What is wrong with America?

What is wrong with America?



Chris Hedges addressed that question in his column a few days ago:


As Hedges tells it, we have ignored the

staggering myopia of our corrupt political and economic elite, which plunder the nation’s wealth for financial speculation and endless war, the mass retreat of citizens into virtual hallucinations, the collapsing edifices around us, which include the ecosystem that sustains life

to instead focus our attention on "a giddy self-worship."

And there's more:

We believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war. We believe that money, rather than manufactured products and goods, is real. We believe in the myth of inevitable human moral and material progress. We believe that no matter how much damage we do to the Earth or our society, science and technology will save us. And as temperatures on the planet steadily rise, as droughts devastate cropland, as the bleaching of coral reefs threatens to wipe out 25 percent of all marine species, as countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh succumb to severe flooding, as we poison our food, air and water, as we refuse to confront our addiction to fossil fuels and coal, as we dismantle our manufacturing base and plunge tens of millions of Americans into a permanent and desperate underclass, we flick on a screen and are entranced.

Either you have a taste for Chris Hedges or you don't. So there's no point in my adding further commentary to what Hedges has to say. If you're looking to read his whole column, here it is: Retribution for a World Lost in Screens