Fwd: "We Are In a Revolutionary Moment": Chris Hedges Explains Why An Uprising Is Coming - And Soon

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2015 07:06:52 -0700
Subject: "We Are In a Revolutionary Moment": Chris Hedges Explains Why
An Uprising Is Coming - And Soon
To: Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
Cc: Bob Hachey <bhachey@verizon.net>, Alice Dampman Humel
<alicedh@verizon.net>, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net>, Roger
Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@aol.com>, marcatony <marcatony@yahoo.com>

When I was a young man, I can recall worrying that I had no solid
convictions. Around me people appeared to know who they were and what
they were about. But I flitted from this person's philosophy to that
one. Often I totally embraced what someone else believed, only to
find later that it was not what I was seeking. As I've said before,
my dad was an outspoken and active Marxist. But mother would bundle
up my two sisters and me and send us off to Sunday School. There I
learned about God and how He loved us so much that He gave His only
son to save us from our sins.
And so I came to a time when I questioned my dad's teachings. What
if, by accepting Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, I could become
that strong, self assured person I seemed not to be. Not only did I
accept Jesus Christ, but I was Baptized in the Holy Spirit. I had
visions and I spoke in Tongues and went forth to spread the word.
Looking back I think that was the one part of me that was consistent.
It's what I call the Missionary Complex. The deep seated need to
"spread the word". Whatever word needed spreading at the time.
There were other sound reasons for my decision to give myself to
Jesus, but they can wait for another story. Suffice it to say, I
followed Jesus with deep conviction for about six years. But even
coming to believe that most of the accounts in the Bible were either
historical or fable, and not Divinely inspired, I began to have more
questions than God had answers. Without going into all of that, I
abandoned my efforts to reach God, and moved on.
As I grew older and experienced more of Life, I learned two lessons
that have held me in good stead. First, we spend far too much time
looking outside ourselves, rather than turning our attention inward.
Second, it is not as important that I persuade you that I am right, as
much as it is for me to know why I believe what I believe. In other
words, to be true to myself.
Finally I know who I am. And I like me. And it is more important for
me to like me, than to have others praise me.
And what, you probably are asking, does all of this have to do with
revolution and the Fall of the American Empire? Just this, no
revolution will be worth it if each of us is not secure within
ourselves. If we learn all we can learn and apply it to our own
beliefs, the Empire will fall from lack of support, and a better
government will replace it. Remember, the Empire's people are focused
outward. They have no inner self. By that I mean, they will follow
their leaders and take what they can, believing that material gain is
the answer to their needs. When their world collapses, they will have
nothing to turn to. They will find themselves to be empty shells.
Knowing ourselves, respecting one another for our individualism, and
understanding that no future can be good unless it includes every
member of our Human Family.


Carl Jarvis


On 6/5/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > "We Are In a Revolutionary Moment": Chris Hedges Explains Why An
> Uprising Is Coming — And Soon
> ________________________________________
> "We Are In a Revolutionary Moment": Chris Hedges Explains Why An Uprising
> Is
> Coming — And Soon
> By Elias Isquith [1] / Salon [2]
> June 5, 2015
> In recent years, there's been a small genre of left-of-center journalism
> that, following President Obama's lead [3], endeavors to prove that things
> on Planet Earth are not just going well, but have, in fact, never been
> better [4]. This is an inherently subjective claim, of course; it requires
> that one buy into the idea of human progress [5], for one thing. But no
> matter how it was framed, there's at least one celebrated leftist activist,
> author and journalist who'd disagree: Chris Hedges.
> In fact, in his latest book, "Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of
> Revolt [6]," Hedges argues that the world is currently at a crisis point
> the
> likes of which we've never really seen. There are similarities between our
> time and the era of the 1848 revolutions throughout Europe — or the French
> Revolutionary era that preceded them — he says. But in many ways, climate
> change least among them, the stakes this time are much higher. According to
> Hedges, a revolution is coming; we just don't yet know when, where, how —
> or
> on whose behalf.
> Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Hedges to discuss his book, why
> he
> thinks our world is in for some massive disruptions, and why we need
> revolutionaries now more than ever. A transcript of our conversation which
> has been edited for clarity and length can be found below.
> Do you think we are in a revolutionary era now? Or is it more something on
> the horizon?
> It's with us already, but with this caveat: it is what Gramsci [7] 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.
> Is there a revolutionary consciousness building in America?
> Well, it is definitely building. But until there is an ideological
> framework
> that large numbers of people embrace to challenge the old ideological
> framework, nothing is going to happen. Some things can happen; you can have
> sporadic uprisings as you had in Ferguson or you had in Baltimore. But
> until
> they are infused with that kind of political vision, they are reactive, in
> essence.
> So you have, every 28 hours, a person of color, usually a poor person of
> color, being killed with lethal force — and, of course, in most of these
> cases they are unarmed. So people march in the streets and people protest;
> and yet the killings don't stop. Even when they are captured on video. I
> mean we have videos of people being murdered by the police and the police
> walk away. This is symptomatic of a state that is ossified and can no
> longer
> respond rationally to what is happening to the citizenry, because it
> exclusively serves the interest of corporate power.
> We have, to quote John Ralston Saul [8], "undergone a corporate coup d'état
> in slow motion" and it's over. The normal mechanisms by which we carry out
> incremental and piecemeal reform through liberal institutions no longer
> function. They have been seized by corporate power — including the press.
> That sets the stage for inevitable blowback, because these corporations
> have
> no internal constraints, and now they have no external constraints. So they
> will exploit, because, as Marx understood, that's their nature, until
> exhaustion or collapse.
> What do you think is the most likely way that the people will respond to
> living in these conditions?
> That is the big unknown. When it will come is unknown. What is it that will
> trigger it is unknown. You could go back and look at past uprisings, some
> of
> which I covered — I covered all the revolutions in Eastern Europe; I
> covered
> the two Palestinian uprisings; I covered the street demonstrations that
> eventually brought down Slobodan Milosevic — and it's usually something
> banal.
> As a reporter, you know that it's there; but you never know what will
> ignite
> it. So you have Lenin, six weeks before the revolution, in exile in
> Switzerland, getting up and saying, We who are old will never live to see
> the revolution. Even the purported leaders of the opposition never know
> when
> it's coming. Nor do they know what will trigger it.
> What kind of person engages in revolutionary activity? Is there a specific
> type?
> There are different types, but they have certain characteristics in common.
> That's why I quote theologian Reinhold Niebuhr when he talks about "sublime
> madness."
> I think that sublime madness — James Baldwin writes it's not so much that
> [revolutionaries] have a vision, it's that they are possessed by it. I
> think
> that's right. They are often difficult, eccentric personalities by nature,
> because they are stepping out front to confront a system of power [in a way
> that is] almost a kind of a form of suicide. But in moments of extremity,
> these rebels are absolutely key; and that you can't pull off seismic change
> without them.
> You've said that we don't know where the change will comefrom,and that it
> could just as easily take a right-wing, reactionary form as a leftist one.
> Is there anything lefties can do to influence the outcome? Or is it out of
> anyone's control?
> There's so many events as societies disintegrate that you can't predict.
> They play such a large part in shaping how a society goes that there is a
> lot of it that is not in your control.
> For example, if you compare the breakdown of Yugoslavia with the breakdown
> of Czechoslovakia — and I covered both of those stories — Yugoslavia was
> actually the Eastern European country best-equipped to integrate itself
> into
> Europe. But Yugoslavia went bad. When the economy broke down and Yugoslavia
> was hit with horrific hyperinflation, it vomited up these terrifying
> figures
> in the same way that Weimar vomited up the Nazi party. Yugoslavia tore
> itself to pieces.
