End times for American democracy? An interview with Chris Hedges / The deep malevolence that drives Trump’s behavior

By Dilip -

Is the United States, as the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek once wrote, living in the End Times? Are these the empire’s last days, its moral authority to claim pre-eminence withered and gone? It certainly seems so: A staggeringly high pandemic death toll, race riots, rampant police brutality, a political class locked in a vicious knife fight with itself, and a mainstream media egging on the whole circus. Prevailing over the mess is a president whose incompetence is shocking to behold. Canada's National Observer spoke about it with Chris Hedges, 63, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for the New York Times, where he served as the paper’s Middle East and Balkan bureau chiefs. The interview was edited for length.

Q: In regards to Trump's term in office, how would you characterize it? Has it surprised you?

A: Well, (Donald) Trump is a daily surprise. Just when you think he can't sink any lower, he does. The kinds of policies and even statements that he's engaging in are just wilfully self-destructive. He's a prisoner of his own megalomania and his own narcissism. So in that sense, I think, like most Americans, we've all been surprised at that — how far worse (it is) than we suspected...

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/09/10/analysis/end-times-american-democracy-interview-chris-hedges

The deep malevolence that drives Trump’s behavior has now been laid bare

When Trump says he didn’t want to start a “panic” it’s obvious that he meant he didn’t want a stock market panic. Recall that he reportedly went nuts when Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, did what any public health scientist would do and announced on Feb. 25 that the coronavirus (which Trump already knew was “deadly stuff”) was likely to cause massive disruption in the United States. The markets nosedived and Trump was livid, threatening to fire her for doing her job...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-deep-malevolence-that-drives-trumps-behavior-has-now-been-laid-bare/

Trump told a reporter his biggest secret: that he is a danger to the American people

HARRY BLAIN: America’s Wars always Come Home

Jill Lepore  A History of America’s military spending

Jonathan Freedland: Trump is destroying democracy in broad daylight // Chauncey DeVega: Vigilantes are preparing ‘to launch a coup’

George Monbiot: Ayn Rand - A Manifesto for Psychopaths

Tom McTague: The Decline of the American World

America isn't breaking. It was already broken / Why This Time Is Different

Black and Unarmed and Killed by the Police…an incomplete list…This is America….


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