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| A Little Chomsky Please |
| Saturday, November 18, 2006 |
My last post was filed with anti-Democratic (not anti-democracy venom) and I make no apology for that. It is fair to place high demands on people who are granted great power and are entrusted with the future of a nation. You will find me equally as boisterous in my anti-GOP pieces. The issue to me is not the parties. I abhor partisanship and feel that is an enemy of the interest of the people. The ideal congress for me would have only Independents who hold office not because of the party to which they belong, but because of the values that they practice in public life and communicate in public life. I don't give a crap what they do in private as long as their actions in the public arena merit the status awarded to them by the people.
For that reason, I am not opposed to reading the work of Noam Chomsky. The man is more than a linguist, he is one of the better minds in this nation and has a gift with words that is present in very few in this world. I was reading his article: The Non-Election in 2004 and found this paragraph that I feel is worth quoting (below).
As usual, the electoral campaigns were run by the PR industry, which in its regular vocation sells toothpaste, life-style drugs, automobiles, and other commodities. Its guiding principle is deceit. Its task is to undermine the “free markets” we are taught to revere: mythical entities in which informed consumers make rational choices.In such scarcely imaginable systems, businesses would provide information about their products: cheap, easy, simple. But it is hardly a secret that they do nothing of the sort. Rather, they seek to delude consumers to choose their product over some virtually identical one.
Does anyone else agree with this assessment? As distasteful as some of Noam Chonsky's opinions may be, those opinions are well though and do express a form of morality. I don not believe it would be fair to frame him as a Democrat or anti-American, or a communist, unless he declares himself to be one. Chomsky's review of the state of the world reflects the actual state of the world. Although he is derided in conservative circle his views actually support much of what should be the conservative agenda, particularly when the conservatives speak of freedom.
The problem is the uneducated, misinformed, and disinformed public. Consider the 200 election Bush v. Gore - there was almost no difference between the candidates and, the speeches presented by either candidate during the campaigns were so devoid of information it was easy to come to the conclusion that both men were made out of card board. Bush one via his recognition of the the Lord Savior Jesus Christ. It was enough to overlook some of his foibles. And, this was deemed to be acceptable. It was a minor difference between the candidates. Chomsky points out below that the public may have become even less well-informed.
In 2000, “issue awareness”—knowledge of the stands of the candidate-producing organizations on issues—reached an all-time low. Currently available evidence suggests it may have been even lower in 2004. About 10 percent of voters said their choice would be based on the candidate’s “agendas/ideas/platforms/goals”: 6 percent for Bush voters, 13 percent for Kerry voters (Gallup). The rest would vote for what the industry calls “qualities” or “values,” which are the political counterpart to toothpaste ads. The most careful studies (PIPA) found that voters had little idea of the stand of the candidates on matters that concerned them. Bush voters tended to believe that he shared their beliefs, even though the Republican Party rejected them, often explicitly. Investigating the sources used in the studies, we find that the same was largely true of Kerry voters, unless we give highly sympathetic interpretations to vague statements that most voters had probably never heard.
Now that the Democrats are in the Senate and House, they are cutting each others throats and divisions between them are resurfacing rapidly. the pretend to agree for a couple days, get elected base on that deceit and then return to business as usual. What are the actionable plans that they have that will produce what solution?
Take the issue at the border -- there has been plenty of opportunity (uh, say 120 years) to seal the border and a lot of ways to do it. How many Democrats in the Congress picked up a hammer, shovel, and some boards to start building a fence? None ... That's how important it really is to them. You can gauge the importance by the actions taken. In terms of interrogating terrorists - while I am not a fan of torture, if someone threatens or even may threaten the well-being of my family and is found engaging in an illegal act at the time - take them apart and get some answers - don't bother me with the details. I'm sure that Noam would frown on that statement, but I respect his free though, so I hope he respects mine.
Chonsky also makes this statement which I would expand to include Democrats as well, because if it were politically expedient the democrats would jump on board. Who signs a resolution for war as a bluff. Everybody who says they were tricked into the declaration needs to get jumped out and those who said they didn't have information to know different should expand their statement to more fully reflect the fact that they voted without knowing the facts. (This would explain some of the meat in the bills.)
It is easy to demonstrate that for Bush planners, the threat of terror is a low priority. The invasion of Iraq is only one of many illustrations. Even their own intelligence agencies agreed with the consensus among other agencies, and independent specialists, that the invasion was likely to increase the threat of terror, as it did; probably nuclear proliferation as well, as also predicted.
The war in Iraq had much more far reaching political and economical destinations. It keeps the US dollar as the Iraqi reserve currency for at least a few more years, puts an army in Iran's lap, allows the US to sustain one of its chief resource advantages over the rest of the world (except perhaps Russia) and gives another are troops some exercise before conflict with more heavily armed and better disciplined enemies. There's just a lot of pork in this war and the myth of being welcomed with open arms has sadly been exposed to the light of day. Saddam could have been taken out of power without any ground invasion - remember we have bombers Iraq couldn't see. The ground troops were moved to complete other objectives - and one of them didn't include fighting in a civil war - and maybe that's why we are letting the Iraqi's kill each other. I really don't know. |
posted by Domesticated Dog @ 10:18 PM   |
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