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Robert Scheer and Chris Hedges on Class Struggle

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Posted on Nov 1, 2011
Heart of Oak (CC-BY)

(Page 4)

Chris Hedges: That’s why you have to delineate who your enemies are. And it’s really interesting being in Zuccotti Park, because when the white shirts, which are the supervisors, aren’t around, there’s a lot of fraternization between the blue uniform cops and the protesters. Even sort of jocular bantering, and it all changes as soon as the white shirts show up. And I think that’s right. And I think that it’s extremely important to remember that you know these blue uniform cops who are all working class, they probably feel most about these bankers in $8,000 suits the way we do. Not only that, they have to work down in the financial district, where these multimillionaires sort of glide by them as if they’re invisible. And there’s also a huge rent-a-cop business. I mean, you are a cop, and these big companies like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan hire you out for $37 an hour so that you can serve as a kind of private security service for their industries and for their executives. So I think that the protesters have been very astute about realizing that this is a kind of natural ally—potentially a natural ally, and I think they’re right.

Robert Scheer: You know, I think one thing that this protest movement has going for it—in the case of the anti-Vietnam War movement there was obviously the war was wrong, never made sense, but to make all the other connections was difficult. The same thing with the civil rights movement. There was no question that a significant group in this society were being persecuted and denied their rights, but others could sort of get off it. This time, anyone who’s seen a movie like “Inside Job” or “The Smartest Guys in the Room,” the Enron movie, let alone read any of the books out there, you know—I mean, they know how rancid this is. They know how evil it is. They know how these people talk among themselves; we have tapes in those documentaries, we know how corrupt the business schools are.

And so I was just wondering, you’re in that city where you have one of the richest guys as the mayor. And he owns the business press, you know, and so forth, and does that embarrass these people at all? I mean, they still think we have a free press of the kind Jefferson had in mind, with a town crier and a penny press and anyone could own one? We see the concentration of power in this media. And I saw an article in The New York Times, I forget who wrote it, one of their media guys raises the cry, why not occupy the newsrooms? And he talked about what Sam Zell did through the Tribune Company to papers like the Los Angeles Times. So do you get any sense of movement in those circles?

Chris Hedges: Well, I don’t hang out with those people too much. Although I did go to prep school with them all. I think they’re sort of beyond shame. I really think that they are like courtiers in these closed cities, where they’re just clueless. That’s my feeling. You know, they live within their own little bubbles—one writer called it Richistan—where they never see anything; they never experience anything, other than people who are just like them. I just think—and you know what, a lot of them also are just stupid. They have been able, through privilege—I mean, George W. Bush is a kind of poster child for this—to become immensely wealthy. I mean, Rahm Emanuel leaves his job for two years, what did he make, $12 million?—working for a hedge fund. I mean, this is just sick. And I think that they run in those circles, they don’t step outside of those circles, and I think that they, because of that, are divorced from the common experience of the ordinary citizen. They have no way to make judgments about it, because it’s not part of their reality.

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Robert Scheer: And there’s a dirty secret to this whole thing. It hit me the other night; I spoke, I introduced at the International Women’s Media Foundation dinner in Los Angeles. And they honored three very heroic women from Mexico, Thailand and Iran. And yet the whole evening was hijacked by Wal-Mart! Because Wal-Mart, which seems to be giving money to all sorts of organizations—and this woman from Wal-Mart gets up there before these people are even honored, and gives a long 10-minute speech about how Wal-Mart represents liberation. And then Bank of America is another sponsor, and then Chevron is another sponsor. And the ability of these companies to throw their money—I mean, one of the dirty secrets of American journalism and punditocracy is the speaking fees, which is always—they’re never commented on. You know, Lawrence Summers got $12 million—no, I’m sorry, $8 million, 8 and a half million dollars when he was advising Obama and ostensibly a Harvard professor, and half of that came in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. You know, $100,000 for a 20-minute talk. Now, the people in the journalism profession, people who are the pundits, they very often get what, 50, 75—Thomas Friedman, he gets enormous speaking fees. And it’s not even discussed. The corruption runs so deep that that’s even—I mean, when I worked at the L.A. Times if a friend of mine gave me a free beer at his restaurant it was considered a conflict of interest. But you can now go get a $75,000 speaking fee. Who’s the guy just indicted, he was chair of McKinsey, the Goldman Sachs director, now they’re going after him with criminal charges today, [Rajat] Gupta I think his name is. I know people who worked for McKinsey and get all kinds of money, consulting and advising, and yet they’re treated as objective journalists. I mean, I think the rot goes pretty deep into the news profession.