> If things unravel [in the U.S.], our backlash may very well be a rightwing
> backlash — a very frightening rightwing backlash. We who care about
> populist
> movements [on the left] are very weak, because in the name of
> anti-communism
> these movements have been destroyed [9]; we are almost trying to rebuild
> them from scratch. We don't even have the language to describe the class
> warfare that is being unleashed upon us by this tiny, rapacious, oligarchic
> elite. But we on the left are very disorganized, unfocused, and without
> resources.
> In terms of a left-wing populism having to build itself back up from
> scratch, do you see the broad coalition against the Trans-Pacific
> Partnership (TPP) as a hint of what that might look like? Or would you not
> go that far?
> No, I would.
> I think that if you look at what's happened after Occupy, it's either
> spawned or built alliances with a series of movements; whether it's
> #BlackLivesMatter, whether it's the Fight for $15 campaign, whether it's
> challenging the TPP. I think they are all interconnected and, often times —
> at least when I'm with those activists — there is a political consciousness
> that I find quite mature.
> Are you optimistic about the future?
> I covered war for 20 years; we didn't use terms like pessimist or optimist,
> because if you were overly optimistic, it could get you killed. You really
> tried to read the landscape as astutely as you could and then take
> calculated risks based on the reality around you, or at least on the
> reality
> insofar as you could interpret it. I kind of bring that mentality out of
> war
> zones.
> If we are not brutal about diagnosing what we are up against, then all of
> our resistance is futile. If we think that voting for Hillary Clinton … is
> really going to make a difference, then I would argue we don't understand
> corporate power and how it works. If you read the writings of
> anthropologists, there are studies about how civilizations break down; and
> we are certainly following that pattern. Unfortunately, there's nothing
> within human nature to argue that we won't go down the ways other
> civilizations have gone down. The difference is now, of course, that when
> we
> go down, the whole planet is going to go with us.
> Yet you rebel not only for what you can achieve, but for who you become. In
> the end, those who rebel require faith — not a formal or necessarily
> Christian, Jewish or Muslim orthodoxy, but a faith that the good draws to
> it
> the good. That we are called to carry out the good insofar as we can
> determine what the good is; and then we let it go. The Buddhists call it
> karma, but faith is the belief that it goes somewhere. By standing up, you
> keep alive another narrative. It's one of the ironic points of life. That,
> for me, is what provides hope; and if you are not there, there is no hope
> at
> all.
>
> Elias Isquith is a staff writer at Salon, focusing on politics. Follow him
> on Twitter at @eliasisquith [10], and email him at eisquith@salon.com [11].
> Share on Facebook Share
> Share on Twitter Tweet
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [12]
> [13]
> ________________________________________
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/we-are-revolutionary-moment-chris-hedges-explains-wh
> y-uprising-coming-and-soon
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/elias-isquith-0
> [2] http://www.salon.com
> [3]
> https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/24/remarks-president-oba
> ma-address-united-nations-general-assembly
> [4]
> http://www.vox.com/2014/6/27/5846856/5-minutes-that-prove-were-living-throug
> h-the-greatest-time-in-human
> [5] http://www.vice.com/read/john-gray-interview-atheism
> [6]
> http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/book/hardcover/wages-of-rebellion/97815685
> 89664
> [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci
> [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ralston_Saul
> [9] http://www.amazon.com/Death-Liberal-Class-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586795
> [10] http://twitter.com/eliasisquith
> [11] mailto:eisquith@salon.com
> [12] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on "We Are In a
> Revolutionary Moment": Chris Hedges Explains Why An Uprising Is Coming —
> And
> Soon
> [13] http://www.alternet.org/
> [14] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > "We Are In a Revolutionary Moment": Chris Hedges Explains Why An
> Uprising Is Coming — And Soon
>
> "We Are In a Revolutionary Moment": Chris Hedges Explains Why An Uprising
> Is
> Coming — And Soon
> By Elias Isquith [1] / Salon [2]
> June 5, 2015
> In recent years, there's been a small genre of left-of-center journalism
> that, following President Obama's lead [3], endeavors to prove that things
> on Planet Earth are not just going well, but have, in fact, never been
> better [4]. This is an inherently subjective claim, of course; it requires
> that one buy into the idea of human progress [5], for one thing. But no
> matter how it was framed, there's at least one celebrated leftist activist,
> author and journalist who'd disagree: Chris Hedges.
