Reverend Wright was right -

[Barb]

Our chickens are coming home to roost!

Chris Hedges: The Collapse of Industrial Civilization & the Antidote to Defeatism | MEDIA ROOTS ? Reporting From Outside Party Lines

AM: You discuss how the world is globally integrated under an unsustainable form of capitalism, but America positions itself atop the totem pole justified by the notion of American exceptionalism. How do you think that that notion plays into the global collapse?
CH: Well, corporations are preying on the United States in the way that they prey on all nation’s states. They are in this essence super-national. They owe no loyalty to any one nation. That’s how you have seen the decimation of the American manufacturing base; that is how you’ve seen the transference of capital overseas where it lies beyond the reach of taxation. You have seen the rise of the decimation of the working class, and the rise of tremendous numbers of poor, whether they are listed as ‘in poverty’ or a category called ‘near poverty’. We’re now talking about half the country. The myth of America is still there; the idea of if you work hard, you can make something of yourself; the idea that we have a right to travel the globe and impose our virtues—supposed virtues—on other countries by force, which is what we are doing and attempting to do throughout the Middle Easy, although it’s not going very well for us.
Imperialism has always been a mask for trade, for business, for control of natural resources. That has been true since the United States began its imperialist expansion with the conquest of the Philippines, Cuba, the control of the Caribbean for sugar and bananas, into the Middle East for oil. So, what we are seeing is a clash between the myths that America once used to identify itself. Let’s not forget that many of the most fervent supporters of imperialist expansion came from labor unions. I mean, GOMPers was at the Versaille Treaty. All segments of this society are complicit. But these forces, which in essence kind of cannibalize both the natural environment and exploit human labor and have been doing this on the outer reaches of empire for decades, are now being done internally just as it was done in the original conquest of the United States against Native Americans.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6BOvprpI6c#t=13]Chris Hedges Part I: Crisis Cults and the Collapse of Industrial Civilization - YouTube[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxNqDg1m46I]Chris Hedges Part II: The Military Mind & the Antidote to Defeatism - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Barb]

AM: Chris, in a recent speech you gave, you said quote, ‘I do not know if we can build a better society. I do not even know if we will survive as a species. But I know these corporate forces have us by the throat. And they have my children by the throat. I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.” Chris, Glen Greenwald recently spoke about how one man, Edward Snowden, has changed the world, and that singular capacity is the antidote to defeatism. What do you regard as the antidote to defeatism?
CH: You can’t talk about hope if you don’t resist, and Edward Snowden has certainly resisted. Heroically. We must carry out the good, or at least the good so far in as we can determine it, and then we have to let it go. The Buddhists call it ‘karma’. I come out of the seminary; that’s what faith is. It’s the belief that it goes somewhere even if empirically everything around you seems to point in the other direction. Once we give up, once we stop resisting, then we’re finished. Not only finished in a literal sense, but finished spiritually and morally. So, I fall back in moments of distress like this on that belief, which is one that I learned in seminary; that we have a capacity and an ability and a moral duty to fight against forces of evil even if it looks almost certain that those forces will triumph.

Chris Hedges: The Collapse of Industrial Civilization & the Antidote to Defeatism | MEDIA ROOTS ? Reporting From Outside Party Lines

 

[ScienceRocks]

Yep,

These fuckers are dead serious about killing science, r&d, infrastructure and educational investment in this country. They want unregulated corporations to do as they do in China and India to people, here in America.

They want to kill the epa
They want to defund nasa
They want to defund the nws
They want to defund fda
They want to kill the safety net

These fuckers are insane...

 

[GWV5903]

Wow, why doesn't he just commit suicide?

Everyone is dumb, the Dems, the Repubs, the Christians, the Anti Religion, the Muslims are victims, the USA is over because he said so...

No wonder Obama was elected by these morons...

 

[Barb]

Wow, why doesn't he just commit suicide?

Everyone is dumb, the Dems, the Repubs, the Christians, the Anti Religion, the Muslims are victims, the USA is over because he said so...

No wonder Obama was elected by these morons...

this is why:

So, I fall back in moments of distress like this on that belief, which is one that I learned in seminary; that we have a capacity and an ability and a moral duty to fight against forces of evil even if it looks almost certain that those forces will triumph.

 

[The T]

The WRONG Reverend Wright is a Racist.

 

[Barb]

Another good talk about how we've gotten here

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYBJDRmSMRY]How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful: Noam Chomsky & Glenn Greenwald - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Sallow]

The WRONG Reverend Wright is a Racist.

Because why?

He was pissed about slavery and the attack on Iraq?

Millions of people died brutally as a result of slavery.

And half a million died as a result of the brutality of the war on Iraq.

Not liking that makes you a racist?

On what planet?

 

[Barb]

The WRONG Reverend Wright is a Racist.

Because why?

He was pissed about slavery and the attack on Iraq?

Millions of people died brutally as a result of slavery.

And half a million died as a result of the brutality of the war on Iraq.

Not liking that makes you a racist?

On what planet?

