Chris Hedges: America is a Tinderbox

[struggle4progress]

40. "Philosophers have SOLVED the world -- but the real problem is to CHANGE it"

Last edited Sat Jul 20, 2013, 08:19 PM - Edit history (2)

Theses On Feuerbach (1845)

I own several of Mr Hedges' books, and in parts I find them excellent. I do not find them excellent in their entirety, however, and the quote above, from the Theses on Feuerbach, summarizes rather well some of my disappointments with Hedges

Hedges originally trained in seminary and afterwards opted for a career as a war-correspondent. Such work is dangerous, of course, and Hedges himself has discussed in print the curious addiction to excitement and danger that prevented many of his fellow war-reporters from changing careers before their luck fatally changed. His political views, I think, often show limitations plausibly associated with his background: he sometimes exhibits a quasi-religious absolutism, together with a continuing need for the excitement of life-and-death struggles. If he had a poetic temperament, and a good ear for popular moods, such tendencies might have produced a brilliant rhetorician, with the ability to stir people to action. And if his substantial analytical ability were not so derailed by his tendency to absolutism and his craving for excitement, he might have become a substantial commentator on current events

I tend to read Hedges because, from a purely philosophical PoV, I frequently rather agree with him. But here, precisely, is the danger. One of the characteristics of popular culture in America -- I say America, because I really cannot speak of other places -- is that political action is routinely confused with personal opinion: people (for example) claim to "support" something when they mean only that in some vague emotional manner they agree philosophically with the position they think is being discussed, while in reality they do nothing whatsoever material to support any definite political organizing around the issue. That is, as remarked in the Theses on Feuerbach:

... reality .. is considered only as the object of contemplation, but not as .. human activity ... Man must prove the truth .. of his thinking in practice ...

This American habit -- of believing we have "supported" something once we stated our opinions about it -- safeguards the status quo, because it ensures that we feel satisfied merely to think and discuss issues without inconveniencing ourselves by any dedication to concrete activity. In accordance with this tendency, we find ourselves arguing about the "meaning" of "news" stories that quote only two words from extensive remarks, or that provide only an incomplete and superficial background to some event -- conditions under which, of course, we actually learn nothing at all about the real world

Hedges at his worst plays into this habit, with "analyses" that are actually mere slogans without much content, such as "Obama's assault on civil liberties is worse than Bush" or "it's just a game, because whether it's Bush or whether it's Obama, Goldman Sachs wins always"

Like many people, Hedges' view of political action does not extend further than -- expressing an opinion. He has no background trying to organize people to do anything for a concrete result, and so his political views are not tethered to any particular reality by any experiment. He wants "to SOLVE the world" and has not sullied himself in the dull and tedious work of trying "to CHANGE it."

Unsurprisingly, he has no strategy beyond "make the power elite terrified of us." And his tactics are completely disconnected from this extraordinarily simplistic strategy: "I wrote Nader's major policy speeches for him in 2008 and voted for Jill Stein in the last election .. as a .. protest vote." But something much more sophisticated than that is needed