Our leaders are incompetent and self-absorbed. Business lacks scruple, and exploitation is the rule of the day. Civil liberties are sacrificed for illusive security.

The political landscape is dominated by paranoid petty partisans, detached elites, the angry, the disenfranchised and the apathetic. Will the future offer hope, or are we doomed to sleepwalk to the slaughtering block?

The article “State of Emergency” (EW, Sept. 27) was filled with biting criticisms of those in power who incompetently orchestrated our current national and global turmoil. While I agree largely with the points Chris Hedges makes, I find his bleak prognosis dispiriting. You can’t motivate others while accepting failure as imminent.

Heroic fatalism is not a pragmatic approach for winning support. People need to know there is hope, that there is a future worth fighting for.

Condemnation with no practical solution will only result in more indifference and disillusionment. With so much at stake, can’t we do better? I hope so.

Caleb Cuff

Eugene