Happy Outcomes

Don't Be Chris Hedges

10/18/2019

Chris Hedges has a death wish. Don't be Chris Hedges.

This is an open letter to Katie Halper and Matt Taibbi.

 

 

Katie and Matt are hosts of the Useless Idiots podcast. As of 10/18/2019 their podcast had Chris Hedges on in two parts. Don't be Chris Hedges.

Don't be Chris Hedges. The world has changed. Journalism needs to change with it. We need to speak truth to opportunity with far more urgency than speaking truth to power because we can win a war in two weeks where we don't know how to build tomorrow. Well, I do. Irreni World Scale.

Chris Hedges reminds me of two media recollections. The first one is from 2004 where an American journalist interviewed an Afghani soldier. The other recollection was an interview with both Chris Hedges and Christopher Hitchens.

In 2004 the Taliban were easily routed from parts of Afghanistan. At that time the US policy in Afghanistan was focused on eliminating opium production. Afghanistan was a world leader in heroin production and the US wanted to stop it. An Afghan soldier was interviewed and had been a paid mercenary for the Taliban with something like two-dollars-a-day. Prior to being a soldier this Afghani had been a poppy farmer. The interview went something like this:

Afghani Soldier is sitting on a mountain rock, rifle across lap, full head wrap, beard, and multi-color blanket wrapped around shoulders.
Reporter: "So the Taliban are no more; are you going to sell your gun?"

Afghani Soldier: "And do what? I only have a second-grade education."

His gun was his only means of legally making a living. Also, guns were just lying around Afghanistan and had little resell value.

Like the reporter above, Chris Hedges has no answer to the Afghani Soldier. He has a death wish and surrounds himself in misery and suffering. That's not normal or healthy. Don't be Chris Hedges.

As the originator of Irreni World Scale I worry that the kind of happy person I represent will be misconstrued. I enjoy living alone very much. However, this kind of lifestyle is not relatable for most people and may be construed as misery.

This brings me to Christopher Hitchens. Christopher had great gusto for life. He was also self destructive kinda like Chris Hedges but in a different light. Hitchens enjoyed cigarettes, alcohol, and sex. Hitchens also enjoyed writing, sorta like Hedges. However the comparisons of passion stand in stark contrast. Hedges line, "I love journalism, why else would I do it?" at the end of the second interview comes off as hollow. Hedges loves misery is the impression I get. Not so with Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens passion for writing was seemingly a topic he brought up in almost every conversation. Hitchens breathed writing.

Hedges is emblematic of why journalism needs to change. Speaking truth to power is not enough. Speaking truth to power has a long legacy from court jester to Pulitzer Prize winning like Hedges, but times have changed. The 2004 interview with the Afghani soldier put that change in clear perspective for me: we need to "build the peace."

We "won the war" in Iraq by a simple march on Baghdad; finding Saddam hiding in a culvert; and giving President Bush Saddam's revolver mounted with engraved plaque. That took two weeks. We never "won the peace"  after eighteen years and today Iraq is a cesspool of misery not opportunity.

And do what?

When the jack-boot of oppression is lifted off ones neck, then what? Let us time travel back a couple of hundred years. The "then what" of the Afghani soldier interviewed would be to go back to being a farmer of poppy or food crops. Today everything is political. The US drop shipped pallets of food into Afghan villages in its effort to discourage poppy farming. To what avail? The warlords came in and took the pallets. That opportunity never materialized.

Journalism's ship has traditionally left port when the jack-boot is lifted. That needs to change. Journalism needs to report on opportunity that provides valuable life every bit as urgently as it reports on the misery of oppression and tyranny. Think Venezuela.  The ruling plutocrats of the 1980s were a staple of Venezuelan reporting where poverty was a program and not just failed policy. Then Hugo Chavez walks in. What opportunity did Chavez provide? Cheap oil at ten-cents per liter? Out of the frying pan and into the fire is pretty much the state of Iran, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Central America, the Arab Spring, and so many "at-the-time" victories helped by journalism. Removing one jack-boot only to be put under yet another one is the recurring theme. Journalism needs to grow beyond speaking truth to power. Journalism needs to speak truth to opportunity. Given the war in Iraq was won in two weeks and the peace is still failing after eighteen years then it is pretty clear that opportunity has to have more urgency. What opportunity manifested after the Arab Spring? Destruction and revolution are easy relative to rebuilding that comes after.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin impress me as leaders because they were happy people working to promote and keep happiness. Karl Marx? Miserable man. Can a miserable person produce happy results?

After the Pilgrims came American's primary new opportunity narrative: rugged-individualism. Ha! What a lie that is. Literally no one goes alone. At best rugged individualism means rugged familyism where the wife kept the house and the husband worked the fields and hunted. That's not a story of an individual. Children were seen as free labor and the larger the family the more free labor. That is not rugged individualism, that's child labor exploitation. Relying on the children to take care of you when you are old is not rugged individualism, that's planned dependency. We are seeing the cultural vestiges of rugged individualism' failure as a mythology in our elder society in the US today. Enough. It is time to speak truth to opportunity.

