Episode 283 - Hedges Bets on West (w/ Chris Hedges)

He is a bit off on JFK/RFK and seems to never have graduated from whatever he read in Hersh / Chomsky. https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/chris-hedges-and-aaron-mate-please-sit-down?fbclid=IwAR0dBmoW3qBswydHMAh9uSSOvtxIbmIKMW6cDPCH0Dr4totik_U62Z2BZ0c

Hedges is refreshing in that he doesn't pull punches and speaks with the understanding of the complete and total corporate capture of the duopoly, media and unions. All conversations need to start from there, we don't have time to rehash the obvious. I personally don't have any investment in electoral politics, if Dr West gets anywhere near the podium the duopoly will have him lone wolfed. For me (sorry Bri, I've written about thisi adnasium) I've been pushing for a black panther style parallel government that we use our time and money for instead of wasting it on elections. The climate wars are inevitable, if we don't start a French underground now to fight the new fascists we will be utterly destroyed before we even start to fight back. The system works, let's stop supporting it. Panther Party

Christopher E Musgrave

Competing for votes? Hell, they get pissed off at the thought of even acknowledging that people disagree with them.

Yes. It's *excellent*. And infuriating. Amato lays out the structural barriers to ballot access in excruciating detail. It gets into some of the dirty tricks Dems used to keep Greens off the ballot, including intimidating petitioners at home (similar to what happened in NC last year with Matthew Hoh). Amato says she had to manage the equivalent of a national law firm to deal with all of the challenges.

Andrea Denault

Have you read it, James?

GRAND ILLUSION: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny, by Theresa Amato

Trevor Lohr

What was the Grand Illusion book that Hedges recommended everyone read?

Andrea Denault

You can check out endFPTP on Reddit to see the voting method nerds duke it out.

Methew

I don't know enough about rank choice to know if there is a roundabout way that its actually bad for third parties, but my inclination is that if it were bad for them it would be in effect already lol. But I also volunteered too! hope more people do

Andrea Denault

I just signed up to volunteer for West’s campaign! Hope the party scares the sh** out of Dems. Be careful of ranked choice voting though. It doesn’t work the way people think it does. Very bad for 3rd parties.

Andrea Denault

Great episode. What term did Chris use to describe union reps? It was hilarious. Need to go back and watch it because that line was 🔥 In addition to Chris and Briahna’s immediate pivot to Biden’s VERY recent anti-union BS with rail workers.

Randy Hendrickson

And, like most in power, they LOVE exporting it via a cozy NGO or the barrel of a gun.

Kimi Ramos

I have never heard Mr. Hedges sound so hopeful. It’s actually thrilling! His succinct description of the way the duopoly works is so amazing. That succinct description needs to be the first message for Mr. West!

Chris is so funny when he's in a good mood 😭

Great episode :-)

Democrats are super into democracy until it comes to competing for votes.