Chris Hedges newest, The World As It Is: Dispatches on the myth of human progress

Hedges is totally left wing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmAY_R9ZaOE&feature=relmfu

this part is even better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By88H5vNMqk&feature=relmfu

"Rebellion will save our souls." :)

We have to become "self-sufficient" as he puts it. But he also understands the dangers of climate change.

His latest work is composed of dozens of essays, and in a piece dated May 31, 2010, This Country Needs a Few Good Communists, I find a proposal for better analysis of what we face: "We must find our way back to the old radicals, to the discredited Marxists, socialists, and anarchists, including Dwight Macdonald and Dorothy Day. Language is our first step toward salvation. We cannot fight what we cannot describe."

Absolutely. Beginning with the need to understand where Hedges would go from here - beyond a very accurate description of the ills of U.S. political economy and the corrupted power-brokers, religious and secular.

[whoops]

Minus the embarrassing religious nonsense, Hedges is inspiring. 

ETA: My apologies for the triple post. It may have been the divine wrath of Hedges' God.

I have condemned Hitchens and Harris for being cheerleaders of empire and Islamophobes for a long time here. You may not have noticed my views, but now you know.

I have no issues with what Hedges or anyone else "believes". I have serious issues with anyone who (in my view) diminishes the heinous role played by religion, especially in modern times, in sowing division and xenophobia and ignorance and hatred amongst human beings. I consider Hedges a powerful ally as a journalist and publicist and activist in anti-imperialist causes. I'm left singularly unimpressed by his meanderings about philosophy and science and matters of the spirit - much of which I have found nonsensical.

But I don't care what he has to say on those issues. That's why I praise and admire Hedges (just look at his demolition of Kevin O'Leary). No one is good at everything. So what's the big deal?

As I'm sure you're aware Hedges has written a book called "American Fascists" about the rise of the christian right. He also acknowledges the atrocities that have been carried out and committed by organized religion. He llived for many years in the middle east he is certainly aware and critical of islamic fundamentalists. What he doesn't do is treat religion as an amorphous thing or believers as some unified group. He also spent time in El Salvador and he does not compare the catholic oligarchy there to the liberation theologist priests who were tortured and murdered fighting for social justice. In death of the liberal class he also takes on the lliberal church for its failure to confront neo-libearl capitalism. So I'm not sure how any of that constitutes diminishing the role religion in atrocities on the contrary I think he clearly identifies where is it culpable and where it is not.

Well he is entirely correct in that. Some people do improve their lives and dedicate themselves to making the world a better place because of religious philosophy and religious communities. 

Who is more deluded? those religious people, or people who don't recognize that fact because they focus on the single point of the existence of a god rather than looking at spiritual belief as a whole experience. 

If you are atheist, fine. I actually lean strongly toward that belief too. But I at least understand that many people who believe are not stupid, deluded, embarrassing or oppressed. If you don't see that, fine, but if you don't understand it perhaps it is best to just leave it alone rather than be needlessly insulting toward them, and pompous about your own world view.

Because I assure you, the statement above does not reflect an understanding of the whole picture.

I totally deny that proposition - 100% - just as I deny that some terrorist acts have their basis in Islam. Your proposition, besides being historically false, is the other side of that same coin. Political movements have their basis in real life, not some chimera cooked up in people's heads. Religious belief (which you call "spiritual belief" because you correctly presume that "religion" is too discredited to be used in polite discourse) has been invoked as an ideological adjunct, and a mobilizing force, for movements born in people's concrete needs. In today's world, this particular adjunct is almost universally used to divide, deceive, and demobilize.

I feel free to look down upon Stephen Harper's values. I feel free to scorn creationism and homophobia and anti-choice "values". Would you deprive me of that freedom?? As for "personal attacks", that's your own invention.

"I had to do it - God made me do it!" Yeah, right. You know what? Being a slave isn't strictly a choice either. Nor is being downtrodden and abused. The issue is what you do to rid yourself of those shackles. People are free to believe in whatever they like. I respect their right to those beliefs. But don't demand respect for those beliefs.

Read his meanderings about issues which he knows little or nothing about, and get back to me: After Religion Fizzles, We're Stuck with Nietzsche.

By the way, Hedges, who is (as I said) a powerful and eloquent anti-imperialist, does not balk at speaking of "religion". I admire his forthrightness. You should consider doing likewise. "Spiritual beliefs" have sweet f*-all to do with religion. It is primarily religious monopolists who seek to reduce matters of the spirit to one of their creepy categories.

