In today's culture — insightful perspective sounds lunatic — a sample from Chris Hedges

© 2017 Peter Free

 

31 July 2017

 

 

TruthDig re-ran one of Chris Hedges' posts

 

It is even more pertinent now:

 

 

The ruling corporate elites no longer seek to build. They seek to destroy. They are agents of death.

 

They crave the unimpeded power to cannibalize the country and pollute and degrade the ecosystem to feed an insatiable lust for wealth, power and hedonism.

 

Wars and military “virtues” are celebrated. Intelligence, empathy and the common good are banished. Culture is degraded to patriotic kitsch. Education is designed only to instill technical proficiency to serve the poisonous engine of corporate capitalism.

 

The graveyard of world empires . . . followed the same trajectory of moral and physical collapse. Those who rule at the end of empire are psychopaths, imbeciles, narcissists and deviants, the equivalents of the depraved Roman emperors Caligula, Nero, Tiberius and Commodus.

 

The bloated ruling class of oligarchs, priests, courtiers, mandarins, eunuchs, professional warriors, financial speculators and corporate managers sucks the marrow out of society.

 

The elites’ myopic response to the looming collapse of the natural world and the civilization is to make subservient populations work harder for less . . . .

 

© 2017 Chris Hedges, The Dance of Death, TruthDig (12 March 2017, reposted 30 July 2017) (excerpts)

 

 

The moral? — Sounds crazy, doesn't it?

 

But — if you have a sense of history and a less than brain-washed view of today's goings-on, you will probably recognize that Hedges has a solid point.

 

Our culture is crazy. It makes deluded mountains of illusory molehills and ignores the important stuff. Selfish maniacs (who run the asylum) turn the planet and most of its species (including people) into "shit" for profit.

 

If you doubt this, consider one of Hedges' more visually metaphorical paragraphs:

 

 

Historical amnesia shuts us off from the past, the present and the future. Those branded as unproductive or redundant are discarded and left to struggle in poverty or locked away in cages. State repression is indiscriminate and brutal.

 

And, presiding over the tawdry Grand Guignol [see meaning here] is a deranged ringmaster tweeting absurdities from the White House.

 

© 2017 Chris Hedges, The Dance of Death, TruthDig (12 March 2017, reposted 30 July 2017) (paragraph split)

 

 

Has an unconsciously disturbing resonance, doesn't it?

 

Truth often does.