179 lines
9.1 KiB
Plaintext
179 lines
9.1 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 8 Num. 15
|
|
======================================
|
|
("Quid coniuratio est?")
|
|
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
"WHO'S NOAM CHOMSKY?" -- PART 1
|
|
===============================
|
|
|
|
Regarding CN 8.03 ("Worshipping at the Shrine of Chomsky"), one
|
|
CN reader responded as follows:
|
|
|
|
I have just one question: Who's Noam Chomsky?
|
|
|
|
Noam Chomsky is an M.I.T. professor who has written and spoken
|
|
voluminously on U.S. and world politics. Much of his material is
|
|
quite good and demonstrates keen insight. It is not for nothing
|
|
that he has so many devoted fans. There are some areas, however,
|
|
in which I personally feel he is in error.
|
|
|
|
There are some persons having a groupie mentality who just want
|
|
to swarm around some leader, and just relax and go by whatever he
|
|
or she says. Not all Chomsky-ites are like this, but some of
|
|
them are. To see who are the groupies, just innocently ask:
|
|
"And in what areas do you disagree with Professor Chomsky?" The
|
|
groupies will just stare and/or dodge the question -- often
|
|
demonstrating an excellent talent for verbal gymnastics -- while
|
|
those who are still doing their own thinking will be quite
|
|
concrete: Chomsky is wrong about this; He errs here.
|
|
|
|
(Chomsky, by the way, is not the only leading light afflicted
|
|
with groupies. Just ask your typical LaRouchie, "And in what
|
|
areas do you disagree with Lyndon LaRouche?")
|
|
|
|
Who is Noam Chomsky? Here, in this series, are some of his
|
|
thoughts, as reported in the booklet *Secrets, Lies and
|
|
Democracy* (Tucson: Odonian Press, 1994).
|
|
|
|
The corporations are the bad guys. Any good effects traceable to
|
|
them are just incidental. They are at heart fascistic, with
|
|
rigid, top-down control. No democracy exists in the corporate
|
|
structure. To back his argument, Chomsky quotes Thomas
|
|
Jefferson, who distinguished between aristocrats, who "fear and
|
|
distrust the people," and democrats, who "identify with the
|
|
people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the
|
|
most honest and safe, although not the most wise, depository of
|
|
the public interest." Jefferson, says Professor Chomsky,
|
|
"specifically warned against 'banking institutions and monied
|
|
incorporations' ...and said that if they grow, the aristocrats
|
|
will have won and the American Revolution will have been lost."
|
|
|
|
According to the M.I.T. professor, the corporations gained
|
|
subsequent ascendancy in part because of judicial maneuvers. It
|
|
didn't happen so much through the legislative branch, "it
|
|
happened through judicial decisions. Judges and corporate
|
|
lawyers simply crafted a new society in which corporations have
|
|
immense power."
|
|
|
|
"Profits are privatized, yet costs are socialized": So says this
|
|
doyen of the intelligentsia. If you are scratching your head,
|
|
what he means is, for example, the Mexican bailout: We are told
|
|
that the Mexican economy is collapsing and American taxpayers
|
|
must lend a hand. Yet the true story, as covered in Conspiracy
|
|
Nation and elsewhere, is that Wall Street investors were in
|
|
danger of losing bucks in their Mexican investments so *we*, the
|
|
taxpayers, had to rescue them -- "costs are socialized." Then,
|
|
when these same Wall Street types score big on their investments,
|
|
we, the taxpayers, do *not* share in that -- "profits are
|
|
privatized." So too with a New York Times headline: "Nation
|
|
considers means to dispose of its plutonium." The costs of
|
|
cleaning up the plutonium belong to us, the nation; the profits
|
|
of the mega power corporations belong to the stockholders.
|
|
|
|
The Noamster is *almost* be-bopping right in tune with the
|
|
conspiracy jive when he clues us in to the war scares of 1947 and
|
|
1948 being manipulated "to try to ram spending bills through
|
|
Congress to save the aeronautical industry". What Cool Cat
|
|
Chomsky misses is that these "war scares" did not just "happen"
|
|
to come along and were then manipulated by the aeronautical
|
|
industry; these "war scares" were purposefully produced, not just
|
|
"manipulated" when they supposedly chanced onto the scene.
|
|
|
|
Almost, Noam. But sorry, you get no cigar.
