In the thread on Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco’s Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, a few commenters complained of what they described as a misreading, or undervaluing of what Hedges really meant when he called for his readers to “turn our backs for good on the Democrats, no matter what ghoulish candidate the Republicans offer up for President…”
In the original post I highlighted what Hedges suggested as the proper course of action: head to “a monastic retreat in which “we can retain and nurture the values being rapidly destroyed by the wider corporate culture and build the mechanisms of self-sufficiency that will allow us to survive.”
To me, this rejection of either choice in the acknowledged messiness of electoral politics is, frankly, disastrous.
But there were objections, and they weren’t frivolous…so consider this the point of warning: What follows is ~1,000 words extending the argument. If you have a better things to do, do them.
So — to kick us off here’s one dissent from what I argued: commenter Oliver’s Neck writes that what I read as a call for retreat is anything but:
The construction of communities that no longer depend upon corrupt powers is an historically recurrent and powerful act of non-violent revolution. It takes great courage and will and is not the act of a defeatist or a moon-eyed ideologue, but that of a pragmatic realist.
The other main complaint that came up in the thread is that I’ve simply read Hedges wrong, and that he’s not actually suggesting he or anyone else should withdraw from the fray. In this argument, I’ve construed “monastic” too narrowly and don’t grasp just how active Hedges thinks his monks should be. Here’s Matryoshka writing in this vein:
My read was that Hedges doesn’t have much faith in any system that exists now, and that it will be a long time before we have one that works in our favor, so until then, we need to do what we can to preserve the values of humane values and environmental stewardship. At no point in the book does anything else point to a “fuck it, go off the grid and shewt yer own skwurrels” conclusion.
The “us” in “build the mechanisms of self-sufficiency that allow us to survive” means all of us (humanity), not just a few isolated survivalists. Context makes a difference. Read the book. It will give you insight into the place we’re all going under the current arrangement.
I think there is some merit in both objections, but ultimately, they each miss what seems to me to be the vital point.