We on the left have forgotten that the question is not how do you get good people to rule, most people who rule are mediocre at best and usually vena… - Chris Hedges

[On the George Floyd protests] Many of those in the streets can’t find meaningful work, are often burdened by large sums of student debt and have realized that in this world of serfs and masters they don’t have much of a future. They understand that if these protests are to succeed, they must be led by people of color, those who suffer disproportionally from the inequities and violence meted out by the occupying forces of the . And they also know that social inequality is at the root of the evil we must vanquish.

If you look at the ideology that pervades this movement, and the term we use for it is dominionism... And dominionists believe that they have been tasked by God to create the Christian society through violence... essentially an ideology of exclusion and of hatred. It is a totalitarian ideology. It is not religious in any way. These people quote, as they did at this convention, selectively and with gross distortions from the Gospels.

As Arendt pointed out, we must trust only those who have this self-awareness. This self-awareness comes only through consciousness. It comes with the ability to look at a crime being committed and say “I can’t.” We must fear, Arendt warned, those whose moral system is built around the flimsy structure of blind obedience. We must fear those who cannot think.