Unspeakable

by Chris Hedges

I understood at a young age that you are not rewarded for virtue. Virtue must be its own reward. I saw that when you do what is right it is not easy or pleasant. You make enemies. Indeed, if you take a moral stance and there is no cost, it is probably not that moral.

Of course when Bush finally invades Iraq in April 2003, you are a vocal critic of the war. When do you deliver the infamous speech about the

Iraq War at the college commencement ceremony? Spring of 2003.

Truth is always the first casualty of war.

They reward Sanders for his role as a sheepherder by not running a serious candidate against him in Vermont.

If anyone thinks there would be vast differences between Trump and Clinton – each uniquely repugnant—they do not understand how our system works.

When capitalism is challenged, the liberals line up with the Brownshirts.

Alexis de Toqueville warned that when democratic populism collapses, when it no longer permits its citizens to engage in a meaningful way politically, it is replaced by an empty cultural populism. This cultural populism, he said, is characterized by the trivial—a bland uniformity, expressions of bitterness and resentment and a mindless patriotism. He called this democratic despotism. It is a world of depoliticized citizens hermetically sealed inside a banal cultural and intellectual vacuum.