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By chacaboy, November 3, 2011 at 8:39 am Link to this comment

Though it does seem to affirm that the “vast majority” of your head is empty
space…;-)

Is there a moderator here to focus this conversation away from cheap shots? The
smiley face doesn’t really compensate…this is definitely the low road.

Report this

By Don Schneider, November 3, 2011 at 6:04 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Why do so many hate and fear mongers find their way to progressive sites such as
this to smear their nastiness ?  You would think they would feel more at home
commenting on rt. wing republican venues.

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By ardee, November 3, 2011 at 5:08 am Link to this comment

Not so objective observer, November 2 at 2:48 pm

i’ll type slowly so you can keep up.  43% doesn’t make a majority. 

Your comment, as dumb as a post, stated that   it would appear that most of the commenters on this topic either commune only with like minded or totally ignore what the fact that the vast majority of the American public couldn’t care less about this “movement”.

Can you not even keep track of what you yourself post?  I thought not. 43% approval would seem to negate your comment about “the vast majority of Americans”. Though it does seem to affirm that the “vast majority” of your head is empty space…;-)

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D.R. Zing's avatar

By D.R. Zing, November 2, 2011 at 5:24 pm Link to this comment

Interesting the talk in the interview about winning
over the rank and file police officers.

That is important. Police officers and their families
are bankrupted as frequently as anyone else in the
current financial system. 

It’s also important to win over rank and file
journalists.  Most journalists join their profession
because they bought into the myth that free speech
exists in the United States.  The truth is free
speech exists for corporations and their owners, such
as Rupert Murdoch, but journalists have been largely
reduced to the role of heavily censored corporate
stenographers. 

The sooner journalists realize the Occupy movement
could benefit their profession the better off the
movement will be.   

objective observer:

Most of the people I know have seen a nuclear
detonation, which means at some rudimentary level
they must understand that our scientists penetrate
and even split the unseen and previously unknown.
Those scientists did not find souls and spirits; they
found subatomic particles.

Likewise, most of the people I know have flown in jets
and seen pictures the Hubble telescope has taken. 
The people know the ancients believed the gods—and
God—were in the clouds.  But the people don’t see
them when they fly in jets.  And when they look at
Hubble pictures, they see the universe, with all its
stars and black holes, not the flawless kingdom of
the Bible. 

And yet these same people still believe when they die
a spirit retaining all their memories and capable of
feeling sensations goes galavanting across the
universe. 

And they twist themselves into mystical contortions to
convince themselves another dimension exists that is
indeed the heaven of the ancients.

And they believe when they close their eyes and talk
to themselves that the God of the ancients is
listening to their thoughts, and some of them even
believe that when their own thoughts echo back to
them what they are hearing are the words of God. 

And some of these people believe the Occupy movement
is just a bunch of punks and hippies. 

I don’t hold any of it against them.  For I have
learned to live among them and I have compassion for
their unique form of mental retardation, brought on
by a childhood of intellectual abuse, that renders
them incapable of perceiving reality as it actually
exists. 

Peace out, dude.

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By objective observer, November 2, 2011 at 2:48 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

ooo, cranky today, aren’t we Mr/Ms ardee.  this is typical of the left wing of the political spectrum, name calling when one disagrees with you, not being able to compose a coherent response. 

i’ll type slowly so you can keep up.  43% doesn’t make a majority.  the people i interact with are what would be called by civilized folk as “middle Americans”.  you know, common folk.  for the record, i applaud the few objectives put forth by the occupiers, i just don’t believe that they will be achieved with their current method. 

since you have no response except name calling and vile, i will regard this as a symptom of your lower mentality and await other, more thoughtful responses.

