Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Call for Resistance

I first ran across Chris Hedges several years ago when I read his book on war, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. As a long-time war correspondent, Hedges could not only speak to war in the abstract but also share his own personal observations reporting from the various battlefields around the world.

Hedges is fascinated by war and how it affects human beings, but he also hates it. So he is not dispassionate in this matter. It also helps that he has an Masters of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School, so he brings a transcendent and moral perspective as well.

He has just written an essay that is flying around the web, and that you might want to read. Needless to say, he is very concerned about our current situation here in America. Here is a short tidbit:

America is devolving into a third-world nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite’s rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us. Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty. This is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them. We can resist, which means street protests, disruptions of the system and demonstrations, or become serfs.

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