"This is too nightmarish to contemplate. We're talking about the fate of a whole planet. Why are people so polite? Why are they so patient? Why are they so forgiving of gangsterism and betrayal? It's very difficult to understand. I believe it's because the dominator culture is increasingly more and more sophisticated in its perfection of subliminal mechanisms of control. I don't mean anything grandiose and paranoid, I just mean that through press releases and sound bytes and the enforced idiocy of television, the drama of a dying world has been turned into a soap opera for most people. And they don't understand that its their story and that they will eat it in the final act, if somewhere between here and the final act, they don't stand up on their hind legs and howl."
Voices from Aldous Huxley onwards give different angles on the ongoing planetary destruction, which Chris Hedges terms a "500 year long rampage". Regular listeners will recognise many echoes of former episodes, since the collage includes several extracts from speeches which have featured in earlier episodes.
Music: Many and various
Big big thanks to ChazK of Virtual Renderings for providing the inspiration - and the majority of the material - for this episode.
This episode rebroadcasts content from episodes 599, 631, 651 & 674.