Chris Hedges: America's devastated 'sacrifice zones' are the future for all of us

Journalist and activist Chris Hedges appeared Friday on Moyers & Company to talk about the conclusions of his latest book. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt is dedicated to investigating the most exploited and impoverished places in America, places that he says are "virtually off the radar screen in terms of the commercial media."

"It's absolutely imperative that we begin to understand what unfettered, unregulated capitalism does," Hedges emphasized. "These are sacrifice zones, areas that have been destroyed for quarterly profit. And we're talking about environmentally destroyed, communities destroyed, human beings destroyed, families destroyed. And because there are no impediments left, these sacrifice zones are just going to spread outward."

When Moyers asked Hedges what he meant by saying there are no impediments left, he explained, "The political system is bought off, the judicial system is bought off, the law enforcement system services the interests of power, they have been rendered powerless." Even worse, Hedges believes these devastated communities represent the future for all of us.

Hedges was particularly eloquent in describing the coal-mining areas of West Virginia, which "in terms of national resources is one of the richest areas of the United States [but] harbor the poorest pockets of community, the poorest communities in the United States. Because those resources are extracted, and that money is not funneled back into the communities."

"Not only that," he continued, "but they're extracted in such a way that the communities themselves are destroyed. ... They no longer want to dig down for the coal, and so they're blowing the top 400 feet off of mountains poisoning the air, poisoning the soil, poisoning the water. ... You are rendering the area moonscape. It becomes uninhabitable. ... It's all destroyed and it's not coming back."

Hedges went on to talk about Camden, New Jersey, which since the disappearance of manufacturing has become the poorest city in the United States and one of the most dangerous. "It's a dead city," he said. "There's nothing left. There is no employment. Whole blocks are abandoned. The only thing functioning are open-air drug markets, of which there are about a hundred. And you're talking third or fourth generation of people trapped in these internal colonies. They can't get out."

He spoke also about the Pine Ridge Reservation and migrant workers in Florida, saying, " It's greed over human life. ... We, in that biblical term, we forgot our neighbor. And because we forgot our neighbor in Pine Ridge, because we forgot our neighbor in Camden, in Southern West Virginia, in the produce fields, these forces have now turned on us. They went first, and we're next."

"These corporations know only one word, and that's more," Hedges went on. "And because the mechanisms of governance can no longer control them, there is nothing now within the formal mechanisms of power to stop them from the creating, essentially, a corporate oligarchic state."

"We have become complicit," he noted sadly, "because we’ve accepted this as a kind of natural law. And the acceptance of this kind of behavior, and even the celebration of it is going to ultimately trigger our demise."

This video is from Moyers & Company, July 20, 2012.