Richard Wolff (14:50)

Welcome back, friends, to the second half of the of Economic Update. It is my pleasure once again to welcome to Economic Update Chris Hedges. He hardly needs much of an introduction. You've all seen him on this program before and in countless other opportunities that you've had. But to remind those of you that may not know, Chris is a columnist for Truthdig. He teaches at the Princeton University in a program for incarcerated prisoners. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and a New York Times best selling author. His most recent work is called in a very suggestive title, the Farewell Tour.

Richard Wolff (15:38)

Thank you, Chris for joining me today. Okay, let's talk a little bit about the book and then about some of the issues that you raise in the book. For me, what jumped out when I first looked at your book was a line that appears more than once that the United States seems to you to be a society that is, and I'll use your word, unraveling. Tell us what you mean.

Chris Hedges (16:04)

Well, I think all the warning signs of a decayed society are palpable. The destruction of the physical infrastructure, the capture of power by an oligarchic elite which has destroyed democratic institutions. A final military fiasco which characterizes late empire as it did with the ancient Greeks when they invaded Sicily or when the British invaded Egypt over the nationalization of the Suez Canal and had to retreat in humiliation, the economic mismanagement of which is pushing us closer and closer towards another economic crash. This time around, without a plan B, since they can't lower interest rates anymore, are they going to fabricate out of electronic ether another $26 trillion, the loss of civil liberties, militarized police, 25% of the world's prison population and that sense of stagnation, despair, hopelessness, what the sociologists Emile Durkheim calls anomie, which expresses itself in diseases of despair. Self destructive pathologies that are rippling across the American opioid addictions, gambling, suicides, sexual sadism and hate groups. And as Durkheim points out, those who lust for the annihilation of others are driven by a yearning for self annihilation. So this book is really a look at those pathologies. Because if we don't rebuild those social bonds, if we don't make it possible for people to engage in self actualization, to reach their potential, their goals, their desires, even in a limited way, then with that economic collapse, these pathologies will burst forth in even more frightening configurations that than they already have. And I look at Trump as a result as the symptom of a disease society, not the disease itself.

Richard Wolff (18:09)

And would you say, using the old psychological term, that there's a massive denial of everything you just said that goes with everything you just said? Yes, because for me, as I look around the society and live here, there is a kind of bizarre almost level of the denial that any of these things add up to what you've just said.

Chris Hedges (18:32)

Well, because it's so bleak. And you add climate change on top of that. The fact that we have a window now of probably a decade at most to radically reconfigure our relationship with the ecosystem, which we're not doing. I mean, the reason climate scientists are so terrified of going above 2 degrees Celsius are feedback loops. And they know what feedback loops do because they've studied it on planets like Venus, which once had water and is now 800 degrees. At that point, you know, you've lost the polar ice caps, the oceans acidify, sea level rises, crops die. I mean, feedback loops essentially accelerate the deterioration in a way that there's nothing you can do, there's no control. And they've run mathematical studies which range between a 70% die off of the human species and complete extinction. And yet we're not responding. We're mesmerized by the vaudevillian reality show which has replaced news, political discourse. And this is characteristic of a dying society as it was for instance, in ancient Rome or the end of the Austro Hungarian Empire. I mean, there is a kind of just checking out, a kind of willful hedonism, an infantilism, almost an inability because the problems are so massive, to even acknowledge that they exist.

Richard Wolff (19:55)

And I think Trump in some way exemplifies, even in his personal style, a kind of willful disregard, almost an enjoyable making fun of all of these problems as dismissing them in this blithe way. In your book, you also talk about people escaping or trying to escape. What does he mean by that? What do you see as signs of an effort to escape the very situation? Even when you don't admit it, you still try to escape.

Chris Hedges (20:27)

Well, half of this country now effectively lives in poverty. Social mobility for the working class is all but non existent. All of the democratic institutions have been reconfigured to consolidate both the wealth and the power of the corporate elite at our expense. As you know better than anyone. What did they do with this fabricated money? They bought back their own stock or they gambled. I mean, the fracking industry, for instance, is a losing enterprise. It doesn't make money, but its value is based on projected profit, not real profit. Well, that's exactly what we saw with the dot com crisis. And they extract debt peonage on a beleaguered population because the money has to be paid back even though they got it at 0% interest. And that's student loan debt, $1.5 trillion. Household debt. Your credit card, you're late on your credit card, it goes to 28%. It's why they suppress wages. Although productivity since 1973 has increased by 77%, you still have a third of the workforce earning less than $12 an hour. And that's by design. So they're oppressing a beleaguered working class in an effort to essentially pay off the money that they have been handed by the Fed. But, but it's just, it's an insane system. The New York Times had a story the other day that I think by next year we'll be paying, what is it, $370 billion a year in interest. And within 10 years it's $900 billion. It's not a sustainable system. And yet they are kind of use that phrase they always use about Mattis. There are no adults in the room. Nobody is confronting any of these crises. Which are impending. And I really, as I do in the book, look at the Christian right. And I wrote a book on the Christian right ten years ago called American the Christian Right and the War in America. And I don't use that term lightly, I'm a seminary graduate. But I look at them as our version of a fascistic movement which has embraced that magical thinking. I mean, you know, the rapture, which isn't in the Bible, the kind of, the whole sort of heretical belief that if we give enough. Buy enough prayer clause and give enough money to our megachurch and make our megachurch pastor a millionaire, Jesus will give us a Cadillac. I mean, it's an utter perversion of the Christian religion. And it's been used to sacralize the worst elements of American imperialism, American capitalism, white supremacy, you know, homophobia, Islamophobia, and everything else. And it has perpetuated among tens of millions of our fellow citizens the kind of utter denial of fact and magical thinking that Trump exemplifies. And I often hear people say, well, how can Trump build an alliance with the Christian right? And having spent two years inside that machine, Trump embodies the, you know, he has all of the characteristics that these narcissistic white male leaders of megachurches have, including preying on the despair quite effectively in the case of the megachurches, of the congregants, in the case of his casinos, those who are in economic distress. And I would say the only difference, they're all con artists. The only difference is that at least anecdotally, from what I can tell, the sexual proclivities of the megachurch pastors is probably a little kinkier than Trump's about hate.

