Chris Hedges: Time to Get Crazy

[marmar]

from truthdig:



Time to Get Crazy

Posted on Jul 2, 2012
By Chris Hedges


Native Americans’ resistance to the westward expansion of Europeans took two forms. One was violence. The other was accommodation. Neither worked. Their land was stolen, their communities were decimated, their women and children were gunned down and the environment was ravaged. There was no legal recourse. There was no justice. There never is for the oppressed. And as we face similar forces of predatory, unchecked corporate power intent on ruthless exploitation and stripping us of legal and physical protection, we must confront how we will respond.

The ideologues of rapacious capitalism, like members of a primitive cult, chant the false mantra that natural resources and expansion are infinite. They dismiss calls for equitable distribution as unnecessary. They say that all will soon share in the “expanding” wealth, which in fact is swiftly diminishing. And as the whole demented project unravels, the elites flee like roaches to their sanctuaries. At the very end, it all will come down like a house of cards.

Civilizations in the final stages of decay are dominated by elites out of touch with reality. Societies strain harder and harder to sustain the decadent opulence of the ruling class, even as it destroys the foundations of productivity and wealth. Karl Marx was correct when he called unregulated capitalism “a machine for demolishing limits.” This failure to impose limits cannibalizes natural resources and human communities. This time, the difference is that when we go the whole planet will go with us. Catastrophic climate change is inevitable. Arctic ice is in terminal decline. There will soon be so much heat trapped in the atmosphere that any attempt to scale back carbon emissions will make no difference. Droughts. Floods. Heat waves. Killer hurricanes and tornados. Power outages. Freak weather. Rising sea levels. Crop destruction. Food shortages. Plagues.

ExxonMobil, BP and the coal and natural gas companies—like the colonial buffalo hunters who left thousands of carcasses rotting in the sun after stripping away the hides, and in some cases carrying away only the tongues—will never impose rational limits on themselves. They will exploit, like the hustlers before them who eliminated the animals that sustained the native peoples of the Great Plains, until there is nothing left to exploit. Collective suicide is never factored into quarterly profit reports. Forget all those virtuous words they taught you in school about our system of government. The real words to describe American power are “plunder,” “fraud,” “criminality,” “deceit,” “murder” and “repression.” .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/time_to_get_crazy_20120702/

[Zalatix]

1. Chris Hedges is just being melodramatic. We must respond with small, incremental steps.

[russspeakeasy]

3. and don't forget to say "please and thank you".

[Zalatix]

8. Eyes down and kiss the ring!

[SunsetDreams]

5. As someone with

Native American ancestory, I don't find anything funny about this article at all. It's disgusting.

Edit: To use that to compare it to now is what I find not only disgusting but disturbing.

[Fawke Em]

23. As someone with Native American

ancestry, I realized the article was not meant to be funny. While certain jabs were made to prod the masses, the intent was to show how destructive the elite have become in this class war... and they're winning.

The article was MEANT to be disturbing and meant to shake the fiber of your being.

I'm not trying to be snarky here, but what did you find offensive? Do you really think what the average working and middle class person is going through now isn't as bad? We may not be falling by the sword and gun, but we're being starved and killed off from lack of access to healthcare and other resources. It's as bad, trust me.

[cali]

2. hedges has no solutions. he pens the same thing over and over and over

and he sees no difference between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. There are notable and vital differences between the two.

[SunsetDreams]

4. actually did you read

all of it? There is a page 2. He mentions nothing about Romney.

[cali]

7. I may be on morphine and still in searing pain, but I actually read with care:

"I have no intention of accommodating corporate power whether it hides behind the mask of Barack Obama or Mitt Romney."

[SunsetDreams]

10. ah I missed that

so he continues on his third party ranting.

[cali]

12. I apologize for snapping at you.

Not a good morning.

[dionysus]

25. are you still on the mend from your accident cali? are you improving?

[cali]

30. let's just say, I didn't mend

I just had my third surgery where they took out the titanium rod that runs up the middle of my my tibia and they bored out the bone, put in a larger rod and put a plate on my fibula. 6 incisions and 30 odd stitches, this ain't exactly microsurgery. I can't put any weight at all on the leg again. Had the surgery on June 22nd. Hopefully it will work this time. Thanks for asking.