> In fact, in his latest book, "Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of
> Revolt [6]," Hedges argues that the world is currently at a crisis point
> the
> likes of which we've never really seen. There are similarities between our
> time and the era of the 1848 revolutions throughout Europe — or the French
> Revolutionary era that preceded them — he says. But in many ways, climate
> change least among them, the stakes this time are much higher. According to
> Hedges, a revolution is coming; we just don't yet know when, where, how —
> or
> on whose behalf.
> Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Hedges to discuss his book, why
> he
> thinks our world is in for some massive disruptions, and why we need
> revolutionaries now more than ever. A transcript of our conversation which
> has been edited for clarity and length can be found below.
> Do you think we are in a revolutionary era now? Or is it more something on
> the horizon?
> It's with us already, but with this caveat: it is what Gramsci [7] 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.
> Is there a revolutionary consciousness building in America?
> Well, it is definitely building. But until there is an ideological
> framework
> that large numbers of people embrace to challenge the old ideological
> framework, nothing is going to happen. Some things can happen; you can have
> sporadic uprisings as you had in Ferguson or you had in Baltimore. But
> until
> they are infused with that kind of political vision, they are reactive, in
> essence.
> So you have, every 28 hours, a person of color, usually a poor person of
> color, being killed with lethal force — and, of course, in most of these
> cases they are unarmed. So people march in the streets and people protest;
> and yet the killings don't stop. Even when they are captured on video. I
> mean we have videos of people being murdered by the police and the police
> walk away. This is symptomatic of a state that is ossified and can no
> longer
> respond rationally to what is happening to the citizenry, because it
> exclusively serves the interest of corporate power.
> We have, to quote John Ralston Saul [8], "undergone a corporate coup d'état
> in slow motion" and it's over. The normal mechanisms by which we carry out
> incremental and piecemeal reform through liberal institutions no longer
> function. They have been seized by corporate power — including the press.
> That sets the stage for inevitable blowback, because these corporations
> have
> no internal constraints, and now they have no external constraints. So they
> will exploit, because, as Marx understood, that's their nature, until
> exhaustion or collapse.
> What do you think is the most likely way that the people will respond to
> living in these conditions?
> That is the big unknown. When it will come is unknown. What is it that will
> trigger it is unknown. You could go back and look at past uprisings, some
> of
> which I covered — I covered all the revolutions in Eastern Europe; I
> covered
> the two Palestinian uprisings; I covered the street demonstrations that
> eventually brought down Slobodan Milosevic — and it's usually something
> banal.
> As a reporter, you know that it's there; but you never know what will
> ignite
> it. So you have Lenin, six weeks before the revolution, in exile in
> Switzerland, getting up and saying, We who are old will never live to see
> the revolution. Even the purported leaders of the opposition never know
> when
> it's coming. Nor do they know what will trigger it.
> What kind of person engages in revolutionary activity? Is there a specific
> type?
> There are different types, but they have certain characteristics in common.
> That's why I quote theologian Reinhold Niebuhr when he talks about "sublime
> madness."
> I think that sublime madness — James Baldwin writes it's not so much that
> [revolutionaries] have a vision, it's that they are possessed by it. I
> think
> that's right. They are often difficult, eccentric personalities by nature,
> because they are stepping out front to confront a system of power [in a way
> that is] almost a kind of a form of suicide. But in moments of extremity,
> these rebels are absolutely key; and that you can't pull off seismic change
> without them.
> You've said that we don't know where the change will comefrom,and that it
> could just as easily take a right-wing, reactionary form as a leftist one.
> Is there anything lefties can do to influence the outcome? Or is it out of
> anyone's control?
> There's so many events as societies disintegrate that you can't predict.
> They play such a large part in shaping how a society goes that there is a
> lot of it that is not in your control.
