Chris Hedges: Americans Are Living An Unsustainable Fantasy

[marmar]

[niyad]

1. k and r

[Jack Rabbit]

2. It's not a pleasant picture

However, Mr. Hedges is one of the few real journalists we Americans have left. That's the unpleasant truth he's telling us.

We have been lulled into this fantasy by the dream manufacturers for the purpose of blinding us to reality while the oligarchs steal our wealth and power from us. As we wake up from this nightmare, we look like the children on Pleasure Island in Disney's Pinocchio, turning into donkeys are crying for their mothers while the Coachmen brutally admonishes his victims, "You've had your fun, now pay for it."

K/R

[whereisjustice]

3. +1, the new democrats have pushed the "new reality" illusion to the point of self-destruction

[Hoppy]

4. "We have destroyed our manufacturing base and called it an opportunity for growth."

Hooray for NAFTA, GATT, WTO and welcome our new TPP.

[The Wizard]

5. Many cancers

appear as a growth.

[project_bluebook]

6. Yes, but the DOW is over 18,000!!!

[CrispyQ]

12. Americans are trinket rich, equity poor.

I read that phrase a few years back & it stuck. We have the latest in iWhatevers, nice furniture, new cars, but no equity, no savings, no retirement. Many are one disaster away from poverty.

So sad that so many living on the edge, believe the DOW is a weather vane for how the economy is doing. The corporate media has brainwashed a significant segment of the population.

[project_bluebook]

14. You are so right, the trinkets of a trickle down economy.

They act like the DOW is the heartbeat of a strong economy when in reality its a gauge of how corrupt out financial system has become, the ultimate trickle down economy.

[Skittles]

19. enough with this WE crap

some of us have never bought into (hey is that a pun?) this materialistic mindset, not even in the 90's

[summerschild]

7. K/R

[vanlassie]

8. Chris Hedges scares the crap out of me.

Maybe later, with a stiff drink.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. "Reality is never an impediment to what we want"...

Bingo.

I've seen this nonsense played out to the point where people are acting like "faith" trumps all. Be it faith in "market forces" or the supernatural. There are people out there treating prayer like they're casting a spell for riches.

[L0oniX]

10. K & R

[99th_Monkey]

11. K&R Hedges' message is a clarion call to wake the fuck up

I love my Chris Hedges. A very intelligent and brave man he is.

[CrispyQ]

13. Going to get the book from my library this afternoon.

People should listen to this man.

Some great quotes from the book here: http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/6771033-empire-of-illusion-the-end-of-literacy-and-the-triumph-of-spectacle

[marions ghost]

23. Thanks for the quotes--

one I agree with totally:
---------

“Sadism dominates the culture. It runs like an electric current through reality television and trash-talk programs, is at the core of pornography, and fuels the compliant, corporate collective. Corporatism is about crushing the capacity for moral choice and diminishing the individual to force him or her into an ostensibly harmonious collective. This hypermasculinity has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our lack of compassion for our homeless, our poor, the mentally ill, the unemployed, and the sick. ... We accept the system handed to us and seek to find a comfortable place within it. We retreat into the narrow, confined ghettos created for us and shut our eyes to the deadly superstructure of the corporate state.”
― Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

[midnight]

15. Wow. How in the world can the Chinese finance this nonsense?

[whereisjustice]

16. There are constant discussions of another currency base. Mostly as a subtle threat from

China to the US. Not to worry, we'll send another approx 500,000 jobs there in 2015. A handful of US oligarchs get cheap labor, China gets a better military and a less competitive US.

It's win-win.

[midnight]

25. Yes, I guess I had read that somewhere, but didn't realize the long range plan.

"Whatever you do, don't sleep on Wisconsin because, I tells ya, there's a new scam breaking out every couple of days, and the place is still the ultimate lab rat for what the oligarchs and their political sublets in the various legislatures, state and federal, want to do to the rest of us. Back in February, when he presented his budget, Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus who was hired by Koch Industries to manage their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, slipped a little tidbit into his budget whereby he proposed that a law banning the sale of large tracts of land to foreign corporations would be overturned. That law passed in 1887, when the people of Wisconsin knew damn good and well what happens when you hand your state over to big corporations, and when they stood up and showed the rest of the country how to fix it. Of course, that was before the genius of Free Trade descended upon us all."

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/scott-walker-bill-selling-off-wisconsin-041513

[whereisjustice]

17. kick

[wiggs]

18. WOW. Eye opening videos from him...suggested

that my kids watch all four parts of a super interesting interview, below.

"Chris Hedges America is a Tinderbox Pt 3 & 4" is especially interesting for its discussion of the Occupy movement, climate change, Pres Obama, etc. Fascinating straightforward guy. His personal history (in Part 1) is important in that you can understand where he is coming from and it's not career-building, ego, money, or future lobbying jobs.

and

[appalachiablue]

20. The observations and criticisms Hedges points out are all valid, if scary to many.

The means of production and capital have been transferred to the developing nations in the last 20 years and the countries of the old, first industrial capitalist powers in the west - the US, UK and Japan are declining according to many, like Prof. Richard Wolff, economist, The New School.

China and India's enormous new middle classes will fuel consumer growth in the next two decades and beyond. China's middle class is already 200 million, and is expected to reach 500 million to 1 billion in the next 15 years, by 2030. That's more than the total current US population of 320 million people.

Similarly India, which has 20% of the world's population has an emergent middle class in the half million range. Mexico and Brazil also have large new middle class consumers.
That's a lot of fries, clothes, computers, cellphones, TVs, cars, a/c, travel and luxuries to sell.
So are Americans valuable anymore?

Paul Buckheit is another excellent writer and posts articles on AlterNet and Truthout. He wrote recently that after lowering our wages and benefits, taking money for college education and health care, plundering mortgages and savings, we Americans are being criminalized and targeted for revenues and fees from increasing trivial offenses like traffic tickets, truancy fines and outstanding debt collections. What the heck..

[DeSwiss]

21. Mr. Hedges and I are simpatico on this subject.....

...with one exception. I don't think that there are enough people in America who even know what the word ''unsustainable'' means. But they're about to find out in the most rude way.


- When they coined the phrase: ''Ignorance is bliss'' they were talking about our ignorance creating bliss for the 1%ers.....

K&R

[center][/center]

[markpkessinger]

24. I have come to regard Hedges as a modern day prophet . . .

. . . in the Old Testament biblical sense of that word -- i.e., not as a soothsayer or fortune teller, but one who points out to the people of his time to what is happening right now in their midst. It's scary stuff to hear and to contemplate, certainly, but ignoring it doesn't alter the reality.

I wish I could be more sanguine about the likelihood of people waking up in sufficient numbers, but at this point I really don't see it happening. And as the saying goes, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own country."