A licentious, money-drenched, morally bankrupt and intellectually vacuous ruling class—accountable to no one and free to plunder and prey on the weak like human vultures—rises to power in societies in terminal decline, where the rule of law has collapsed and desperate human beings have been reduced to commodities. This class of parasites was savagely parodied in the first-century satirical work Satyricon by Gaius Petronius, written during the reign of Nero when Rome’s Republican values were abandoned for unbridled greed, hedonism, and narcissism. Jeffrey Epstein and his cohorts, drawn from the ruling political, academic, and financial elites, for years engaged in sexual perversions and exploitation of Petronian proportions. Sex, as in the late Roman Empire, has been transformed in the twilight of the US empire from a private act of intimacy to one of public entertainment. In her book Satyricon USA: A Journey Across the New Sexual Frontier, author Eurydice Eve set out to look, with remarkable understanding and empathy, at the sexual landscape of the United States, spending time with BDSM practitioners, celibate Catholic priests, and even necrophiliacs. In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Chris speaks with Eurydice about her portrait of America, which, carried out below the radar, exposes a nation desperately seeking catharsis and, as she writes, a “need for continuity and safety and uniformity—and love.”
Eurydice Eve is the author of Satyricon USA: A Journey Across the New Sexual Frontier and F/32, a novel that won a national fiction contest before its publication and has been translated into several languages. She writes a monthly sex column for Gear magazine, and her non-fiction has appeared in Spin, Harper’s, and other national magazines. She lives in Miami, New York City, and Crete, Greece.
Chris Hedges interviews writers, intellectuals, and dissidents, many banished from the mainstream, in his half-hour show, The Chris Hedges Report. He gives voice to those, from Cornel West and Noam Chomsky to the leaders of groups such as Extinction Rebellion, who are on the front lines of the struggle against militarism, corporate capitalism, white supremacy, the looming ecocide, as well as the battle to wrest back our democracy from the clutches of the ruling global oligarchy.
Pre-Production: Kayla Rivara
Studio: Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Dwayne Gladden
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Transcript
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This post was originally published on The Real News Network.