Over ten years ago Bruce had me read two books by James Davidson Hunter, the first was Culture Wars and the second was the one pictured. I thought he was being a little over dramatic with the title, but the events of the last year seem to be making him rather prescient.
Chris Hedges struck a nerve. This is his final paragraph of a well written and reasoned post concerning the economic tidal wave getting ready to swamp all of us.
I spent two years traveling the country to write a book on the Christian right called “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” I visited former manufacturing towns where for many the end of the world is no longer an abstraction. Many have lost hope. Fear and instability have plunged the working class into profound personal and economic despair, and, not surprisingly, into the arms of demagogues and charlatans of the radical Christian right who offer a belief in magic, miracles and the fiction of a utopian Christian nation. Unless we rapidly re-enfranchise these dispossessed workers, insert them back into the economy, unless we give them hope, these demagogues will rise up to take power. Time is running out. The poor can dine out only so long on illusions. Once they grasp that they have been betrayed, once they match the bleak reality of their future with the fantasies they are fed, once their homes are foreclosed and they realize that the jobs they lost are never coming back, they will react with a fury and vengeance that will snuff out the remains of our anemic democracy and usher in a new dark age.
What pisses me off about the mindless drones filling the pews of the churches spewing this kool-aid is that they're too damn dumb to place the blame on the ones who have gotten us into this mess and take out their wrath on the ones trying to clean it up.
3 comments:
Hold on this too will pass. Tomorrow has to be better. The decisions that have been made are the right ones.
Love
Mom
if you think you have it bad read the book of Job he lost everything just think how good you have it
Anon, the book of Job is an allegory not the story of a real man. It's an exploration of the philosophies of the day and how they all fall short of God will for our lives. There is much to be learned from the book in times of trouble. Job didn't join a cult or start goose stepping with the masses to solve his problems.
Post a Comment