Chris Hedges on Talk Of The Nation: "We've undergone a kind of corporate coup d'etat in slow-motion" [View all]

[kpete]

Last edited Thu May 16, 2013, 02:33 PM - Edit history (1)

Looking Ahead: Chris Hedges On Poverty, Politics, U.S. Culture

(This is just a snippet

I think we have powerful proto-fascist movements in this country, and I look at the Tea Party, the militia, the Christian right, where they celebrate the language of violence, they celebrate the gun culture. And they channel what I would describe as a very legitimate rage and a legitimate sense of betrayal towards the vulnerable, towards Muslims, towards undocumented workers, towards homosexuals, intellectuals, feminists, liberals. They have a long list of people they don't like. And I think that is a very - remains a very frightening and powerful undercurrent within American society.

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And what you get when you enter that kind of ideological belief system is you no longer deal with reality. You believe that - you believe in magic. You believe that Jesus will intervene to protect you and promote you, and then it becomes impossible to have a kind of rational discussion, for instance with people who believe that, you know, everything - the Earth was created 6,000 years ago, and there were dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden.

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I think it's important that, you know - and Sheldon Wolin writes about this in "Democracy Incorporated" - that we have the facade of the democratic state, and yet what we've undergone is a kind of corporate coup d'etat in slow-motion...



http://www.npr.org/2013/05/15/184232470/looking-ahead-chris-hedges-on-poverty-politics-u-s-culture