The Collapse of the American Empire?

Chris Hedges is appeal at surprise winning journalist who over the past decade and a half has made his name as a columnist activist and author he's been a vociferous public critic of presidents on both sides of the American political spectrum and his latest book America the farewell tour is nothing short of a full-throated throttling of the political social and cultural state of his country and with that we welcome Chris Hedges back to TV oh it's so nice to see you in that chair thank you you know I sort of jokingly said to you in the green room before we started having read your book I don't know whether to kill myself today or wait till tomorrow right what I said you're Canadian so so we don't have in being an American this is the most depressing look at your country I think I've ever read and if I can just be permitted sort of an observation on the top and then you tell me if I'm totally out to lunch here after reading this I thought Chris Hedges sees the same problems in America that I heard from Donald Trump at the Republican convention where he described widespread carnage and mass unemployment and drug problems and so many things bad with America your prescriptions obviously for fixing all that are different but do you - do you - essentially see the country the same way in that regard no because he you know it's important that he while he will run down some of the pathologies that have gripped huge sections of the country he blames them on undocumented workers on liberals on Muslims on Mexicans you know so he's a classic con artist or a demagogue but you do raise an important point he tapped into the deep despair and rage that large segments in particular the white working-class feels that having been betrayed by both of the major parties well let's get into with it you call this a farewell tour a farewell to what a farewell to the American Empire to America as we know it and is that a good thing because I've heard some people say you know the farewell to American Empire will be a good thing for this world it depends how the Empire dissolves it depends what our reaction is it yeah I mean Empire when it contracts and it will contract very quickly once the dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency can express itself in some very frightening forms so for instance the British Empire in essence it was a slow collapse from the end of World War one culminating with the Suez Crisis right the abortive attempt to retake the Suez Canal after was nationalized they had to retreat in humiliation largely because of Eisenhower's opposition and then the pound sterling was dropped as though and so they fell into a pretty significant depression but they handled it in a different way what happens in the United States we're not prepared at all our democratic social and cultural institutions are deeply decayed we are also a very violent society in a way that for instance Canada is not or the in the way that Great Britain is not we are wash in weapons and not just weapons but these are in essence these a k14 and a take a the AR 14 s that are used in these mass shootings and schools and concert venues and malls and our assault weapons there's not they're not for hunting and they're easily accessible so I worry that the disintegration of Empire will exacerbate the kinds of dark pathologies that I spend a lot of time in the book writing about the UK farewell tour as you've described it took about 40 years how long is the American farewell tour been going for well there's been a steady decline I would say since the early 70s when we shifted in the words of the Harvard historian Charles Mayer from an empire of production to an empire of consumption so we began to borrow to maintain both an empire and a lifestyle we could no longer afford those began the distortions accelerated under Reagan the cannibalizing that's when the cannibalizing of the federal government began on behalf of corporations at the expense of the citizenry you know the famous phrase government is not the solution government is the problem well that's true if you're Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil but it's not true if you're a single mother trying to raise children on a substandard wage or no wage so all of the mechanisms by which democracy was supported by which opportunity was offered to the have been slowly erased and of course we've been de-industrialized as has large parts of Canada with all of the attendant consequences that come from collapsed communities the loss of good-paying unionized jobs I'm gonna play devil's advocate for a second here because of course Donald Trump would say the growth rate that America is experiencing right now the economic growth rate hasn't been this high in decades the unemployment rate hasn't been this low in decades he sees other signs of a country that is economically quite dynamic right now well it's all about measurement so yes it's true the stock market is on a run but why well largely first of all because of the Donald Donald Trump's tax cuts which will remove an estimated 1.5 trillion dollars from the US budget over a 10-year period that money has not been used to bolster manufacturing or create jobs it's either been hoarded or it's been used to buy back stock and that has inflated the stock market because the senior managers and CEOs of large corporations their compensation packages are tied to the value of stock presumably some of it's gone to creating new jobs not much that's how unemployment gets below 4% yes but the unemployment figures are completely fixed if you if you look at how they measure unemployment so for instance if you work one hour a week you're counted as employed the average worker at Walmart works 28 hours a week which puts them below the poverty line they're counted as employed if you have stopped looking for work after four weeks you are magically erased from the unemployment rolls and it doesn't count large sectors of the population students retired people who are many of whom are now riding around in RV vans work doing temp work for Amazon at Christmas for 12 hours a day in warehouses prisoners so real unemployment the LA Times a couple years ago said you know real unemployment is pushing probably 17% if we're teen if we're talking and we're if we removed people or if we look at people who are considered the working poor ie those people who have jobs but are the below the poverty line as in essence unemployed are certainly not receiving an income that can sustain in any way a lifestyle yeah I know you're not a massive fan of heartless capitalism as I just read in 308 pages of the book however comma private companies create most of the jobs that most Americans have so what do we do about that well I would argue that there are different types of capitalism so I grew up in a farm town in upstate New York and I saw the penny capitalism of farmers farmers produced brought their produce in for sale you had regional capitalism so a local factory owner who lived in the community sat on the school board paid taxes and then you have corporate capitalism which is another animal altogether so when you talk about producing jobs let's look at Apple where are the manufacturing jobs for Apple overseas they're in China and what are the working conditions for the people who they're subcontractors who make Apple products not great it's kind of slave labor it's huge suicide rates wage theft when they don't make quotas they're not paid people climbing up on the living in these horrific dormitories so corporate capitalism is an enemy of penny and regional capitalism and it is global it's supranational it has no loyalty to the nation-state and it is corporate