|
|
|
|
The kindly professor *does* hit the mark when he points out the
|
|
increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots in this
|
|
country. Conspiracy Nation points to this gap, and the
|
|
simultaneous disappearance of the middle class, as a big reason
|
|
why it is becoming increasingly obvious which side of the line
|
|
the mainstream media is on. When there was a large middle class,
|
|
the sharp distinctions between rich and poor were more blurred.
|
|
Reflecting the then-fuzzy lines between the classes, the media
|
|
also was not clearly in focus. But the whoredom of the American
|
|
press *now* is as obvious as a hooker on Saturday night.
|
|
|
|
Here's Chomsky, the learned man. And there's you, a mere mortal.
|
|
"I AM CHOMSKY, THE GREAT AND IRREFUTABLE! WHO ARE *YOU*, AND WHY
|
|
DO YOU 'DISS' ME!?"
|
|
|
|
You reply, "Well you see, sir, it's just that you.... Well, you
|
|
say that the Clinton crime bill 'was hailed with great enthusiasm
|
|
by the far right.' And sir, I know that you are like Oz, the
|
|
ALL-SEEING, and I am only the editor of a small conspiracy
|
|
newsletter, but still -- Which 'far right' are you talking
|
|
about??"
|
|
|
|
"[The Clinton crime bill] was hailed with great enthusiasm by
|
|
the far right..." -- Noam Chomsky, ca. 1994
|
|
|
|
Can you spell "wrong"? W-r-o-n-g. The "far right" *hated* the
|
|
Clinton crime bill. Either Professor Chomsky is glaringly,
|
|
obviously wrong in this statement, or else he is surprisingly
|
|
sloppy in his use of the term "far right". Even I, a mere
|
|
Editor-in-Chief of a tundra-based "e-zine", understand that the
|
|
term "far right" is ambiguous.
|
|
|
|
So also the Pied Piper of uprooted youth warns his followers that
|
|
"It's pretty clear that, taken literally, the Second Amendment
|
|
doesn't permit people to have guns." Say what?? Chomsky does
|
|
not elaborate. I guess if it's not "pretty clear" to you, you'd
|
|
better keep it to yourself. Otherwise, Chomsky might presume you
|
|
to be part of the "far right".
|
|
|
|
Yet there are actually people who speak in hushed tones when
|
|
uttering the name of Chomsky. Just like with Sherman Skolnick,
|
|
if he's not God then he must be the Devil -- for some people
|
|
there is no middle ground. Chomsky, surrounded by "yes men",
|
|
succumbs to their need to place him on a pedestal. And what
|
|
happens after they place you *on* the pedestal? Answer: they
|
|
knock you *off* the pedestal. So hey Noam, don't blame me. I
|
|
never set you up. They did.
|
|
|
|
Chomsky blames populist rage against arrogant government on
|
|
"intensive business propaganda" that makes the people feel as if
|
|
the government is "some kind of enemy." (If *I* were to say
|
|
that, I'd risk being called a "conspiracy nut".) This is all
|
|
just a bunch of "government bashing" that's going on, Herr
|
|
Professor seems to say, and not a democratic uprising rooted in
|
|
the outrage felt by the people Noam claims to love. Why won't
|
|
the Mighty Mentality from Massachusetts allow for the possibility
|
|
that yes, Consarnit, this is an honest-to-Pete populist uprising?
|
|
Might that mean that Big Government -- *this* big government,
|
|
anyway -- is not just inches from God Himself? And *if* Big
|
|
Government falls, is Noam then left without his *own* personal
|
|
tin god -- his own personal Jesus -- without which he would be
|
|
"walking that lonesome valley, all by himself"?
|
|
|
|
Maybe. For certain is that Chomsky sits right in the middle,
|
|
half right and half wrong. With many unable to view things
|
|
beyond the sophistication of a two-dimensional cartoon reality,
|
|
that makes for deification, demonization, and yours truly,
|
|
sitting on the fence,
|
|
|
|
Brian Francis Redman
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
If you would like "Conspiracy Nation" sent to your e-mail
|
|
address, send a message in the form "subscribe cn-l My Name" to
|
|
listproc@cornell.edu (Note: that is "CN-L" *not* "CN-1")
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
For information on how to receive the improved Conspiracy
|
|
Nation Newsletter, send an e-mail message to bigred@shout.net
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Want to know more about Whitewater, Oklahoma City bombing, etc?
|
|
(1) telnet prairienet.org (2) logon as "visitor" (3) go citcom
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
See also: http://www.europa.com/~johnlf/cn.html
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
See also: ftp.shout.net pub/users/bigred
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
|
|
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
|
|
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
|
|
|