The Corporate Media Circus: The Truth Alone Will Not Set You Free

Chris Hedges in t r u t h o u t | The Corporate Media Circus: The Truth Alone Will Not Set You Free.

The ability of the corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The pernicious idea that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the freedom to accumulate vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others has collapsed. The conflation of freedom with the free market has been exposed as a sham. The travails of the poor are rapidly becoming the travails of the middle class, especially as unemployment insurance runs out and people get a taste of Bill Clinton's draconian welfare reform. And class warfare, once buried under the happy illusion that we were all going to enter an age of prosperity with unfettered capitalism, is returning with a vengeance.

Comments

[Alain]

Hi Jodi

I read the Hedge's piece quickly but it struck me as having a Gramsci like quality - the masses continue to consent to their own domination by ruling classes. And the key is to create alternative means of expression and communication. Maybe its me but in the last year or so Hedge's sounds (like most of what is left of the left) more pessimistic about the future and the chances for transformation.

[Jodi]

I like Hedge's pessimism--that's why I find myself linking to him alot. I go back and forth between agreeing with the Gramscian version of struggle (which makes sense if one thinks a revolution should be more than a coup) and perhaps a more Leninist view that the people are created retroactively.