Evolving Chomsky

Posted on:  https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1899606766246433608&postID=1640724837437046035&page=1&token=1542311896110

11/15/2018

I never paid much attention to Chomsky before 3 or 4 years ago when my sister sent me a transcript of an interview and asked for an evaluation.  On the whole, it dealt with a grand conspiracy of advertisers and capitalists whose propaganda steered a gullible society toward an apathetic materialism, while at the same time enlarging the gap between rich and poor.  To be charitable, it bordered on incoherence.  He bemoaned the growing poverty in America, the falling standard of living of the middle class and the poor, blaming all greedy capitalists, without ever mentioning the surge in immigration which is largely responsible for the drop in American workers' wages and the influx of welfare cases. 

I couldn't help but surmise that he knew better, that this grand distortion of basic economics was not accidental, that his characterization of the situation was intended for an ignorant and gullible audience that would never ask pertinent questions.  He keeps up the revisionist history with claims like this in Scientific American a couple of weeks ago:  "As Amartya Sen has shown, Maoist China saved about 100 million people – not a small number – as compared with democratic capitalist India from independence to 1980, not from “enlightenment” in the usual sense, but from rural health programs and other reforms."

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/noam-chomsky-calls-trump-and-republican-allies-criminally-insane/

He continues with this view: "As for the Enlightenment and modern science, no serious analyst can question their major achievements – or overlook their role in the age of discovery that brought untold horrors to much of the world, devastating the Western Hemisphere and Africa, crushing the leading world centers of civilization in India and China."

Trying to make sense of that, is he talking about the disease induced annihilation of Native Americans, else which "devastati[on]" are we talking about?  And if so does he not distinguish between the Enlightenment, which came after the "Colombian Exchange," and the Renaissance (which didn't)?

And now Chomsky, who over the years has condemned the press and both political parties alike as corporate puppets, is softening his stance on the press in order to distance himself from the new great satan, the Donald, and seems to be teaming up with it, condemning Republicans who don't believe in the "truly existential threat" of global warming, and evil bankers who are "..increasing investments in fossil fuels, knowing very well what they are doing."  Fossil fuel disinvestment surely is a current fad, but not one which thinking people take seriously.  It's not the bankers' fault or even Big Oil's fault that I'm willing to pay good money to buy gas and drive a car, or that Chomsky likes to make good money flying from lecture to lecture. 

There are many good reasons those competent in economics or history or climate science (or linguistics, for that matter) can't take Chomsky seriously.  Intelligent lies have currency; idiotic lies don't.  --AGF