capitalism that has started and and kind of hollowed the American economy out from the inside when I read your book I see an America at war with itself between white supremacists and neo-nazis who are trying to make their claim for the end of the world I see you described widespread sexual abuse in a hardcore poor industry that is completely frightening opioid and drug abuse and heroin abuse that is off the charts addictive gambling run amuck widespread as you've described already here tonight inadequate employment and underemployment and unemployment far too much general suffering I understand you're trying to tell a story here but is that genuinely truly reflective of America today yes and and I think that what and I you know I traveled all over the country as you know for this and spent two years so I was in Anderson Indiana where all the old GM plants were Utah I wrote my gambling chapter out of the Trump Taj Mahal before Trump ever even announced he was running for president it's in Atlantic City in Atlantic City it's now closed it was when I was writing it was in deep decay I mean most of the rooms were mothballed rats mice all yes mice were fighting on the floor and people shooting up in the elevators so I think what was so disturbing for me writing the book was how many people have been affected especially in the opioid crisis I don't think the numbers begin to reflect the numbers of people who are addicted to powerful narcotics depressants and I mean I list statistically we're talking about big big numbers big large sectors of the American populous that in essence has found ways to check out the proliferation of hate groups is III used for the book Emile Durkheim's great study of suicide where he went back and tried to look the sociologists at what were the factors of causes that led people to kill themselves and he talks where he coins this term anomie and I think that that that's what I'm trying to do is explain that anomie that has gripped I would argue at least half the country and the dark pathologies that that anomie produces and that fundamentally if we don't address that alienation that dislocation and that despair if we don't we integrate these people economically politically and socially back into a system that no longer responds in any way to their rights and their grievances then these pathologies will only grow we spoke earlier about the decline of American Empire as the pressure becomes worse as the economic situation deteriorates if these conditions go unaddressed then these pathologies will explode and I cover the war in the former Yugoslavia and so I know what disintegrating societies that resort to violence can look like I watched as after the economic collapse of Yugoslavia in late 1980s from a failed self-identified liberal elite that couldn't respond I watched these figure these distortions like Radovan Karadzic and Franjo Tudjman slobodan milosevic essentially be vomited up out of the decay in the way that Trump has been vomited up out of a very diseased country well that was what I was gonna ask you is is how much of what you're describing here is a feature of the person who happens to sit in the Oval Office today versus if anybody else were in that chair I think Trump is the symptom not the disease he's a con artist he's a demagogue and he he he was astute enough to tap into the zeitgeist the tragedy for me you know there were insurgencies in both of the major political parties Bernie Sanders the Demerol and the Democratic Party establishment was just more astute in terms of blocking the nomination to Sanders and I would argue that they effectively blocked it the Republican Party establishment was not able to block Trump and if Sanders had gotten the nomination I think he would have beaten Trump how would America be different if that it happened not terribly because with a republican-controlled Congress it would have been paralysis but you wouldn't have Sanders pushing forth the kinds of agendas nor making the kinds of appointments to the EPA to education Supreme Court Supreme Court that the Trump is made and and that that for me is is quite frightening and and I think we we have to pin some of the blame on the Clinton campaign when you go back and read the Podesta emails they push Trump as a candidate because they thought he would be the easiest candidate to defeat so both Sanders and Trump responded in to to the the reality of the grotesque social inequality in the United States which is greater than the Gilded Age greater than it was a century ago the difference being that of course Trump is is dishonest I mean Trump is is only fueled the kleptocracy well let me pick up on that because and you mentioned a bunch of important institutions in American society in the midst of that answer and I want to pull a quote from the book here that deals with that Sheldon if you would bring this graphic up the most ominous danger we face comes from the marginalization and destruction of institutions including the courts academia legislative bodies cultural organizations and the press that once ensured that civil discourse was rooted in reality and fact helped us distinguish lies from truth and facilitated justice I saw a poll recently I bet you saw it too in which Republicans were surveyed and 93% said if Donald Trump says it I believe it yeah I think the same poll showed those same people saying if someone in my family says it only 63% of people believe that they believe the president more than they believe their own family 80% of Republicans think that what's in the Wall Street Journal is not credible 80% of Republicans don't believe the Wall Street Journal even in that America what hope do empirically provable facts have well you pinpointed something that's very ominous when national and political discourse is no longer rooted and verifiable fact then facts are interchangeable with opinions truth is whatever you want it to be and I write in the book about the nature of the permanent lie that that all politicians lie all governments lies I have stone said but they live for expediency so for instance Bill Clinton argues that bypassing NAFTA there will be many more American jobs good jobs Bill Clinton doesn't make that argument anymore because it's false and who knows whether he knew or didn't know but it's false with the permanent lie reality facts doesn't matter so Trump wins by a landslide Trump has the largest inauguration crowd in the history of you know if we rent first guy to win Wisconsin in 50 years it's endless Andrew right it's endless endlessly but it doesn't have it doesn't matter and then you have media platforms that like Fox News that will propagate or disseminate these lies uncritically and and that has eroded discourse in the United States the the institutions in it functioning democracy you have institutions and you cited them the courts academia the press that their job is to make sure that people speak about a verifiable reality those institutions have become corrupted weakened destroyed or replaced with systems masks you know Fox Breitbart all of these right-wing propaganda outlets masquerading as news the court system has been taken over and is is now being finished off with appointments by the from the Federalist Society which is this ideological right wing so and that it creates a kind of schizophrenia where you whatever you know you may see reality in front of you but reality is denied by the power elites and by the organs the media platforms that disseminate the opinions of the power leads and that that really begins to sound like descriptions of totalitarianism someone like Hannah Aaron would write about I don't want to let the clock get too far away from this year without