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The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change
In The Precipice, Noam Chomsky sheds light into the phenomenon of Trumpism, exposes the catastrophic nature and impact of Trump’s policies on people, the environment, and the planet as a whole, and captures the dynamics of the brutal class warfare launched by the masters of capital to maintain and even enhance the features of a dog-eat–dog society to the unprecedented mobilization of millions of people against neoliberal capitalism, racism, and police violence.
368 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 24, 2021
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About the author
Noam Chomsky
977 books17.1k followersAvram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media.
Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard M. Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky's commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid, and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.
Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Helms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.
Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard M. Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky's commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid, and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.
Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Helms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.
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May 10, 2021
There’s a lot more of Noam Chomsky these days, a lot of which has to do with the Trump regime. But in Precipice, Truthout journalist CJ Polychroniou has stitched together four years of interviews with Chomsky, making the book a huge and definitive Told You So. Chomsky was on the case, and his perceptions, criticisms and cautions were spot on right at the time. From the election to the refusal to leave the White House, Chomsky has insights to offer, as they happened. No hindsight involved.
The book starts at the end of the term, with Trump out of office, and moves backward to end in 2016. It is interesting, because as strident as Chomsky is on the subject today, he seems to have been even more astringent at the very beginning. He had no problem seeing it all for what it was. His usual clear thinking, wide-ranging research and assimilation of the greater picture are very much center stage in this book.
He is more than a little upset. It seems that after 75 years of preaching to ever greater audiences around the world (he is by far the most famous American intellectual in the world. There basically is no other), society is far worse off today than it was when he began, as a teenager in the Second World War era. He is beside himself over Global Warming (no matter what anyone calls it), “the greatest existential threat to mankind,” which has built itself into this monster threat precisely during his lifetime. Readers will feel his frustration in having to talk about anything else, because it will pale in comparison to climate.
He cites a New York Times article showing the “perpetual low ranking among voters, even among Democratic voters” of the environment as an issue. “The article failed to add that this assessment is an incredible indictment of the country and its political, social, economic and media institutions, all of which, so the assessment claims, have sunk to such a level of depravity that the question of whether organized human society can survive in any minimally tolerable form, in the near future, is of little consequence.”
Chomsky is horrified as well by the decline of democracy, worldwide, but particularly in the USA. He says: “If the US were to apply for membership in the European Union today, it would probably be rejected.” He cites things like the” absurd” Senate, where Wyoming, with just half a million residents, has the same representation as California, with 40 million. There’s also the Electoral College farce, and the constant beatings democracy takes from gerrymandering, voting restrictions and way too much money buying influence.
His third fear is nuclear war. Numerous times over the four years of interviews, he cites the Doomsday Clock, now less than two minutes to midnight, and switching from minutes to seconds as it runs out of time. Between Obama spending hundreds of billions to upgrade the nuclear arsenal and Trump cancelling nuclear reduction and inspection treaties with Russia and Iran, he sees a nuclear conflagration as highly possible.
But despite these fears being well worth exploring, the theme here is Donald Trump. Polychroniou asks the questions of the day, and Chomsky fires away: “The very fact that someone could be considered a serious candidate after having killed…hundreds of thousands of Americans through a disastrous response to COIVD-19 is an extraordinary victory for Trump, and a defeat for the country.”
Much earlier, on Trump’s fascism: “Fascism is too sophisticated a doctrine for him to grasp… (His administration) more resembles a tin-pot dictatorship.”
And in summary: “Trump’s dedication to destroy human life for the sake of short-term profit for his constituency is by far the worst of his crimes.”
As usual, Chomsky has dug deeper than anyone. On American healthcare, he found a 2008 study where he says: “Reducing administrative costs of the US healthcare system to Canadian levels would save at least $209 billon (a year) – enough to fund universal healthcare in the USA.
Another study shows Americans with stress levels higher than even Venezuelans. American stress levels are nearly the highest of 143 nations in the study, a good 20 percentage points above average. Deaths of despair run to about 150,000 a year in the country, contributing to a reduction in life expectancy “unprecedented in developed societies,” he says. Early on, in an interview about Trump’s first hundred days in office, he says “All of this resonates with at least parts of a society that has long been the safest and most terrified in the world.”
On China, he sums up the trade issues as: “The US is concerned with Chinese growth and is seeking (pretty openly) to impede it – not a very attractive policy stance.”
There are problems with the book (but nothing to do with Chomsky). Polychroniou has not assigned dates to any of the 37 chapters (or chapter numbers for that matter). You have to figure out that the timeline is going backwards, assuming it is a timeline. You have to guess at about when they took place from clues in the conversation with mentions of names or events (first hundred days, Mulvaney appointment, midterm elections, Mueller investigation, and so on).