The straw-man factory must be working overtime shifts these days.

To the extent that any of them publicly promotes their religion, especially to the exclusion of others, I would certainly make the same judgment of all of them. To the extent that they participate in and lead the fight for freedom and peace and justice, why would I begrudge them their individual beliefs?

Did someone suggest that Hedges could do a "much better job" if he dropped his religious foolishness? No, you concocted that, to bolster your sinking ship of a thesis.

You see, a person like Hedges, if someone told him "your views on religion are foolish, and here's why", would either engage that discussion or say that he'd rather not discuss it. He would never say: "How dare you attack my values, the core of my being, my heritage and culture?" Such ripostes are for intellectual cowards. Hedges is anything but that.

So I read it over again. 

Again, I can't claim to be versed in Nietsche, if that is your beef.

I might have thrown in a caveat or two to soothe the feelings of sensitive atheists who might think he was implying that there can be no morality without religion. 

But I don't take his argument that way, and the way I read it, as a look at our society as a whole, I agree with much of it.

I don't think the major religions are going anywhere anytime soon. The question is how will they change and what will happen to the progressive elements within them?

6079:"Would you make the same judgment about King? Malcolm X? Tubman? Gandhi? Bonhoeffer? Riel? Douglas? Crazy Horse? the Dalai Lama?

Yes, I'm sure they could have all done a much better job of it if they had our rational perspective and lost all that foolish god stuff.

Nice enough folks, but I'm not sure I'd want them embarassing me in front of my friends."

If that is not tongue-in-cheek I'm afraid you've been infected with a post-modernist disregard for history by a relativism that has no concern for relativism! :)

I fought political battles for the betterment of the human condition side by side with an Anglican priest who was never going to make Bishop. That priest was active at the same time that a Catholic priest,Eugene Cullinane, a member of the Basilian Fathers who had become active in the CCF in Saskatchewan about the Tommy came to power, found himself rusticated to a rural retreat in the Southern Ontario bush. He had studied sociology under critical thinkers , including Goetz Briefs, a refugee from Hitler Germany. "Cullinane decided to write his doctoral dissertaion on the CCF in Canada (Gregory Baum, Catholics and Canadian Socialism: :Political Thought in the Thirties and Forties). We can see why he wound up orgnizing potato and maple sytup co-operatives in Combermere in the 1960s.

If your statement about some religious greats was indeed about the possibility of religious renewal on the side of social progress - with the kind of nostalgia that Hedges holds - I take back the post-modernist slur. :)

Just as I hope you understand that I came onside with a bit of history to support yourstory. Mind you, most of history was made horrific by religion, and they're at it again like their founding pilgrims south of the border. As Miriam Margolyes told them to their New York faces (probably the only place she safely could) "Religion has you people by the balls." This, Hedges understands.

THE point that Hedges tries to make is that, while IT never really stopped, the zealousnss and mindlessness of the Pilgrims certainly gave way to much quieter devotion and a charitable church movement until the rise of the born-again literalists, fundamentalists and evangelican movements, who found growing favour after the civil rights successes.

That resurgence should be explained, and Hedges tries.

Hedges grew up with a Presbyterian preacher father, and tries to keep his description of the INSTITUTIIONAL changes over his lifetime from becoming this generalized: "Intolerant and tolerant strains of religion have always existed." Those kinds of truisms tell us little about the changes he has lived and now feels threatened by, as a U.S.citizen.

"Give free rein to those who are intolerant (and think they answer to no-one, and that their values are backed up by god) and they will do whatever they can get away with"...

In fact, that kind of truism tells us nothing, except that, yep, it doesn't look good with that kind of "Christianity" in ascendance. Give me Tommy Douglas's kind of Christianity - and he was a Baptist minister, seen in his input during the Canadian flag debate, as described by Vincent Lam: "In 1964 a bitter debate on a new national flag dragged on for five weeks, until Douglas chastised the House for wasting time when they should be acting on more pressing issues.

"He annswered the suggestion that the St.George's Cross shold be retained on the flag in honour of Canada's Christian heritage by declaring, 'St. George's Cross was first used in the Crusade when the kings, barons and knights of Christendom perpetrated murder, raping and plunder in the name of Christianity...Let us remember first of all that Christianity is not the only faith in Canada. There are people of Jewish faith, the Mohammedan faith and the Buddhist faith."