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By blogdog, November 2, 2011 at 2:31 pm Link to this comment

from the interview, near its closing - “...Exxon Mobile is not going to lavish you…”
of course not, exactly why it took NPR (National Propaganda Radio) 9 days to
start covering OWS

but let’s not stop there - what if Rockefeller, Ford, Soros Foundations,
et al, do lavish you, then what is expected?  e.g.

Appalling Propaganda from Amy Goodman About Libya
Willy Loman - Scott Creighton
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2011 - http://tinyurl.com/3q5cddn

Amy Goodman of Democracy NOW! has become one of the most disingenuous
news figures this country has to offer and that’s saying a lot because there are
numbers of them. She is not worthy of your trust, she is not worth of your time,
she is not worthy of your respect… anymore.  Such a sad legacy she now leaves
behind after a long and storied career as a dedicated teller of the truth in spite
of the power aligned against her. For whatever reason, she has become just
another presstitute in service of the globalists who are at this minute still
attacking the people of Libya, still bombing them and their infrastructure, still
laying siege to cities and populations who refuse to surrender to NATO powers, 
and still planning how to dice up the people of Libya’s state assets to hand
them over to their favorite corporate contributors.

[...]

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By ardee, November 2, 2011 at 2:24 pm Link to this comment

Oh another one crawls out of the woodwork. They all shout ,“because I say so!” in their squeaky little cockroach voices.


objective observer, November 2 at 12:55 pm

in my profession, i talk to a lot of different people throughout the day.

As one might expect of a streetwalker…;-)

  it would appear that most of the commenters on this topic either commune only with like minded or totally ignore what the fact that the vast majority of the American public couldn’t care less about this “movement”.  most of the people i talk to consider these “occupiers” as either slackers or 60’s has beens or wannabes.  until there is some unified message, demand or call to action, this event will simply be an annoyance.

...and there you have it, conclusive proof, not of the relative popularity of the OWS movement but of the sliminess of those who oppose it. Oh cockroach, CBS for one disagrees with your silly little poll. Polling your Johns, by the by, not really authentic.


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20125515-503544/poll-43-percent-agree-with-views-of-occupy-wall-street/

October 25, 2011 6:30 PM

 
Poll: 43 percent agree with views of “Occupy Wall Street”

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By Morpheus, November 2, 2011 at 2:09 pm Link to this comment

Memo to America: Stop waiting for Democrats and Republicans to save you. It’s bad for your health and your future. Can’t you tell? You have another choice -use it!


“WAKE UP PEOPLE!” 
Read “Common Sense 3.1” at ( http://www.revolution2.osixs.org )

Enough talk, it’s time to get organized.

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By Dieter Heymann, November 2, 2011 at 2:03 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Sorry Mr. Scheer but the overturning of tables by Jesus, if that really happened, had absolutely nothing to do with social justice. For openers, these so-called money “changers” were not money changers but lenders of funds to people who did not have the money to buy a lamb that was to be slaughtered in the Temple at Easter. According to Jewish laws they were not allowed to demand interest although they probably had some ways to circumvent that law. They served a social purpose. Secondly, the so-called overturning was a religious not a social act by Jesus who held that the slaughter of lambs was a heathen and not a Jewish tradition.

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By objective observer, November 2, 2011 at 12:55 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

in my profession, i talk to a lot of different people throughout the day.  it would appear that most of the commenters on this topic either commune only with like minded or totally ignore what the fact that the vast majority of the American public couldn’t care less about this “movement”.  most of the people i talk to consider these “occupiers” as either slackers or 60’s has beens or wannabes.  until there is some unified message, demand or call to action, this event will simply be an annoyance. 

change comes only through the ballot box or the bullet box.  if voted in, the elected quickly become what they campaigned against, and become the problem.  if the latter, those that are calling the loudest for change will lose, since most of them wouldn’t know which end of the gun to point downrange, and are too anti second amendment to learn.

