[Vision2020] Re: Noam Chomsky and other concerns

[David M. Budge]

Joan, it's unfair of you to stuff words in my mouth (as in Horowitz) as 
I've hardly room for my feet as it is.  Secondly. I agree with Horowitz 
about as much as I agree with Hitchens (not so much),  but as I've said, 
even a broken clock is right twice a day.  Hitchens, however, can turn a 
rhetorical phrase almost as well as Churchill (that's Winston, not Ward) 
and I read him for his style more than his substance.  Do you think it's 
possible I could agree with his positions on economics after listening 
to several days of my hun-like narratives on libertarianism? He does 
drink too much though (scotch, not bourbon), and I'm with you on 
Yugoslavia. 

I'm a bit skeptical on the Lancet's "100,000 dead" statistic you quote 
as even Human Rights Watch thinks that number is quite exaggerated, and 
the leading source of tracking such numbers, iragbodycount.net, puts the 
high side at just under 20,000. Not that that's insignificant, but one 
must needs to be careful when spouting statistics that may be 
incendiary.  Keep in mind that Human Rights Watch estimated that Saddam 
murdered an average of about 30,000 a year for ten years. Personally, I 
was extremely conflicted over the Iraq initiative and never endorsed 
military action, but there are very smart people on both sides of the 
argument and I've not just yet made up my mind as the rationale of the 
arguments are most often based on a yet inconclusive outcome. (how's 
that for a chicken-sh_t answer.)  I will, however, stand on my position 
that pulling out now would be immoral, but I'm sure you have much to say 
about that.

Last but not least, my suffering from a chronic case of over-zealous 
optimism, makes me stick to my guns in hope for you having some sort of 
political epiphany.  And, as apparently went unnoticed, I'm much more 
interested in you leaving the Democratic party than I am recruiting you 
into any other.  I'm just hoping for greater pluralism in our politics,  
especially among the learned.  I'm sure that now that Howard (my 
barbaric yaup) Dean has become Chair of the DNC, you've great hope for 
the revival of the New Deal.  But perhaps I'm discounting your last 
(incredibly insightful) paragraph as glibness.

Dave Budge


Joan Opyr wrote:

> Dave writes:
>  
> "It is difficult to find rhetorical balance as a student of political 
> philosophy.  In that effort I read regularly:  The Nation, The New 
> Republic, Reason Magazine, and The National Review (don't choke Joan.) 
> I also make sure I catch every Hitchens' piece in either Slate or 
> Vanity Fair.  Given the progression of my leanings it's probably not 
> difficult to figure out which I find to be more credible."
>  
>  
> I am choking, David, not because you read The National Review but 
> because you cite David Horowitz with apparent approval.  He, more than 
> any of the other right-wing ideologues you mention, is frequently 
> guilty of selective quotation and grotesque distortion.  I find his 
> work shoddy in terms of research and his political analyses cheap and 
> shallow.  I'm afraid Horowitz is the Right's answer to Camille Paglia 
> -- another shallow thinker who disguises her lack of genuine depth 
> with deft allusions to her "reading for tonnage" and a clever sleight 
> of vocabulary: 
>  
> "Presto, change-o; I'm Susan Sontag!  No, really!  What do you 
> mean what I just said makes no sense?  I used the word chthonic, 
> didn't I?  Go on, define that!  Hah!  You can't.  Asshole."
>  
> (I hate Camille Paglia.  Can you tell?)
>  
> Though my affinity for the Democrats is, as I say, largely vestigial, 
> you're wrong to think there's any hope for me.  I will stay in the 
> party and fight for its salvation until the last dog (meaning that 
> frothing old fool, Zell Miller) is hung.  I might have been a 
> Rockefeller Republican -- I like Rockefeller Republicans -- but the 
> words turn to ashes in my mouth.  I . . . can't . . . do . . . it.
>  
> Ted -- I've read a good deal of Chomsky.  Not the complete works, of 
> course, because that wouldn't leave me any time for Miss Marple, but 
> of what I have read, I find myself more in sympathy with his politics 
> than with his linguistic theory.  I began my academic career in 
> linguistics (before I got tired of transcribing my accent 
> into International Phonetic Alphabet form) and, even then, 1988-1993, 
> Chomsky's linguistic work was widely considered outdated.  He was 
> not/is not interested in language acquisition.  He simply declares 
> that the brain is "hardwired" for language and leaves it at that.  And 
> so, except for a few die-hard students, linguistics professors tend to 
> leave Chomsky alone.  His importance as an American intellectual, a 
> free thinker, and a radical cannot be denied.  Agree or disagree, what 
> he has to say on political subjects is fascinating.  He certainly 
> can't be ignored or sidelined.
>  
> About Chomsky's statements in the 1970s re: Pol Pot and the Khmer 
> Rouge -- Chomsky's positions, like the US government's, have obviously 
> changed with new information and new political realities.  Who would 
> have guessed that Pol Pot would murder a million of his own 
> countrymen?  Who could have known that Khmer Rouge massacres would 
> kill as many or more Cambodians than the illegal US bombing campaign?  
> What's important, I think, is to recognize that Pol Pot's crimes don't 
> absolve us of our own.  Saddam Hussein's brutality doesn't make our 
> disregard for Iraqi civilians (100,000 dead and counting) in the 
> current war okay.  Dead is dead, and when you're standing at the 
> graveside of a lost friend or relative, I doubt very much if you care 
> about the political how and why.  It doesn't matter if that death was 
> the consequence of the machinations of your own homegrown dictator or 
> a faraway government.  You are enraged; you are bereaved; you're 
> filled with grief and despair.  The question, then, is what do you do 
> about it?  Take the philosophical approach?  Go home and keep your 
> head down?  Join a resistance group or build a car-bomb or flee to 
> Iran or Syria?
>  
> Right now, the only pot I'm interested in is the pot we're stirring -- 
> and I don't make this pun for laughs.  There's nothing funny about the 
> situation in Iraq, just as there was nothing funny about the 
> destruction of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.  Would there have been a 
> Pol Pot without our mass destruction of Cambodia's rice paddies, 
> forests, and (however crude by our standards) government and 
> infrastructure?  Would we be fighting a second Iraq War if George Bush 
> Sr. and Ronald Reagan hadn't propped up and armed Saddam Hussein in 
> the 1980s?  American actions have international consequences, but the 
> vast majority of the population fails to recognize that.  America 
> has big, big feet, but most of us vote and talk and behave as if we 
> were a nation of toe-dancers.  This is where the (corporate) media 
> lets us down.  This is where our two-party system lets us down.  This 
> is where Republicans and Democrats are in perfect agreement: politics 
> is about mouthing empty rhetoric and rallying just enough of the 
> Rah-Rah crowd to push through an agenda that benefits the existing 
> hegemony, i.e., the ruling class.
>  
> Oh, hell -- I'm not a Democrat, am I?  I'm an anarcho-syndicalist.  It 
> was bound to happen someday . . .
>  
> Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
>  
> PS: Christopher Hitchens drinks too much.  He's a once-fine writer who 
> has boiled too many brain cells in bourbon.  He lost me around about 
> the time he advocated bombing seven kinds of hell out of Belgrade.  
> And what did we get for that?  The eternal enmity of the Serbs and a 
> radical Islamist government in Kosovo.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.
>  
>
>  
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : 
> http://explorer.msn.com
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_____________________________________________________
> List services made available by First Step Internet, 
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.   
>               http://www.fsr.net                       
>          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
>¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
>  
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20050213/14d1d229/attachment-0001.htm