The closet concern of Conservatives for a return to a "heritage Canada" (white and Christian) is selling newspapers for the National Post at the moment.

My favourite politician over the last decade is a man of faith.  He walked the walk and one of his heroes was J.S. 

I also think religion is on balance a negative force in the world.  It divides people while "spirituality" to me is the manifestation of our hard wired human empathy. Community is the result of empathy.  Keeping religion out of politics and public institutions is a good thing for democracy.

@ Maysie

Well said, and not just because you happen to agree with me on part of this

(though I should probably reiterate that although I am a supporter of progressive religious thought, and do not think the bible should be consigned to the recycling or used for rolling papers I am very close to being an atheist).

@ Unionist

Again, it depends on which religious or spiritual community you are talking about, because in the first place they are not all the same, and secondly, in any given community not all adherents think exactly alike, believe exactly the same thing, nor are they there for the same reasons.

One simple example is the many pacifist sects, some of whose members endured exile, imprisonment and death because they did not want to take part in war. 

I see your point, and I also think you and I agree on almost all of this. 

But on all the issues you mention and a good many more there have been people who have taken part in the struggle who are religious, and some whose committment is grounded in  their religious faith. 

So how is it in order for us to single out that one attribute in our allies as something which can be ridiculed, or which somehow tarnishes their other work?

You want to have a debate with someone about the existence of a god, or certain beliefs of certain faiths? Fine; feel free to ask someone what he or she actually believes and have at it. I don't want to get in the way of that. But I think some of the attitudes  and casting guilt by association I have read go beyond that.

You are in favour of the separation of church and state? Good; me too. You might want to know that one of our allies in this was Roger WIlliams. He didn't invent the concept, but he did invent the phrase, and he was one of the first people to fight for it in colonial America:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Williams_(theologian)

The Quaker peacher Mary Dyer took the fight against theocracy a bit further by returning to the colony from which she was banished until she was executed. She had great dedication; too bad it was just for a bunch of superstitious claptrap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Dyer 

So if I said that 97% of adherents are there because their parents were there, would you be shocked? Or do you think that religion is an individual deliberate choice for most? Did a lot of your childhood friends decide to opt for other religions than the ones they were raised in?

And perhaps you could provide me with a short list of religious communities that are utterly and truly indifferent on the issue of whether or not their kids marry within the faith, live in proximity to other members of the faith, go to particular schools based (or not) on faith, etc.? If your list omits most branches of Roman Catholicism and Judaism and Islam and Sikhism and Hinduism and Anglicanism and Orthodox Christianity (not meaning to be exhaustive), doesn't that say a little something about the vile xenophobia which "religious community" engenders?

This is not a matter of belief. Not many people will tell you, "God doesn't want my child to marry outside the faith". It goes about dressed up as "community, culture, tradition", and other such harbingers of hatred and war.

My Catholic grandparents said that straight out to my mother and her siblings.  My Mother accepted "mixed" marriages but was very clear as we were growing up that a nice Catholic would be the right choice for me and my 5 siblings.  

I didn't baptize my children in any religion.  If they want religion they can go out and find it themselves.  People of religion. like all people, come in all types.  In the catholic world I was born into it includes Bishop Romero,  Rigoberta Menchi, Father Marshall and Bishop Fabbro.

Maysie I am not sure who you were referring to with your post above.  I am a white man and I don't believe that on balance that religion is in any way a positive force in the world  but my personal feelings about religion includes the fact that the convicted pedophile Marshall and the current Bishop of London are the face of religion to me. So I hate the institutions of religion and thus religion itself to a large degree because in insular communities when you get assaulted by someone like Marshall no one believes you.  He was a great pillar of the Catholic community.  

The Catholic Order he made his "vows" to promoted him while he was abusing me and others and that was after they had already transferred him from another city because of complaints.  Fabbro went to school with me at the same time as I was being abused and he ultimately signed off on the settlement we came to. They stonewalled me in the courts for 6 years and almost bankrupted me paying for expert reports despite production of documents that showed they had sent Marshall for treatment years before I had filed suit.  

So Maysie I say that fuck religion and its institutions is a very big part of my world view and it has nothing to do with my white man's privilege and everything to do with my being abused.

That is my personal story but if you want to see some more of religions' cultural influence then look at the Xian track record with residential schools. Didn't matter which church ran those hell holes they all were geared to the same purpose of cultural genocide in the name of faith, progress and enlightenment. 

