Why Americans can't debate politics anymore | The Chris Hedges Report

I get sick of all the name-calling and sneering and snobbery that is in our media and on the floor of Congress today. I taught high school English, and critical thinking used to be a part of the curriculum. I taught my students to look for biases in journalism. What a different landscape in schools today. My heart breaks! I always enjoy listening to Chris and his podcasts because he looks at nuance and common humanity in everything he says and does.

I was born in UK 87 years ago and the US, although not perfect, was generally an admired country. I do not think that the US is so well admired today.

Given the whole Reefer Madness and the Red Scare, I don't blame the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine made a massive difference, the Corporate Media ALWAYS told malicious and outrageous lies. Walter Kronkite was an anomaly, not proof of a glorious past of accountability, which never existed.

We can debate each and every disease in our society and in our time, but the solution is still the same. The more social inequality the more unhealthy a society will be. The distance between the richest and poorest is the thermometer for any society. The wider the gap, the worse the society will be.

There’s no social events anymore. It’s all consumption only spaces where you drive to alone in a car. Also, I work 6 days a week and many times the only energy I have after chores on my one day off is to lay down and watch a movie or YouTube. I think many people are working many hours too. The whole society is a poison.

I get my news from a comedian because if I didn't get the jokes with it I would sink into a horrible depression.

Make America think again 🇺🇸

Just another home run for Chris Hedges and guests. One can get jaded on the high quality of content Chris always provides.. Thanks Mr Hedges.

God Bless Chris Hedges. Your content, speeches, books inspired a series of paintings. Thank you immensely for strength.

28:25 -- basically, on real conversation reversing the tide of hate and belief in falsehoods -- an example i came across related to this point is the essay by Howard Zinn called "The Mysticism of the South". in it he talks about the efforts he and his students took to desegregate Atlanta public libraries during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. the gist of the essay was that, once blacks and whites came into contact with each other (through acts of civil disobedience where by blacks ignored segregation mandates and entered into public places, such as libraries), it was only a matter of time until the jim crow segregation system collapsed. the reasoning Zinn observed for this was that the more people interact the more they see each other as what they really are, people. the "mysticism" in the title refers to the two sides residing in their own segregated spheres of society and thus not having to interact. without this interaction both sides were free to essentially make up what the other side was like, what they believed and stood for. that mysticism was then shattered once the walls of segregation were ignored. once people started occupying the same spaces there wasn't a whole lot either of the sides could make up about the other. after all, the "other" was only a table or two away and miraculously didn't behave the way they had assumed. i like this story. it makes sense. its really hard to hate someone you interact with. i mean yes, ted cruz is a person so im not claiming there aren't exceptions to the rule. at the scale of society, however, i do subscribe to the idea that the interaction amongst oppositional groups melts away many of the boundaries for that opposition. anyways check it out even if for no other reason its to bring back the memory of Howard, a personal hero of mine, someone i love very much!

Mickey Huff was a professor of mine at Diablo Valley College. I haven't seen him for I think 20 years. Nice to see him again.

New Jersey just mandated the teaching of information literacy in schools, kindergarten thru 12th grade. A glimmer of hope!

Doing research, I found Harold Pinter's Nobel Laureate Speech from 2005. Very much a part of your approach, Chris. I find that great writers have no fear of death, they speak truth because they know nothing else, and are free of fear, and let fly no matter the ramifications. Some survive, like Noam Chomsky and Chris and his "trial by fire" as a war correspondent. Having seen death up close and personal, one is immune to fear. Like Benjamin Clementine's song "Condolence" - "give my condolences to fear...."

Nolan and Mickey speak incredibly well and really know their stuff. Fantastic interview. One of the best I've seen in the last 12 months, and I've watched plenty. I'll be buying those two books for sure. Great work Chris and TRNN.

I think this is very good. I'd add one wrinkle of nuance to it, and mildly critique the premise as stated in the title of the video. 'Anymore' implies that there was a time when Americans could debate politics. I'd push back on that a little. People may once have had more of a shared sense of reality, but that isn't the same as having a skill or ability to debate, to analyze arguments, to be critically aware of media effects. Any shared worldview that Americans had back in the days when the center-out, top-down broadcast / print publication model was the only game in town did not emerge from people individually bringing keenly honed critical thinking skills to bear against a broad array of facts, ideas, and perspectives presented in a fairness-policed neutral media environment. Rather, very reasonable-sounding talking heads were selected, through opaque processes, to give Americans an acceptable palette of ways to think about the curated information they were given. When did we stop teaching critical thinking, logic, and media awareness in our public schools so that suddenly people became susceptible to manipulation? The answer, of course, is that we never systematically did teach those things in the first place. When the only information available to people was that which could pass through the regulated corporate gatekeeping and 'reasonable' editorial filters, it wasn't hard to maintain the illusion that we didn't really need to teach these things explicitly, and that people could simply be expected to absorb critical thinking skills through their skin. Perhaps the most alarming line in the movie "The Shining" is when Jack Torrance exposes the fundamental attitude of the Print / Broadcast paradigm: "See? It's OK. He saw it on the television." The culture of mass-production and mass-media creates the consumer identity. And a consumer is someone who is uncritically involved, or perhaps entirely uninvolved, in the processes that bring them what they consume. It isn't the Internet that has cultivated mass-credulity and eroded preexisting critical thinking skills. Rather, the past paradigm has made people uncritical consumers, and our education paradigm did precious little to correct for it, because consumers in a top-down, center-out, curated and mass-produced world didn't 'need' to be able to analyze arguments, tell good information from bad, evaluate biases, et cetera. The hyper-specialization of end-stage Industrialism meant that such things were almost always somebody else's department. What the Internet has done is to expose in dramatic ways why this was always a stupid idea.

Thank you Chris for putting Mickey and Project Censored on.

Fundamentally, the "Fairness Doctrine" required for profit broadcasters to "operate in the public interest". Consequently, news departments were isolated from advertising; educational, cultural, and public affairs programs were included in the broadcast schedule; &c. The "fairness doctrine" was far more than just "equal time".

Thank goodness for people like Chris Hedges.

You've only scratched the surface...keep going

In our neo-liberal capitalist society everything devolves into whether something makes a profit or not. Our news media is just another example of the inevitable degradation resulting from such a system.