being without giving you an opportunity to speak to what you see as the prescription for getting America out of this farewell tour and here's just a few of the ideas that you advance in the book a $15 minimum wage a ban on for-profit health care a dismantling of nuclear weapons ending trade agreements giving citizenship to undocumented workers what do you think implementing that menu of policies would change I think that it's about reintegration so it's about taking this dispossessed huge dispossessed segment of the American population and reintegrating them into the country and of course the opposite is happening through programs of austerity slashing welfare you know the original welfare program which was cut by Clinton 70% of the recipients were children I mean it's called AFDC yeah I see standing for children yeah well and the children were sold out and there's been now a further slashing of availability of food stamps and so you're taking a population in distress and you were exacerbating that distress so I wrote a book about the Christian Right called American fascists and I came to the conclusion after two years of writing that book that the only way to battle the Christian Right which I see as a kind of Christianized fascist force and I speak as a Seminary graduate I should point that out you're a reference yes I am yeah you are the dr. Reverend that's right so Christopher Lynn hedges the the importance I believe to countering the magical thinking of the Christian Right was rooted in the economy in reintegrating them into the economy giving them the kinds of jobs the unionized jobs that were once available where you had job security job safety a pension plan medical benefits and a salary that could sustain a family that's all gone and by making it worse we are pushing larger and larger parts of the population into the embrace of demagogues hate groups or seeing them engage in behaviors that are wilfully self-destructive I mean suicide for instance the highest rate of suicide in the United States are middle-aged white men who realized that there's no place for them anymore and as and I quote Pope Pope John Paul in his encyclical on work work is not just about the exchange of labor for wages it is about status dignity self-respect the ability to find a meaningful place in society and we're not doing it and the longer we don't do it the worse it's going to get here's another quote from the book politics is a game of fear those who do not have the ability to frighten power elites do not succeed the platitudes about justice equality and democracy are just that only when ruling elites become worried about survival do they react appealing to the better nature of the powerful is useless they don't have one I guess I need to ask you whether you are actually advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government No I'm strongly opposed to violence as okay let's take the violent out of that sentence are you advocating the overthrow of the United Scott vaque ting the overthrow of a corporate government I'm advocating the reversal of the corporate coup d'etat in slow motion how does that happen it happens the same way it happened in Eastern Europe I covered the revolutions in East Germany Czechoslovakia Romania it happens when people have enough and how is it not I mean if the Great Recession 2008 till whenever if that didn't and all of the corporate kleptocracy that Wall Street got away with there and how Main Street had to pay for it if that didn't propel people to rise up what will the next crash and we're getting one I don't know when but it's coming and this time around the elites don't have a plan B so what's the thing they can't lower interest rates anymore and they've already lower them we're already at virtually zero so what does that look like that rising up that you see coming well we've seen glimpses of it you know the put a most movement in Spain where they surrounded the Parliament I mean large numbers of people taking to the streets obstructing the system I saw it in vanilla square in Prague 500,000 Czechs I saw it in East Germany in Leipzig and that was the most efficient security and surveillance state in human history until our own okay but I'm gonna take a quote if I remember it correctly from your book which was now that we've got all those communists out of Eastern Europe we can go back to the form of government we used to have fascism is that it's coming well America is already a failed democracy and Trump has no ideology it's an ideological vacuum which is very rapidly being filled by the Christian Right we saw it he just had a big White House dinner or with evangelicals he has 81% support among evangelicals I that that the ennis Noam Chomsky says you may want Trump out but believe me Mike Michael Pence will be worse the Christian Right is organized they have their own universities they have their own media platforms and systems of indoctrination they have huge amounts of money behind them including the most retrograde capitalists in the United States that what's coming to replace whatever this is I'm a reporter and I and I and I learned a long time ago that's you know trying to predict the future is a very dangerous thing but unless there is sustained mass civil disobedience to put pressure on two political parties and a system that is completely captured by corporate power then what's coming I can do I can assure you will not not look nice and not be good you've called this America the farewell tour but I wonder if this is exclusively in your view an American story no and we know from you know what's happening in Europe brexit Hungary Poland which are kind of quasi fascist states now Canada is not immune to this you you also not to the extent that we have but you've had your experiences with mass shootings populist politic populist politics but it's far more virulent and pronounced within the United States because empires are always fragile in this sense that they depend on the control of foreign labour foreign resources we have 17 years of warfare now in the Middle East futile endless you know meanwhile our infrastructure is collapsing crumbling public libraries are closing schools our teachers have to buy basic supplies for students and you know now we have this insane idea that we're gonna train teachers and public schools to carry concealed weapons I mean these are all examples of a society that is completely on board so it is not hardly unique to the United States and and it will have a ripple effect in countries like Canada but it will never reach the extent of chaos and potential violence because but but never forget that that within American society we are a deeply violent culture awash in weapons we believe in the regeneration through violence this myth that violence is a form of purification and that comes out of our long history of side and slavery he started with a revolution yeah we did not you did well we also killed 90% of indigenous peoples in the United States and slave 4 million Africans and and we've never really confronted that you know that dark aspect you know in American history we we cling to our national myth and and so that does make us different and more dangerous than Canada this is if you don't mind my saying a depressing book but it is well reported and a very important read America the farewell tour Chris Hedges really good of you to come into TV oats and I thank you thanks for having me the agenda with Steve Paikin is brought to you by the chartered professional accountants of Ontario helping businesses stay on the right side of change with strategic thinking insightful decisions and business leadership are you on the right side of change ask an Ontario CPA