However on the other hand I have spent the last 15 years working closely with Bill Siksay and he epitomized for me the other side of some religious people.  I was proud to support a deeply religious man because of his true spirituality that made him stand up for his beliefs in the face of both right wing attacks and not so subtle coercion from his own party.  Spirituality is a personal attribute that is most often a positive part of a persons character.  To me religion is not spirituality.

Our big six banksters were bailed out lots in the late 1980s and 90s. After years of deregulation in banking they lost money gambling on oil and gas stocks, foreign real estate fiascos, Canary Wharf etc. Canadian banks were bailed out big time with the Great Canadian bank heist of 1991 when money creation was fully privatised and when banks were allowed to finance government debt with no money down of their own.

At one point Canada's chartered banks wanted to merge in order to gamble bigger and better alongside their Wall Street counterparts. The NDP and various grassroots organizations opposed the move. 

And Harper introduced US-style competition for mortgages in the mid to late 2000s. It flopped. 

Canada's big monopolistic banks should be in great shape after taxpayers were forced to insulate them their own bad market plays several times since the 1980s. And they've been using tens of billions of dollars of the savings of Canadians to finance foreign takeovers of crown corporations and valuable public assets across Canada. Mel Hurtig's research in Ottawa reveals that about two-thirds of all foreign and mainly U.S. takeovers of Canadian corporations and public assets from 1985 to 2002 were financed by Canadian banks.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Occupiers-Have-To-Convince-by-Chris-Hed...

I'd refer to it as a pulse as opposed to a strength, a pulse from a lifeless body where none previously existed...but it seems they've only exposed the lie mainly to the already converted.  It's also necessary when reading US based commentary to engage in a little translation in order to fully capture the meaning as it pertains to our situation in Canada.  'Liberal establishment' here runs a little deeper than the one democratic party on the flip side of the same coin as they have there.

http://occupybostonglobe.com/2011/10/23/buddhist-monks-visit-occupy-bost...

Wow.... and some have their own media now.

Hedges makes occasional reference to some notion of a transcendental and spiritual impetus that will eventually drive us forward, which until now has proven itself to be so elusive as to not only be unable or unwilling to fully reveal itself, but that it embodies such a consistency as to make itself unrecognizable to our own devices as well to this point. And if that weren't enough, we sometimes encounter vague undercurrents suggestive of a spiritualized end state once everything has been accomplished.

Thus it should be considered a useful exercise at the very least to examine his writing in terms of articles such as 'Calling All Rebels,' along with his other offerings where in the opinion of many readers it seems, this one included, he correctly identifies the irreconcilability of our long term prospects as a species with Capitalism.

I have to admit to certain levels of both confusion and curiosity when he presents on the one hand a series of arguments to describe a world order that continues to exist well past its expiry date, by way of ever increasing levels of destruction that is eating itself and us alive as part of its normal and unalterable function, while on the other side of the equation he describes a mass of subjects languishing in wait for some cataclysmic event, or a series of cataclysmic events in combination; such as universally intolerable levels of desolation, poverty, and environmental destruction, where everything that ever hoped to resist would be propelled toward some spectacular and magnificent epiphany, and where all of these horrible things will be swept away.

When we measure our questions in response to what Hedges has to say (beyond the question of what sort of revolt he has in mind for everyone else while limiting his own actions to peaceful civil disobedience and the occasional misdemeanor arrest) they should be consistent with trying to determine if there exists a fatal error in his calculations. If we consider that there is not an 'us' and a 'them' or an 'it' to contend with as he sometimes suggests, but that we are 'it,' and that 'it' constitutes the sum of what has been invested by humanity to this point, [and it is here that he seems to compete with himself...is it them or us...what is being discussed?] then we have to ask not only the question of what name do we give to this epiphany which promises to deliver us despite our fear and our casualty levels, from the current condition of being willing accomplices in this destiny and instead to the barricades, palaces and eventual victory; but more importantly the question of what name and character it will assume once we're successful. In what form will his ephemeral descriptions of spirituality consist in? Or do we just throw ourselves into something where attempting to understand what it is to begin with or what it could become with our assistance once again, is an unnecessary and inconvenient distraction from what really matters, which amounts to pure reaction in other words.

When we properly situate ourselves in order to begin asking the necessary questions of any given proposition, in this particular instance we're likely to encounter not only atheists patiently waiting their turn in line.