And it is sloppy. One interview gets reprinted verbatim a second time later on. That’s bad enough, but which one is in the wrong place in the timeline?
Worst of all to me is the criminal lack of editing. Chomsky has a tendency to employ key phrases and facts repeatedly. This makes sense when you consider how many and how many different ways he has to tell a story in answer to a question. So he has talking points. But if you interview him constantly over four years, the same words, phrases and sentences will appear again and again. They need to be edited down.
I don’t know many times he cites Joseph Stiglitz for calling Trump’s tax reduction The Political Donor Relief Act. Or how many times he cites the study of the healthcare costs in the USA compared to Canada. Or the business of the Doomsday Clock being less than two minutes to midnight. Or Republicans with a platform so extreme they can never run on it. They have to raise side issues instead. That Republicans are so extreme they are now to the right of every right wing party in the world. Or how Europe would reject a US application to join them. Or how as a child, he listened to Hitler live on the radio, and though he couldn’t understand the words, he could tell evil would come of them. Over and over again.
I think there’s more than a dozen of these memes that get replayed endlessly throughout. It is painfully different from say Understanding Power which I reviewed about 15 years ago. That’s a 400 page book with 600 pages of footnotes that tell their own stories, but it was so well edited, it flowed as a constant stream on new and penetrating ideas and facts. And I praised it as much for its editing as anything else. The editing made the book. Not so with Precipice, seemingly devoid of editing altogether.
One of the great things about Chomsky’s analysis is how he sees everything as a puzzle piece. While readers might remember a news item, Chomsky will not only remember it, but place it in a context where he can show it made the subject far worse, or intractable, took it down to a new level, or made it all understandable. For Chomsky, clues hide in plain sight. All you have to do it is look at them differently. Precipice shows this, but readers will have to work for it.
David Wineberg
The book starts at the end of the term, with Trump out of office, and moves backward to end in 2016. It is interesting, because as strident as Chomsky is on the subject today, he seems to have been even more astringent at the very beginning. He had no problem seeing it all for what it was. His usual clear thinking, wide-ranging research and assimilation of the greater picture are very much center stage in this book.
He is more than a little upset. It seems that after 75 years of preaching to ever greater audiences around the world (he is by far the most famous American intellectual in the world. There basically is no other), society is far worse off today than it was when he began, as a teenager in the Second World War era. He is beside himself over Global Warming (no matter what anyone calls it), “the greatest existential threat to mankind,” which has built itself into this monster threat precisely during his lifetime. Readers will feel his frustration in having to talk about anything else, because it will pale in comparison to climate.
He cites a New York Times article showing the “perpetual low ranking among voters, even among Democratic voters” of the environment as an issue. “The article failed to add that this assessment is an incredible indictment of the country and its political, social, economic and media institutions, all of which, so the assessment claims, have sunk to such a level of depravity that the question of whether organized human society can survive in any minimally tolerable form, in the near future, is of little consequence.”
Chomsky is horrified as well by the decline of democracy, worldwide, but particularly in the USA. He says: “If the US were to apply for membership in the European Union today, it would probably be rejected.” He cites things like the” absurd” Senate, where Wyoming, with just half a million residents, has the same representation as California, with 40 million. There’s also the Electoral College farce, and the constant beatings democracy takes from gerrymandering, voting restrictions and way too much money buying influence.
His third fear is nuclear war. Numerous times over the four years of interviews, he cites the Doomsday Clock, now less than two minutes to midnight, and switching from minutes to seconds as it runs out of time. Between Obama spending hundreds of billions to upgrade the nuclear arsenal and Trump cancelling nuclear reduction and inspection treaties with Russia and Iran, he sees a nuclear conflagration as highly possible.
But despite these fears being well worth exploring, the theme here is Donald Trump. Polychroniou asks the questions of the day, and Chomsky fires away: “The very fact that someone could be considered a serious candidate after having killed…hundreds of thousands of Americans through a disastrous response to COIVD-19 is an extraordinary victory for Trump, and a defeat for the country.”
Much earlier, on Trump’s fascism: “Fascism is too sophisticated a doctrine for him to grasp… (His administration) more resembles a tin-pot dictatorship.”
And in summary: “Trump’s dedication to destroy human life for the sake of short-term profit for his constituency is by far the worst of his crimes.”
As usual, Chomsky has dug deeper than anyone. On American healthcare, he found a 2008 study where he says: “Reducing administrative costs of the US healthcare system to Canadian levels would save at least $209 billon (a year) – enough to fund universal healthcare in the USA.
Another study shows Americans with stress levels higher than even Venezuelans. American stress levels are nearly the highest of 143 nations in the study, a good 20 percentage points above average. Deaths of despair run to about 150,000 a year in the country, contributing to a reduction in life expectancy “unprecedented in developed societies,” he says. Early on, in an interview about Trump’s first hundred days in office, he says “All of this resonates with at least parts of a society that has long been the safest and most terrified in the world.”