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By gerard, November 2, 2011 at 10:05 am Link to this comment

One thing we all need to understand better is what we mean, more precisely, when we say “they are clueless.”  It is so commonly used for that everybody assumes it has content.  It indicates, but the content is vague:  Whata does “out of it” mean, exactly, “not aware of causing disaster”, “out to lunch”, “care-less” nnd—most important—how do people get that way and what’s the most effective thing to do about it, and how?
  I know these questions seem boring and petty, but the psychology of “cluelessness” is very widely spread, not only among the rich, and in my opinion we need to seriously look into it. Probably we should all start with asking ourselves what we are “clueless” about, and why?

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By felicity, November 2, 2011 at 9:39 am Link to this comment

There are written accounts of Russian elites (to the
manor born types) who literally starved to death in
their houses when the peasants on their estates
rebelled and deserted them during the Russian
Revolution of 1917.

Reminds me of Scarlett’s line in Gone With the Wind,
“I’ll think about that tomorrow” when any threat to
their existence tomorrow is simply unthought of today.

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By prisnersdilema, November 2, 2011 at 7:57 am Link to this comment

While occupying Wall Street don’t forget to occupy Conneticut…

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D.R. Zing's avatar

By D.R. Zing, November 2, 2011 at 7:49 am Link to this comment

“The hero of independent media…Bob Scheer.”
—Chris Hedges

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By D.R. Zing, November 2, 2011 at 7:47 am Link to this comment

This is an awesome interview. I recommend everyone
listen to it. Thank you, Truthdig, for posting it.

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D.R. Zing's avatar

By D.R. Zing, November 2, 2011 at 7:29 am Link to this comment

Thomas Friedman is a walking conflict of interest.

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By D.R. Zing, November 2, 2011 at 7:27 am Link to this comment

“A lot of them are just stupid.” —Chris Hedges

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By D.R. Zing, November 2, 2011 at 7:17 am Link to this comment

Hell yes!  Occupy the newsroom.

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By DonMidwest, November 2, 2011 at 6:07 am Link to this comment

An excellent summary of the class struggle that we are going through and the importance of OWS.

I worked to get Robert Scheer elected to congress and went door to door in the 1960’s in Oakland. I well recall the Oakland police turning us back in the anti war march of Oct 15, 1965.

These days, every system is broken down. The problems our country faces are systemic and have not been addressed by the political class nor of course the corporations who have been carrying out the Corporate cout d’ etat.

I sent this article out to my friends.

I live in the Columbus OH area these days and sent it to the local democratic club. They have been focused on stopping Gov Kasik and not taken the step beyond the democratic party as advocated in this interview.

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By ardee, November 2, 2011 at 5:50 am Link to this comment

Perhaps the most significant and in-depth discussion I have read in my two plus years here at TD.

This is worth, not only a read, but a re-read and some real thoughtful consideration of the several points made. Further it certainly shines the bright white light of truth and balance on the insinuations and clumsy efforts of the twin pillars of propaganda here; Ozark Michael and IMax, in their efforts to discredit OWS. That this need to slander is present shows plainly how important this movement really is and both infers a status on it and makes one wonder where we will go from here.

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By Outraged, November 2, 2011 at 12:31 am Link to this comment

“If you have a very large crowd shouting outside your
building, there might not be room for a safety net if
you’re the one tumbling down when it collapses.”

Lemony Snicket

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By gerard, November 1, 2011 at 9:53 pm Link to this comment

Wow!  A very cogent and thorough summary of where we’re at and what a lot of us are about, all put forth through airing the personal views and wide experiences of Scheer and Hedges.  I’m very glad to know more about where they are coming from and what they think our chances are. Hang in there, guys, and keep looking and listening, publishing and talking.

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