‘Independent media no longer exists in this vacuum of commonality and conformity. ...’

There’s something called the “internet” you should know about.

In fact, in general, advancing technology is steadily reducing the cost of publication.  No one really knows what the result will be, but instead of crying about change being needed you (and Mr. Hedges) should recognize that it is already taking place, and it is apparently outside of ruling-class control, at least for the moment.

Note: NPR is supported by the government and corporations and behaves accordingly.

lol.

It leads nut jobs to invent their own reality and pimp their fiction as “truth”. Take the below statement. Factless, baseless and patently untrue. Yet, JM promotes it as “truth” and factual.

“There are astute analysts who think the Christian Right is grandly manipulated by AIPAC, the brains of the clutch.”

So the logic: If the facts dont support your agenda ... Invent it.

Is nothing new. This defines every article Hedges ever wrote. This is his attempt to come clean.

I thank Chris Hedges for yet another analysis that “tells the truth and shoots straight”. 

This time I would like to quibble with two things though—small things in the context of the great service he performs, but worth quibbling about I think. First, the title:The Truth Alone Will Not Set You Free.

It is the Facts alone that will not set you free, and that is what Mr. Hedges actually argues. As William Faulkner so eloquently pointed out, there is a different between truth and the “mere facts.” The original saying, as far as I know, came from JC, who did not seem afraid of emotion. He said, “the truth will set you free”. In the context of other sayings attributed to JC, I would conclude JC was talking about self-honesty and revealed truth.

Secondly, Mr.  cites the Christian Right but not sidekick AIPAC in the context of who is directing us downward. There are astute analysts who think the Christian Right is grandly manipulated by AIPAC, the brains of the clutch. I think I understand why Mr. Hedges doesn’t get into this, and perhaps it is wise, but I feel a part of the equation is missing.

Independent media no longer exists in this vacuum of commonality and conformity. Scant few have the wherewithal to view HBO and support the local artists and farmers markets.
How then do we, the people regain the power that was handed to us in 1776?  I have as of yet not figured that out, but one thing I do know, is that it must be done and soon.
We have lost the control of our government, for we the people are the government, not the politicrats that inhabit Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area. Those people are nothing more than bureaucrats that have chosen a life of middling decline to the lowest common denominator. Without so much as thinking of the damage they may be doing themselves and others.
Our country is at a crossroads, we can descend into the fascist and autocratic form of government that is the wish of the moneyed elite or we, the people can turn this country around and become what we once were, free and responsible. Yet to do this, we need more than an unfettered media and a governing body that is answerable to the people, we need people, common people to stand up and be counted in this long and arduous fight against the elite that have effectively taken over this country.
May I suggest that we return to the ideal of pamphleteering, an ideal which helped create this ‘Great Experiment.’ Common people doing uncommon things are what created this climate, the climate that led to the creation of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. No one group can do this alone, we must include all groups that are willing to work their collective asses off for the cause of freedom and self-determination.
What engenders this kind of noble and forward thinking progress? A climate of inclusion and not exclusion, like the kind that the Green Party or other third parties have, not the exclusivity of the Far Right Wing Nuts, or the ‘Ultra-Liberal Leftists’ that have taken over the Democratic Party.
Viable third parties have been a hallmark of our country for as long as we have existed as a country.
Yet, if you read, watch T.V. or look at the MSM blogs and other forms of MSM communications, you will see that there is a dearth of reporting on the possibility of any third party being viable and alive. Even candidates which were in the mainstream parties, but did not fit the profile of the corporate masters were not included in the debates for the presidential party nominations, these people included Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, (D) Ohio, Rep. Ron Paul, (R) Texas and too many others to mention, but what we did not see and were not allowed to see or hear about were the third party candidates that made up the majority of candidates that ran for president and Congress.
You would think from the tone of this response to this almost fine article that I am appalled at the dearth of true journalism and reporting on the ‘others’ who ran for Congress and the presidency, WRONG! So WRONG in fact that you have missed the point by an innumerable sum. For I had foreseen the results that we now have before us, when the ‘Great Communicator,’ pulled all plugs on the ownership of more than two forms of media in any given area, and turned this country into a wasteland of national and international corporations that control the media, like nobodies business.
Given these and other ‘facts’ too numerous to mention, what will force us, the people to again take the reins of government back from the politicrats and corporations, the masters of the universe?  The simple fact that we cannot get local news, weather and sports for our communities! Plain and simple reporting without bias and without the ‘Fair and Balanced’ bullshit that is now the mainstay of the entertainment-news industry.

Mike789 is on the right track. The futility of believing in the political system, rather than the people, soon programs many into thinking of technological innovation in ways that our considered acceptable to corporate culture. And what is job one for corporate culture? Why getting more money out of you of course! That is why community based operating systems and open source software seem so foreign to so many, because being harnessed to number crunching companies, it most certainly is.
Corporate culture speaks ill of anything that does not make more money. The so-called altruism of tax deductible charity gifts is really image management, by way of public relations advertising. So it is not surprising that boiler plate terms such as “socialism” and “nanny state” are brandied about with great success amongst the public. The people have been well trained. Many actually believe President Obama when he said the financial crisis is partially their fault. The voter-slaves have their marching orders: stay in line and buy what they are told.
But sharing your food and creations with your fellow citizens, unencumbered by any corporate or government middleman?... now that is a dangerous idea.
Nomi Prins, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, has pointed out that the United States government subsidy of the banking industry is actually supported to the tune of over $13 trillion. That is enough money to create a national health service, pay off everyone’s mortgage, and guarantee college student loans. But nobody is even listening, because they refuse to hear. So you are much better off talking to people who actually grow your food.

