Truthdig Radio: Robert Scheer and Chris Hedges on class struggle

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Listen: http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/chris_hedges_and_robert_scheer_on_class_struggle_20111101/


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Chris Hedges: They don’t know what’s happening. It’s that old Dylan song, you know? “There’s something happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones.” They don’t have—they don’t know what’s going on. That’s why they keep asking for demands: What are your demands, what are your demands? I was just down at Zuccotti Park, and they said, “We’re thinking about having a slogan saying ‘our demands are there is no demand.’ ” They want the corporate state reversed, and the power elite can’t get their head around that.

Robert Scheer: You know, the power elite has spent a lot of money denying there is a power elite. And I remember when I was teaching in graduate school in economics, there was ‘oh, there really isn’t—there’s equal, relatively equal income distribution.’ And just today, the Congressional Budget Office came out with a study of what I would call Three Decades of Greed. They traced it from ’79 to ’07. And the top 1 percent’s income went up 273 percent! I mean, we now have ample documentation of the obvious: that this claimed middle class that was supposed to be the basis of American democracy is being wiped out; that people lower down are really suffering. And you’ve seen these people, you’ve met with them, you’ve rubbed shoulders with them. What do they think, they’re just going to rough it out, or that it won’t matter?

Chris Hedges: Well, I think that oligarchic elite is so insulated from reality; you know, the only time they mingle with the working classes is when they meet their gardener or their chauffer or, you know, a bartender. And of course these people are in roles where their job depends on them being subservient or obsequious. So they’re totally divorced from what’s happening. They don’t see it, it’s not on their radar screen, they don’t get it. And that’s what happens with isolated elites, whether it’s in the Forbidden City or Versailles or anywhere else. They can’t make rational decisions, because they don’t understand what reality is like for the 99 percent. They have no idea.