About book Empire Of Illusion: The End Of Literacy And The Triumph Of Spectacle (2009)
I always feel terrible after reading Chris Hedges, but this is why I read him. It’s well enough to see any number of New York Times Bestsellers in nonfiction which are typically just your Founding Father of the Week or reactionary propaganda written in a sickening love for the status quo in a manner befitting Stockholm Syndrome patients that inevitably close with a cheap climax as befits their whorish authors, but whenever Chris Hedges puts out a book it lets me feel that perhaps there is some hope: people are going to see that the world really sucks. Hedges travels in this book to those zones of the nation (and where ever our nation has its eager paw stuck: Iraq, and Afghanistan) where there is nearly no hope. Hedges travels to the Adult Video Awards in Las Vegas, wrestling tournaments, Wall Street, the Pentagon and shows how the United States, which ostensibly a republic, is yet well on the way to Mussolini’s, or Hitler’s corporate state. This trajectory is opposed by…no one. Quite simply, as Hedges points out the reason for this is that no one cares, those that seemingly do care are actually working along with those that profit from this corporatization of the United States, while those that really, really do care are so marginalized they can do very little. Our culture has been inundated with pleasure that is cheap, easy, and immediate that in turn cares very little (if at all) for the future, or anything else really save the satisfaction of the ego. There is a cultural segregation going on that not only preys upon race, but sex, income, fornication, geography, and so on. This is a very depressing book, but depressing in the sense that the truth is not very pleasant, but shall set one free in the process. I did not particularly enjoy reading this book. The shame of it is that there are a lot of very interesting ideas and important observations made, but the author's style and tone seem to really get in the way. In the words of my friend, Charlotte, Hedges is "the king of pretty-sounding generalizations." The chapter on the illusion of love is one that requires an especially strong stomach to get through, and yet, it is one that actually changed my mind quite a bit on the subject of "adult entertainment." For the most part, however, this reads like the book version of that bumper sticker that says, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." And perhaps we would all do well to pay a bit more attention... I just don't think the sky is falling quite yet.
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Second time round for this book, still impacts.
—Zoegr
Too pessimistic, not really worth reading.
—tanusha1