On China, he sums up the trade issues as: “The US is concerned with Chinese growth and is seeking (pretty openly) to impede it – not a very attractive policy stance.”
There are problems with the book (but nothing to do with Chomsky). Polychroniou has not assigned dates to any of the 37 chapters (or chapter numbers for that matter). You have to figure out that the timeline is going backwards, assuming it is a timeline. You have to guess at about when they took place from clues in the conversation with mentions of names or events (first hundred days, Mulvaney appointment, midterm elections, Mueller investigation, and so on).
And it is sloppy. One interview gets reprinted verbatim a second time later on. That’s bad enough, but which one is in the wrong place in the timeline?
Worst of all to me is the criminal lack of editing. Chomsky has a tendency to employ key phrases and facts repeatedly. This makes sense when you consider how many and how many different ways he has to tell a story in answer to a question. So he has talking points. But if you interview him constantly over four years, the same words, phrases and sentences will appear again and again. They need to be edited down.
I don’t know many times he cites Joseph Stiglitz for calling Trump’s tax reduction The Political Donor Relief Act. Or how many times he cites the study of the healthcare costs in the USA compared to Canada. Or the business of the Doomsday Clock being less than two minutes to midnight. Or Republicans with a platform so extreme they can never run on it. They have to raise side issues instead. That Republicans are so extreme they are now to the right of every right wing party in the world. Or how Europe would reject a US application to join them. Or how as a child, he listened to Hitler live on the radio, and though he couldn’t understand the words, he could tell evil would come of them. Over and over again.
I think there’s more than a dozen of these memes that get replayed endlessly throughout. It is painfully different from say Understanding Power which I reviewed about 15 years ago. That’s a 400 page book with 600 pages of footnotes that tell their own stories, but it was so well edited, it flowed as a constant stream on new and penetrating ideas and facts. And I praised it as much for its editing as anything else. The editing made the book. Not so with Precipice, seemingly devoid of editing altogether.
One of the great things about Chomsky’s analysis is how he sees everything as a puzzle piece. While readers might remember a news item, Chomsky will not only remember it, but place it in a context where he can show it made the subject far worse, or intractable, took it down to a new level, or made it all understandable. For Chomsky, clues hide in plain sight. All you have to do it is look at them differently. Precipice shows this, but readers will have to work for it.
David Wineberg
December 9, 2021
Why we are screwed: “Almost 80 percent of Americans believe in miracles.” “40 percent of Americans expect Jesus to return to earth (the Second Coming) by mid-century.” I doubt they’ll be that excited when he arrives but talks only in Aramaic, talks incessantly about helping the poor, has no Green Card, and at best, looks more like Richard Reid the shoe bomber more than the dreamy white guy in those paintings. “In the 60’s, the Republican Party was strongly pro-choice (Reagan, Ford, Bush I) and in 1972, two thirds of Republicans thought abortion was a private matter, “and that the government should have no role in it.” Nixon and his team saw he could get needed Catholic and evangelical votes by adopting the anti-abortion stance. Et voila. For the past forty years, polls say most Americans want higher taxes on the rich, not lower. Mussolini and Hitler gave the people back something, Trump just stabbed them “in the back”. Wyoming (population 575,000) has the same number of senators as California (population 40 million). It can never be changed because the small states would simply block a constitutional amendment. Ah, the Napoleon Complex also works with states.
So, 40% of the US population doesn’t see climate change as a pressing issue because they think Christ is going to show back up and save the day. The job of insurance companies is to make money, not provide health care. In the Reagan years, “70% of the adult population thought health care should be a constitutional guarantee.” The public option once had the support of 2/3 of the US population but it won’t happen now just because the “financial and pharmaceutical industries will not tolerate it.” Obama as a senator showed “impassioned support for Israel’s murderous assault on Lebanon. He even went as far as to cosponsor legislation calling for strong action against any country that might impede the assault.” After Trump was elected, gun sales plummeted. However, “US consumer sales of firearms are greater than the rest of the world combined.” Peddling unfounded fears of remote possibilities works: Seventy percent of Oklahoma voters “approved legislation to prevent the courts from applying” Sharia law to the judicial system. Top secret documents from Israel show that only weeks after it takes over the occupied territories that Israel knew all the international laws it was breaking, including violating the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention and boldly violating Security Council orders. Not one person concerned about Russiagate will mention Israeli interference in US elections. Or that in 2015, Netanyahu addresses Congress clearly to sway them on Iran.
