The Implosion of Capitalism - Chris Hedges

[trof]

"When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged.

We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. “At times when the page is turning,” Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote in “Castle to Castle,” “when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!”

Pretty powerful stuff.
More: http://truth-out.org/news/item/8808-when-civilizations-die

[trof]

1. 3 recs and NO replies? C'mon, guys???

[LiberalLoner]

2. Speechless...really sobering article.

[nilram]

3. Hulk Hogan had a sex tape?

wow. I must get all my news from DU.

(ok, rec'd too).

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. love this bit:

"one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide.
Welcome to the asylum."

I am a big Hedges fan, have all his books.
He is NOT an uplifting person and has become more sobering over time, as he is convinced it is probably too late to turn the ship around.
I cannot argue with his perception, unfortunately.

[joelz]

5. Excellent read

I feel like I'm on the same planet when I read Cris's stuff, maybe a few dozen writers are like that Zinn,Kline,Chomsky,Amy Goodmen etc. the rest just seems like gibberish

[Wind Dancer]

6. K & R!

So depressing!

[Confusious]

7. Reads like a Luddite manifesto

Science is a tool, and he's blaming the wrench because it didn't turn without him.

You attack science, you lose me. I personally have no problems doing away with ancient superstitions i.e. ambiguity and mystery. Science tells us the earth is 4 billion years old. It took 3 billion for life to start and another billion for us to appear. How valuable is life? Nothing has more value.

The failure isn't science, rather society as a whole and what it places value upon. Even before science, people destroyed their environment. before science, there were the plebeians and the patriciains. And the patricians did everything to get a leg up on their fellow patricians that they could, exploiting everyone they could, including slavery. The Romans drove a species of African panther to extinction with their games, paid for by the patricians.

If you participate in shallow culture, you're to blame.

I personally wince every time I see someone desperate to be on TV or famous.

It's pathetic and sad, and really tells you how this culture is.

[Recursion]

8. I loved the bit about the non-exploitative Native Americans...

...because God forbid we face the fact that the European colonists joined an already-existing genocidal war in Massachusetts, and that slavery existed in North America before 1620.

[xfundy]

9. That's attributable to man's inherent stupidity

And endless attempts to find some way, any way, that he can feel himself superior to others, for whatever stupid reason, and always, always, for personal gain.

[Confusious]

10. Don't matter who, what, where

Humans are always the same.

I'm reminded of the history of the Incas just before Pizarro showed up...

The Inca king dies, and his son then kills his brother and drank alcohol out of his skull.

[BeHereNow]

11. It is more than clear that mass, collective neurosis and delusion is now considered "normal."

If anyone is left standing, at least they will be able to read some of
our more sane commentators about the fall of the species, and how and WHY it went down,
and perhaps understand.

Thanks for posting this Trof.

BHN

[Warren DeMontague]

12. And he wonders why his wife is in the other room, blowing Roger Sterling.