Again I will interject Christopher Hitchens. I disagreed vehemently with Hitchens on the war in Iraq. Hitchens got it wrong. But Hitchens truly enjoyed life and it was apparent in his every interview and his opportunity reporting came with his anti-theism. 

Hitchens is in some sense is our first opportunity journalist. After 9/11 Hitchens took on the failed opportunity of religious culture with vigor. Where are all the other journalists following suit? Perhaps religion is the third rail of journalism. Why? Is it because all religions are evil beyond the pail and perhaps journalists just lack the courage to state it? Hitchens did and he was ready to point out that there is no evil worse then thought crimes. Thought crime is a moral teaching of all Abrahamic religions. Religion needs to be put down. In this I have the utmost respect for Hitchens.

Who wants to live life as an Evangelical? Religion is a vampire that sucks all the spirit out of life, ironically, doing so all the while laying claim to exclusive dominion over the spiritual. A religious culture is unimaginative, dead, and proscribed. As Benjamin Franklin quipped,  "some people die at the age of seventeen and are not buried until they are eighty". That is the life proscribed by religion. There is no opportunity just rote conformity of tradition and ceremony. Pray five times a day, baby.  The irony of religion is that in the name of spirituality it mandates robotic behavior and values obedience over opportunity.

Who would I rather spend a day with: Christopher Hitchens or Chris Hedges?

Religion is a not system of opportunity but conformity, it grinds people to a nub. But, as I stated previously religion is not our only opportunity problem. Rugged individualism is a myth on the order of religion such that it has created our elder culture today with absolutely no opportunity for the elderly.

Journalism needs to upgrade to include speaking truth to opportunity so that when speaking truth to power wins the day that there is a tomorrow to live in. Chris Hedges has a death wish and cannot promote a happiness of tomorrow.

Solutions

I'd like to offer a thread to pull on:  a late biography of John Adams by David McCullough. Do you know what Adam's first job was as a lawyer? His job was rewriting blue laws created by Pilgrims. Nobody wanted to live in a theocracy after a century of it. His career eventually culminated in his writing the first constitution for the State of Massachusetts.  Early American history is a tale of the staid religious culture of the Pilgrims. Literally the Old Testament was implemented as law and theocracy created. After one-hundred years of so of theocracy New England said enough, there was no opportunity in it. I'm pointing out that there is speaking truth to opportunity in Early American history and John Adams lived it. Even as far back as the The Mayflower itself where the "city upon a hill" opportunity was promoted as the end all there also contained a rich outcast son who would go on to dance naked around a Maypole with the natives just to annoy the unimaginative Pilgrims.

It is time to start separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to opportunity. Going after capitalism is easy. Going after religious culture takes Christopher Hitchens courage that even Hedges doesn't possess. As much as Hedges belittles those journalists who refuse to risk their lives in a war zone, Hedges won't take on religion.

In some respects I'm in the same boat as you folks in that I promote better culture. However, I do not promote better culture primarily by being critics of existing culture and speaking truth to power. Okay a little. Currently I am focused on one particular criticism in that our Democracy is a failed state and that we need to get out of our denial about this where today our denial takes the shape of  a game of musical representative chairs to bring us hope and change. It will not.

My primary focus is building a better tomorrow with Irreni World Scale. In doing so I need to promote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I cannot very well do that if I'm a miserable person myself born of anger at the current system. I'm a happy software engineer who lives a happy life of my choosing and from this perch I have designed Irreni World Scale with expressed purpose of keeping a happy life say in the tradition of George Washington.

Be happy. Katie strikes me as a happy person and an interesting person to have a conversation with. She comes off as happy. Matt, dude, chill. I guess Matt you could just be a miserable character like Chris Hedges but I don't really see it. Matt, if you want people to believe that what you are writing about will in fact lead us to a better tomorrow then a constant anger and frustration presentation cannot be the personality of a better tomorrow. Chris Hedges is a miserable person and so whatever he's selling I want no part of. Is that what you want? In some respects this is my problem with Bernie as well. Bernie is just yelling, "get off my lawn". That's not satisfying. At least Elizabeth Warren has some air of happiness.

Don't be Chris Hedges. The world has changed. Journalism needs to change with it. We need to speak truth to opportunity with far more urgency than speaking truth to power because we can win a war in two weeks where we don't know how to build tomorrow. Well, I do. Irreni World Scale.

Cheers!

Benefit of cooperation replaces rule of law!

Freethinkers unite!

Freedom!

Party On!

Let's get cracking!

Voluntarily Reject Demagoguery!

Politics as Science!

Demand Irreni World Scale!

Anti-theism is feminism!  

Think disruption!

Empathy for all!

Moral relativity: think it, breath it!

Prove it or lose it!

Conversations equal consensus! 

Welcome to the 21st century!

Scale your empathy, scale the world! 

Find your tribe!

Be sexy people!

The future is coming! 

Innovate at a rapid pace!

Slow speed ahead!

Well come! and well met!