Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and is one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. Chomsky is a prominent political dissident and is perhaps foremost among all those commited to freedom of speech. He is an outspoken advocate of the global abolition of nuclear weapons. One of the most cited scholars alive, he is one of few public figures willing to "get real" and publically discuss topics which are apparently too hot to handle by politicians. In that respect his bravery is virtually unmatched. He was an outstanding opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an "invasion" an an act of American imperialism. Chomsky has long publicly criticized Nazism, and totalitarianism. In Chomsky's view, the truth about political realities is systematically distorted or suppressed by an elite corporatocracy, which uses corporate media, advertising, and think tanks to promote its own propaganda. His work seeks to reveal such manipulations and the truth they obscure. He points out how absurd it is that The Future of Human Life Is at Risk but this is not even mentioned in the political primaries. Chomsky believes this web of falsehood can be broken by "common sense", critical thinking, and understanding the roles of self-interest and self-deception, and that intellectuals abdicate their moral responsibility to tell the truth about the world in fear of losing prestige and funding. He argues that, as such an intellectual, it is his duty to use his social privilege, resources, and training to aid popular democracy movements in their struggles. Naom Chomsky's comments on Donald Trump In an interview with the Guardian, Chomsky was asked if Trump was "culpable in deaths of Americans." Chomsky Says Trump a 'Sociopathic Megalomaniac' Who Made US 'Singularly Unprepared' for Pandemic New comments from the renowned academic come after he accused Trump of wanting "to destroy the prospects for all organized human life... in the near future." World-renowned intellectual and author Noam Chomsky called U.S. President Donald Trump a "sociopathic megalomaniac" whose leadership drove the U.S. to become "singularly unprepared" for the corona virus pandemic. Chomsky's fresh criticism of the president came in an interview with Agence France-Presse. "The White House," said Chomsky, "is in the hands of a sociopathic megalomaniac who's interested in nothing but his own power, electoral prospects." Trump "doesn't care what happens to the country, the world," though he's still reliant on "his primary constituency, which is great wealth and corporate power," Chomsky said. The administration has "no coordinated plan" for addressing the pandemic, meaning the nation will see "a lot more" deaths from Covid-19 on top of the nearly hundreds of thousands (sic) confirmed fatalities that have already occurred, he added. Setting the stage for the current situation is that Trump kicked off his administration by moving to take apart "the entire pandemic prevention machinery," including by "canceling programs that were working with Chinese scientists to identify potential viruses," Chomsky said. Another contributing factor to the flawed response, said Chomsky, is that the nation is "in the stranglehold of private control," an example of which is the lack of a national single-payer healthcare system. "It's the ultimate neoliberal system, actually," he said. While Chomsky predicted a recovery from the pandemic will come eventually and "at severe cost," the same cannot be said of the climate crisis. "There isn't going to be any recovery from the melting of the polar ice caps and the rising of sea levels," he warned. Chomsky's fresh comments to AFP follow similarly scathing recent rebukes of the Trump administration. "Yes," responded, "but it's much worse than that, because the same is true internationally. To try and cover up his criminal attacks against the American people, which have been going on all of this time, he's flailing about to try and find scapegoats." Chomsky also recently took aim at Trump's policies that are worsening the climate crisis, telling Canada's National Observer last month that the U.S. president "wants to destroy the prospects for all organized human life. And in the near future. That's what it means to maximize the use of fossil fuels, to cut regulations that might diminish or restrict that danger." But as bad as Trump is, Chomsky noted that the groundwork was laid well before the failed business owner walked into the Oval Office. In an April interview with Democracy Now!, Chomsky said: Trump
is taking a failing, lethal system and turning it into a monstrosity,
but the roots were before him. Just think back to the reason why the
pandemic occurred in the first place. Drug companies are following
capitalist logic. They don't want to do anything. The neoliberal hammer
says the government can't do anything the way it did in the past.
You're caught in a vise. Then comes along Trump and makes it
incomparably worse. But the roots of the crisis are pre-Trump. The same with the healthcare system. Like we know that—everyone knows—they should know the basic facts. It's an international scandal: twice the costs of comparable countries, some of the worst outcomes. The costs were recently estimated by a study in The Lancet, one of the world's leading medical journals. They estimated that the costs, the annual—annual costs to Americans are close to half a trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands (sic) of lives lost. That's not so small. Going forward, Chomsky suggested there are lessons to be learned from the coronavirus crisis. "One lesson is that it's another colossal failure of the neoliberal version of capitalism. Massive failure," Chomsky told Efe last month. "If we don't learn that lesson," he said, "it's going to recur worse next time." Interviewed by the Observer's Linda Solomon-Wood via Zoom in front of an online audience of around 700, Chomsky said, "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who's really the guiding hand, the thinker . . . He's the real evil genius in the administration. He said the stimulus program cannot give money to blue states . . . no money for places like New York that vote Democratic." Chomsky asserted that the "usual class war is operating" in the U.S. during the coronavirus crisis, which he compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The author explained, "The Great Depression had an enormous impact — much worse than this, in fact . . . And there were two ways out. One way out was fascism. It spread over a lot of the world . . . Another way was basically New Deal-style, welfare state-style democracy and liberalism. That was the way the United States took (in the 1930s) . . . Those are the two ways out. We're in the same situation now." Chomsky also addressed another major crisis during the interview: Climate Change. "We are not going to escape from the melting of the polar ice caps, the rise in sea levels and the other extremely harmful consequences of global warming," Chomsky told Solomon-Wood and the online audience. "The major country in the world, the United States, happens to be in the hands of someone — in fact, a party — that wants to exacerbate the crisis. They want to make sure that the coming crisis is as severe as possible and as imminent as possible and are putting all their efforts into that right as we speak. If we want that to happen, we can watch and not react...." He describes the History of the US Economy in Decline. And how the USA has from it’s inception, carried out and exported domestic and international terrorism and genocide, sponsors illegal invasions, coups, and embargos, which has concentrate wealth and power into fewer and fewer people. "...for the
protection of the immensely wealthy elite minority at the expense of
the poor majority, both domestically and abroad, ... a horrible,
sinister militaristic lie, having nothing to do with freedom nor democracy, and everything to do with vastly increasing the wealth and power of the elite at the endless misery of the masses." However Mr. Chomsky is not all about doom and gloom. He states that it is not too late to pull together and work through the existing system to set things right as we have done in the past. Sunrise is a youth movement Chomsky recommends.
Footnote: It is interesting how many people are so wrapped up in their own problems they can't be bothered with larger issues. "...There
is one more parallel between the events of 1933 and the events of
2016....Like Hitler, Trump is a radical, authoritarian figure who lies
outside the normal parameters of his country’s conservative governing
class. Thus, there is a parallel between the two men’s unexpected rise
to power that is worth considering: Why would traditional conservatives
willingly hand power to a figure so dangerous that he threatened their
own political and economic interests? ....Hindenburg and the German right viewed Hitler in strikingly similar terms to how Republican elites view Trump. Yes, they badly underestimated his fanaticism, which Hitler had downplayed in public. While they failed to anticipate that Hitler would launch a total war and industrial-scale genocide, they did consider him a buffoon. ....Hitler, in their eyes, was not a serious man, unfit to govern, a classless buffoon. His appeal, the German elite believed, came from his outsider status, which allowed him to posture against the political system and make extravagant promises to his followers that would never be tested against reality. -Article: |
