Stop Me Before I Vote Again

This self-anointed Parson Weems is our ascetic scourge, issuing fatwas against himself on a weekly basis.
The "Left" has had choices to make for its nightly entertainment. Pious penitents seem to play well, inveighing and invoking while never quite getting to the part of the show with a beat for dancing. Hedges, he of the fully paid up goo-goo credentials as OP-san documents, dutiful Christian son, Harvard, Harvard Divinity, NY Times, microphone sermonizer for the next 40 years, seems to have been born with mylar ears, never seeming to hear the voices of rage or correction coming back at him - an amazing gift of transcendent ego.
"Slowschialism" of course, but Friar Piety keeps at it, and he's got his very contemplative and quietly furious brothers. Debs in his grave is more of a real and rational human than this crowd, but hey, get a hustle, and work that hustle like nobody's business, and you'll be a Name.

CH always has trouble with self-critique. The inflexible and overblown insistence that "faith" is somehow "important," despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary. The co-equal attribution of blood-thirst to US and FMLN forces, all on the assumption that his first-hand perception suffices. The rather obvious fear of talking plainly and accurately about social class and forms of class society.

Why the trouble? Who knows?

His attraction seems to be--partly at least--as an apostate. Someone from the mainstream who became radicalized al la CounterPunch's favorite, CP Roberts. Unfortunately, whether his heart is in the right place or not being a hack for The Times inevitably means being a hack in the pinko* rags as well.

*Okay! By "pinko" in this case, timidly progressive--peeking around the corner and looking at something that on a good day under the right light might reflect a mild tinge of whitish-pink.

(WARNING: these congregations are rated "fragile": no anarcho narco-nihilists allowed at any club gatherings without an accompanying adult.)

Hedges is a regular speaker at events put on by hard core Marxist cults like the RCP.

Just go to the "Revolution Books" website. He's actually doing a benefit for them.

The NYC launch for author Chris Hedges' new book, The Death of the Liberal Class, will be a benefit evening for Revolution Books. Hedges will speak and there will conversation with the audience. Proceeds from the evening go towards the 2010 Fund Drive to Save Revolution Books.

As far as I can see, he'll pretty much talk to anybody, from mainstream corporate media to the far, far anarchist left.

You can take issue with his analysis but you shouldn't flat out lie.

Not Bob -- I think you may have misread Owen. Hedges, like St Francis, is always willing to go preach to the wild animals. But not even the Dominicans would have accepted a wolf into the friary -- much less the Franciscans.

I think you may have misread Owen.

Possibly. But when you cultivate a style that's intentionally obscure it's a risk you have to take.

I'm not quite sure what you're tying to say with your Monastic references either. Perhaps I'm just an idiot.

The idea that "liberal" institutions have undergone a catastrophic collapse since Clinton can be debated.

I do know that Hedges is from upstate New York and that in the past it was a region known for radical left wing Protestantism.

Compare the evangelical churches of the 19th Century to the right wing cults calling themselves "evangelicals" today. John Brown's father, for example, helped found "Case Western Reserve University. Oberlin College was founded by radical Protestant abolitionists. So there you have at least two "radically liberal" institutions.

Another sense in which one could defend Hedges would be to say that his DOTLC argument could be taken as a rebuttal of present-day liberal self-perceptions. At that level, it might be a valuable argument, despite its bad faith basis.

As to Hedges talk at Old Skool Commie gigs, I really do think he's trying to get Marxist. He just doesn't have the fortitude or self-forgiving to really throw himself into it. As probably proven by talking to these old hacks.

interesting is it not

N.A. is suggesting ..i take it ..
there might be more to uppper state
preacher's boy's background
then common expectation suggests ...
as in
maybe another john brown ...

perhaps

for a single spirit
it's not as with evangelicals as a movement past and present
that historic transformation
is clear and adverse
no in any individual case
of course the haute parson crowd
even today
certainly might produce a metamorphic egg

but one can only judge a hatchling
by his product and ...so far
hedgerow's radicalism is of
a different class
upper vs lower burger
and an exceedingly lesser quality
--- warm gas jets not hacking blades--
then father S's hero
old pilgrim Brown

to the contrary and in particular
as he grows closer to the "revolutionary" noodle head left

if i were to call his soul
up to the interrogation stand

my first question would be
something like :

"are you now or have you ever been
a CIA contract player "

that is to suggest my first approach
would be to take him
for far more then meets the eye

like code pinkster yahootah benjamin
http://www.infowars.com/images/codepink2.jpg

agrandizing and practicalizing
the motive behind their actions
and deepening
the sinister shadows
these flickering flames cast
adds to the theatre of it all ..no ??

in fact i suspect he's just nasty
a family infected
rabid chick a dee

" hard core Marxist cults "

"flat out lie"

perhaps you pitch this too intensely

the rcp is indeed a cult
but hardly a hard core one
beyond its party line rhetoric
its soft core to the max
or i should say
at the same distance inside
the full enclosing surface
of all the "party's "
perfectly centered spiraling circulations
and windings of line
is one clever boy's preposterous ego trip
and god bless their strayed souls
each and every one of em
he has a cult cadre to realize
his progress and comparative celebraty

another instance of moray Al's
durable charismatic authority driven
" voluntary " association
its dynamics much like any
similarly centered intentional "community "
only probably more durable
because they all don't have to live with each other 24/7

second pass on "flat out lie "

suppose i wasn't talking
about birds of his feather
and their club like gatherings
of fellow flocksters
ie
not talking about
an odious variety of liberals :
progius birdius liberalis radiculous

but indeed talking about
the range of audience
b4 whom ilks like hedge fun
might speak

to go
all standing back hairs
over this violation
that i've intentionally
crimped his range
by claiming he only speaks to his own
suggests to me
a certain miss placed intensity

the kind
that prefers to comment
on say
roman the spiked girl fucker polansky
then say
the vaguery of organizing the job site
or the impact of trade policy on wages

a righteous soul
super heated with moral rage
not all that far in spirit
from..well...sir chris here

knight from hedgy heath
(upper state new york )

Hedges writes the same column every week: "The Christian Fascists are coming." Except they're not.