I’m finished watching the first thirty minutes of this talk by Chris Hedges, and much of it is resonating with me.   Here are a few of the early points made by Hedges:

Those who have been hurt the most by corporate profiteering have been rendered invisible by the corporate media.

The corporate media has imposed “a bland uniformity of opinion” upon us.

Those who are the most powerful are not those who hold formal titles; It’s our job to make the powerful frightened of us. The question isn’t how to get “good people” into power. It’s how we can limit the damage done to us by people in power.

Liberals have lost all credibility. We now have a bankrupt liberal class – one that is nihilist. They “refuse to confront the permanent war economy.”

The up and coming fascist movements in America have tapped into the rage of ordinary American because liberals failed to seize the opportunity. We will now increasingly have to deal with politicians whose aim is totalitarianism. They will find scapegoats to blame for America’s woes, and they will not serve as legitimate rulers. Rather, they will, as George Orwell predicted, “cling to power by force and fraud.”

We now have “inverted totalitarianism.” It has not been built around a demagogue; rather, it is “expressed in the anonymity of the corporate state.” Citizens are utterly impotent within the current system.