In case some of you didn't read the comments or the whole article..I thought this was interesting.
By Alphysicist, October 25 at 10:02 am Link to this commentDear Chris Hedges:
Great article, and I also liked your book Empire of Illusion. At a fundamental level I disagree, however: the so called liberal class is not a group of people who just stood by as Wall street raped the country and so forth. This point of view assigns them a rather passive role. But they were ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS, not to mention beneficiaries in what happened. The Ivy League trained (Nobel-Prize winning) economists were not making mistakes when they advocated deregulation (which was championed by the Clinton administration): they were providing the ideological and pseudo-rational background for what was happening (an example of non-negligible and willful participation for prestige and generous pay in return).
The anti-segregation and the anti-war movements of the sixties were also corrupted by the liberal class into something that they were not intended to be. Political correctness was introduced to stifle criticism of the elites: for example the criticism of AIPAC or even to mention the U.S.S. Liberty was for a long time (and still is) treated on the same level as genuine racism. Justified anger of African-Americans is very often channeled into hate of the white working class neighbor (because they happen to be on average marginally better off), rather than used as a basis for genuine progressive reform. It is now more a kind of “divide et impera” politics. As mass uncontrolled immigration also threatens the jobs of the working class (especially the un-skilled working class) it would be the job of the liberal class to stand up against it. However, as usual, they use the term “racism” to stifle criticism of this form of outsourcing.
The anti-war movements of the sixties were diverted in the direction of the “sexual revolution”, an extension, in the end, of the consumer culture, which had strong profit motives (the rise of the porn industry, which you detail in your book, could not have been made possible without the sexual revolution). (Please read for example the book “Elementary Particles”, by M. Houellebecq, or see the BBC series on the life of Eddie Bernays.)
For the killing of culture, Hollywood and the mainstream media bears a large fraction of responsibility. The Jerry Springers and co. are not by any means arch-conservatives. But also, the why study “dead white males” movement at universities (which also uses the struggle against racism as a cover) is one of the factors which lead to Dickens and co. being forgotten.
The problem with the so called liberal class is that they end up corrupting the idea of solidarity. The Republican right is openly pro-business and pro-profit in most cases, so it is not as corrupt of them to act accordingly. A Wolfensohn (ex-president of the World Bank) playing the role of the champion of the poor is just like Madonna presenting herself as an actress.
Reading your book it occurred to me that liberal class is somewhat of an oxymoron: liberal thinking, which is open and critical, is by its very nature a subversive activity. The idea of a class (in the sense in which your article uses it), however, assumes some sort of connection or participation in institutions of power.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_world_liberal_o... /