Chris Hedges weighs in...?

[Richard Coleman]

The last paragraph of a recent essay “The Treason of the Intellectuals” by Chris Hedges:

“Those who doggedly challenge the orthodoxy of belief, who question the reigning political passions, who refuse to sacrifice their integrity to serve the cult of power, are pushed to the margins. They are denounced by the very people who, years later, will often claim these moral battles as their own. It is only the outcasts and the rebels who keep truth and intellectual inquiry alive. They alone name the crimes of the state. They alone give a voice to the victims of oppression. They alone ask the difficult questions. Most important, they expose the powerful, along with their liberal apologists, for what they are.”

Complete article is at http://www.truthdig....tuals_20130331/

I have emailed Chris Hedges at Truthdig asking him to "weigh in" on JFK. research vs. the official truth.

We'll see.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Richard, Hedges is 1) published 2) on the left. THEREFORE he will not write anything revealing about JFK. Today's hothouse, foundation funded, left is simply not allowed to write about the National Security State acting independently of elected officials. Off limits. Much great about Hedges but the line has been dug too deeply, and everyone toes it. Dug so deep nobody even needs to mention it. You can tell by the condescending scoff.

They are allowed to write about social history. They are not allowed to write about the INTERACTION between broadcast words and social movements. That's not too difficult because the Democrats have not said anything that could interact with social movements since early June, 1968.

Edited April 2, 2013 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Did you ever notice how Michael Parenti stopped getting those groovy Pacifica bookings sometime around 1996?

[Richard Coleman]

Nate:

Parenti's great.

As for Hedges, you may well be right. As I said, we'll see....

[Blair Dobson]

Richard, Hedges is 1) published (citation please!) 2) on the left. (citation please!) THEREFORE he will not write anything revealing about JFK. (citation please!) Today's hothouse, foundation funded, left is simply not allowed to write about the National Security State acting independently of elected officials. (citation please!) Off limits. Much great about Hedges but the line has been dug too deeply, and everyone toes it. (citation please!) Dug so deep nobody even needs to mention it. You can tell by the condescending scoff.

They are allowed to write about social history. They are not allowed to write about the INTERACTION between broadcast words and social movements. That's not too difficult because the Democrats have not said anything that could interact with social movements since early June, 1968. (citation please!)

Interesting opinion piece.

1) your use of the word "published" is vague .

2) describing Hedges as "on the left" is so off the mark ( untrue ) as to be laughable.

3) your ?conclusion? about Hedges is ill conceived.

4) you make a lot of your assumptions appear as empirical facts.

not everyone writing about social or political injustice needs to address JFK or "the big event".

not writing about it or addressing it in a way you find palatable certainly doesn't mean they "can't" write about it.

do some more homework on Hedges would you? then try an couch your opinions in the real world.

you will then see how your opinion holds up to the facts.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Thanks for exemplifying the cure for vagueness.

Heal thyself lately?

Edited April 2, 2013 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Richard Coleman]

Blair: WTF?!

From Amazon,com's author description:

he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He is a Senior Fellow at The Nation Institute and writes an online column for the web site Truthdig. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto.

Of course he's published. Many more books listed at Amazon. Not on the left....are you nuts?

[Len Colby]

Did you ever notice how Michael Parenti stopped getting those groovy Pacifica bookings sometime around 1996?

Huh? Parenti and his kid still frequently appear on Pacifica.

http://www.google.com/search?domains=KPFA&sitesearch=kpfa.org&q=Parenti+&sa.x=23&sa.y=9

And they still broadcast the very CT friendly “Guns & Butter" program

Funny though Papa Parenti rails against the elites and the class system he sent his son to an elite New England boarding school the current cost of which is about 50k/year (how Bushish).

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

http://www.buxtonschool.org/podium/default.aspx?t=142561

[Len Colby]

Blair: WTF?!

From Amazon,com's author description:

he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He is a Senior Fellow at The Nation Institute and writes an online column for the web site Truthdig. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto.

Of course he's published. Many more books listed at Amazon. Not on the left....are you nuts?

What makes him unlefty?

[Blair Dobson]

Sorry for the late reply...

wow the sarcasm meter here is in need of a big repair.

Everyone, I am more than aware of Hedges work as a) I have read all of it with the exception of the graphic novel and I read his regular column on Truthdig... I have also seen most of his taped interviews, podcasts etc

Nate Wisenheimer says " Hedges is 1) published 2) on the left. THEREFORE he will not write anything revealing about JFK."

Let me blow this to pieces point by point:

Hedges has said when attacked on being a leftist, (paraphrased but go sit through any interview with him, it usually comes up ) that

a ) he is understanding of "the rights" view ( ie tea party people wanting to restore a proper government and the frustration of those on the right )

b ) he was raised in a religious setting

c ) he has a number of times pointed out that he is niether left nor right leaning but leans to wards a more centrist humanistic position. both centrist and humanistic are my interpretations of his statements. I'll post "citations" here for those who need clarification later..

Hedges writes and speaks publicly about issues far more threatening to the current power elite than the Kennedy assassination and also participates very loudly in the Occupy movement.

His participation in things deemed "left" by the media and other puppetshow enthusiasts do not make him a "lefty" as such...

( winking at you Jim D and Len C)

(I'll come back to this in a minute here..)

Insofar as his books are published, yes they are. ( winking at you Coleman)

a ) he is not the kind of guy to not write about something at the whim of his publishers.

b ) he can pretty much say what he wants as he is a best selling author and a credible one at that. ( take that Posner )

c ) I am pretty sure that if he wanted to write about it he would and could get it published in a heartbeat by any number of large and or small publishing houses.

d) to suggest that Hedges isn't writing about JFK because he is a lefty afraid of his publishers wrath is childish, uninformed and the best joke i have read in some time.

and, maybe he has a life and could care less about Kennedy....who knows.

Hedges walked away from a decent job at the New York Times and would no doubt walk away from a publisher...another would pick him up soon after (and have unless i am mistaken...)

I'll leave the record of his interviews, published materials to speak for him as Hedges certainly doesn't need me to stick up for him.

But hey there Wisenheimer, let me be honest for a sec here...

your entire post there is a nonsense ramble and it got my tinfoil pants and hat a little itchy.

"today's hothouse, foundation funded, left is simply not allowed to write about the National Security State acting independently of elected officials."

huh?

What complete hogwash.

I could build a six story house out of the extant published "anti state/anti media corp/anti greed" material over the last 20 years about "the National Security State acting independently of elected officials" and still have room for a poolhouse and six car garage without so much as touching my vast collection of romance novels.

Is there a corporate media state opposition to anything/anyone that opposes it in print media or otherwise? Sure..but that doesn't make your ill informed and widely brushed stroke an example of good housepainting.

This is getting long winded but let me make an example of a police state that doesn't work ok?

See, In China,

they used to get worried about people putting up pro democracy posters so they banned them...but they still kept showing up...

This frustrated them because the posters kept showing up and no one could catch the people doing it..

So then, a shifty guy put down his little red book and said "hey, lets make a big deal about posters...let them put them up...and then we will jail them!"

and that's exactly what they did....

But there was international fallout because of this and that wasn't good for the crooks in the red guard who wanted to sell more plastic ducks to western countries... so they adopted the Western policy:

let them do what they want until they are a real force for change, then do something....

See, if Hedges or Chomsky got enough people with pitchforks and torches to march on the Nestle Corporations Xmas party or drag the owners of large companies out of bed and make Pinochet Pinata out of them, those Blackwater folks would be all over that in a heartbeat...but that would look bad.

So they take the lazy route and let them put up their posters for the six people that read them, three of which actually understand what they are reading...

"They are allowed to write about social history. They are not allowed to write about the INTERACTION between broadcast words and social movements. That's not too difficult because the Democrats have not said anything that could interact with social movements since early June, 1968."

this whole thing .. is just ramble.

"they"

"the left"

"the right"

"punch and judy"

You are watching theatre that has real world consequence but it uses unreal terminology.

The upper tiers of power are not right or left, they are one party called greed.

you get the illusion of choice..diet or sugar free...democrat or republican...but it's one power, one party..

When engaging in adult discussions about power, censorship or police states, intelligent folks stay away from weasel words and simplified gong ringer terms like that because largely, they mean nothing today. 1964? a little bit more, but not much.

Left and right are terms that describe a puppet show. ideas thrown over a castle wall for the peasants to fight over...

Police states remain regardless of the leaning of the regime and you can be thankful that you still have the puppet show to watch and not the real thing..

Hegdes states this...Over and over... that he doesn't use the nomenclature and language of the elite because it dumbs down the message, the meaning and the context.

All that rambling concluded, if you knew anything of Hedges and his work, you would understand what I just said there.

Power doesn't need a team jersey.

Just the puppets need jerseys . so the foolish can laugh and point, make bets while the real show goes on in the background...

(I just channeled Nagell for a moment there...)

short summary?

Before you go rambling off about Hedges, read his books. Know your subject. Because everything you posted implies you have read nothing of his, know nothing of the man or the context in which he speaks.

so Shush...

One of the reasons I don't participate here as much as I'd like is because of people who post opinion as fact and do it poorly i might add. It gets my blood boiling because it's exactly the thing everyone rails on about...

It's bad enough with the Zodiac killer killed RFK MLK JFK nutbars....

As for the rest of you, logging in here doesn't mean "check your sense of humour at the door..."

Cheers.

sorry for any typos....

Edited April 4, 2013 by Blair Dobson

[Blair Dobson]

Thee is no doubt he is recognized as an on the left published author.

Blair: WTF?!

From Amazon,com's author description:

he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He is a Senior Fellow at The Nation Institute and writes an online column for the web site Truthdig. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto.

Of course he's published. Many more books listed at Amazon. Not on the left....are you nuts?

What makes him unlefty?

at the party and IN the party are different things guys...

watch his interviews.

lefty is weasel terminology like "hippie" or "commie" and usually left out of grown up discussions because they are stigmatized...they are used to marginalize.

you know, like when your friends describe you to another friend as "a conspiracy nut"....

"but but but.....i am a serious researcher!!"

not any more..now you are a nut... Hedges goes on about the use of language...I don't think he considers himself a "lefty" and I think those kind of distinctions are important. He certainly does.

mind you, Bush is considered a "real patriot" so..who knows...

it's all part of the show and I still can't tell the difference between coke or pepsi..it's all sugared water to me.

that said, here's a joke for ya all:

a republican senator and a democrat senator are both in an elevator when the cable breaks...who dies first?

who cares.

Edited April 4, 2013 by Blair Dobson

[Len Colby]

c ) he has a number of times pointed out that he is niether left nor right leaning but leans to wards a more centrist humanistic position. both centrist and humanistic are my interpretations of his statements. I'll post "citations" here for those who need clarification later..

[...]

His participation in things deemed "left" by the media and other puppetshow enthusiasts do not make him a "lefty" as such...

( winking at you Jim D and Len C)

[...]

Hegdes states this...Over and over... that he doesn't use the nomenclature and language of the elite because it dumbs down the message, the meaning and the context.

.I don't think he considers himself a "lefty" and I think those kind of distinctions are important. He certainly does.

Why I Am a Socialis

Posted on Dec 29, 2008

AP photo / Craig Ruttle

By

Chris Hedges

The corporate forces that are looting the Treasury and have plunged us into a depression will not be contained by the two main political parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have become little more than squalid clubs of privilege and wealth, whores to money and corporate interests, hostage to a massive arms industry, and so adept at deception and self-delusion they no longer know truth from lies. We will either find our way out of this mess by embracing an uncompromising democratic socialism—one that will insist on massive government relief and work programs, the nationalization of electricity and gas companies, a universal, not-for-profit government health care program, the outlawing of hedge funds, a radical reduction of our bloated military budget and an end to imperial wars—or we will continue to be fleeced and impoverished by our bankrupt elite and shackled and chained by our surveillance state.