@ SJ #50

Wow. Looks like superstitious religious people aren't the only ones who can hear a door creak and turn it into a big monster story. 

In the first place, your spin aside, does Hedges look like he is just sitting around waiting for something to happen? Near as I can see he is one of the people who is working overtime to convince fence-sitters that they should get behind the occupy movement. 

In fact, when I think of the political equivalent of apocalypse and millenium fantasies its not progressive religious people who come to mind, but rather certain utopian idealists who seem to be waiting for just such an event to happen to us and bring about The Revolution™ or its evil twin, the end of civilization. Some even argue we should ignore dealing directly with some of the world's problems and devote our efforts to bringing about that millenial paradise instead.

If you look at history, many revolutionary changes resulted from exactly the sort of awakening that you seem to see as a vial of opium - from the revolt against church supremacy and absolutism to class, the rights of women and human rights generally. It happened in the 1300s, the 1500s, the 1700s, 1848, 1870, 1918, and in the 1960s.

Of course those changes were the result of people working to make them happen, but the fact is that there was a point at which they reached critical mass and caused a sea change in society.

And really, all the spray paint and bricks in the world are not going to change anything if nothing changes between the ears.

It's to do with this recurring theme that continues to crop up regarding atheists looking to pick a fight with anything containing references to the spirit world - on the apparent basis that it merely turns our crank to poke a stick at religion - which deserves as complete a response as the faculties will allow for. Now whether or not the response is clear enough is another story...but I would really spare any protest I might have for being accused of not having made an effort at all.

Well, what you just described is precisely why the inquiries should be made in the first place. Various interconnected societies in the western context have seemingly managed transformational adjustments over the course of history. In the context of the British Empire, we removed ourselves from religious based rule and replaced it with an apparently more benign representation of religious rule, where they finally came to understand that the succession of the crown for instance is not necessarily made by right of divine injunction. As the society progressed under the gaze of enlightenment and reason, or because of these, we allowed ourselves instead to be placed under a seemingly more democratic system of government which still retained out of sheer tradition and habitual function, the trappings of a system little changed in appearance since the earliest days of absolute rule. Over time far less emphasis was given to the notion of divinely inspired Earthly guidance from any sector of rule having an inordinate say over our affairs through human leaders. The last ten or so years, [one might say since the creation of the state of Israel where a muted form of Christian fundamentalism began to slowly gain political credence] we've witnessed the return of similar religious inspired falsehoods and representations trading in clashes between civilizations as part of the contemporary political justification, as it once was. It frankly needs to be sniffed out wherever it rears its head and tested for rancidity, so that it might ultimately dawn on us as to why we're continually led into replacing one absurdity with another. It might occur to us that we've been listening all this time to the wrong ideologies and to the wrong people, so that we may learn to identify certain characteristics on sight and eventually come to know the error of our ways.

Now certainly the exigencies of society created specific instances in which allowances were provided by the ruling class, which by and large coincided with their long term goal of retaining power on the one hand, and leveraging the positive developments for their own purposes on the other. The movement toward universal suffrage for example couldn't be put back into the bottle once it was revealed that women could work in the war factories just as well as the growing numbers of absent, mutilated or dead men once did, and that once everyone dedicated to the tasks assigned to them by power were paying an equal portion of their salary to the maintenance of the system through taxes, it was becoming more difficult to justify a two tiered level of civic responsibility. So what we end up with instead is a 100% participation rate in the maintenance processes which guarantee the existing structures.  A pretty good trade off overall.  At any rate, if one could quell dissent by using an easier and demonstrably more benevolent method with the introduction of a few reforms, a stage managed zeitgeist in essence, while retaining the final say regardless of any given situation through state violence where necessary, while still maintaining a level of day to day control and direction that has changed very little over time...it seems to me to be an evolutionary survival adaptation, similar to an organism but applied to an entire system of our making. It is at the point where regression to earlier forms of control such as religion, spirituality, transcendence, call it what you will; starts making inroads into our consciousness as being in vogue once again through popular demand, like saying the insulating value of asbestos was really given short shrift because its toxicity was overstated by certain interest groups...such as those scientists who are always up to something...that the whole thing begins to crack wide open for everyone who is willing to see it for what it is.

