Empire of Illusion

Empire of Illusion begins with an exploration of the narratives found in World Wrestling Entertainment competitions, noting the increased use of class, family, and sexual conflict. Hedges compares the spectacle to Plato's allegory of the cave, and argues that the invented celebrity culture of the wider entertainment world is creating with it a population divorced from understanding reality. Hedges furthers that the rise of artificial relationships and pseudo-events has political implications, particularly with the creation of celebrity status for politicians.

The following chapter decries the abuses against women in the American sex industry. Hedges notes the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases in the industry, the rampant violation of consent in pornographic productions, the intentional monetization of adolescent viewership, and profiles the testimonies of women who were traumatized by sex abuse while performing in pornography. Hedges compared the abuse and psychological degradation in pornographic productions to the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and shared critical observations regarding his trips to Las Vegas and an AVN Adult Entertainment Expo.^[2]

In the third chapter, Hedges accuses institutions of higher education, especially prestigious American universities, of prioritizing the teaching of sophisticated systems management over all other fields of inquiry.^[2] Hedges charges that universities, at the behest of corporate and defense industry interests, created an academia that lacks critical thinking, overvalues strict analysis and utility, retreats into specialized language, overly accommodates students from wealthy families, indulges in bloated athletics spending, and sacrifices faculty support and the humanities. The end result, Hedges claims, is that higher education is chained to servicing decaying financial and corporate structures without the ability to critically examine and correct its role in the United States.

This chapter is a criticism of positive psychology and self-help media.^[2] Hedges denounces positive psychology by pointing to its possible pseudoscientific leanings and the pervasive interests of corporations in the field that seek greater productivity and satisfaction from workers. Hedges charges that advances in positive psychology amount to a corporate campaign to pathologize worker dissent and protest in the name of improving mental health.

The final chapter of Empire of Illusion is dedicated to the political implications of an American culture formed by illusion. Hedges claims that the current United States of America is wholly unrecognizable to its historic form, especially in regards to the loss of civic religion and infrastructure. Hedges argues that worsening economic injustice related to outsourcing and medical debt may lead to collapse, and that unaccountable corporations have seized critical state functions through lobbying and privatization. Hedges laments the potential for a fascist corporate takeover with disingenuous Christian trappings, but balances that vision with a message on the unconquerable power of love.