Chris Hedges: The Corporate State of America (video)

Tweet

Print

No one speaks to the problems that besiege the world more directly or correctly than Chris Hedges. This interview by Bill Moyers, interspersed with brilliant imagery, tells what is wrong. If you want things to change, then you need to know what’s wrong.

Camden, New Jersey

Chris Hedges says, “The political system is bought off, the judicial system is bought off, the law enforcement system services the interests of power, they have been rendered powerless.” and goes on to discuss what it means. In this interview, Bill Moyers quotes him writing that places like Camden, New Jersey, above, are “beset with the corruption and brutal police repression reminiscent of the despotic regimes in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America”.

Of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota: “It’s appalling. The life expectancy of a male in Pine Ridge is 48. That is the lowest in the Western Hemisphere outside Haiti. At any one time, 61% of the dwellings do not have electricity or water.”

Of farm workers in Immokalee, Florida: “It’s a frightening window into the primacy of profit over human dignity and human life.”

And, Hedges warns that this will only spread outward to entangle us all: ”It’s greed over human life. It’s the willingness on the part of people who seek personal enrichment to destroy other human beings. … In that biblical term, we forgot our neighbor. Because we forgot our neighbor in Pine Ridge, because we forgot our neighbor in Camden, in southern West Virginia, in the produce fields, these forces have now turned on us. They went first and now we’re next.”

“These corporations know only one word, and that’s ‘more’.”

Tagged bill moyers, chris hedges, food stamps, moyers interviews hedges, unemployment underemployment, video