Learning to See in the Dark Amid Catastrophe: An Interview With Deep Ecologist Joanna Macy
People dare to be comfortable with uncertainty if they are in solidarity with each other.
Chris Hedges | Unspeakable
Chris Hedges on the most taboo topics in America, with David Talbot.
Noam Chomsky | Calling Someone ‘Anti-American’ Is a Classic Technique of Social Control (Video)
“As far as I know, the United States is the only free society that has such a concept,” Chomsky said.
Chris Hedges | The Illusion of Freedom
Politics in totalitarian societies are entertainment. Reality, because it is complicated, messy and confusing, is banished from the world of mass entertainment. Clichés, stereotypes and uplifting messages that are comforting and self-congratulatory, along with elaborate spectacles, replace fact-based discourse.
DN! | Who Should Bernie Voters Support Now? Robert Reich vs. Chris Hedges (Video)
The real question is what do we do right now? And what do we do to mobilize and organize a lot of people out there who, right now, are not mobilized and organized and how do we keep the energy building?
Henry A. Giroux | Radical Politics in the Age of American Authoritarianism: Connecting the Dots
The left needs a new political conversation that encompasses memories of freedom and resistance. Such a dialogue would build on the militancy of the labor strikes of the 1930s, the civil rights movements of the 1950s and the struggle for participatory democracy by the New Left in the 1960s. At the same time, there is a need to reclaim the radical imagination and to infuse it with a spirited battle for an independent politics that regards a radical democracy as part of a never-ending struggle.
Henry A. Giroux | Taking notes 53: The fascism of Donald Trump’s America
Giroux: Donald Trump’s blatant appeal to fascist ideology and policy considerations took a more barefaced and dangerous turn last week when he released a statement calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
Henry A. Giroux: The plague of American authoritarianism
Giroux: As David Sirota observes, “Getting cooperation,” means being willing to make seemingly apolitical entertainment products into highly ideological vehicles for pro-war, pro-militarist propaganda.”[13] It gets worse. Sporting events are now infused with the spirit of militarism and can be seen in fighter jets flying over football games, NASCAR races, and the Super Bowl.
Two by Chris Hedges: Our Mania for Hope Is a Curse and The Pathology of the Rich White Family
Hedges: The pathology of the rich white family is the most dangerous pathology in America. The yearning for positivism that pervades our corporate culture ignores human nature and human history. But to challenge it, to state the obvious fact that things are getting worse, and may soon get much worse, is to be tossed out of the circle of magical thinking that defines American and much of Western culture. The left is as infected with this mania for hope as the right. It is a mania that obscures reality even as global capitalism disintegrates and the ecosystem unravels, potentially dooming us all.
Chris Hedges: A Nation of Snitches
Hedges: Just as infected as the prisons and the courts are poor neighborhoods, which abound with snitches, many of them low-level drug dealers allowed to sell on the streets in exchange for information. And from there our culture of snitches spirals upward into the headquarters of the National Security Agency, Homeland Security and the FBI.
Noam Chomsky: A Surveillance State Beyond Imagination
A White House lawyer seems determined to demolish our civil liberties. . . . in order to carry out violence and subversion abroad, or repression and violation of fundamental rights at home, state power has regularly sought to create the misimpression that it is terrorists that we are fighting, though there are other options: drug More
Chris Hedges: The Last Gasp of American Democracy
The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, in his essential book “Democracy Incorporated,” calls our system of corporate governance “inverted totalitarianism,” which represents “the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry.” By Chris Hedges Posted on Jan 5, 2014 truthdig.com This is our last gasp as a democracy. The state’s wholesale intrusion into our lives More