Chris Hedges: "The American Empire is over and the descent is going to be horrifying" - Jan. 1, 2012 (3 hours)

[LargoWinch]

See full clip here.


WASHINGTON, DC
Sunday, January 1, 2012
On Book TV’s In Depth, author and journalist, Chris Hedges. The Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent spends three hours taking viewers’ calls, emails and tweets on topics such as terrorism, religion and politics.
The National Book Critics Circle Award nominee has a Masters degree in Divinity and is the author of nine books. His works include, “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,” “Empire of Illusion,” and his latest release “The World As It Is.”
Updated: Sunday at 3:47pm (ET)

[jk]

Re: Chris Hedges: "The American Empire is over and the descent is going to be horrifying" - Jan. 1, 2012 (3 hours)

if you actually watched it, would you mind jotting down the highlights in your recollection? i don't think i'm prepared to invest 3 hours.

[LargoWinch]

Re: Chris Hedges: "The American Empire is over and the descent is going to be horrifying" - Jan. 1, 2012 (3 hours)

Understandable jk. I am watching tonight while reading/posting and will try to do so later.

Multitasking is the way!

[marvenger]

Re: Chris Hedges: "The American Empire is over and the descent is going to be horrifying" - Jan. 1, 2012 (3 hours)

if you actually watched it, would you mind jotting down the highlights in your recollection? i don't think i'm prepared to invest 3 hours.

- He believes in many of the essenetial messages of the bible, but not all of them, in particular the view that humanity is on a course of linear andvancement in civilisation and morals. He thinks there are some areas of advancement and some area of retreat. More of a eastern cyclical pattern until perhaps climate change and we fall off a cliff.
- Technology has replaced the role of God. Ie don't worry about climate change, have faith technology will fix it.
- He hates liberals because they speak the language of feeling the pain of the underprivileged but they have allowed the liberal institutions of; universities, the church, journalism, to be rendered impotent. He says that the liberal class was supposed to be centralist and not the left. He says what the liberal class did was position themselves as the left to move what was the left (anarchists, socialists, trade unions) that were fairly well established and acted as a break on runaway capitalism and inequality, to radical fringe groups that were ineffective. They did this by moving closer to power and accepting the privilages that came with this, in exchange for paying lipservice to social injustice but not actually challenging the status quo and dismissing the old left as irrelevant. They claimed this not offending the status quo to be professional and objective analysis. He says this is a suicidal move because although in the short term the benefits are great for the liberal class, their objective analysis has made them impotent in performing its social role.
- He hates objective analysis in the above sense that doesn't challenge the status quo. If you see injustice like starving kids and civilian war dead you report it in the most truthful way you can, but there is no way to do this objectiviely, it has subjectivity to it, and to leave this subjectivity out is not the truth.
- He hates the liberal class for living in their ivory towers and not getting dirty by intimately engaging with the underprivilaged to gain some insight into their condition.
- He believes the closer you are to the centre of power the less room you have to challenge the status quo. Those who truly champion social change do not usually gain access to centres of power or want to. He agrees with Karl Popper that asking who will lead us out of social mess is the wrong question as those attracted to power are usually mediocre or venal.
- He's not commnist but thinks giant corporations are rapacious systems of death.

• THinks Marx was right in the sense that unrestrained capitalism is a revolutionary force
• Agrees with Polanyi that unrestrained capitalism leads to the commodification of everything, rape of resources, environmental and cultural death

- Therefore sees a lot wrong with Ron Pauls ideology but thinks he has good views on foreign policy and upholding the constitution
- Thinks that strong state intervention is needed to right the inequalities in the US

• Education and jobs programs
• Kicking out and jailing the special interests that are sticking their blood funnel into everything

- He relates Freuds ideas of a battle of forces of life and death within individuals to war and corprations

• in war death sustains people, they embrace it and each death sustains more killing
• corprations embrace death necessarily as they commodify everything

- He doesn’t want to emigrate, he wants to stay and fight
- He believes in the inverse relationship between justice and truth and power and privilege. The more you are practical and serve power and privilege the less you serve truth and justice.
- He doesn't like multitasking largo. He doesn't use twitter either because he'd rather rather read a book in quiet and solitude to really have a good think.

[c1ue]

Re: Chris Hedges: "The American Empire is over and the descent is going to be horrifying" - Jan. 1, 2012 (3 hours)

The interview shows clearly that Chris Hedges is a secular humanist.

As noted above, he believes in God but doesn't follow the tenets of any established religion.

He also supports and believes the New York Times (the prime secular humanist stronghold) but broke with that institution because of his own personal experiences in the Middle East clashing with the New York Times' behavior over Iraq.

He also notes that Iran will get a nuclear weapon, but isn't worried about it. He notes that Iran "has an address" and therefore views nukes as defensive, noting the contrast between North Korea and Iraq.

His main worry is an extremist group getting a nuclear weapon; in this case there is no 'address' and thus no balance of terror. He views Pakistan as the most unstable and dangerous nuclear power.

A good example of Hedges' secular humanism being his base, tempered by first hand knowledge and learning, is climate change. He puts forth KcMibben and Hansen as wonderful examples of how we should be saving the earth and so forth from climate change.

The secular humanist base can also be seen from his reading list.

Other interesting notes:

As a first-hand observer of the revolutions in Eastern Europe - he says that change cannot be measured or predicted. He uses these examples: In Poland, it took 10 years. In Germany, it took 10 days. In Czechoslovakia it took 10 weeks. The leaders of the German movement expected only incremental change in 1 year - i.e. free movement across the Wall, clearly inaccurate with actual events.

He also is an advocate of non-violence. He notes that while the intervention in Yugoslavia was good (either not talking or not knowing about the Western encouragement of separatists which was a major factor there), his firsthand experience was that the leaders of the resistance were primarily gangsters and criminals who used their newfound eminence to rob ethnic Serbians (the enemy).

As such he hopes Occupy will be a similar revolutionary movement as was seen in Eastern Europe, as opposed to a violent one.