Intercalary for Madame

Readers, Readers:

I thought it fitting to not put a heavy load on Madame when she returns, and let her use her pre-fashioned posting to give herself a breather.  This also means that we are “in-between” chapters, as Madame has some things to say on this one (and possibly, I have a response, lol!).  Therefore, I thought I would post some selected tidbits from comments others have made on Hedges’ book.  A few are from Hedges’ recent book, Death of the Liberal Class, which expounds on some points made in this one.  I apologize in advance if I have misplaced or left out attribution.

Americans are an “increasingly docile, illiterate peasantry nursed by corporate feudalism.”

We have “casino capitalism, with its complicated and unregulated deals of turning debt into magical assets to create fictional wealth for us, and vast wealth for our elite. Corporations, behind the smoke screen, have ruthlessly dismantled and destroyed our manufacturing base and impoverished our working class. The free market became our god and government was taken hostage by corporations, the same corporations that entice us daily with illusions through the mass media, the entertainment industry, and popular culture.”

From Timothy Lukeman, comes at least the next two:

“Once you're aware of how thoroughly blanderized & infantilized our culture has become, it's all too easy to succumb to despair or cynicism.’

“Since the 1970's our economy has rested on the accumulation of un-unsustainable amounts of corporate and house-hold debt, used to a large extent not for productive investment but for participation in speculative bubbles and consumption to support luxurious living. Our economy is kept afloat by the willingness of foreigners to buy up this debt. As government social services are continuously slashed, the bailouts of 2008/2009 have only strengthened the stranglehold of corporate America on our economy and government resources.  Meanwhile, our politicians have covered up our unraveling. According to Hedges, the Consumer Price Index is constructed to under-estimate the real rate of inflation. Ronald Reagan lowered his unemployment rate by including members of the military in the employment count. Bill Clinton lowered the official unemployment rate of his reign by excluding from the employment count people who had stopped looking for work and also by counting low wage under-employed workers as employed. American jobs have gone to the low wage third world. Hedges notes that, contrary to Clinton's prediction in 1993, NAFTA has thrown 2 million Mexican farmers off the land and many of them have ended up in the US. Even more illegal immigrants have come from Mexico as northern Mexican factories have closed down and relocated to the even lower wage and even lesser regulated paradise of China.”

What is happening to us in this economic totalitarianism is effectively a “slaughterhouse of the emotions. Industrial scale soul rape.”  Too many of us do not recognize our “powerless position in this imaginary world we live in.”

“Every end signals a beginning.  After a time of decay comes the turning point.” (Professor’s Note: The latter is taken from the Tao Te Ching, the book of Dao).

We have a “trite American culture that seems to be blissfully unaware of its decadence, that seems to be a contributor to a civilization that may be circling the toilet bowl.” (And perhaps leading us to societal suicide).

At least the first of the following paragraphs is from a D. Benor:

We exist in a “blizzard of contemporary noise and chatter of the spectacular. A country grown blind to the demeaning aspects of the immensely profitable porn business, and the idiocy of choreographed violent professional wrestling. He speaks of our modern American economy as ‘casino capitalism’ in which the house of the very wealthy always win at the expense of the rest who are so easily conned into thinking ‘that's the American way.’”

We seem unable or unwilling to see or do anything about that we have seen fashioned a culture “wrapped up in greed rather than compassion, in spectacle rather than ideas, and in celebrity rather than authenticity.”

Hedges is “one of the very few remaining journalists in the US who do actual journalism instead of regurgitating washed out mantras handed to them by their keepers, is not afraid of hurting the public's tender sensibilities by the truth. He realizes the gravity of our current situation and is unafraid of telling the readers that our economic and political future looks bleak. The way our government tries to address the collapse of the economy, which it coyly terms "a recession", by throwing taxpayers' money at the problem, is wrong and self-destructive.’

Hedges says we don’t yet sufficiently grasp “corporatism in the US, the downfall of the middle class or stacking of the deck in favor of totalitarian practices behind the scenes.”

Hedges is “disgusted and contemptuous, angry and frustrated at the lame and stupid culture he finds himself suddenly imprisoned in. Unfettered market capitalism, corporate interests, and America's oligarchy have conspired to create a ‘brave new world’ of lies and stupidity that everyone hold dearly to be truth and wisdom.”

