Q&A on American Sadism

The great 20th-century Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote, “We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart’s grown brutal from the fare.” The United States has long fed its heart with fairy tales about itself. Hardly a day goes by without some new story being spun about our noble intentions, benevolence and devotion to international law. Sadism is not something new. Just ask indigenous peoples and Blacks or the Vietnamese and Iraqis. Chris Hedges warns, “The violence and exploitation, which has long defined imperial projects, now defines existence at home. For empires, in the end, cannibalize themselves. The tyranny we long imposed on others, we now impose on ourselves. The dark pleasure derived from exploiting others is all that is left.”

Recorded at the Sanctuary for Independent Media.