> For example, if you compare the breakdown of Yugoslavia with the breakdown
> of Czechoslovakia — and I covered both of those stories — Yugoslavia was
> actually the Eastern European country best-equipped to integrate itself
> into
> Europe. But Yugoslavia went bad. When the economy broke down and Yugoslavia
> was hit with horrific hyperinflation, it vomited up these terrifying
> figures
> in the same way that Weimar vomited up the Nazi party. Yugoslavia tore
> itself to pieces.
> If things unravel [in the U.S.], our backlash may very well be a rightwing
> backlash — a very frightening rightwing backlash. We who care about
> populist
> movements [on the left] are very weak, because in the name of
> anti-communism
> these movements have been destroyed [9]; we are almost trying to rebuild
> them from scratch. We don't even have the language to describe the class
> warfare that is being unleashed upon us by this tiny, rapacious, oligarchic
> elite. But we on the left are very disorganized, unfocused, and without
> resources.
> In terms of a left-wing populism having to build itself back up from
> scratch, do you see the broad coalition against the Trans-Pacific
> Partnership (TPP) as a hint of what that might look like? Or would you not
> go that far?
> No, I would.
> I think that if you look at what's happened after Occupy, it's either
> spawned or built alliances with a series of movements; whether it's
> #BlackLivesMatter, whether it's the Fight for $15 campaign, whether it's
> challenging the TPP. I think they are all interconnected and, often times —
> at least when I'm with those activists — there is a political consciousness
> that I find quite mature.
> Are you optimistic about the future?
> I covered war for 20 years; we didn't use terms like pessimist or optimist,
> because if you were overly optimistic, it could get you killed. You really
> tried to read the landscape as astutely as you could and then take
> calculated risks based on the reality around you, or at least on the
> reality
> insofar as you could interpret it. I kind of bring that mentality out of
> war
> zones.
> If we are not brutal about diagnosing what we are up against, then all of
> our resistance is futile. If we think that voting for Hillary Clinton … is
> really going to make a difference, then I would argue we don't understand
> corporate power and how it works. If you read the writings of
> anthropologists, there are studies about how civilizations break down; and
> we are certainly following that pattern. Unfortunately, there's nothing
> within human nature to argue that we won't go down the ways other
> civilizations have gone down. The difference is now, of course, that when
> we
> go down, the whole planet is going to go with us.
> Yet you rebel not only for what you can achieve, but for who you become. In
> the end, those who rebel require faith — not a formal or necessarily
> Christian, Jewish or Muslim orthodoxy, but a faith that the good draws to
> it
> the good. That we are called to carry out the good insofar as we can
> determine what the good is; and then we let it go. The Buddhists call it
> karma, but faith is the belief that it goes somewhere. By standing up, you
> keep alive another narrative. It's one of the ironic points of life. That,
> for me, is what provides hope; and if you are not there, there is no hope
> at
> all.
> Elias Isquith is a staff writer at Salon, focusing on politics. Follow him
> on Twitter at @eliasisquith [10], and email him at eisquith@salon.com [11].
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [12]
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[13]
>
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/we-are-revolutionary-moment-chris-hedges-explains-wh
> y-uprising-coming-and-soon
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/elias-isquith-0
> [2] http://www.salon.com
> [3]
> https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/24/remarks-president-oba
> ma-address-united-nations-general-assembly
> [4]
> http://www.vox.com/2014/6/27/5846856/5-minutes-that-prove-were-living-throug
> h-the-greatest-time-in-human
> [5] http://www.vice.com/read/john-gray-interview-atheism
> [6]
> http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/book/hardcover/wages-of-rebellion/97815685
> 89664
> [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci
> [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ralston_Saul
> [9] http://www.amazon.com/Death-Liberal-Class-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586795
> [10] http://twitter.com/eliasisquith
> [11] mailto:eisquith@salon.com
> [12] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on "We Are In a
> Revolutionary Moment": Chris Hedges Explains Why An Uprising Is Coming —
> And
> Soon
> [13] http://www.alternet.org/
> [14] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
>