In his 2009 book “Empire of Illusion,” Chris Hedges writes about a terrifying failure of the American state brought on by the corruption and economic excess that he says is rife within U.S. capitalism.
“The working class,” he writes, “which has desperately borrowed money to stay afloat as real wages have dropped, now faces years, maybe decades, of stagnant or declining incomes without access to new credit. The national treasury, meanwhile, is being drained on behalf of speculative commercial interests.”
He predicts the government will be too weak to do anything about the situation and he quotes Ralph Nader as saying that fraudulent corporations will siphon off much of the bailout money that is being distributed in an attempt to keep them solvent.
Society Transformed from Chaos
Although he doesn’t self-identify as one, Chris Hedges probably qualifies as a collapsitarian; a newly coined word to describe those who predict a coming apocalypse.
According to Virginia Hefferman, writing in the July/August 2009 issue of Mother Jones, “The term surfaced in a January New Yorker piece that quoted (James Howard) Kunstler, author of the peak-oil treatise “The Long Emergency” and a survivalist novel, ‘World Made by Hand.’ ”
Hefferman says the collapsitarians are cheerleading for a complete collapse of the U.S. economy, because, they believe “something new, brighter, and more durable might appear.”
And, she quotes one of the movement’s followers, an Internet entrepreneur named Thor Muller, as saying: “It’s good news. We’re squeezing the industrial era out of our system. Perceived value is collapsing, leaving only real value.”
This will lead to an end for materialism and consumerism. Out of the chaos will come such things as, “Community gardens, wiki projects, DIY, and repair and lending culture.”
A Bleaker View of the Future
But, Chris Hedges warns that people have to be careful what they wish for. He thinks the failure of capitalism will lead to a bleaker future than the social utopia people such as Muller are hoping for.
He points out that the American borrowing binge is unsustainable: “The moment China, the oil-rich states, and other international investors stop buying U.S. Treasury Bonds, the dollar will become junk.
“Inflation will rocket upward. We will become Weimar Germany.”
A Repeat of the Weimar Republic Failure?
Following World War I, the Weimar Republic was created to govern Germany. It ran into economic collapse and social unrest of such a chaotic nature that the way was paved for a demagogue, Adolf Hitler, to rise to power.
Hedges sees a similar fate befalling the United States. “A cabal of proto-fascist misfits,” he writes, “from Christian demagogues to simpletons like Sarah Palin to loudmouth talk-show hosts, whom we naïvely dismiss as buffoons, will find a following with promises of revenge and moral renewal.”
Hedges paints a dark picture in which “extremists, will use fear, chaos, the hatred for the ruling elites, and the spectre of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian controls to extinguish our democracy.”
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