[dionysus]

31. oh no! I'm pullin for ya cali.

[Zalatix]

15. I'm voting for Obama in 2012 but I see where he's coming from.

I will be expressing similar displeasures in 2016 when I vote and work hard for a Socialist candidate on the level of Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic Presidential primary. Such as, perhaps, Elizabeth Warren, if she is running then.

[SunsetDreams]

19. I do not see where he is coming from

From the OP article:

Those native communities that were most accommodating to the European colonists, such as the peaceful California tribes—the Chilulas, Chimarikos, Urebures, Nipewais and Alonas, along with a hundred other bands—were the first to be destroyed. And while I do not advocate violence, indeed will seek every way to avoid it, I have no intention of accommodating corporate power whether it hides behind the mask of Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. At the same time, I have to acknowledge that resistance may ultimately be in vain. Yet to resist is to say something about us as human beings. It keeps alive the possibility of hope, even as all empirical evidence points to inevitable destruction. It makes victory, however remote, possible. And it makes life a little more difficult for the ruling class, which satisfies the very human emotion of vengeance.

“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power,” wrote the philosopher John Locke, “they put themselves into a state of war with the people who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.”

...

Those who exploit do so through layers of deceit. They hire charming and eloquent interlocutors. How many more times do you want to be lied to by Barack Obama? What is this penchant for self-delusion that makes us unable to see that we are being sold into bondage? Why do we trust those who do not deserve our trust? Why are we repeatedly seduced?

It is offensive to compare what is happening today to the very real torture, death and destruction of Native American lives. While he doesn't advocate violence, he has no intention of accommodating blah blah. This kind of talk is dangerous and indeed crazy!

[Zalatix]

20. Dangerous, how? Is he calling for violence? Oh no wait, he's not.

I can understand where you don't like him comparing the Native American plight to our modern economy. (What with global warming threatening to kill billions and all, though it hasn't done so yet.) But I'd like specifics on what is dangerous about what Hedges said.

[SunsetDreams]

22. You don't think it's dangerous

I don't see how you don't get that there are crazy people out there who will take that and run with it. It reminds me so much of the Tea Party rhetoric. It's irresponsible for a writer to engage in this sort of CRAZY talk. You can get your specifics by re-reading the article and bearing in mind that there are crazy people who will take that literally.

Edit: If I don't reply it's because I've hidden the thread. I think if he hadn't of compared it to the very real tragedy regarding what happened with Native Americans...I could stick around and talk about it more.

[Zalatix]

24. No, I don't think it's dangerous. Don't tell me, show me.

And don't tell me to read the article - I already did. I want you to show me where the danger is in his rhetoric beyond "someone might take something he said and run with it".

When you can't show me an example of Chris Hedges' incendiary violence-inspiring remarks, you fail to show where he has done anything worse than put a football team sticker on his car - something that itself can inspire acts of rage. (Try having a Vikings sticker on your car when parking in Milwaukee.)

No, really, if you're going to respond, don't tell me... SHOW ME.

[Zalatix]

6. Let me guess, your solutions are "small, incremental changes"?

[cali]

9. I'm with Pema Chodron: Start where you are.

For me, that means working locally to make my community and my state a better place. Knock it if you wish- and I'm sure you do, dearie, but Vermont is not a bad place and it's because of an engaged citizenry.

[Zalatix]

11. We're beyond that now. We need immediate, radical changes.

I wouldn't be opposed to splitting America in half and letting the Wingtards go their separate ways to wallow in their filth.

[cali]

13. Maybe we are but there's still a lot to be said for

working on a local level.

