Posted on 07/04/2010 7:42:14 AM PDT by LuigiBonnafini
The United States, locked in the kind of twilight disconnect that grips dying empires, is a country entranced by illusions. It spends its emotional and intellectual energy on the trivial and the absurd. It is captivated by the hollow stagecraft of celebrity culture as the walls crumble. This celebrity culture giddily licenses a dark voyeurism into other people’s humiliation, pain, weakness and betrayal. Day after day, one lurid saga after another, whether it is Michael Jackson, Britney Spears or John Edwards, enthralls the country … despite bank collapses, wars, mounting poverty or the criminality of its financial class.
(Excerpt) Read more at adbusters.org ...
They act like my daughter..dump her job and let her partents support her and her family...burning up mommy and daddy’s retirement.
What?? Exactly what is happening now.
BM for after church
“They act like my daughter..dump her job and let her partents support her and her family...burning up mommy and daddy’s retirement.”
And why do you allow her to do that? Let the kids go live with the father(s) and let her live on the street. Enabling bad behavior will never correct it.
Any article written by uber-Marxist Chris Hedges needs a barf alert.
Apparently you haven’t read much of Hedges past scribblings. He despises traditional free-market America. This clown doesn’t want an end to big government...he wants to crush capitalism and transform the country into a socialist “paradise.”
If you read the entire essay, the author starts out with recognition of a seriousness disconnect and undeniable sickness of perception in our culture, but when he starts analyzing causes, he’s trapped in the box of political correctness and ends up trashing “unfettered capitalism”. He identifies unenlightened self-interest, unconstrained by a moral foundation, as the root of our problems, but ends up with the totalitarian answer that self sacrifice for the common good is the solution. Even liberals sometimes have cogent notions, but can’t think passed the collectivist dogma.
It only takes a few paragraphs before it becomes a Left-Wing Rant against Capitalism and Conservatives.
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, is the author of several books including the best sellers War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.
Although he does make some good points, he, of course, over generalizes. This is one of those depressed state rants that liberals are famous for, and which drive their politics. Enough truths in it to justify their delusions, but mostly hyperbolic generalizations.
Is he? I just scanned his piece, but he sure seems to have an understanding of the situation, and I didn’t get a whiff of anything marxist. I don’t know who the guy is, but his piece is pretty powerful.
Well, except for the Bush-Patriot Act thing. He did get a wee bit confused there.
Tough love...give a mouse a cookie, he’ll want a glass of milk.
So much of what is happening today reminds me of other bizarre stories coming from history ... like the destruction of Smyrna by Ataturk... even while Turkish troops were moving towards the city, many of the wealthy were at the opera.
Nazi Germany was a society that could not distinguish between reality and illusion. So was the Soviet Union.
Seems like every family has at least one these days.
What Hedges wants to set up is some sort of leftist utopia i.e. something that can't be realized without suppressing choice and individuality. What he rails against is people enjoying entertainment he doesn't himself enjoy. Believe me, people like him are your worst enemy and as much a threat to traditional America as Islamo-fascists. They are two sides of the same coin.
Chris Hedges is a true leftist. Limbaugh was the guy who grabbed the first few articles about "gas guzzlers" and warned that the left was starting a war on SUVs. A lot of people called in and told him he was crazy. They said nobody would be stupid enough to make what you drove a political issue.
I don't know how much steam this will pick up, but this guy is calling for the next step in the revolution; the violent repression. He's also calling for a war on the entertainment industry. The entertainment and sports industry has to be next. The left has declared war and largely won on everything else in this country that turns a profit. The next great Satan is the only industry left that's profitable. Spielberg, Tina Fey, George Lucas and the rest will be surprised when they become the next axis of evil to the left, but I think it's coming.
This guy got a mouse in his pocket?
This guy is so full of shit, his sneakers squeak with every step he takes.
Turning anomalies into generalities is a simple and rather childish attempt to convince rubes (bobble-head dem base fools) that mass culture and "unfettered" captitalism are responsible for our current spot. Poppycock!
Criminals in government are responsible for all our problems, without doubt and without question.
I got as far as this deal breaker before I threw in the towel:
It refuses to prosecute the Bush administration for obvious war crimes, including the use of torture..."
What else do you need to know, eh?
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