“Noam Chomsky: On Trump and the State of the Union” (nytimes) is interesting. America’s greatest thinker (as measured by references in academic journal papers) weighs in on King Donald I. Here’s my comment on the piece:
Chomsky: “that’s how the Trump administration deals with a truly existential threat to survival of organized human life: ban regulations and even research and discussion of environmental threats” regarding the North Carolina legislature “barring state and local agencies from developing regulations or planning documents to address [rise in sea level]”.
Even if you assume that an existential threat to humanity should be dealt with by North Carolina’s state and local bureaucrats (personally I would rather have the folks who built the Chinese high-speed rail network on the job!), how is Trump responsible for a state action?
Secondly, if Trump presides, at least nominally, over the National Science Foundation and its $7 billion budget, how can Trump be accused of failing to support research on the subject of sea level rise, climate change, planetary physics, etc.? Has he diverted NSF funds to redecorate Mar-a-Lago? If you want to attribute everything done by the Federal Government to Donald Trump then Trump becomes, measured by dollars, the world’s greatest supporter of research regarding climate change!
There’s a lot more that is interesting. Chomsky, the world’s most cited living academic, cites Stephen Colbert, a TV comedian.
How can the Democrats re-take the nation?
Under Barack Obama, the Democratic Party pretty much collapsed at the crucial local and state levels, but it can be rebuilt and turned into a progressive force. That would mean reviving the New Deal legacy and moving well beyond, instead of abandoning, the working class and turning into Clintonite New Democrats
But how can the New Deal (i.e., handouts) work in a country that is stuffed full of recent immigrants whose lifestyles voters (at least the Deplorable ones) don’t want to fund? Wasn’t that one of the principal lessons of the last election? (proving Milton Friedman right when he said “It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state”)
How to account for Hillary’s loss? Philosophy professor George Yancy of Emory has the answer:
[George Yancy] How does the lack of critical intelligence operate here, that is, the sort that philosopher John Dewey saw as essential for a democratic citizenry?
It turns out that people who voted for Trump are stupid! (“lack of critical intelligence”). Chomsky adds “racism and sexism”. So… stupid, racist, and sexist. Who says that you can’t learn a lot of new stuff by paying $300,000 for four years of a philosophy bachelor’s?
Chomsky considers that Trump supporters may not have a monopoly on stupidity:
We might ask other questions about critical intelligence. For liberal opinion, the political crime of the century, as it is sometimes called, is Russian interference in American elections. The effects of the crime are undetectable, unlike the massive effects of interference by corporate power and private wealth, not considered a crime but the normal workings of democracy. That’s even putting aside the record of U.S. “interference” in foreign elections, Russia included; the word “interference” in quotes because it is so laughably inadequate, as anyone with the slightest familiarity with recent history must be aware.
Chomsky equates health insurance with health care:
such real but lesser crimes such as the Republican initiative to deprive tens of millions of health care
But from a philosopher’s point of view, why aren’t the Democrats also guilty of this crime? Obamacare was set up with the idea that it would leave tens of millions of Americans without health insurance. If we accept the assumption that health insurance = health care that’s also tens of millions of Americans without health care. Why is the person who murders 100 people guilty of “crimes” according to Chomsky, but the person who murders 50 people is an upstanding citizen?
Chomsky has historically been a “follow the money” kind of guy, admittedly with fairly poor accounting skills (all of Latin America turned out to be worth less to U.S. fatcats than Apple and Google, for example). He asserts the existence of
the Republican campaign to destroy the conditions for organized social existence, in defiance of the entire world?
But if Republicans hold a lot of financial assets, which only have value under “organized social existence,” why would they want to destroy organized social existence? Chomsky should at least explain this, no?
Readers: What do you make of this display of the best American minds?
>Why is the person who murders 100 people
>guilty of “crimes” according to Chomsky,
>but the person who murders 50
>people is an upstanding citizen?
Taking a large and complex system which does something useful but also “murders” 100 people and modifying that system so the number of “murders” is reduced to 50 people would not (“from a philosopher’s point of view”) make someone a “murderer”. Perhaps one could consider them to have committed a “crime” for failing to get to zero murders, but it would be a very different crime than taking a system which is murdering 50 people and seeking to change it such that it murders 100 people.
How can a reasonable person can take anything Chomsky has to say about politics seriously ? Admittedly, there are not many so reasonable persons around in that respect, but still..
His views on essentially everything political are deeply compromised by his approval of Chinese communists: “I don’t feel that they deserve a blanket condemnation at all”, as well as his denial of the Khmer Rouge genocide. That alone would suffice to discard his opining on things political as utterly irrelevant to put it mildly.
Chomsky is interesting as a representative of that peculiar human being variety where the political (religious) side of one’s brain is completely separated from the reasoning/logical side as his work in linguistics has some value (universal grammar, the innate nature of language, etc). Perhaps, in some distant future, if we are lucky, science will shed some light on that phenomenon.
Chomsky denies having any religious motives. This is true only to the extent that you don’t view progressivism as a form of religion.
The fact that Chomsky’s interviewer (himself clearly sympathetic to Chomsky’s world view) even asks about religion shows how relevant this is (perhaps unconsciously – probably the interview was thinking of more conventionally recognized religions such as Judaism that Chomsky left behind many decades ago).
Once you view progressivism (aka Leftism, Marxism, etc.) as a religion then many inexplicable positions become completely understandable. For example, if you ask, are President O and President T are both bad because their actions cause people to die, the answer changes once you view this thru a religious framework. If O is a True Believer in the One True Church that you also believe in and T is a heathenous devil worshiper, then of course O is better than T – that almost goes without saying.
Must have missed a few CNN news cycles. How did the Russian conspiracy go from being an H-Rod campaign speech to absolute fact?
Have to disagree that Chomsky is one of the foremost America’s thinkers. But he was quite popular with Soviet elites over three decades ago.
If the “effects of the crime are undetectable”, then how is he so sure that the Russian interference was a big crime?
Obamacare managed to lower life expectancy, didn’t it?
I still find it difficult to understand the many people who bring up sexism in regard to Trumps win. When you tell them that about 50% of white women voted for Trump their reaction is either disbelief or some sort of convoluted explanation about how women are being tricked.
@dean, Phil contradicts himself. A year or so ago, according to the Philenfurhrer, Malcolm Gladwell was not only ‘Murica’s, but North America’s greatest thinker. A sentiment I heartily endorse. I can’t wait for his next book where he takes 300 pages to explain if you want to be really good at something, you need to work hard.
@wally: Like Neil deGrasse Tyson, the greatest physicist.
I wish that the 99.9% of Trump voters would stop giving the other 0.1% a bad reputation
wally/dean: I’m not contradicting myself! Chomsky is the greatest thinker as measured by academic journal references. Gladwell is the greatest thinker as measured by popular acclaim 🙂
Stevie, ayo I hear you copkilla. Put on you pussyhat but don’t go shooting no Rethuglicans today, gangsta.
Yes philg 12, and Marx is the greatest economist because all economic losers and socialist academia like to cite him! Never mind he never made a good investment, although he tried.
Chomsky simply states that the North Carolina legislature and Trump administration deal with environmental issues the same way; he’s not saying Trump is responsible for the legislature’s actions.
Regarding the NSF, Trump’s proposed federal budget proposal included large (and probably unprecedented) cutbacks in the NSF’s budget, with specific cuts to climate change research.
The “health care = health insurance” comments are beyond absurd. In fact, this entire post is absurd.