Re: Chomsky

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2022 08:06:02 -0700 (PDT)
 >
 > again from electoral-vote.com...I don't understand why letter writer 
 > can't accept Chomsky's worker takeover of auto industry. But I guess 
 > it's beyond the pale in this country.

Yeah.

Frankly, I don't think Chomsky has said anything different since 1961.  I
think he's been a reluctant "leader" and probably feels that if he were to
just repeat the same things over and over again ("read the newspaper",
essentially), that people will stop looking to him for advice.
Unfortunately for him, that has not been the case.

 > M.B. in Granby, MA, asks: I was surprised when you referred to Noam 
 > Chomsky as "probably America's most important living public 
 > intellectual." It's an oft-repeated phrase, which makes me 
 > skeptical. In spite of agreeing with much of his ideology, I have 
 > some doubts about the quality of Chomsky's intellect.
 > 
 > Last year, I listened to an Ezra Klein podcast with Chomsky and 
 > found Chomsky's reasoning specious. Describing the federal 
 > government's 2009 bailout of the auto industry, Chomsky said, that 
 > the federal government had a "choice" in how to respond. Instead of 
 > giving money to the automobile companies, "There was another choice. 
 > Turn the auto industry over to the work force, and the stakeholders, 
 > the community. Let them have control. Let them think through what 
 > they ought to do. Maybe they'll decide on the sensible thing."
 > 
 > Chomsky uses the word "choice" several times in his answer, but the 
 > politics, not to mention the legalities and economics of the 
 > situation militated against this "sensible thing." His use of 
 > language obscures the material reality of the moment. Like anyone 
 > else, Chomsky's allowed to misspeak, but I don't think that was the 
 > case here.
 > 
 > And I so wonder, is Chomsky really an important public intellectual? 
 > If so, how?
 > 
 > V & Z answer: For the last 50 years of her life, Rosa Parks was one 
 > of the United States' most important living historical figures. She 
 > didn't do all that much to justify that distinction during that 
 > time, but she didn't need to, because she'd done everything 
 > necessary to justify it on December 1, 1955.
 > 
 > Similarly, Chomsky made crucial contributions to linguistics over 
 > the course of his career, and he also spoke truth to power in a 
 > manner that people of his stature largely did not do in the 1950s 
 > and 1960s. He thus had a significant impact on public discourse. 
 > This is why he's America's most important living public 
 > intellectual.
 > 
 > He's now in his nineties, of course, and a person rarely maintains 
 > their "A" game into their 10th decade on the planet. Further, he's 
 > been NOAM CHOMSKY for so long that he's basically just playing a 
 > character, whether or not he is consciously aware of it. So, he 
 > hasn't said anything particularly new or profound in a pretty long 
 > time, and on just about any issue, you can easily predict what his 
 > opinion is. Still, that doesn't take away from the important 
 > contributions he made in the past. And most public intellectuals 
 > eventually reach this stage; what we've written here is also 
 > basically true of Cornel West, Paul Krugman, and Niall Ferguson, 
 > among others. Better that than the public intellectuals who go off 
 > the deep end, like Alan Dershowitz has.
 >