Hedges goes on to say, "The inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults. We have been blinded to the depravity of our ruling elite by the relentless propaganda of public relations firms that work on behalf of corporations and the rich. Compliant politicians, clueless entertainers and our vapid, corporate-funded popular culture, which holds up the rich as leaders to emulate and assures us that through diligence and hard work we can join them, keep us from seeing the truth."
Ain't Hedges great? i'd add that many of Hedges 'we's and us's' dance off the cliff exuberantly not seeing the truth. Where Hedges says "We have been blinded to...", making us out to be passive passengers instead of the producers and directors of our own destiny. The only thing 'we' really all have is personal responsibility, we are cruise directors not passengers. The blindness is self-inflicted
Anyway, John Steinbeck said it well when he said, "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Mainstream media gives very little coverage to poverty because it's uncomfortable for advertisers trying to embrace the Horatio Alger Myth. As Barbara Ehrenreich, of Time Magazine, put it: "They don't want really depressing articles about misery and hardship near their ads."
Aristotle's revolt is viable in that progressive land reform in the United States and Canada could address a range of environmental and social problems, encouraging sustainable organic farming and perennial range lands that provide (literally) green jobs, and a re-imagining of rural North America.
Land reform works. Even in Zimbabwe, where the corrupt Mugabe regime doles out the choicest slabs to its pals, the overwhelming evidence is that government-led land reform has in fact worked for the poor. What happens when you give land to landless, dedicated, and intelligent people? They work at it, they make a life of it, they make farming work. They are Aristotle's bottom-up revolt
