PULLMAN – Michael Jackson’s life and death, Kate and Jon’s divorce, the next American Idol.
You might think it’s just entertainment, but author Chris Hedges thinks it’s war – and the fate of ordinary Americans hangs in the balance. If that sounds hyperbolic now, it did not sound that way during Chris Hedges’ hour-long lecture to a near-capacity crowd at the CUB auditorium Thursday night.
Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of “Empire of Illusion,” painted a bleak picture of an American way of life co-opted by a corporate culture that values profit over everything else and is driving the country to economic ruin.
“The fantasy of celebrity culture is not designed simply to entertain,” he said. “It is designed to keep us from fighting back.”
In Hedges’ view, the American people have been betrayed by both Republican politicians and Democratic politicians because both have been co-opted by corporate financing.
“What we call American culture is not American culture, it is corporate culture,” Hedges said, and it is time to fight back. A Green Party candidate would provide an alternative to mainstream politics, he said, but the question is not how do we find a good leader, as much as it is “How do we limit the damage the powerful do to us?”
Former President Bill Clinton came in for some of the harshest criticism of the night.
“Populist movements keep giving politicians the benefit of the doubt, and that was their mistake,” Hedges said.
“Populist movements keep giving politicians the benefit of the doubt, and that was their mistake,” Hedges said.
The adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (banking regulation) and the passage of draconian welfare legislation all happened on Clinton’s watch, with this support, and they have had devastating consequences, he said.
“Much of the rage of the working class toward liberals is not misplaced,” he said.
It was also on Clinton’s watch, Hedges said, that Democratic politicians began seeking, and getting, massive corporate campaign contributions.
“Bill Clinton led the Democratic party to the corporate watering hole,” he said.
Obama was criticized as being more of the same, bringing in many of the same advisers that played a part in the Clinton White House.
“Brand Obama does not threaten the core of the corporate state any more than Brand George W. Bush,” Hedges said.
“We have already destroyed our working class, and we are now allowing corporations to destroy our middle class.”
For instance, under Obama the debt is increasing to unimaginable levels, he said, and we’ll never be able to pay it back. When the collapse comes, the elite will withdraw to heavily protected gated communities and the rest of us will live in a police state.
“This is the inevitable result of unbridled corporate capitalism,” he said.
Hedges is a former lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and a former Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University. He also was a foreign correspondent for 20 years and was part of the New York Times team that was awarded at 2002 Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles on global terrorism.
Hedges, whose talk was sponsored by the WSU Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, also will speak tonight, Sept. 25, at 7 p.m. at Community Congregational United Church of Christ, 525 Campus St., Pullman.
