Chris Hedges and Derrick Jensen criticize Bill McKibben

Thankk you very much Making Progress.  Really Chris Hedges and Derrick Jensen both praise Bill McKibben and go on to radically deconstruct the middle class and the liberal leadership as complicit in the quiet corporate takeover since WWI.  The question of just where to draw the line and fight back is always a tough one and most of us would rather stay peaceful and weigh in too late.  The second part is available on 4shared as Chris Hedges and Derrick Jensen discuss violent resistance.

The distinction between subjective and objective violence, the many arguments against violent resistance and the fact that resistance is still needed and has provoked reaction from the state for all of history.  Hedges makes the valid point that resistance has to be based on unhooking from the corporate state on every level: Jensen decolonizes his mind.  At the end both of these gentlemen, true professors, agree that they learn alot from their students in the prisons and that much of their thesis resonates better in prison than in their universities.  

Just have to note that Chris Hedges said his students in a DC prison are the only group of readers that thought his world view was too rosy in War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. 

Prison has also been noted in some research as a growing source of Islamic conversion, whether radical or not, I don't know. Prison growth has been greatest after it became more private enterprise. Think of it as American style maddrasses, schools for indoctrination, and also survival skills for criminal activity. When crime goes down endangering their market, organize a grassroots movement to institute new laws to criminalize more activity, and manditory sentences.

I love both these people—Jensen and Hedges—and have read several of their books, including Endgame (Jensen) and War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.(Hedges)

Jensen does a great job questioning non-violent resistance, so much so that the reader is tempted to leave one's commitment to non-violence behind.  So much so that, whenever liberals insist non-violence is the only way, I wonder—Could the original American Revolution have been successful via non-violence?  At a certain point, a population can be pushed too far.

I admit to an inner conflict on this subject. The heart says non-violence is best; the mind says otherwise.  As Jensen says, in effect, a state uses violence because violence works. Non-violence works too, but only where the authority in question has a conscience, a living constitution, and cares.  I'm not convinced our current global corporate regime has such.

As Hedges notes, the systems themselves are "pathological", and sociopaths tend to rise to the top in our structures..

The structures contradict any viable solutions for the hastening merging of economic, environmental and social crises. At some point, there will be a complete meltdown....and the structures themselves have repression as the only solution available to them..

Solutions would require the power elite, financiers, banksters, and major industry to go against what they perceive as their own economic self-interests. Not likely when they control government....and their control over government has been strengthened with the recent Supreme Court decision..

At some point in time, it will forcefully hit home on an individual basis that nothing is working., when shelves at the supermarket are bare and the electricity is no longer  on...and the unemployed are left to beg in the streets..

That isn't a difficult forecast when you study the trends....basically, cause and effect.. Not much different than forecasting a ball will go downhill if placed on a mountainside.

Hedges, like others.... Wolin, Johnson, Bates, Celeste, etc., are pretty good at forecasting..

Univ. studies point to an agricultural collapse from industrial farming....with or without global warming added to the mix. It's pretty easy to prophesy empty supermarket shelves based on the science. Is Big Ag going to address that, and return to small, sustainable  individual farms close to cities? Not likely they'd ever support that policy in Washington. They can undersell sustainable farming..Drive the small farmer broke.

The media suggests playing the fiddle while Rome burns. They've hid the fires  behind a "free market" smokescreen.

Take up gardening  Learn it before a crop failure is a matter of eating or not eating...and learn to preserve what you grow. Dry beans or peas on the vine..Tomatoes, being aciic, are easy to home-can safely.

Swiss Chard will grow nearly year-round if covered at night or when it snows..Cook it as Spinach, or use in a salad...Raise a few chickens...feed 'em home-grown, dried corn.cracked with a hammer or some other device. They'll keep your garden free of bugs and fertilize it for you..

Besides, gardening is healthy exercise...and brings one closer to their innate biological human nature...ties with the environment that sustains them.

When environmental - economic - social crises come to a head...it won't be pleasant...and is survivable until they can be corrected..Correction will probably require an overthrow of existing structures. The power of the state will be instituted to prevent that for as long as possible.

I get from Hedges, that violence is a recourse only after all other measures to sustain human life fail...and its forced upon the population..

Totalitarianism? Wolin/Johnson note we are living under "inverted totalitarianism". An illusion of democracy..

QUOTE: "The genius of our inverted totalitarian system “lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual."

.http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20080515_chalmers_johnson_on_our_managed_democracy/

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease".