Re: Chris Hedges

This is a more "reasoned" discussion but you are still propping a single line out of a whole array of explanations which is still fear mongering in the way of using the shortsighted fear inducing derogatory connotation of "commie". This only serves to obfuscate the context/gist of >>this<< whole video. Maybe you make a distinction but the effect of the accusatory term of "commie" has a discriminatory connotation of fear mongering and most of all dismissal of >all< ideas presented.

Putting in the context in which it was actually used gives it a whole different scope of how he is using "socialism". One can call it whatever and if one is short sighted enough or easily swayed by fear of a particular term then one can miss the bigger picture. As I stated before. "It's never the facts, but always the story, that causes the great waves of change, the ever-shifting rise and fall of empires."


"We must embrace, and embrace rapidly, a radical new ethic of simplicity and rigorous protection of our ecosystem—especially the climate—or we will all be holding on to life by our fingertips. We must rebuild radical socialist movements that demand that the resources of the state and the nation provide for the welfare of all citizens and the heavy hand of state power be employed to prohibit the plunder by the corporate power elite. We must view the corporate capitalists who have seized control of our money, our food, our energy, our education, our press, our health care system and our governance as mortal enemies to be vanquished.

Adequate food, clean water and basic security are already beyond the reach of perhaps half the world’s population. Food prices have risen 61 percent globally since December 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund. The price of wheat has exploded, more than doubling in the last eight months to $8.56 a bushel. When half of your income is spent on food, as it is in countries such as Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia and the Ivory Coast, price increases of this magnitude bring with them malnutrition and starvation. Food prices in the United States have risen over the past three months at an annualized rate of 5 percent. There are some 40 million poor in the United States who devote 35 percent of their after-tax incomes to pay for food. As the cost of fossil fuel climbs, as climate change continues to disrupt agricultural production and as populations and unemployment swell, we will find ourselves convulsed in more global and domestic unrest. Food riots and political protests will be inevitable. But it will not necessarily mean more democracy."

~Chris Hedges~

He does have a point regarding democracy since as we have witnessed the term has been bastardized and appropriated by those with the capital means to buy it. Seeing or defining things in terms of "known" ideologies is short sighted and extremely limiting. No different than the current binary 2 party system were both sides and trying to takes control of the wheel while we are all driving over a cliff.

The way I see it is that the current movement is a work in progress driven by an instinctual biological imperative for sustainability and not by the extremely limited existing political ideology or rhetoric or the labeling of ideas as a means of generalizing, dismissing or propping them up.

We must throw all these existing non functional models out and keep our minds open without trying to label ideas or attaching them to any existing model but consider new ideas from the perspective of >>EVOLVING<< into a whole >>NEW<< sustainable model not based on previous ideologies........... Tweet