Chomsky on Post-Midterm America

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5869

both video and transcript are at the link --

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now joining us is a man who needs no introduction, so I'm not going to do one. Thanks for joining us, Mr. Chomsky.

NOAM CHOMSKY, COGNITIVE SCIENTIST, POLITICAL ACTIVIST: Glad to be here again.

JAY: So we are told by many people, and across the political spectrum, that the problem is we just can't get along. On the front pages of the newspapers today, the story is, will the Democrats work with the Republicans? And they're polling about whether more Republicans want their representatives to fight or not fight. And we're told by people like Jon Stewart that the problem is that we need a more rational center, a more rational discussion; the problem is the people on the left extreme and the right extreme, and there's always been this division between what's called liberalism and conservatism, and that's the basic division of American society, and the problem is the liberals and the conservatives just need to have a more fruitful discourse, they need to get together and figure out a sane center, this all at the time of perhaps the gravest crisis in terms of global economy, certainly since the 1930s. And who knows? It might turn out to be even more profound than that. What's your take on this whole positioning of what the problem is?

CHOMSKY: I think there's very little truth to it. What's happened over the past roughly 35 years is that both parties have drifted to the right. I don't think the terms liberal and conservative mean much. In fact, if you take a look at the—there's quite serious inquiry into the actual attitudes of people who call themselves conservatives. So the group of people who say, I'm in favor of small government, cutting back taxes; put aside the social issues, they're different; well, it turns out most of them have more or less social democratic attitudes. You know, they think there should be more money spent on health, more on education, more on assistance to the poor, but not welfare. Reagan succeeded in blackening the term welfare with his tales about, you know, black women in limousines that are coming to the welfare offices and so on. So no welfare, but assistance to the poor. No foreign aid, but then when people are asked how much should we be giving, they typically say considerably more than we actually are. And what you basically have among the so-called conservatives in the population is what we call liberal attitudes on issue after issue. Take, say, the health-care reform that Obama passed, which is the real fighting issue. Well, a majority of the population's opposed to the health-care reform. If you take a look at the reasons, a substantial number are opposed because it didn't go far enough, and on particular matters that Obama gave away, like, say, a public option. There's pretty strong support for allowing the pharmaceutical corporations to get away with murder, because the government's not allowed to negotiate prices with them—overwhelming opposition.

More at the link ---

Especially the part about how we shouldn't be calling it the left when 40 years ago it was the moderate Repubs.

policies described as "liberal," they understandably reject them & go for the alternative.

Thanks for posting this

Chomsky didn't say that, Jay was quoting George Will, but, it's too true.

If sound bites (taken out of context) are repeated over and over again, people think it is news. This is manipulation and is called "propaganda".




:eyes:

At these centers, group pressure is used to condition them into feeling good about themselves when they ignore any evidence and instead parrot the proclamations of the designated authorities.

By the time they're adults they have a natural inclination toward glib, shallow puns ("I'm not interested in the age of rocks but in the Rock of Ages!" *applause*) and a natural aversion to thinking things through.

Thanks for the thread, Donnachaidh.:thumbsup: