Chris Hedges

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“The Revolution Didn’t Come — It Never Does In America, Not Since The First One”

July 6, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a strong New York Times Book Review piece, George Packer surveys the common ground shared by disparate pundits Chris Hedges, a revolutionary on the Left, and the Libertarian-ish Charles Murray, who claims to love both meritocracy and Sarah Palin, go figure. In new titles by each author (here and here), Packer reads the dissatisfaction in America that wasn’t quelled by the evanescence of Occupy, the white-hot anger of the Tea Party or the Presidency of Barack Obama. At the root of this multi-ideological discontent is a stinging anti-government strain, powered by the belief that the system is rigged, if for different reasons. Packer, however, is left wanting by both books.

His opening:

A few years ago, it wasn’t hard to find Americans who thought a revolution was coming. At the depths of the recession, in hard-hit places like the North Carolina tobacco country or the exurbs of Tampa Bay, I met plenty of people who believed we were one power blackout or gas shortage away from civil unrest, political violence, even martial law. The feeling didn’t conform to strictly partisan lines, and the objects of wrath included bêtes noires of both the left and the right: banks, oil companies, federal and state governments, news media. At Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, a Tea Party couple visiting from rural Virginia was surprised to find a patch of common ground with Occupiers — at least until the discussion turned to actual policies. The anger was populist, which is ideologically capacious. The enemy was bigness, feathering its own nest and conspiring against the little guy.

The revolution didn’t come — it never does in America, not since the first one, no matter how bad things get. The Tea Party reared up, only to be appropriated by billionaires and partly dissolved into the Republican Congress. Occupy Wall Street flashed across the sky and flared out, more a meme than a movement. I once asked a man in Tampa Bay — formerly middle class and owner of his own small business, he was without work, facing foreclosure and dying of cancer — why there was no mass movement of Americans in his situation. “Imagine getting up every day and not having a purpose,” he said. “You’re not working, your self-worth goes down the toilet. You don’t interact with people. You stay in your house. You don’t want to answer the phone. It isolates you.” He seemed to be saying that in America failure, like success, feels ­personal.

But the collective discontent hasn’t gone away — far from it.•

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“Maybe It’s A Better Way To Describe It As A Revolutionary Process”

June 4, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Predicting things will fall apart is easy, but predicting when is hard. Chris Hedges, author of Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt, thinks we’ve already entered the collapse phase.

In the U.S., we have myriad problems that increasingly seem unfixable from the inside: gerrymandering, Citizens United, corporatocracy, institutionalized racism, income inequality. You know, gerrymandering might be the most frustrating of them all, since you can’t remedy the rest with entrenched leadership.

Elias Isquith of Salon just interviewed Hedges, who asserts that a revolutionary movement in America would have global stakes. “When we go down, the whole planet is going to go with us,” the author says, making clear what he believes would happen if our society runs aground.

The Q&A’s opening exchange:

Question:

Do you think we are in a revolutionary era now? Or is it more something on the horizon?

Chris Hedges:

It’s with us already, but with this caveat: it is what Gramsci calls interregnum, this period where the ideas that buttress the old ruling elite no longer hold sway, but we haven’t articulated something to take its place.

That’s what that essay I quote by Alexander Berkman, “The Invisible Revolution,” talks about. He likens it to a pot that’s beginning to boil. So it’s already taking place, although it’s subterranean. And the facade of power — both the physical facade of power and the ideological facade of power — appears to remain intact. But it has less and less credibility.

There are all sorts of neutral indicators that show that. Low voter turnout, the fact that Congress has an approval rating of 7 percent, that polls continually reflect a kind of pessimism about where we are going, that many of the major systems that have been set in place — especially in terms of internal security — have no popularity at all.

All of these are indicators that something is seriously wrong, that the government is no longer responding to the most basic concerns, needs, and rights of the citizenry. That is [true for the] left and right. But what’s going to take it’s place, that has not been articulated. Yes, we are in a revolutionary moment; but maybe it’s a better way to describe it as a revolutionary process.•

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