Notable Quotable: Chris Hedges On Our Suicide Pact

Election season is front and center once more. For Americans left to right, it's another chance to use the little power we have to reclaim some of it back, if possible. But it won't be easy.

On every street corner of our nation, in most every home, people are talking about being squeezed financially. Many can't put adequate food on their table, and they're getting loud and angry.

On social and national media, the ever-growing wealth gap is finally being taken seriously. Across the political spectrum, taxing the rich is a policy idea that's coming back into vogue. But policy wonks and talking heads just talk—they have no power to make such a policy reality.

There's a reason for that.

In his essay, America's Suicide Pact, Chris Hedges brilliantly lays out how we ended up here. He provides a synthesis of how both political parties, greedy by nature, colluded to enrich the elites on the backs of a duped population that now struggles to make ends meet.

Here, we quote his powerful introduction:

"Civilizations, as the historian Arnold J. Toynbee famously argued, ‘die from suicide, not by murder.’ They collapse from within. They fall prey to moral, social and spiritual decay. They are seized by a parasitic ruling class. Democratic institutions seize up. The citizenry is immiserated, wealth is funneled upwards to the ruling class and coercion is the principle form of control.

"Our suicidal march began long before Donald Trump and his bizarre court of buffoons, sycophants, grifters and Christian fascists took power. It began when the ruling class, especially under the Reagan and Clinton administrations, set out to harvest the country and empire for personal profit.

"There is a word for these people. Traitors.

"These traitors, ensconced in the leadership of the two ruling parties, stripped us of assets and power slowly. They used subterfuge, lies and legalized bribery. They pretended to honor electoral politics, checks and balances, a free press and the rule of law while subverting all of these democratic pillars. That old system, however flawed, was hollowed out. It was turned over to the amoral and the idiotic — look at the Supreme Court or Congress — those willing to do the bidding of the billionaire class."

Read his full essay on Substack for free.