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Forum Post: Chris Hedges - America is a tinderbox

Posted 10 years ago on July 19, 2013, 9:21 p.m. EST by gnomunny (6819) from St Louis, MO
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8 Comments

8 Comments


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[-] 1 points by gsw (3406) from Woodbridge Township, NJ 10 years ago

Excellent Interview!!!!!

Thanks g!

[-] 2 points by gnomunny (6819) from St Louis, MO 10 years ago

Thanks. Hedges has a great grasp of the big picture and I thought what he had to say about Occupy was very interesting. And how TPTB have been preparing for an uprising for a while now, which is something we've been suspecting all along. The signs are definitely there, that's for sure.

[-] 0 points by itsmyblood (10) 10 years ago

America go BOOM!

[-] 0 points by stevebol (1269) from Milwaukee, WI 10 years ago

Hedges is saying that movements are the only way to get leaders to act like liberals because positions of power only attract the mediocre and the venal.

That's messed up but it's probably true.

[-] -1 points by BlackRepublic (-33) from East Windsor, CT 10 years ago

He's saying more than that; he's saying the People's Movement is born of a unified people economically disparaged and not of a party which merely uses hedge issues to bolster its own power. How many hedge issues have been reintroduced over the past few years? And do you really think Hilary will save us?

[-] 0 points by stevebol (1269) from Milwaukee, WI 10 years ago

Lol. I know he's saying more than that. As far as Hillary, you got me all wrong. I won't vote for her, I just think she's going to win in 2016.

[-] -1 points by itsmyblood (10) 10 years ago

"HEDGES: That's what I'm saying. But I'm saying that we have to hold--you have to hold fast to that moral imperative. So if you keep conceding--I mean, let's look at what the liberal class has conceded to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party in Europe would be a far-right party. It's pro-war, it's anti-union, it's anti-civil liberties. I mean, Obama's assault on civil liberties is worse than Bush. It's an enemy of the press. It's used the Espionage Act to shut down whistleblowers, which are the lifeblood of a free press. It has assassinated American citizens. I mean, and, you know, at what point do you say enough? And I think that Nader was correct when he ran for president by saying, if we can get 5, 10, 15 million people to withdraw from the system as a kind of counterweight, we can begin to put pressure from the other side. But right now there is no pressure from the other side, because we are effectively manipulated. Look, both sides of the political spectrum are manipulated by the same forces. If you're some right-wing Christian zealot in Georgia, then it's homosexuals and abortion and all these, you know, wedge issues that are used to whip you up emotionally. If you are a liberal in Manhattan, it's--you know, they'll all be teaching creationism in your schools or whatever. Yet in fact it's just a game, because whether it's Bush or whether it's Obama, Goldman Sachs wins always. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs. And it's only by stepping outside the system and challenging the system--and we can do that through electoral politics, which is what Debs did. Nineteen-twelve I think he polled 6 percent of the vote. But that doesn't mean that we'll take power. It just means that we will begin to build forces that will pressure power to respond. And I think that's what we've forgotten. We have to begin to make the power elite terrified of us. And Occupy did that, by the way. They were terrified of Occupy. And you saw in the elections--. JAY: Because they thought it would really catch on bigger than it was. HEDGES: And they had to destroy it. And let's remember who destroyed it. Barack Obama destroyed it in a coordinated federal campaign, because the people who were most threatened by Occupy were the Democrats, which is why they tried to co-opt the language and they sent out Van Jones, you know, occupy the ballot booth and all this kind of stuff.

In the same way, they were threatened by Nader 2000. They were terrified of Nader, which is--Nader's mortal enemy became the Democratic Party, challenging all his voter lists, which, of course, made him spend millions in legal fees to fight back, demonizing him for the election of Bush when in fact Bush was appointed by fiat by the Supreme Court. It had nothing to do with Nader. They didn't do the recount in Florida, because Gore had won. So what I'm saying is that you can have an electoral strategy, but an electoral strategy is not going to include embracing the Democratic Party."------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Truth.

[-] 1 points by gnomunny (6819) from St Louis, MO 10 years ago

There's nothing in that Hedges interview I would disagree with. And for the record, I'm not a Democrat. Personally I can't stand Obama, nor did I vote for him either time.