacrifice, camarderie, dedication, discipline, and strength, without any of the counterproductive murder, maiming, destroying, occupying, hating, looting, pillaging, or stupidity.

Chris Hedges: American Psychosis + Hedges Says Vote for Howie Hawkins for Governor in NY

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

Amanda Zackem on Oct. 23, 2018

Pulitzer-prize winning Journalist, Author and Activist Chris Hedges, discusses modern day consumerism, totalitarian corporate power and living in a culture dominated by pervasive illusion.

Chris Hedges: Manufacturing Culture or Consent

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Oct 13, 2018

Liza Featherstone in Divining Desire: Focus Groups & the Culture of Consultation shares with journalist Chris Hedges how advertising techniques developed by early Viennese intellectual elites were adapted and coopted by US elites to control politics, consumption and opinion.

Definitions: The Bourgeoisie by Gaither Stewart

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by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Previously published Oct. 12, 2008
August 15, 2018

“We are not fighting against men or a kind of politics but against the class which produces those politics and those men.” (from Dirty Hands, a political play by Jean Paul Sartre, first performed in Paris on April 2, 1948.)

Chris Hedges: No Tyranny in History has Crushed the Human Capacity For Love + Love is the Most Potent Enemy of War

Image by Jonathan Blundell via Flickr

Dandelion Salad
Originally posted Jan. 26, 2010
August 10, 2018

with Chris Hedges

TheWritersFestival on Jan 26, 2010

Chris Hedges reads from his book Empire of Illusion at the Ottawa International Writers Festival.

Chris Hedges: Generation Wealth and The Cult of Self

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video below

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Jul 28, 2018

Photographer and filmmaker, Lauren Greenfield, discusses the cult of self and its destructive qualities shown in her new film – Generation Wealth – with journalist Chris Hedges.

Crisis in Consciousness by Graham Peebles

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by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
April 28, 2018

Our society is besieged by a series of interconnected crises. Millions of people around the world know this and are crying out for change, for a different way of living, for justice, peace and freedom.

Living in an Age of Desire and Anxiety by Graham Peebles

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by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
April 6, 2018

Overwhelmed by anxiety and image insecurity a friend’s 20-year-old daughter recently quit her university course and withdrew to her bedroom where she took to self-harming. Company and environments in which she felt emotionally secure became harder to find, until she stopped venturing out all together.

Rebel Without a Clue: Autonomy and Authority in the American Public School by Susan Cain and Mark Mason + Caleb Maupin: After Florida…

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by Susan Cain and Mark Mason
Guest Writers, Dandelion Salad
Mark Mason, PhD
crossposted from Dissident Voice Feb. 5, 2018
February 16, 2018

The American high school dropout is an unconscious revolutionary. Instead of casting aspersions upon the dropout, we should attempt to decode this behavior that is condemned by parents, school authorities, educational experts, religious leaders, politicians, and peers. To understand the distress of the American high school student requires us to examine the politics of quitting school. Leaving school is a political act. Its political causes cannot be investigated in a context of isolating and blaming the individual.

Revolt Against The Shallow Deadliness Of Our Corn Syrup Nation

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The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
January 13, 2018

Reject the glossy and sensational for the gritty and educational. Wean your mind from corn syrup and eat your vegetables. We have become a diabetic, cancerous, obese, depressed, anxiety attack ridden culture from the consumption of glitter-sugary corn syrup politics, sound-bite news, vacuous entertainment, and catch-phrase economics. We are commercialized right down to our souls from our mega-churches to our worship of wealth to our brand cults. It is killing us and our world.

Socialism: Creating a World to Change Our Lives by Sam Friedman (must-read)

Image by Cary Bass-Deschenes via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Republished with permission from Solidarity and Against The Current

by Sam Friedman
Solidarity and Against The Current, January-February 2017, #186
Originally posted Jan. 10, 2017
December 26, 2017

THERE IS A growing suspicion among many people involved in movements against war, for social justice, and for an ecologically sustainable society that capitalism can only create a world of war, injustice and environmental destruction. There is widespread and growing understanding that the current social order cannot continue without catastrophe occurring —yet we lack a vision of what might replace it.

Chris Hedges: We Desperately Need the Clarion Call of the Radical Poet to Give Words to our Despair + The Wreckage of a Soul by Soraya Boyd

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Dec 3, 2017

Gerald Stern, Poet and Author, discusses how poets and their poetry have lost the voice to “speak truth to power” in this digital society.