Channel: The Agenda with Steve Paikin

Views: 2,915,612

Rating: 3.860168 out of 5

Keywords: The Agenda with Steve Paikin, current affairs, analysis, debate, politics, policy, Chris Hedges, U.S. politics

Id: tPk9HSLagVg

Length: 27min 43sec (1663 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 12 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/martini-meow]

If you have five more minutes, watch it from the start.

Also see Ms Gray's AMA:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/bj9csn/i_am_briahna_joy_gray_national_press_secretary/

We're not sure how many more questions she'll answer, but the whole thing has great questions worth pondering, such as adding various angles on M4A considerations.

[u/cinepro]

13:00

"How would America be different if Sanders had won?"

"Not terribly..."

[u/president2016]

Haven’t watched it yet due to time but this was conservatives talking points during Obama’s run in that it wasn’t capturing the true unemployment. I thought I remember them changing the way it’s calculated which reduced the number (the critique).

[u/pullupgirl__]

Spent my lunch break watching this, it's some scary stuff.

[u/CharredPC]

In this era of poverty wages and record wealth inequality, "unemployment" isn't a valid metric. Simply being employed isn't enough, so why does that line in the proverbial sand even matter? It was a relevant talking point- when employment translated into making enough to live on. It's now just the tip of an economic iceberg where the millions of Americans treading water are slowly going under.

[u/GrumpySquirrel2016]

Great book. I read the ebook version and then purchased the hardcopy as a gift for family.

[u/SocksElGato]

Highly recommend his book America: The Farewell Tour. The man is in the highest order of truth tellers.

[u/4now5now6now]

yes!