Despair, A Self-Portrait. Photo credit: Lloyd Morgan, Flickr
It is despair that is killing us. It fosters what Roger Lancaster calls “poisoned solidarity,” the intoxication forged from the negative energies of fear, envy, hatred and a lust for violence.
Chris Hedges
Nov 06, 2024
In the end, the election was about despair.
Despair over futures that evaporated with deindustrialization.
Despair over the loss of 30 million jobs in mass layoffs.
Despair over austerity programs and the funneling of wealth upwards into the hands of rapacious oligarchs.
Despair over a liberal class that refuses to acknowledge the suffering it orchestrated under neoliberalism or embrace New Deal type programs that will ameliorate this suffering.
Despair over the futile, endless wars, as well as the genocide in Gaza, where generals and politicians are never held accountable.
Despair over a democratic system seized by corporate and oligarchic power.
This despair has been played out on the bodies of the disenfranchised through opioid and alcoholism addictions, gambling, mass shootings, suicides — especially among middle-aged white males — morbid obesity and the investment of our emotional and intellectual life in tawdry spectacles and the allure of magical thinking, from the absurd promises of the Christian right to the Oprah-like belief that reality is never an impediment to our desires.
These are the pathologies of a deeply diseased culture, what Friedrich Nietzsche calls an aggressive despiritualized nihilism.
Donald Trump is a symptom of our diseased society. He is not its cause. He is what is vomited up out of decay.
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READ MORE: The Chris Hedges Report