Any resistance that is informed by faith in the supernatural must eventually be resisted itself, because as good as it makes people feel about certain things, historically they've only been able to convince people that what they say about their faith is true by using the very same methods they resist.  Any child can tell you even today, they resist being indoctrinated within the faith of their parents at their own peril, which is where it is first allowed to be perpetuated.  More often than not, religion has been found in league with very systems deserving of resistance.  This is the point of #5.  Frankly, any proposition that hasn't been able to prove itself for many centuries, except for the methods of violent coersion, genocide, planetary scale mass delusion, Jim Jones syndrome, you name it...has been given far too much respect.  I've been fairly reserved in my own responses.  Its not my fault that religion has never adapted very well, or very socially when it comes to criticism.

But not disappointing I have to say...because there was no other expectation given the recent discourse.

@ SJ #56

Really? What religion are you talking about? You talk about faith and religion as if it is one thing Slumberjack.

In that, you have no idea what you are talking about. And for someone who claims to speak for a more rational philosophy I think it shows a stunning ignorance in how people really think and feel.There isn't too much more I can say about it that I haven't said upthread.

You have to wonder what they teach in divinity schools these days.  The history of the victor...[no pun intended] to be sure.

What is relevant here is the American form and the period of its transition. I'm sure divinity schools reach back somewhat in history. And I'm not being "coy" 6079, just trying to stay on subject, not be so bloody subjective. A good rule for history....and most other areas of study.

If you must know I went to public school for three years then catholic school till grade 11 and then finished in the public system again.  I did spend two years in a catholic boarding school designed to stream bright catholic boys into the University of Windsor's seminary program.  I got by trades training at a community college in BC and my university degrees from the U of S. 

The closest thing to a divinity school would be the boarding school that I went to in grade 10 and 11 before they threw me out for smoking cigarettes.  Peoples life experiences do matter as to world view.  My world is definitely framed from the traumatic events in my adolescence that made me wary of any authority because in my experience they just want to screw you.  But I did not lay down and play dead  and I still don't.

Have a nice day and please try to play nice in our sandbox.

In the American context the Puritans began the "religious" problem. They were thrown out of England for being assholes who wanted to deny everyone else their rights. Some of the Xian's who followed were more respectful but most were determined to save the FN's from themselves by converting them. Some Xian's did not believe in conversion by force but lets face it our residential schools were specifically designed to eradicate native culture in the name of Christian values and they were run by the mainstream churches of Canada both protestant and catholic. So while I admire the work done by the Mennonite Central committee to name one Xian institution I doubt if it has offset the harm of other Xian do gooders. 

And in my experience those little old ladies at the church socials will not drag you downstairs to the inquisition but there is a good chance they will buttonhole you to sign a petition to restrict abortion rights or reverse same sex marriage. 

6078

You seem to have missed my central point.  Many good spiritual people belong to and are involved in religions.  However despite this on balance the institutions of those religions are a net negative influence on the world.

You know the reference to the United Church is sort of bizarre when you add in the idea that I might be ignoring such things.  I have mentioned Bill Siksay as my version of a great politician whose deeply held beliefs were framed in the Xian faith.  What don't you get about that part of my view? By the way before he went to work for Svend he was trained as a minister and was very involved in the movement to have openly gay ministers in the mainstream protestant churches.  His life partner Brian is a United Church minister and so your snide chippy comment about being aware of this information was uncalled for. Actually I do know the information and guess what I still have the same believe that on balance religion has caused more harm than good. 

Do gooders all believe in the R2P.

@ NS

How can you not see how discriminatory it is to throw all religious people in one pot and judge every one of them based on how you think these billions of people balance each other out?

If it weren't so absurd I would probably be far more creeped out by what is actually being implied.

Not anti-semitism specifically, SJ. I could have just as easily used the masonic plot to control the world, or the belief that any identifiable group is somehow plotting against you behind a smiling face.

I don't know about plots against me personally, which has little to do with this conversation, but you can be sure there are people plotting against some of the things you apparently believe in, for which they shouldn't be faulted for in my estimation.

How can you not see that is not what I have argued. Putting meaning into my posts that is not there in the words and then saying it creeps you out is really just a nasty little personal insult.

 Try being respectful okay.  I have not attacked you I have merely posted my beliefs.

There you go again.  I did not say that you said I said that.  Although you are still trying to put words into my posts that I don't agree with at least this post you left out the "your views are creepy" comment. 

I got that you find that creepy. Please would you now acknowledge that my posts do not say that.  

