I don't even know what to transcribe because, whenever Chris Hedges speaks, it's worth citing, and he speaks for nearly the entire 30 minutes, as Hill allows him to speak at length. This is an excellent distillation of the situation in the American Empire as it is, rooted in the historical context of both its own past, as well as similar contexts in the Roman Empire as well as in Italy and Germany in the first half of the 20th century. <img attachment="yuck_it_up,_assholes.jpg" align="right" caption="Yuck it up, assholes">They discuss the failures of so-called liberalism at reasonable length. Hedges doesn't waste any time pretending that Trump isn't a threat but also doesn't waste time pretending that the threat started with Trump---or that it would end with his departure. He talks about how Carter began the immiseration of the working class, with Reagan picking up the baton and taking credit for having begun it---and with Clinton having taking the machinery of Reagan and done even more downward-spiraling horrors with it. <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EDKRGkgLsI" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/5EDKRGkgLsI" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Al Jazeera English / Marc Lamont Hill" caption="Democracy doesn’t exist in the United States: Chris Hedges | UpFront"> Maybe a short quote from <b>15:30</b>, <bq><b>Chris:</b> What was wokeness? Wokeness was---the corporations love it; they love it you know---is wokeness a woman CEO? No. It's about empowering working-class women. It's a complete inversion. <b>Marc:</b> Do you see wokeness as a kind of superficial approach to dealing with identity politics or do you see identity politics itself...? <b>Chris:</b> <b>I see identity politics as furthering the goals and the rapaciousness of the corporate state</b> [...] wokeness in the hands of the ruling class has been used as a cudgel to essentially <b>punish and scold the working class. And it is also about elevating their own status</b> [...]</bq> When Marc asked Chris about the quotation from scripture at Trump's inauguration at <b>19:45</b>, he responded that it was, <bq><b>Chris:</b> Idolatry. Moloch, Worshiping at the feet of Moloch. It's idolatry. It's heresy, It's the sacralization of human and political power, which is probably the greatest sin any religious institution can make. Look, the mega churches work like this---and I learned this from Hannah Arendt [...]---they are essentially equivalent of the so-called German Christian Church, established under the fascists in Germany where, on one side, you had the Christian cross and, on the other, the Nazi flag. And let's be clear, Marc, <b>this church is bankrolled by the very billionaire class that we talked about. Why? Because with <i>Magic Jesus</i>. you don't need labor unions; with <i>Magic Jesus</i>. you don't need health care; because <i>Magic Jesus</i> is going to give you a Cadillac and make all your dreams come true.</b> And that is a shift from a reality-based world into the world of magical thinking. And <b>once people shift into that world of magical thinking. you can't reach them through rational argument.</b></bq>