As an example of a phenomena rarely ever reported, I notice that Mr. Hedges mentions Michael Jackson, Governor Sanford and Sascha Baron Cohen, which reveals he must spend more time watching television than he would care to admit. Someone as seasoned as the ex-journalist should already know that the old cliche “the revolution will not be televised” is actually true.
The Corporate Bogey is a good device to employ on this site. The rottenness of corporate culture is an established fact. What is rarely spoken of our actual solutions to the miseries imposed on the majority of humankind so unnecessarily, because so many, including Mr. Hedges, still accept the idea of corporate omnipotence, even as they protest against it. In other words, a good start would be to realize that corporations are not special at all, especially if you do not allow the threat of violence, both legal and physical, to intimidate you. There are many souls on this earth performing good works and actions, without ever considering the celebrity ego driven recognition that so many crave. Anonymous truth is still the truth.

ardee states “How do we recover what was lost? How do we reclaim the culture that was destroyed by corporations? How do we fight back now that the consumer culture has fallen into a state of decay? What can we do to reverse the cannibalization of government and the national economy by the corporations?”

As an artist myself, I recommend you frequent your local art shows and farmer’s markets. You do not have to by the cloned stuff from the chain stores. Become a patron of your local artists and becomee a conservator of work that has a little bit of soul wrapped up in its making.

“How do we recover what was lost? How do we reclaim the culture that was destroyed by corporations? How do we fight back now that the consumer culture has fallen into a state of decay? What can we do to reverse the cannibalization of government and the national economy by the corporations?”
Hedges is right that we have to reclaim our culture because it is our culture that defines our attitudes and perspective. Some of us have been working tirelessly on this for years. As a poet, I’ve been doing it with the Blue Collar Review for over a decade.

...read about Edward Bernays, the grandfather of PR. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and used the understanding of psychology to sell everything from cigarettes to automobiles to invasions of foreign countries….Adam Curtis’s documentary The Century of the Self is a must watch…Google video has it…you have to watch it….

“The lines between artists, social activists and journalists have to be erased.”

You erased them long ago when you resigned your journalist title.

Its how you justify your hamas propaganda.

fail!

“Strange too that Mr. Hedges rails against corporate control, when digital technology is actually enabling people who are musicians to make their own recordings without interference from middle management and marketers.”

I believe this a bit of a perversion of the meaning of Mr. Hedges’ rant against corporate controls. The products and the uses to which they are put, their benefits or their drawbacks are not the issue, in my opinion. As Mr. hedges himself notes:

“New desires and habits were implanted by corporate advertisers to replace the old. Individual frustrations and discontents could be solved, corporate culture assured us, through the wonders of consumerism and cultural homogenization. American culture, or cultures, was replaced with junk culture and junk politics. And now, standing on the ash heap, we survey the ruins. The very slogans of advertising and mass culture have become the idiom of common expression, robbing us of the language to make sense of the destruction. We confuse the manufactured commodity culture with American culture.

How do we recover what was lost? How do we reclaim the culture that was destroyed by corporations? How do we fight back now that the consumer culture has fallen into a state of decay? What can we do to reverse the cannibalization of government and the national economy by the corporations?”

Without delving into the control corporations have assumed over our governance, a very dangerous and corrupting affect upon our democracy, it is the climate of “need” that advertising and the media have installed in our culture.

When one willingly goes into debt, paying usurous interest rates for cheap crap thus indebting oneself for life and to a lifestyle unnatural and ultimately unfulfilling, then it is a bit superficial to look only at the coincidental and unintended benefits derived. At least in my own opinion.

I’m beginning to see a change in attitude since the “house of cards” has collapsed. Watching and listening to CSPAN, esp. BookTV has been my “go to”. People are no buying into the corporate model so readily and they are asking some pretty sticky questions. Thouhg I appreciate the passion of Chris Hedges, (and I feel the same frustration), his voice seem to emit from out of the wilderness when a clearing may be before us. I’ll not preach to the choir about blogs, etc. We simply must not waver in our earnest effort to peel the onion. For those with the wherewithal, “SHOUTING FIRE: STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF FREE SPEECH” tonight on HBO 9pm, may prove a refreshing insight.

Mr. Hedges claims that “The lines between artists, social activists, and journalists have to be erased”, is spoken like a justice league eraser head. It would indeed be a world even darker than it already is, if those fortunate to have some personal creative spark, are firmly instructed that it must serve this greater cause. This exemplifies an attitude amongst some liberals who claim to love the arts, but actually are quite oblivious to its deeper functions. Under the Hedges agenda, people like Jackson Pollock should have stayed doing socially conscious mural work for the WPA, rather than indulging in his personal “chaotic” manner of splashing paint. Work that has nothing to do with exposing corporate fraud or political injustice, but is simply seeking to convey living beauty in a myriad of forms, on its own terms; this too under such a viewpoint would be considered invalid, or simply not of any importance.
Strange too that Mr. Hedges rails against corporate control, when digital technology is actually enabling people who are musicians to make their own recordings without interference from middle management and marketers.
For journalists (and there still are ones who do excellent work) the battle in corporate media will continue. For artists, strategic disengagement from the hydra-headed company monster that Hedges speaks of, is actually what is happening more often than most people realize, because that is a phenomena which is rarely ever reported.

If it is independent media you support then NPR is one of a scant few choices available to you. Many criticize that source precisely for the reasons they should support it; it scrupulously seeks to present all sides of issues, always!

Pacifica Radio is certainly available to those who wish to hear only the left’s views and I do not criticize that network for its excellent presentation of those views. But I do not want to hear, as a steady diet, slanted news, whether left or right, thus my choice is NPR. I can make up my own mind thank you very much, all I ask is a full and complete narrative.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
  - Upton Sinclair

Independent Media, media supported by people, is all I trust. Im not even sure about NPR anymore…