You keep repeating the same thing and you do it in reference to me and it has nothing to do with my views.  Please stop misrepresenting what I have said and drawing negatived conclusions based on your interpretation. What ever you thought you read into my posts I have now  told you three times is not my intent so again please stop attacking me based on something I don't even believe.  How many times to I have to tell you the same thing before you stop putting concepts in my words that I do not mean.

Post your views all you want in relation to what creeps you out just stop trying to tie it to my posts. 

I don't want to leave you hanging, and I can't presume to know your intent. I can only speak to how it feels when I read it.

I think I understand, and agree with much of what you have said here. If we have reached an impasse I think the best we can do is to recognize that, and be aware of the points which each of us consider to be over the line.

We live in hope, Sj...and I hope that I can come to understand your last missive.

For that you would have to do a little back reading in this thread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUjjiCQsGYI&feature=related

I'm quite certain at this point that Obama and his merry gang of hand picked Wall Street and Goldman Sachs executives would indeed appreciate that kind of support in the streets. Americans should instead be asking themselves what role if any did people like Amy Goodman, Michael Moore, Bill Maher, and the rest of what presents itself as leftist commentary in that country play in maintaining and building upon the mass euphoria that was the Obama election campaign.

I'm not running for such a position.  If we're talking about unfairness to the campers and to everyone else however; the ones who are in the running, or who are already in a position to make off with people's minds, have this peculiar habit of arriving at answers that go nowhere towards addressing anything.  Meanwhile everyone else who bothers to dwell upon such matters understands well enough that the price for maintaining things at full steam ahead isn't seen as being anywhere near high enough yet to override the price to be paid for bringing it all to a full stop.  Which is why every attempt at providing real answers to the collective problem is always first met by center leftist politics and the union bureaucracies if need be, followed up in short order the police.

It seems to me that you don't quite apprehend, even in today's circumstances with the brutality of the system revealed to all who bother to look, the importance of individual subtlety when it comes to describing certain solutions. The phrase 'Que Se Vayan Todos' doesn't only appeal to Argentineans. Any real campaign against corporatism would do well to suggest to anyone who will listen a wholesale rejection of the apparatus, along with all of its attachments, appendages and dependencies which lend it the appearance of popular legitimacy. One might start with an idea making its rounds at the various 'occupy' locations that all of it is rotten to the core and progress from there by no longer appealing to the rot for change...to the corporations, their politicians, their corporate media, their police; the entire facade of power to be precise about it. The one demand that people should be repeating to one another, and not to 'them,' is that they all must go. We need to convince ourselves. The idea that there is no 'them' except for what we invest in 'them' should be a concept shared as broadly as possible, even to the ones wielding the batons. Starting from that position and frame of mind seems a more promising deal than inviting everyone to thrash about in the quicksand as usual.

How life carries on indeed. It's as if life only occurs under a particular brand of guidance, or under some franchising arrangement. Who will conduct policing services when the institutions of the police are driven from the streets? What possible code of justice could one devise to replace the multi-tiered one employed now. There are blueprints laying around everywhere, under dust, heel and beneath Capitalism's wreckage. Certainly no one model could apply everywhere, nor should it because of the varying circumstances and need, but locally as the conditions warrant.

Well, certainly any father not concerned about the welfare of his kids to that degree should have had a vasectomy before even considering the dad role. Oh I know a lot don't, but enough do to be able to count on some sort of ongoing social life, a bit removed from the cro-magnon
neanderthal social structure. You know, the totally local perspective.

That's where we're heading anyway Gaian, back to the future.  The living everywhere and locally more and more resemble a bent over society, dragging themselves along just like it once was.  The local is where the global rubber hits the road so to speak.  It is where things are directly maintained, enforced, monitored, catalogued and registered for compliance.  You can't hope to tackle these problems everywhere.

Here's a really early social gospeler,John Donne, over the top some four centuries later, but representing the message from the mount that was the common Christian message right up until Hedges' youth. It's the brand that he understood... Nov. 23, 1628 : "He that oppresses the poor digs in a dunghill for worms...Certainly he that sears (dries) up himself, and makes himself insensible of the cries and curses of the poor here in this world, does but prepare himself for the howlings and gnashings of teeth in the world to come...he feeds but on dust that oppresses the poor."

Today's evangelical is just as likely to say the poor just aren't on the right track with the lord. I've seen them actually put them down as losers. Natural supporters of neo-con born-again winners.