Sometimes I look around and see a little kid in a stroller and feel pretty good about the world. Other times I read a book about the slow and largely invisible demise of society and feel consumed by despondency and the impossible urge to be a character in a heartwarming ensemble romantic comedy similar to Love, Actually but even better and more heartwarming.

For this week’s book report, I mashed up my brain with Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges. Gnarly title for a gnarly book.

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Hedges’ argument can be boiled down into a delicious balsamic reduction:

(1) Americans live in a corporate state, one that promulgates illusions and an all-consuming culture of selfhood in order to maintain its hegemony while keeping us worker bees blissfully unaware

(2) We are complicit in the rise of this corporate state because it is emotionally and intellectually easier to worry about Kim Kardashian than the current financial crisis or how we are killing people in other countries

(3) A society full of illiterate, self-involved citizens who willingly – albeit somewhat unknowingly – support an oppressive and destructive ruling class is one on the verge of what Hedges calls “inverted totalitarianism”

(4) “Inverted totalitarianism” is a very bad thing

To prove his point, Hedges delves into the sordid worlds of celebrity, pornography, higher education, and “positive psychology” in his pretty freaking scathing analysis of contemporary America. Attention US Weekly, gonzo films, admissions policies at Harvard, and self-help gurus: YOU ARE MAKING EVERYTHING WORSE.

According to Hedges, those who populate the upper echelons of American business and government – people C. Wright Mills dubbed the “power elite” – are becoming increasingly distanced from the rest of us. And instead of questioning corporate greed, institutionalized cruelty, and nepotistic educational systems, we are happily enticed to follow the ups and downs of pseudo-celebrities as they cheat on their girlfriends, escape from rehab, and get fat. Although Hedges teeters on the edge of bombast – and at times relies too heavily on the expertise of a limited set of pundits – he makes a compelling case for why we ought to shut off WWE and think for a moment about why the CEO of Goldman Sachs continues to ball out of control in Connecticut while the rest of us default on the subprime mortgages his company sold us last year.

Every great empire, before it crumbled, “descended into orgies of self-indulgence, surrendered their civic and emotional lives to the glitter, excitement, and spectacle of the arena, became politically apathetic, and collapsed” (p. 189). Hedges regards celebrity culture as a kind of religion, one that allows people to escape their depressing realities (ones filled with debt, inequity, humiliation) and immerse themselves worlds of outrageous spectacle. It reminded me of Marx’s view on religion, that its primary purpose is to distract the proletariat from the fundamental class conflict of a capitalist society.

If you are even remotely concerned with where we’re headed as a culture and a nation, you should read this book. It’s a good jam.