Review by New York Times Review
chris hedges is a bundle of contradictions and so too is his new book, "America: The Farewell Tour." As a New York Times reporter covering the Middle East, Hedges won praise from all quarters. The conservative Christopher Caldwell wrote in a 2002 review of an earlier Hedges book, "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," that Hedges "has proved a correspondent of unusual bravery, stubbornness and independence. By going AWOL from the U.S. military's press pool during the gulf war, he became one of the few eyewitnesses to American-Iraqi gunfights. He was among the rare big-time reporters to cover the Kosovo War as a war and not a morality play. His remorseless chronicling of the criminality and thuggery of our allies in the Kosovo Liberation Army is one of the high points of post-Vietnam War journalism." At the same time, Caldwell was on to a problem: Hedges' "tone is often marked by an argument-foreclosing condescension." "Is this moral reflection," Caldwell asked, "or moralistic preening?" In his current book, Hedges raises provocative questions. Has the destructive aspect of capitalism reached a tipping point? Are drug abuse, pornography and gambling emblematic of a free market run amok? Are the vacant shells of cities like Scranton, Dayton, Buffalo, Youngstown and Cleveland the inevitable consequences of an economy based on greed? Hedges' answer consists of a grim doubling down. "The American Empire is coming to an end," he writes. "The death spiral appears unstoppable, meaning the United States as we know it will no longer exist within a decade or, at most, two." Traditional institutions of liberalism, including the Democratic Party, are, in Hedges' view, hopelessly corrupted. "The ruling elites," he says, "bought the allegiances of the two main political parties by purging ... New Deal Democrats and corporate and imperial critics. They imposed obedience to corporate capitalism and globalization within academia and the press." Hedges' indictment names names: "Self-identified liberals such as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama mouthed the words of liberal democratic values while making war on these values in the service of corporate power." Even liberal nonprofit organizations like MoveOn.org and the Sierra Club "are feeble appendages to a corporatized Democratic Party." Hedges is a Harvard Divinity School graduate and an ordained Presbyterian minister. His ecclesiastical immersion shows. This passage is long but revealing of his mind-set: "The violence and commodification of human beings for profit are the quintessential expressions of global capitalism. Our corporate masters are pimps. We are all being debased and degraded, rendered impoverished and powerless, to service the cruel and lascivious demands of the corporate elite. And when they tire of us, or when we are no longer of use, we are discarded. If the United States accepts prostitution as legal and permissible in a civil society, as Germany has done, we will take one more collective step toward the global plantation being built by the powerful. The fight against prostitution is the fight against a dehumanizing corporate capitalism that begins, but will not end, with the subjugation of impoverished girls and women." Insofar as Hedges holds out any hope, it is through local community organizing and groups like Black Lives Matter. For the most part, however, the prospects for the country are bleak: "This moment in history marks the end of a long, sad tale of greed and murder by the white races. It is inevitable that for the final show we vomited up a figure like Trump." Both righteous and self-righteous, Hedges is addicted to fire and brimstone. A Jeremiah preaching eternal damnation, he is adding to the already crowded shelf of American narratives of decline. His call springs not only from Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather but also from spoiled preachers like Jimmy Swaggart and James Bakker, and now from Donald Trump. It's a call that has echoed down through the ages: "Drain the Swamp." Thomas B. edsall covered national politics for The Washington Post for 25 years and since 2011 has been a contributing Op-Ed writer for The Times.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
America as we know it is in a death spiral, Hedges vehemently argues, and the end may come sooner than we think. The Pulitzer-winning former war correspondent pulls no punches as he deep-dives into the many trials plaguing the nation. Traveling across the country and talking to witnesses on the front lines, he explores crises such as the opioid epidemic and the evaporation of family-supporting jobs, while also analyzing why we have fostered fertile environments for hate groups and sexual violence. While he presents the election of Donald Trump as a symptom of the country's troubles, he places blame equally on both parties, claiming that the Democrats have betrayed the working and middle classes. Convinced that without radical change, the U.S. will only last one to two decades before a complete collapse, he lays out a revolutionary solution that some will decry as socialism while others will endorse for its commitment to justice. This is an exceedingly dark, passionate, and provocative book, certain to arouse controversy but offering a point of view that needs to be heard.