Richard Wolff (23:56)

The hate groups, they're getting more and more numerous. Today's New York Times another story about it interwoven with the Republican Party increasingly, apparently. Where does that fit in this proliferation? You mentioned it earlier, but this proliferation of groups that really want to use violence to enact a purifications ceremony of sorts here in the United States, well.

Chris Hedges (24:22)

We should first be clear that that's always been within the DNA of American Soc. Richard Slotkin calls regeneration through violence. So it's always been there. And white hate groups have always been there, going all the way back to the slave patrols and the Klan and the Baldwin Felts and the Pinkertons. And they've always been part of the DNA of American society. And in times of societal distress or eventually probably economic collapse, the these hate groups will be unleashed. I mean, Trump is already inciting these groups towards violence rhetorically.

Richard Wolff (24:59)

He did during the campaign, too, and he's done since.

Chris Hedges (25:03)

But we live now in a period of relative stability. With that stability gone, then these groups will be, in essence, unleashed. They'll be given a kind of green light to attack the vulnerable. I mean, the whole idea that 11 or 12 million undocumented workers is responsible for the economic decline of the United States, you're already in crazy land. You're already in crazy land, right? I mean, most of them are earning below the. It doesn't make any sense, but it works, as you know. And I saw it in Yugoslavia, with the economic collapse of Yugoslavia, and then this rapacious and often buffoonish Radha von Karadic was every bit as buffoonish as Donald Trump, and so were the Nazis. I mean, Hitler couldn't even speak proper German. And. But these buffoons are dangerous, and they channel that rage, and it's a legitimate rage in terms of betrayal towards the weak, towards the vulnerable. And these groups are at the forefront of that. And the state wants that rage and wants that energy to be directed away from where it should be directed, which is at the elite ruling class that has mismanaged the nation that is decomposing on us.

Richard Wolff (26:16)

As we come towards the end of the program, I have to ask the question, how did you assess the Kavanaugh hearings, this whole spectacle that we had for several weeks around the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination?

Chris Hedges (26:31)

Well, that's what it was, a spectacle. It was political theater. The outcome was utterly preordained. The. The fact that Susan Collins was struggling over whether Kavanaugh would revoke Roe v. Wade is insane. The Christian right has made it very clear that this is their guy, and he's on the Supreme Court because he will revoke Roe v. Wade. He committed acts of perjury, aside from the fact that he's very likely a sexual predator, but none of it matters. So it was the farce of democratic process, although Grassley, like, even, you know, ran roughshod over even the decorum and the rules in place in the Senate. And I think it was a kind of public window into the utter dysfunction of American democratic institutions. And the fact that all we have left is the facade of democracy. We don't live in a democracy. There are no institutions left that can be called authentically democratic in the time we have left.

Richard Wolff (27:39)

Where's it going? I know it's difficult, and no one can see the future, and I don't believe in prediction, but nonetheless, what's your gut? Where is this that you so eloquently describe.

Chris Hedges (27:51)

Well, we know where it's going vis a vis climate change. That's not.

Richard Wolff (27:55)

I meant more the social dimension.

Chris Hedges (27:57)

Well, it's unraveling. I mean, you know, when you have a figure like Trump, you look to the end of the Roman Empire with Caligula, Nero, Commodus. He actually reminds me of Commodus, who was not interested in governance. It was just a big show, and he dressed himself up and went to the arena and fixed fights. And that's kind of like Trump. But we know where it's going. I mean, decay, we have a kind of roadmap by looking at decaying societies. And they have very similar characteristics, as Joseph Tainer has pointed out in the collapse of complex societies, including at the end, the withdrawal by a hedonistic and irresponsible elite into, you know, the Forbidden City or something.

Richard Wolff (28:36)

Sorry, we've come to the end. Thank you so much, Chris.

Richard Wolff (28:39)

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