52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
02. Empire of illusion: the end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle.
Hedges, in hysterics, prophecies nothing less then the End of American Civilization, charging our culture with retreat into mass deception. Instead of participating in reality we construct pseudo-events, favoring inanity over reality, pornography over love, and the continued charade of free-market capitalism over Democracy. Corporations have taken over, civil liberties are a memory, and we’re fast heading toward Weimar-Germany-level catastrophe that will rock us to our core. In what can only be described as a tacked-on coda, he suggests that — don’t worry — Love is stronger than Death, for about two pages.
My issue with Hedges isn’t that what he’s saying is untrue — it’s all true. It’s that he’s screaming at the top of his lungs without any constructive suggestion. If we’re powerless against the corporate security state, we need not hyperbole but organization and action, which would make for a much better and more useful book. Especially since only the choir is going to read this anyway, and they’re already awake.
And he’s right: evil is struggling to crush an uncrushable kernel of eternal life. But someone else is writing that book.
(PS – I had an idea, if the totalitarian security state ever arrives in force, for a secret post office of Christians, operating under the radar and on foot. It would be like an anti-Tristero, not evil but Good. Who’s in?)
*raises hand*
Brian Estabrook. January 13th. 2010. 3:36 pm.