Empire of Illusion

Chris Hedges makes a lot of salient points but then he repeats them and repeats them again. This whole book would be better as just one essay. Poor Chris just comes across as a cranky contrarian instead of an insightful social critic.

It's end times for academics. Hedges bewails the plethora of in-your-face-ness in America: wrestling, tv, even government and universities. Thoughtful discourse is found tedious, he moans. “We are chained to the flickering shadows of celebrity culture....”

No one who spent an hour in our country could deny this. It's obvious. Hedges spends two hundred pages visiting all the most worrisome spots in American culture, pleading his case that America is in trouble. Bread and circuses everywhere, but more: bread tainted with toxins and circuses of the depraved.

Yes, America is definitely the land of spectacle these days. But does that mean doom for the country?

Like most books of this sort, Empire is long on problems and short on solutions. A careful look at the stats that prop up Hedges' treatise shows the author is prone to the very thing he is ranting against; Hedges' book is filled with, well, illusion and spectacle.

Wrestling and porn, easy targets though Hedges is merciless in his outrage citing the worst stomach churning examples to sledgehammer his point home. From there it's onto reality television then a segue to the corporate controlled news foisted on us. All this to lead us to the Empire of the title, the complete giving over of our lives to corporatism.

It's a long angry screed, relentless and pessimistic. It's something the 20-something me would have loved and gotten righteously indignant about. Now it just makes me sad. It's all fire and brimstone with little in the way of redemption and hope.