Well, I HOPE All US employees and those far beyond DC, holiday-frozen into the Obamanible SNOman's 2 t0 10 year, $60 Billion Pay CUT$, effectively Join YOU, AT LONG LAST!

Hey! Watch out for that broad brush! A pastor's power is not unlike the power of the journalist-- we write the vision, make it plain, speak out in word and in symbolic action. We do our best. Every day.

Pay CUTS? Please. Federal workers have never made more, and are guaranteed that wage for two years, while tens of millions of US are still looking for work. Hedge's words deserve brighter response.

There is present hope, and there is also the posterity issue. We must place on record attempts to oppose the self-destructive line of march of our period, so our descendants are aware that some of us struggled on their behalf.

For chrissake 23:06! You just don't get it. This is one of the best essays I've ever read. At least he and some of our most revered activists are DOING something. I want to join them on December 16th, even if no one where I live knows there is a war--wars. It's a small step. THAT means something.Where else shall we go? To the press? To our representatives? t To our tea-party neighbors whose activism is funny hats. There is no where left but the streets. I'm protesting even if I have to stand in the street alone. December 16. Go.

In my college days in the 1960s I studied financial management and I became so distraught with the lies, blind faith and belief my professors were passing off as the truth that, lacking 9 semester hours to graduate, I dropped out of school. I worked in the capital markets for a few years and ended up in the real estate business until I dropped out of society in 1986 because, years ago, I saw today's failure of the capital markets approaching.

Somewhere along this rough and rocky road I've traveled I ran across Ghandhi's quotation; "You must be the change you wish to see in the world" and that's exactly what I did. Instead of trying to change the crooks of the world I changed myself and walked away from that insanity before I became one of those Zombies. I've lived a very austere but happy life and I can honestly say I'm ready for anything those Wall Street Crooks and D. C. War Mongers can do to me.

.....Thus, "Chris and company of protesters", I applaud you in the civil disobedience you are about to carry forward, and I say, "More power to you!" And, "Power to the People!" I truly wish I could be there with you to suffer the corporate-fascist police state's indignities in solidarity with you. But know that, even though I cannot be there with you physically, I AM THERE WITH YOU IN SPIRIT!!!!!

"...The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined non-conformists who are dedicated to (TRUE) justice, peace and brotherhood [no matter what non-violent action(s) it takes]..."! --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Words in parenthesis and/or brackets added by me.)

God be with all of you, and speed you to True and Lasting Victory!!!!!

wolfbritain.com/

The power we may have is to stop buying almost everything...
This approach hits corporation where they care, their bottom line.

This seems to fit here:

Hope has two beautiful daughters;
Their names are Anger and
Courage.

Anger at the way things are,
and Courage to see they do not
remain as they are.

~ St. Augustine

Andrei, I feel for you that you do not see the enthusiasm for a people's movement in this country, and in this world, right now. Perhaps you do not hang with youth, or with women's circles, or in communities of color. We are all feeling some deep compulsion to do something to make things better. Even the tea partiers feel it. But I agree that it isn't ripe yet. That may change more quickly than any of us imagine though.

I predict we are one year off from some truly interesting times, full of many enthusiasms, and, in all probability, no small amount of chaos. Prepare to find out who you are and what you want to be when you grow up. The next 2-3 years will be very enlightening indeed, as discoveries are coming faster and more furiously than any other time in the human journey. I don't necessarily mean technology either, although there will be a lot of that going on too. I mean with regard to matters of the spirit.

Chris Hedges: in recent weeks your voice has become very important to me.

This time again you have raised our consciousness, but I want to say it's more simple than that. The corporations have too much power. Over half of the 100 largest entities in the world by GDP are not countries, but businesses. Our system of US government is controlled by allied, colluded corporate power and a paranoid, docile population infected by nihilistic marketing and propoganda which distorts the truth. And because of all this, the fabric of the country is coming apart as the environment erodes, cities crumble or flood, and the middle class simply sinks into poverty.

Got that part? Good. Thanks for bearing with me. Now it follows that if we (progressives, liberals, socialists, those who confront corporate power) don't act, and fail at winning this argument, chances are decent that we will be vindicated only by a history that records an infamous collapse of American power (as an imbalanced system topples under its own weight), possibly followed by a rise of technocratic fascism, or possibly by a New New Deal, or possibly by darkness.

My politics are really simple.

Chris your are an inspiration! You continue to speak out, with the real truth.

00:54 has it absolutely right. I've said it before: the only thing these bastards understand, and care about, is their bottom line. The one, true way to really get to them is BOYCOTT, on a massive scale. Start taking away their money, and they will pay attention.
If you don't like the fact that Big Business and the CorporocRats are running the show, hit 'em where it hurts.
BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT!

I meet so few people in my daily life who are willing to fight to save this country from total madness. I believe 95% of the American people are willing to be led into a gas chamber. Some may have strong feelings about the difference between right and wrong, but they choose to do nothing to save their own lives. They have great political conversations at parties and Starbucks, but they do not put their feet on the street. The word, "resistance" means nothing to them. When I left Vietnam in 1971, I saw the truth about America. The United States Government was a mass murder machine in Southeast Asia, and it is happening all over again in the Middle East. I realized this truth in a padded cell of a psychiatric hospital, where a lot of truths are born. Indeed, hope is about getting into action, and facing the monster. There is absolutely nothing else left to do.
Mike--> from Portland, Oregon