Here is the New York Times Book review of Hedges' new book. The book is on
Bookshare, and I've started reading it, but was interrupted by Woodward's
book. I'm surprised that the Times reviewed it at all since they tend to
ignore books by people who are out of favor like Max Blumenthal. But
obviously, they aren't fond of it.
Miriam
NONFICTION. Doomed!. By THOMAS B. EDSALL. Thomas B. Edsall covered national
politics for The Washington Post for 25 years and since 2011 has been a
contributing Op-Ed writer for The Times.. AMERICA The Farewell Tour By Chris
Hedges 388 pp. Simon & Schuster. $27. Chris Hedges is a bundle of
contradictions and so too is his new book, 'America: The Farewell Tour. As a
New York Times reporter covering the Middle East, Hedges won praise from all
quarters. The conservative Christopher Caldwell wrote in a 2002 review of an
earlier Hedges book, 'War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,' that Hedges
'has proved a correspondent of unusual bravery, stubbornness and
independence. By going AWOL from the U.S. military's press pool during the
gulf war, he became one of the few eyewitnesses to American-Iraqi gunfights.
He was among the rare big-time reporters to cover the Kosovo War as a war
and not a morality play. His remorseless chronicling of the criminality and
thuggery of our allies in the Kosovo Liberation Army is one of the high
points of post-Vietnam War journalism. At the same time, Caldwell was on to
a problem: Hedges' 'tone is often marked by an argument-foreclosing
condescension. 'Is this moral reflection,' Caldwell asked, 'or moralistic
preening? In his current book, Hedges raises provocative questions. Has the
destructive aspect of capitalism reached a tipping point? Are drug abuse,
pornography and gambling emblematic of a free market run amok? Are the
vacant shells of cities like Scranton, Dayton, Buffalo, Youngstown and
Cleveland the inevitable consequences of an economy based on greed? Hedges'
answer consists of a grim doubling down. 'The American Empire is coming to
an end,' he writes. 'The death spiral appears unstoppable, meaning the
United States as we know it will no longer exist within a decade or, at
most, two. Traditional institutions of liberalism, including the Democratic
Party, are, in Hedges' view, hopelessly corrupted. 'The ruling elites,' he
says, 'bought the allegiances of the two main political parties by purging
... New Deal Democrats and corporate and imperial critics. They imposed
obedience to corporate capitalism and globalization within academia and the
press. Hedges' indictment names names: 'Self-identified liberals such as
Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama mouthed the words of liberal
democratic values while making war on these values in the service of
corporate power. Even liberal nonprofit organizations like MoveOn.org and
the Sierra Club 'are feeble appendages to a corporatized Democratic Party.
Hedges is a Harvard Divinity School graduate and an ordained Presbyterian
minister. His ecclesiastical immersion shows. This passage is long but
revealing of his mind-set: 'The violence and commodification of human beings
for profit are the quintessential expressions of global capitalism. Our
corporate masters are pimps. We are all being debased and degraded, rendered
impoverished and powerless, to service the cruel and lascivious demands of
the corporate elite. And when they tire of us, or when we are no longer of
use, we are discarded. If the United States accepts prostitution as legal
and permissible in a civil society, as Germany has done, we will take one
more collective step toward the global plantation being built by the
powerful. The fight against prostitution is the fight against a dehumanizing
corporate capitalism that begins, but will not end, with the subjugation of
impoverished girls and women. Insofar as Hedges holds out any hope, it is
through local community organizing and groups like Black Lives Matter. For
the most part, however, the prospects for the country are bleak: 'This
moment in history marks the end of a long, sad tale of greed and murder by
the white races. It is inevitable that for the final show we vomited up a
figure like Trump. Both righteous and self-righteous, Hedges is addicted to
fire and brimstone. A Jeremiah preaching eternal damnation, he is adding to
the already crowded shelf of American narratives of decline. His call
springs not only from Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather but also from
spoiled preachers like Jimmy Swaggart and James Bakker, and now from Donald
Trump. It's a call that has echoed down through the ages: 'Drain the Swamp.