[Zalatix]

14. I doubt few here haven't been doing that.

It's not enough. If it was, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in:

1. Half of working class America's wealth lost.
2. An economy rapidly descending into a Plutonomy so bad that even illegal immigration is down.
3. Unions disappearing. Can't even get Scott Walker kicked out of office. Unions lost face across most of the country as a result.
4. Global warming proceeding apace. Ocean acidification. (I'll be gracious and roll those two into one.)
5. Rainforests still being cut down like wheat before the scythe.
6. Global water supplies dwindling into crisis level shortages.
7. America is leading the way with extrajudicial executions and the killing of innocent bystanders on a scale that makes MyLai look like a Facebook internet brawl.
8. Diebold. Citizens United. Foreign nations intervening in American elections with their multibillion dollar campaign contributions.
9. Our nation's infrastructure collapsing with funding perpetually coming up short.
10. Mass privatization and disaster capitalism running amuck.
11. Public worker pensions going byebye, private sector pensions long gone.
12. Minority unemployment skyrocketing. How's that for incremental progress?
13. The Reagan revolution still running wild.

How successful has local action been in slowing these problems down?

[cali]

17. works here in Vermont and this is where I live.

[Zalatix]

18. Good for Vermont. 1 state down, 49 to go.

[movonne]

27. When the rest of the states go down so will Vermont...you breathe the

same air...

[malaise]

16. Excellent article

Rec

[Catherine Tarry]

21. Spam deleted by Violet_Crumble (MIR Team)

[ananda]

26. We absolved the Germans who resisted Nazi-ism.

But here in America we treat protest and resistance as criminal acts,
as though our country has turned into a neonazi police state... where
the police forces themselves are virtually owned by the corporate elites;
and as a result, people get beaten, arrested, resort to drugs, go homeless,
insane... but of course the real insanity is in what is considered "normal."
Normal we ain't.

[Chiquitita]

28. do I understand?

Just to be sure, what I got out of Hedges' is: we are supposed to believe that in reality the corporate elites know the capitalist system is coming down sometime soon, along with climate change and that they are aware that a range of disasters that will decimate the human population is on the horizon. They are preparing by hoarding as much as possible and getting ready to hunker down while the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves. We can either acquiesce (and eventually perish) or fight back (and eventually probably perish too). Hedges seems to be calling on the reader to fight back, and to consider imitating the models of Crazy Horse and non-centralized, egalitarian Native American customs of wealth sharing.

Is that what you got out of it?

[MineralMan]

29. You first, Chris.

"Let's you and him fight" isn't a valid slogan. So, you first.

[hfojvt]

32. but he already has

gotten crazy, that is.

[MineralMan]

35. Well, I suppose

that's true enough.

[stupidicus]

33. I agree

the silly thing about the falsehood of the necessity of endless growth to maintain capitalism, is that it overlooks the fact that we live in a finite world. That's why we have a few haves, and countless havenots.

Solidarity and people power is the only solution, with the solidarity required and focused on only the end and largest goal -- elimination of the political power of the monied interests.

The only "fact" we have to go on in this country, is that one party is completely in their pocket, and the other to a lesser degree. That's why I've long seen the best and easiest solution as the election of better democrats that more closely resemble what they use to be. That's gonna be required before say, public financing of elections, etc things are enacted that will break the hold the monied interests have.

[jwirr]

34. The phrase that struck me as significant is "Capitalism --- demolishing limits". The rw keeps

telling us that we should run government like we do a family budget. Well a family budget takes restraint and limitations. But they think that business can be run without limitations. In that case get rid of the Ten Commandments because they are nothing but limitations.

The rw is failing to understand their own message. All human actions require limitations because we all are greedy (sinful) and need to be brought into line for the good of everyone around us. The liberatarians are the worst when it comes to this idea. They want laws for us but not for themselves. According to their own belief in Christianity that is not what God calls for. All of us must accept limitations.

[raouldukelives]

36. K&R nt

[reeds2012]

37. Breaking up the US into smaller parts is an interesting solution

It won't happen if Hedges other claims are true that there is no significant difference between the parties as controlled by the same banking, military interests.

Were we able to do it, the omnipresent search to plunder the rest of the world's resources would decrease. We'd all also need to lead humbler lives, not drive wherever we wish at our whim, for example.

I don't see it happening, if his arguments are true that both parties really only serve the top 1% of the 1%.

[Karmadillo]

38. K&R