Dr. Robert Greer: Hedges’ Empire undersold US dysfunction

In 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges penned “Empire of Illusion – the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,” an enlightening yet somewhat depressing book about the American psyche and our future. When I first read the book almost nine years ago, I wondered whether Hedges’ assessment of the American cultural rot he was witnessing was in fact real.  

Now, as we progress toward the presidential election of 2016, with its political idiocy, two-party corruption, and weekly, daily and nightly media hyperbole, I suspect that Hedges may have made an undercall.

One presidential front-runner may be indicted for compromising state secrets while another could put P.T. Barnum to shame. And all the while, the tabloids, newspapers and television media constantly beat the drum of spectacle and illusion – not to inform, but to sell more cell phones, ED drugs, beer and cars.  ”Buy a Subaru – it’s love.”  Really?

Hedges’ amazingly insightful book informs the reader that we are now living in two Americas – one America that seems to function in a print-based literal world that does cope with complexity and can separate illusion from a truth… and another, which is rapidly becoming the majority world – a world that is constantly distancing itself from any sense of reality, a new majority world in which, for too many people, things are always magical, and they are deserved, never earned.

(Listen to the entire commentary in the audio post below.)

Dr. Robert Greer's commentary on Chris Hedges “Empire of Illusion.”