"I just wanna testify..."

"We live in a fragmented society. We are ignorant of what is being done to us. We are diverted by the absurd and political theater. We are afraid of terrorism, of losing our job and of carrying out acts of dissent. We are politically demobilized and paralyzed. We do not question the state religion of patriotic virtue, the war on terror or the military and security state. We are herded like sheep through airports by Homeland Security and, once we get through the metal detectors and body scanners, spontaneously applaud our men and women in uniform. As we become more insecure and afraid, we become more anxious. We are driven by fiercer and fiercer competition. We yearn for stability and protection. This is the genius of all systems of totalitarianism. The citizen’s highest hope finally becomes to be secure and left alone."

Chris Hedges' bio includes a Pulitzer prize and 2009 Online Journalist of the Year. He's one of the few truly deep, clear thinkers in America today. Read his How the Corporate State Wins Again, his recent column for Truthdig. Just fold up those rose colored glasses and see things through his eyes for a moment. See if you feel a great big wave of affirmation for what you sense is happening across the country. I find his writing inspiring (he does have a Masters In Divinity from Harvard). It's nice have your intuitions verified, clarified, and justified by someone qualified to know.

I'd like to give him a great big smack on the lips for being such a man of principle in a nation of wimps.