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Forum Post: Chris Hedges lays it out after being released from jail for protesting Goldman Sachs

Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 7, 2011, 5:46 p.m. EST by looselyhuman (3117)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

...

We seemed to have lost, at least until the advent of the Occupy Wall Street movement, not only all personal responsibility but all capacity for personal judgment. Corporate culture absolves all of responsibility. This is part of its appeal. It relieves all from moral choice. There is an unequivocal acceptance of ruling principles such as unregulated capitalism and globalization as a kind of natural law. The steady march of corporate capitalism requires a passive acceptance of new laws and demolished regulations, of bailouts in the trillions of dollars and the systematic looting of public funds, of lies and deceit. The corporate culture, epitomized by Goldman Sachs, has seeped into our classrooms, our newsrooms, our entertainment systems and our consciousness. This corporate culture has stripped us of the right to express ourselves outside of the narrowly accepted confines of the established political order. It has turned us into compliant consumers. We are forced to surrender our voice. These corporate machines, like fraternities and sororities, also haze new recruits in company rituals, force them to adopt an unrelenting cheerfulness, a childish optimism and obsequiousness to authority. These corporate rituals, bolstered by retreats and training seminars, by grueling days that sometimes end with initiates curled up under their desks to sleep, ensure that only the most morally supine remain. The strong and independent are weeded out early so only the unquestioning advance upward. Corporate culture serves a faceless system. It is, as Hannah Arendt writes, “the rule of nobody and for this very reason perhaps the least human and most cruel form of rulership.”

Our political class, and its courtiers on the airwaves, insists that if we refuse to comply, if we step outside of the Democratic Party, if we rebel, we will make things worse. This game of accepting the lesser evil enables the steady erosion of justice and corporate plundering. It enables corporations to harvest the nation and finally the global economy, reconfiguring the world into neofeudalism, one of masters and serfs. This game goes on until there is hardly any action carried out by the power elite that is not a crime. It goes on until corporate predators, who long ago decided the nation and the planet were not worth salvaging, seize the last drops of wealth. It goes on until moral acts, such as calling for those inside the corporate headquarters of Goldman Sachs to be tried, see you jailed, and the crimes of financial fraud and perjury are upheld as lawful and rewarded by the courts, the U.S. Treasury and the Congress. And all this is done so a handful of rapacious, immoral plutocrats like Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs who sucks down about $250,000 a day and who lied to the U.S. Congress as well as his investors and the public, can use their dirty money to retreat into their own Forbidden City or Versailles while their underlings, basking in the arrogance of power, snap amusing photos of the rabble outside their gates being hauled away by the police and company goons.

It is vital that the occupation movements direct attention away from their encampments and tent cities, beset with the usual problems of hastily formed open societies where no one is turned away. Attention must be directed through street protests, civil disobedience and occupations toward the institutions that are carrying out the assaults against the 99 percent. Banks, insurance companies, courts where families are being foreclosed from their homes, city offices that put these homes up for auction, schools, libraries and firehouses that are being closed, and corporations such as General Electric that funnel taxpayer dollars into useless weapons systems and do not pay taxes, as well as propaganda outlets such as the New York Post and its evil twin, Fox News, which have unleashed a vicious propaganda war against us, all need to be targeted, shut down and occupied. Goldman Sachs is the poster child of all that is wrong with global capitalism, but there are many other companies whose degradation and destruction of human life are no less egregious.

...

http://www.truth-out.org/finding-freedom-handcuffs/1320678254

23 Comments

23 Comments


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[-] 5 points by beautifulworld (23769) 10 years ago

"Those who resist—the doubters, outcasts, renegades, skeptics and rebels—rarely come from the elite. They ask different questions. They seek something else—a life of meaning. They have grasped Immanuel Kant’s dictum, “If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.”

“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,” Arendt writes. “For human beings, thinking of past matters means moving in the dimension of depth, striking roots and thus stabilizing ourselves, so as not to be swept away by whatever may occur—the Zeitgeist or History or simple temptation. The greatest evil is not radical, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over the whole world.”

[-] 1 points by DKAtoday (33802) from Coon Rapids, MN 10 years ago

[-] (aAHAhaha) points by DKAtoday ( Heeheeheehoo ) _ minutes ago

Nice ( well no - not nice - but - well said ) - kinda goes well with:

GREED the #1 Cause of Disease Death & Destruction In The World.

[-] 3 points by Philpux (643) from Mountain View, AR 12 years ago

Campaign Finance Reform. Boom!

Right on, Dood. Corporations have no ethics or morals because so many people bear responsibility for the indiscretions of the whole, that really no one person has to feel the guilt. It is a distribution of responsibility, that is pervading every aspect of our culture, as you say. It happens with both the perpetrators and the victims.

I also agree that we need less camping, and more marching.

[-] 1 points by looselyhuman (3117) 12 years ago

Agreed on all counts. Thanks.

[-] 2 points by Keepitsimple (110) 12 years ago

YES!!! Seems like what is coming from the OWS is the that people are tired of the left/right, Dem/Rep ideologies. Neither one seems to represent the needs and wills of the people including a sound healthy limited government of, by, & for the people. Both the government and the people have gotten fat a lazy. This is how the predator banksters and corporate greed grew unchecked like a cancer.

[-] 2 points by aquainted (268) 12 years ago

Excellent words that are sure to be pissed on by numerous shills that should be banned from this site.

[-] 1 points by looselyhuman (3117) 12 years ago

I wish I could have pasted more. The entire article is worth the click...

[-] 0 points by aquainted (268) 12 years ago

Did he write that in jail?

[-] 1 points by Lockean (671) from New York, NY 12 years ago

This guy gets it. Thanks loosely.

[-] 1 points by looselyhuman (3117) 12 years ago

Welcome.

[-] -3 points by agamemnon (-20) 10 years ago

Yes Hedges does really "get..it"

I wish more people here got it

[-] 0 points by forourfutures (393) 10 years ago

Anything but solution on action is a problem at this late date.

"This game of accepting the lesser evil enables the steady erosion of justice and corporate plundering."

The only way out of that box is Article V where 3/4 of the states are ratifying.

[Removed]

[-] -1 points by nomdeguerre (1775) from Brooklyn, NY 12 years ago

Chris Hedges, why aren't you in Libya sodomizing Gaddhafi loyalists with knives or rifles? Isn't that what you wanted from the beginning? You're such a fraud. Speaking just for myself, get lost.

[-] 1 points by looselyhuman (3117) 12 years ago

Thanks for the bump. :-)

[-] -1 points by nomdeguerre (1775) from Brooklyn, NY 12 years ago

Just trying to pull that light chain of truth. The more people who know what a fraud Chris Hedges is, and other humanitarian interventionists are, the better.

Nice try co-opting OWS.

[-] 2 points by looselyhuman (3117) 12 years ago

Chris Hedges is OWS incarnate. Thanks again!

[-] -2 points by Skoalman (56) 12 years ago

Truth Out? Cool, more left wing drivel.

[-] 1 points by looselyhuman (3117) 12 years ago

Thanks for the bump. :o)

[-] -1 points by Skoalman (56) 12 years ago

No problem, I'm here all night.

[-] 1 points by looselyhuman (3117) 12 years ago

Thanks again!

[-] -3 points by MissBirdy (-78) from Thornwood, NY 12 years ago

They should have kept you for a few more years.

[-] 1 points by looselyhuman (3117) 12 years ago

Thanks for the bump. :)