Those disquieted that America society has been “systematically degraded to one essentially ‘colonized’ by financial, technical, professional, managerial and academic elites devoid of any real sense of the common good--which was, after all, the whole point of our experiment in self-government--might want to turn to Wendell Berry's many excellent collections of essays. Am thinking in particular of The Art of the Commonplace, What Are People For, or Citizenship Papers. Hedges mentions Berry as a prescient critic of America's ‘march of folly,’ and he provides a long Berry quote at the end of the book's introductory chapter that pretty neatly sums up the whole book, as does Berry's incisive observation in his latest essay on our ‘anti-economy’ in the September 2009 Progressive that our society has become ‘sucker-dependent,’ with manufactured anxiety and human wants in the foreground and real, grounded human needs--like food, land and community--forced into the background. So, if you are even a tiny bit unnerved by Hedges' screed, please read Wendell Berry.”  (Professor’s Note: this jibes with what many have been saying that we have created a form of capitalism too dependent on “bubbles.”)

We have become a “consumer culture which lives on credit, and has come to expect really unreasonable things from government.”

Americans live “lazy and easy, meaningless and morally bankrupt lives that have degraded their humanity. People have chosen, and given a choice they have proven to everyone that they will do what human nature dictates and choose to live lives where they can enjoy their laziness and stupidity, and ignore critics who are trying to get them to read books and criticize.”

“Mr. Hedges has a dark prophecy for this sad current state of affairs. Eventually, a system built on illusion and debt will collapse, and it will hurt the common people the most, leading them to choose fascists and demagogues who will unleash hate and war on the world. This must be true because humanity has done this before (the 1930s).”

“When interpreting, Hedges writes in highly condensed sentences that are so overloaded with wisdom wrought through historical synthesis that many deserve a pause for intellectual digestion, reflections, and verification. He shows that he has digested for a long time what he produces. Almost always, the perceptive reader will quietly and, at times, tragic-comically, say true, true, true. He draws from plenty of famous writers of a similar genre ranging from Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, C. Wright Mills, Christopher Lasch, Neil Postman, John Ralston Saul, to Laura Nader, Daniel Boorstin, Andrew Bacevich, Chalmers Johnson, David Cay Johnston. et al..and Siegfried Sutterlin.”

We have encultured a “brutal, criminal and inhumane sado-masochistic psychopathology.”

“Positive psychology, preached at major universities and inflicted in the most infantile and embarrassing pep rally patterns by corporations upon their employees, generates the illusion of enthusiasm. It permeates governmental agencies and corporations as well as the how-to-find-happiness industry. Real relationships, so Hedges believes, are destroyed by the constant pressure to exhibit false enthusiasm and buoyancy.” (Professor’s Note: And feeds the illusion monster that slowly sucks the heart and soul dry from individuals and this culture).

We are creating “mortal indebtedness and fiscal hopelessness.”

“In the final analysis, in the absence of ethics, overwhelming events will force corrective measures, unfortunately, so history shows.” (Professor’s Note: I can find little to disagree!)

We are “steadily impoverished by our power elites - legally, economically, and politically. Our health care system, if unchanged, is expected to consume one-fifth our GNP by 2017 (despite a Harvard Medical School study estimating a single-payer system would save $350 billion/year), rampant militarism (761 military bases around the globe; spending 10X that of #2, China), and an education system costing 2X that of other developed nations, are draining our lifeblood. We are headed for a long period of social and political instability.”

“Hedges believes our decline began when we shifted from production to consumption during the Vietnam War. Making capital by producing became outdated - money could now be made out of money. Result - of 100 products offered in the 2003 L.L. Bean catalog, 92 were imported; when New York City asked for bids on new subway cars in 2003 no U.S. companies responded. ($3-4 billion contract, 32,000 jobs.) NAFTA was supposed to help both the U.S. and Mexico. Hedges contends it has helped neither - at least 2 million Mexican farmers have been driven out of business by subsidized U.S. farming corporations, and the Mexican border-factories are closing down as production has shifted to China.”

“Lenin said that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch its currency. When money becomes worthless, so does government. Remember pre-WWII Germany? America's rapidly rising debts may take us there too.”

If enough of us awaken from this destructive illusion, perhaps we can change the bleak outlook so many above are seeing.  If not, hugely painful reality will intrude!