Chris Hedges: A Prayer For Democracy - Town Hall Seattle

"Empires communicate in two languages. One language is expressed in imperatives. It is the language of command and force. This militarized language disdains human life and celebrates harshness and brutality. It demands. It makes no attempt to justify the flagrant theft of natural resources and wealth or the use of indiscriminate violence.

The other language of empire is softer. It employs the vocabulary of ideals and lofty goals and insists that the power of empire is noble and benevolent. The language of beneficence is used to speak to those outside the centers of death and pillage, those who have not yet been totally broken, those who still must be seduced to hand over power to predators.

The road traveled to total disempowerment, however, ends at the same place. It is the language used to get there that is different."

Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges: This Was The Year That Was

Here is an excerpt from Chris Hedges' talk at the University of Western Ontario.

It is his summary of where we are today, and how we have gotten here.

Chris Hedges: The Wall Street Cult of the Self and Ochberg: Coping With a Narcissist

As Ochberg implies, psychopaths don't have ethical considerations, and narcissists and asocial personalities don't care.

In layman's terms I think most of these fellows have a great hole in their being. They know that something is not right with them, but their egos will not allow them to acknowledge it.

Those who gravitate toward the corporate power structures can be quite successful in some organizations.   But despite outward success they are always restless, unfulfilled, and tend to project their dissatisfaction outward and ascribe it to others.   If they succeed it is all them, but if they fail, someone else is at fault.

They are incapable of trust, because everything they do is a facade, a lie.   Therefore they rarely have a real relationship with their families, and at best view them as a desirable addition to their collection.  They have utter contempt for other people, although they will use flattery and other means to create a dependency while they are using them.  And after that is done, they will be discarded without another thought.

They are like sharks, endlessly seeking to fill their terrible emptiness with possessions, be they things or other people. They are literally insatiable in their needs, and highly focused in their pursuit of them.

They are very clever in finding the weaknesses in people and organizations, and will exploit them ruthlessly. Ethics and conscience provide no brake or boundaries on their willingness to say and do anything that is required to achieve their ends.  If you attempt to thwart, be prepared for something a little different, and completely off the hook in response.

It is really something to see them at work. The destruction they can wreak, sometimes with remarkably superficial charm and high verbal acuity, is hard to describe until you see it in action.

They are always a challenge to the HR and compliance departments, and frequently end up badly, one way or the other. It becomes a personal challenge to see how far one can go without being stopped, far beyond any personal needs or requirements.  Flouting the rules becomes a game in itself.

Chris Hedges Speaking At South Dakota State University Oct 2, 2012

This presentation is joined in progress at the discussion of Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson is an interesting character. As I believe that I have said before, Obama reminds me more of Wilson than either Roosevelt or Hoover.

I do not particularly like Woodrow Wilson's tenure as president, for many of the same reasons that I find Barack Obama to be found wanting, compared to the progressive title to which he has pretended but to which he has only rarely delivered. He seems more like a traditional moderate Republican, with a nose for the deal rather than for a set of defining principles. And much the same can be said for Wilson and his own stumbling ineffectiveness, emphasis on ends rather than means, and servility to the financial interests.

Chris Hedges: The Rise of the Corporate Class

"Oh you who are born of the gods, easy is the descent into Hell. The door of darkness stands open day and night. But to retrace your steps, and come back out into the brightness above, that is the work, that is the labor."

Vergil, The Aeneid

I struggle with Hedges' perspective at times, because in his revulsion he places himself to the left of 'the liberal class' which is the well-educated middle and upper middle class and traditionally benevolent social power such as church organizations, universities, and the 'thought leaders' or intellectuals and even the media. But his insights are often brilliant.

To me the last thirty years of the Anglo-American empire merely testifies to the corrosiveness and calcifying nature of greed on the hearts of the gifted, and the logical outcome of irresponsible and reckless selfishness on position. This is a euphemism, of course, for what has been traditionally called a rising lust for power and the commensurate 'wages of sin.' The familiar meme is of the gifted one becoming a good guy gone bad through some excess or fatal flaw. One's strength is their weakness. Hamartia (ἁμαρτία).

We are not in hell yet, but the path ahead is easy. It's all downhill from here.

"And I saw a white horse, its rider having a bow, and there was given to him a crown, and he went forth overcoming not in righteousness, but that he may conquer."