The free market and globalization, promised as the route to worldwide prosperity, have been exposed as a con game. But this does not mean our corporate masters will disappear. Totalitarianism, as George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell wrote, “that is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Force and fraud are all they have left. They will use both.

[...]

http://www.truthdig....am_a_socialist/

Edited April 4, 2013 by Len Colby

[Blair Dobson]

Why I Am a Socialis

(sic)

Posted on Dec 29, 2008

thanks for illustrating my point clearly Len.

it's just like the story of the blind men and the elephant around here isn't it?

you just googled that didn't ya?

for brevity, the term "socialist" and the term "lefty" are very different terms and have entirely different connotations in the same way "anarcho-syndicalist" and "punk rocker" do.

but i forget..I am on a board peppered with people who confuse "minutiae" for "nuance" aren't I ? LMAO...

[Blair Dobson]

"All centralized power, once restraints and regulations are abolished, once it is no longer accountable to citizens, knows no limit to internal and external plunder. The corporate state, which has emasculated our government, is creating a new form of feudalism, a world of masters and serfs. It speaks to those who remain in a state of self-delusion in the comforting and familiar language of liberty, freedom, prosperity and electoral democracy. It speaks to the poor and the oppressed in the language of naked coercion. But, here too, all will end up in the same place.

.........

All tyrannies come endowed with their own peculiarities. This makes it hard to say one form of totalitarianism is like another. There are always enough differences to make us unsure that history is repeating itself. The corporate state does not have a Politburo. It does not dress its Homeland Security agents in jackboots. There is no raving dictator. American democracy—like the garishly painted train station at the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka—looks real even as the levers of power are in the hands of corporations. But there is one aspect the corporate state shares with despotic regimes and the collapsed empires that have plagued human history. It too communicates in two distinct languages, that is until it does not have to, at which point it will be too late."

Chris Hedges

-------------

1 Getting into a discussion with people who just like to argue, about something as important and distinctive as the use of language is futile.

Like with the gun nutters who get upset about "clips vs magazines" ...well they both contain bullets and I'm sure the victims of gun crime don't care about the distinction either.

2 the New Obama looks an awful lot like the Old Bush to me...therefore "party distinctions" are pointless if the policy is the same..

3 I suspect you will all be dissapointed by Hedges...

As I have learned over the years, serious , committed and educated people tend to stay away from "conspiracy nutters" of both flavours, because the landscape of "debate" and "discussion" they inhabit is also populated with the mentally ill, the entitled and opinionated people who think acting like a six year old is "serious research and debate".

my statement here doesn't apply to everyone here or on other boards, but most of them. emotionally unstable and intellectually underqualified people who couldn't "discuss" or "debate" a simple subject, let alone one that involves as many complex moving parts and concepts...

I'd like to hear what he has to say too, but Hedges probably has better things to write about that are current and germane to his interests.

we'll see.

Edited April 4, 2013 by Blair Dobson

[Len Colby]

Dobson did you notice how most, or at least many, short guys really do have some sort complex (though perhaps not quite Napoleonic)? And that the guys who talk the most about all the sexy they're getting are (with rare exceptions) the ones getting the least? By the same token the ones crowing about their intellectual superiority to all those around them are indubitably compensating for something. You claimed that “he has a number of times pointed out that he is niether [sic] left nor right leaning but leans to wards [sic] a more centrist humanistic position” and in response I posted an essay where he declared “Why I Am a Socialist” and now you proclaim I somehow “illustrat[ed your] point clearly”. Perhaps one could argue that a French or Swedish person who self-identified as 'socialist' was “neither left nor right ...but...centrist” but even that would be a bit of a stretch; it is ridiculous to apply such reasoning to someone from a country in which LBJ was the most progressive man elected president in the last 50 years.

"for brevity, the term "socialist" and the term "lefty" are very different terms and have entirely different connotations in the same way "anarcho-syndicalist" and "punk rocker" do."

No lefty is a synonym for leftist and means, “a member of the political Left or a person sympathetic to its views.” Except perhaps going by the dictionaries of hardcore Communists a Socialist is “a member of the political Left or a person sympathetic to its views.”