Some take offense at being told of the various ways the US has used it's military and CIA to overtly and covertly "stabilize" or destabilize (as it were) communities here and there to make it safe and profitable for "our" corporations to rape, plunder, pillage, steal, plow the fields with salt and poison the wells around the globe. They really get pissy when it's mentioned that since they aren't (and never in any real sense were) "our" corporations anymore, and because there's no place left that'd have them, all that shit they tested out in the world is being brought right back home to us. Environmental ruin, poisoned water, a degraded workforce, economic collapse and social stratification...all that, and the ruling elite (because more and more they are allowed to write the legislation they work within) get all of the benefits of our natural resources, our educated people, our labor, our infrastructure, our tax code and our legal system without any accountability or even being sent a bill for services rendered or cleaning up the unimaginable mess they're making.

 

[Stephanie]

he was right alright, our chickens are coming home to roost...and in the form of our CORRUPTED Federal Government

when this man is taken as some sort of hero, you know our goose is cooked

 

[AvgGuyIA]

Rev Wright is a racist!

 

[editec]

Yep,

These fuckers are dead serious about killing science, r&d, infrastructure and educational investment in this country. They want unregulated corporations to do as they do in China and India to people, here in America.

They want to kill the epa
They want to defund nasa
They want to defund the nws
They want to defund fda
They want to kill the safety net

These fuckers are insane...

Would that they WERE insane.

Evil is not necessarily insane.

And it much more than GREED driving them, too.

I am convinced these MASTERS are sincere and believe that they are saving humanity by setting conditions where market forces kill off most of us.

 

[Fishlore]

When Rev. Wright called upon God to damn America, he was preaching in a mode as old as his namesake, the prophet Jeremiah, one respected and part of America's religious heritage since the days of Cotton Mather. The prophet calls down God's wrath upon Israel for her failure to keep the Law.

The theological issue contained in Rev. Wright's now-famous call is whether or not he was correct that America is not following God's law. His is a judgement shared by the American Council of [Catholic] Bishops and, more recently, pope Francis. The bishops, for example, recently declared that rep. Ryan's budget, the official policy of the Republican Party, is incompatible with Catholic social teaching.

Religious leaders across the spectrum have turned away from America's out-of-control reactionary conservatism. Even more damning, Reaganomics didn't work and isn't working. The right wing tide is ebbing. In politics, demography is destiny. The question is: will America ease into its new course gently over the next couple of election cycles or will we flip over with a bang sometime around 2020?

 

[natstew]

Remove the self loathing, racism, and hatred of whites, and Jeremiah is an empty suit.

Hey! It wasn't the White Man's fault that you were born black, and being black is only a curse if you make it one! We all have ancestors who were slaves, get over it and get a life that's not based on hate!!

 

[Kondor3]

So, super-national corporations are actually in charge, regardless of which party and which talking-head occupy the White House, etc.?

Is such a state of affairs actually real?

Does that endure, now, in perpetuity?

Does that end in Radicalism or Revolution?

There's no escaping the idea that both parties are in-bed with Big Business and various monied interests - although one party appears to be more thoroughly seduced than another.

It all sounds a little Matrix-ey, but, it also has a familiar and believable 'ring' to it.

Personally, I don't trust either Party any further than I can throw 'em... one trusts to luck and the marketplace to make things better for folks... the other pays lip service to safeguarding the common man but largely only goes through the motions.

A most unpalatable and unsatisfactory state of affairs... but there seems little prospect of change, this side of something pretty damned Radical.

 

[rightwinger]

What Rev Wright actually said

The government put them in slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing “God Bless America.” No, no, no. Not “God Bless America”; God Damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God Damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!


Would any preacher in America feel otherwise?

 

[DriftingSand]

The culprits behind the corporations are the banks. They rule the flow of money and yet every one of us participates in and "feeds" the banking cartel so none of us can really bitch very much unless you're willing to severe ties with the Federal Reserve, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, the IMF, the World Bank, etc. How many folks own cars built by "corporations?" Computer? Cell Phone? Yes ... we are all to blame as long as we keep feeding the monster.

"Give me control of a nation's money
and I care not who makes the laws."
Mayer Amschel Rothschild (Banking Boss)

"The issue which has swept down the centuries
and which will have to be fought sooner or later
is the people versus the banks."
Lord Acton (Historian)

 

[Fishlore]

What Rev Wright actually said

The government put them in slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing “God Bless America.” No, no, no. Not “God Bless America”; God Damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God Damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!


Would any preacher in America feel otherwise?

The enormity of the genocide and crimes committed in the slave trade have long been beyond America's capacity to comprehend, much less accept. The issue is most troubling for America because slave labor was the capital upon which the American economy was founded and the legacy of slavery continues to this day in constant subversion of the noble ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, which is the official rationale for the establishment of the United States of America.

 

[rightwinger]

Rev Wright was speaking about countries that put themselves above God. I don't know of any other preachers that would feel otherwise

 

[LordBrownTrout]

The WRONG Reverend Wright is a Racist.

Because why?

He was pissed about slavery and the attack on Iraq?

Millions of people died brutally as a result of slavery.

And half a million died as a result of the brutality of the war on Iraq.

Not liking that makes you a racist?

On what planet?

Yes, he is a bitter racist. Just because he's black and pissed about slavery doesn't make him an expert at all.