Conversations about Chris Hedges - 1

In response to a commentator who suspected I knew nothing about Hedges ...

Actually I have read most of his early books (before he went crazy in my opinion). Hedges was once a journalist worth reading. I have watched and listened carefully to many of his recent interviews and commented on them in detail in my own blogs. I consider Hedges to be a dangerous lunatic, which is the motivation for my continuing interest in him.

http://dragontheory.blogspot.ca/2015/06/chris-hedges-pope-of-truthiness.html

http://diaryofachristianskeptic.blogspot.ca/2015/06/ordinary-craziness.html

Hedges gets an alarming amount of attention just *because* of his manic charisma, which tends to obscure the real dangers and simply spreads panic.

Otherwise, I could ignore him just like a million other crackpots screaming "The sky is falling".

But just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they aren't out to kill you. Take a look at this discussion of Climate Change put together by an actually sane real journalist (Gwynne Dyer)

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Ideas/Full+Episodes/2010/ID/1475821518/

If you take the time to listen to this video, I think you will come away with a much better understanding of the issue than Hedges will ever provide. I think you will also agree that it's *worse* than Hedges says. Actual facts make things much scarier but also give us some dim idea of what we can actually do.

This treatment is far scarier than anything Hedges serves up. It's scary because it's a sober parade of actual facts. It's also *years* ahead of public opinion, typical of Dyer. Dyer has unique experience and access to very senior centres of power. Hedges has comparatively narrow military experience as a reporter, but pretends to read the minds of powerful people and sees only evil conspiracies. Hedges is notably ignorant of the world outside the United States, tending to project 2015 American political issues on the world in general and back through history. Perfectly ok if not done to serve up a crackpot conspiracy theory.

Hedges never pauses for breath to look at the details like Chomsky does all the time. Unlike Chomsky, Hedges preaches to convince. Dyer and Chomsky lay out facts and respect the listener to draw his own conclusions.

The conclusion of Dyer's analysis is *not* "extinction", but a terrifyingly real scenario that stops short of "extinction" - just billions of people starving to death in the very near future. Bad enough, but not a "rant". 

Chomsky agrees that climate change is our #1 problem but always endeavours to teach us about the facts. The IPCC report, never cited by Hedges in detail, lays out the terrifying details of climate change but is incredibly "rant free" in all it's 5,000 pages.