"America: The Farewell Tour"

These are difficult words to write for me as I have always looked up to Chris Hedges in a way I have towards Noam Chomsky.

Perhaps it is an indication that he has not changed, and I haven't changed but the times have changed radically since the heady days of Occupy and when he successfuly sued the Obama legislation over the NDAA?

Hedges is still one of the most clear-seeing commentators shown by the fact that he has been pushed by the Deep State to the margins.

However, for all that I found his presentation far too painfully ideological for me.

The dangers associated with a rapid collapse of the United States are all-too-clear and especially the dangers of a theocratic, right-wing Christian regime. However, I no longer see any "solutions" in a left-wing socialist movement any more than than a right-wing populist movement.

Hedges paints a picture of the anti-imperialist Left being pushed to the edges on the internet but totally ignores that the anti-war Right is equally in the sights of Silicon Valley and the Deep State.

He is also guilty of a mistake I never thought he would fall into – and that is anachronism – the judging of the past in the terms of present-day "identity politics". He says that the Founding Fathers were racists,mysogonist, which of course they were. He is giving succour to the Left who are keen on tearing down statues and banning books they don't like.

In short, I am not as uncritically supportive as I once was

It is worth listening to his brief comments on climate change and I am deeply in favour of seeing things as they are without recourse to hope..

Chris Hedges, "America: The Farewell Tour"

 

America: The Farewell Tour

 

A longtime foreign correspondent, Hedges has reported from more than fifty countries. His latest book is a profound exploration of one of the most troubled: today’s United States. Hedges, author of American Fascists and War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, cites the opioid crisis, the increases in gambling and magical thinking, and the explosion of xenophobia as symptoms of a society that has lost hope. He traces this disillusionment to the twin ills of a de facto corporate coup d’état and a failed democracy. The anger and frustration these have spawned helped bring Trump to power and Hedges issues a passionate call to action to reverse them. 
 

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He writes a weekly column for the online magazine Truthdig out of Los Angeles and is host of the Emmy Award–winning RT America show On Contact. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard University, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Toronto. He currently teaches college credit courses in the New Jersey prison system.