Meet Chris Hedges on September 24 In NYC

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt
Blueprint for Accountability
Monday, September 24, 2012 at 7:00 pm EST

Culture Project
45 Bleecker Street, New York City

Join author, journalist, war correspondent & columnist for Truthdig, Chris Hedges,
for an intimate conversation and questions about his latest book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.

Presentation will be followed by a book signing with Chris Hedges.

General admission tickets $15.
Student & Senior tickets $10.

Purchase at CultureProject.org

Please pass this along to anyone who you think might find it to be of interest.

Video of Chris' appearance at Impact 2012

Chris Hedges: The Tinder of Revolutionary Movements

"I have three precious things, which I hold fast and prize.

The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle, and you can be bold; be frugal, and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others, and you can become a leader among men.

But in the present day men cast off gentleness, and are all for being bold; they spurn frugality, and retain only extravagance; they discard humility, and aim only at being first.

Therefore they shall surely perish.

Gentleness brings victory to him who attacks, and safety to him who defends. Those whom Heaven would save, it fences round with gentleness."

Lao Tzu


"A revolution is coming: a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough. But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability."

Robert F. Kennedy

Chris Hedges: Brace Yourself, the American Empire Is Over

Hedges offers an interesting interpretation of events that one rarely hears in the mainstream media.

Chris Hedges: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

Chris Hedges: Resistance and Faith, Faith and Unbelief - Prague Spring 1968

“Each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Robert Francis Kennedy


"Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance."

Václav Havel, Letter to Alexander Dubček, August 1969

The impulse to freedom and democracy always seems weak and hopeless when matched against the forces of oppression, because aggressive oppression is always more single-minded, having already crushed internal dissent and perspective, and is generally better organized and equipped.

And yet even the greatest tyrannies have fallen, always. This is because they carry within themselves the seeds of their own renewal and return to balance, or utter destruction.

As in most human things, their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness, and it is their inability to master and evolve that strength, to reform and achieve sustainability, that brings them crashing down, every time. Their strength is their weakness, in its overreach and self-absorption.




Faith, Unbelief, and Their Fundamentalisms



The Locus of Intolerance and the Objectification of the Other



I am sure that Hedges would agree that, as a person, he is subject to the same impulses, the same tendencies, the same foibles, the same snares of pride, harsher moments and failures to love, that he descries so capably in their more extreme manifestations of the abuse of faith and humanness.

I would have liked to have seen a little more expansion of the continuum of unbelief to include the uncertainty of agnosticism versus the certainty of atheism, for I believe that to be a fateful threshhold which one crosses with their own 'leap of faith' as it were, that being the difference between 'I do not know' and I am certain enough to declare and commit myself, whether it be for faith or for unbelief. - Jesse

At Their Extremes, Most Belief Systems Become Indistinguishable From their Putative Opposites

I noticed today that I have never posted a memoir which I had intended about Prague, and my time as a forty year old 'student' at a symposium there when I was taking my MBA in 1991, a period of great change. I shall have to do that sometime. I thought I had done so already.

It was particularly meaningful to me because this is where my father's grandfather had been from many years ago. And of course it is a city with a great tradition of learning, manufacturing, and engineering.   And the 'hometown' of my great-grandfather, although all family traces seem to have been erased by time, and by the decisions of the great powers to hand the region over first to the Germans and then to the Soviets.

Coincidentally enough I am informed by readers via email that two organizations have blocked access to Le Café Américain of late: the government of mainland China, although I think that applies to all blogs and has been on and off for some time, and just recently Bank of America. Plus ça change, plus c'est la similar bureaucratic mentality.

'Prague Spring' 1968 - The 99 Percent

Marta Kubišová, Modlitba pro Martu , 1968

Let peace continue with this country.
Let wrath, envy, hate, fear and struggle vanish.
Now, when the lost reign over your affairs will return to you, people, it will return.

The cloud is slowly sailing away from the skies,
Everyone is reaping his own harvest.
Let my prayer speak to the hearts that are
Not burned by the times of bitterness like blooms by a late frost.

Let peace continue with this country.
Let wrath, envy, hate, fear and struggle vanish.
Now, when the lost reign over your affairs will return to you, people, it will return.

Let my prayer speak to the hearts that are
Not burned by the times of bitterness like blooms by a late frost.

Let peace continue with this country.
Let wrath, envy, hate, fear and struggle vanish.
Now, when the lost reign over your affairs will return to you, people, it will return.

Jan Palach Memorial, Wenceslas Square, Prague, 1989