.... politics will turn on you. - Nader
Hedges is at his most impassioned in this debate with Robert Reich. It's just the last 35 minutes of the show. But his point was made years ago by Rage Against the Machine, in this video directed by none other than Michael Moore. At less than four minutes, it's the more efficient option (and it will actually embed!):
Hedges is at his most impassioned in this debate with Robert Reich. It's just the last 35 minutes of the show. But his point was made years ago by Rage Against the Machine, in this video directed by none other than Michael Moore. At less than four minutes, it's the more efficient option (and it will actually embed!):
4 comments:
That was a very interesting debate. Reich was, perhaps, a bit too measured in his comments while Hedges, predictably, seemed a bit too strident and absolutist. I eventually chose Hedges because of one point - we are out of time. Reich proposes a new "post-Hillary" movement that, in three or four electoral cycles, may supplant Democrats and Republicans alike. That new order would then tackle the urgent and immediate problems of the day from climate change to democratic restoration, inequality and so on. Yet the way we're already being overtaken by events from climate calamities to the rise of authoritarian populism and the commensurate decline in liberal democracy makes Reich's vision seem a pipe dream.
Our governments have failed us. 10 years ago Raulston Saul wrote "The Collapse of Globalism." We knew that far back that globalism was not the rising tide that floated all boats and that it had been transformed into a vehicle for transferring vast wealth, and the political power that flows from it, to a very narrow elite, the 1%. Globalism, free market fundamentalism was the cirrhosis of democracy and yet our governments just kept signing trade deals that yielded state sovereignty to make room for a metanational corporatist sovereignty. We were told free trade would yield great prosperity. That was then. Today we're told we must sign the TPP because, bad as it may be, it will go worse for us if we refuse. The levers of power are no longer in our hands.
The winner - Hedges.
It feels like Reich is driven by his terror over what might happen with Trump in charge to the point that he's willing to dismiss Clinton's history. Chomsky is with Hedges too: It doesn’t matter much who we vote in because, “’policy is insulated from politics’ meaning, no matter what games these guys play in the political arena, policy’s going to go on exactly the way it is, because we’ve got them by the balls....Serious changes in the economy will simply require dismantling private power altogether."
Unfortunately, Hedges talks above the heads of most people here, complex concepts using big words spoken way too fast and long. They're not going to hear it. Maybe RATM will help clarify.
"private power" like "deep government" is invisible to the electorate. You can find it but you have to look for it and why go to all that bother when you have a guy who'll make America great again and all you have to do is give him your vote.
How many really see today's reality of shared sovereignty between our governments and this corporate order that functions through an apparatus that includes campaign contributions and private dispute tribunals? How many even care?
When I was a young fellow, barely in my teens, I came across an old photograph that no young person should be allowed to see. It was taken in France in the 20s or 30s. It was in a laboratory. There was a man dressed in the long white gowns surgeons of that day wore. On the table was a Labrador-type dog. The man was performing vivisection on the dog. The animal, despite what must have been excruciating pain, had its head turned to lovingly lick the hand wielding the scalpel. I have that image burned into my mind and I'll carry it to the grave. I only wish I didn't feel that, today, we're that dog.
Sorry, Marie, but I have to change my vote in favour of Reich/Clinton. Left out of my consideration was the prospect of the next president possibly choosing four future justices of the USSC. In a just society this wouldn't be a partisan problem. In the U.S. it is. When a court can be so corrupt as to pass the Citizens United verdict the nation is in deep peril.
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