My Conversation With Chris Hedges About America's Diseased Society and How Donald Trump is Just a Symptom of a Much Bigger Problem

Chris Hedges is the author of the new book America: The Farewell Tour.

He is also the author of numerous award winning and bestselling works including Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Death of a Liberal Class, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.

Chris Hedges and Chauncey discuss how America is a deeply sick and pathological society, why Donald Trump is the symptom and not the cause of this disease, and the role of celebrity culture and consumerism in the downfall of American democracy.

Chris Hedges and Chauncey also reflect on the need for a more advanced and sophisticated understanding of how race and class relate to one another and the perils of empty symbolic politics such as the so-called “Women’s March”. Chris Hedges also explains why peoples resistance movements such as Standing Rock and the Ferguson Uprising are the real way forward if American democracy and a humane and free society are to finally be created and salvaged in the country.

During this week’s podcast Chauncey asks, “What year is it?” when New Age Jim Crow Enforcers are keeping black folks from voting in Georgia, Jewish-Americans and others are being made into second class citizens by Christian fascists with the support of the Trump regime, and the fascist bigot Donald Trump tells transgender people that their personhood is “illegal” and their identities do not exist under American law.

On this week’s show Chauncey also celebrates Jeremiah Harvey, a 9-year-old black child, who refused to forgive a white racist woman who claimed he groped her.

This week’s podcast with Chris Hedges can be listened to or downloaded here.