--Bridget Thoreson Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Hedges's latest critique of late-stage capitalist America is forceful and direct, reflecting a weary despair backed up by diligent reporting. He sees the ills of drugs, gambling, pornography, hate groups, mass incarceration, and an oppressive state as evidence of a "creeping corporate coup d'état," decries the fiction of an economic recovery, and paints the election of Donald Trump and the ascendancy of "his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists and moral deviants" as embodying "the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism." He turns an unflinching eye on the opioid crisis, the evisceration of organized labor, and the resurgence of hate groups, and supports his contention that laborers are on a "global plantation built by the powerful" with harrowing descriptions of sex work in the pornography-industrial complex. In Hedges's view, the few positive responses left to Americans are to band together for small-scale socialist enterprise and community, and engage in "a global fight for life against corporate tyranny" as exemplified by the protests against industry might and police power in Standing Rock, S.Dak., and Ferguson, Mo. Though this account is trenchant, even the staunchest adherents of Hedges's unreconstructed socialist views may feel drained by the unrelenting bleakness of its worldview. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Delve into the dark side of America not openly discussed in polite society with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedges, as the author exposes the historical context of this country's endemic addiction to pornography and violence, to the rampant overuse of opioids and the rise in drug-related deaths. Traversing rural byways and visiting small cities to explore the aftermath of plant closings and economic migration, Hedges finds those who stay become saddled with systemic unemployment and economic stagnation as the community falls into financial ruins. An exhaustive excavation of America's ugly underbelly, these pages contain graphically honest content that can be challenging to read. Stories explored here are hidden from cable news owing to conflicting interests and a push to present a sanitized society. Hedges pushes the boundaries of reporting to open a dialog for change that he argues must begin with the end of the corporate state and recognition of the value of the individual. While Hedges uses extensive reporting, the text feels somewhat lacking in cross-cultural representation. VERDICT Will appeal to readers interested in the current sociopolitical climate as well as research related to gambling, pornography, and the opioid crisis.-Angela Forret, Clive, IA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
With a trademark blend of heavy-handed polemic and sharply observed detail, Hedges (Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt, 2015, etc.) writes a requiem for the American dream."This moment in history marks the end of a long, sad tale of greed and murder by the white races," writes the author. "It is inevitable that for the final show we vomited up a figure like Trump." There's not much room for evenhanded debate in the face of such language, but that's beside the point: Hedges is ticked off, as ever, and here he is in full-tilt righteous indignation, making it clear that it's not just Christians who are awaiting the apocalypse. Hedges limns an America whose economy is presupposed on mindless consumption and permanent war, in which the rich are now busily honoring Karl Marx's prediction that in the end times, "the capitalist system would begin to consume the structures that sustained it"health care, education, infrastructure, and so forth. That much seems inarguable. Hedges doubles down on the apocalyptic prophecy as his argument builds: "Droughts, floods, famines, and disease will eventually see the collapse of social cohesion," he writes, "including U.S. coastal areas." Nobody said that climate change and its effects would be pretty, but the author lays it on thickly as he delivers a comprehensive, onrushing litany of the horrors that await us. Where he uses hard dataas when he calculates that despite at annual expenditure of $76 billion in the war on drugs, overdose deaths have increased by 400 percent since 1999Hedges is nearly unassailable. Where he relies on mere rhetoric, as in a rather strange disquisition on sex work, sadism, and capitalism, he's less satisfying. His breadth of reference, however, is refreshing, drawing on the likes of Plato, mile Durkheim, and Eric Voegelinand lots of Marxfor reinforcement.While often an exercise in preaching to the choir, the book is also a fiery sermon that weighs the nation and finds it wanting. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