Richard Sakwa said, NATO’s prime mission today is to “manage the risks created by its existence.” FOX News ran a poll on who was the most popular US politician: its winner was Bernie Sanders. Look at the Cold War this way: publicly a war on Communism, but privately a war on “radical nationalism”. You can find the CIA up to no good even in Australia when it was disposing the Whitlam Labor government in 1975. Large scale CIA interference in Italian politics is heavily documented since 1948; destroying the US style “freedom and liberty” of Italian voters in 1948 was the first major task of the recently formed CIA. Yum. The CIA later brought back the Mafia by hiring them and in return the Mafia could bring back the heroin drug trade. CIA humor: All those people thrown in jail for drug charges, while the CIA gets a free pass despite being more involved in the drug trade than those who went to prison. US message to the world: “you are free to do what you want, as long as it is what we want you to do.”
Britain’s development depended on “large scale piracy” and it “stole superior technology from India, the Low Countries and Ireland. “The general practice is called ‘kicking away the ladder’ by economic historians: first use the practices to develop, then bar others from following.”
By the time Apartheid died in South Africa, only Reagan was supporting it. By that time, even “Thatcher and Israel had abandoned that sinking ship.” US “New Deal public housing projects were restricted to whites by laws that remained in effect until the late 1960’s.” According to the Public Religion Research institute, in 2011, only 30% of white evangelicals thought “personal immorality was consistent with an ethical performance of official duties.” Now that percentage is up to 72%. Noam doesn’t think Trump is a liar because he says lying requires knowledge of the truth. Is it racism that made it called “Obamacare”? After all, we don’t call Medicare “Johnsoncare” (nor do we call Obamacare “Romneycare”). Why would North Korea want to meet with the US if we keep calling it the greatest threat to world peace? On the world stage the crimes of the US far outweigh the crimes of North Korea. The world sees our “we are American, bitch (actual Noam quote)” posture and rolls its eyes.
Ben Franklin “pondered whether Germans and Swedes should be barred from entering the country because they are ‘too swarthy’.” Walt Whitman wrote “what has miserable, inefficient Mexico …to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?” Said like a true poet, Walt. Henry Stimson in Truman’s cabinet kept having aides reassigned if he thought they were “Hebrew” and he “consistently maintained that Anglo-Saxons were superior to “the lesser breeds”. “The US cast its first Security Council veto in 1970, and quickly gained the lead in doing so. It is the only country to have gone as far as to veto a Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law – mentioning no one, but it was understood that it was a response to Washington’s rejection of World Court orders to end its unlawful use of force (aka international terrorism) against Nicaragua and to pay substantial reparations.”
Best reason for the Right to buy all the guns it wants: Two-thirds of “firearm deaths” are suicides, and half of all US suicides are by firearm. This means today’s conservative gun zealots need no longer worry about the government ever coming to pry their gun from their cold, dead hands; that will probably be the coroner’s job. “Student debt is structured to be a burden for life.” “A return to passivity and obedience.” Present US student loan debt is a whopping $600 billion more than US credit card debt. “The US spends at least 50 percent more on healthcare than other rich countries.” The US media will say the US “withdraws” from an agreement but when Iran does the same it says Iran is now “violating” an agreement. Ford, Kissinger and Reagan betrayed the Iraqi Kurds big time while Clinton, not to be outdone, betrayed the Turkish Kurds big time.
Today’s Republican views of Government: “Government has a serious flaw. It is somewhat responsive to the general public. The flaw can be remedied by transferring policy making to private tyrannies that are completely unaccountable to the public.” The Republican party can’t just simply come out and say, “Look we are the most extreme of the two business parties. So vote for us.” So, the Party goes for cultural issues like abortion bad, guns good, climate change is a commie plot, and always be afraid of them (and we’ll tell you who they are). The Post Office offers the 1% nothing, it just helps ordinary people. Single payer health care is hated because it provides “the greatest relief to lower income households.” Can’t have that, ha ha. The donor class hated Warren and Sander’s critique of wealth. Reagan’s tax gift to the mega wealthy, according to Rand recently, is valued at “almost $50 trillion”. “Medicaid only helps poor people who ‘don’t matter’ and don’t vote Republican anyway.” So why should the Republicans pay to maintain it?
Prescription: The Working Class has to be pried from the present clutches of its own class enemy, the Republican Party since Eisenhower. The only hope for Democrats is to shift back to its New Deal origins “and beyond” and, electoral politics “should not be the prime focus”. I had fund advised for this book’s Haymarket publication, so it was great fun to finally read it; it was very good.
So, 40% of the US population doesn’t see climate change as a pressing issue because they think Christ is going to show back up and save the day. The job of insurance companies is to make money, not provide health care. In the Reagan years, “70% of the adult population thought health care should be a constitutional guarantee.” The public option once had the support of 2/3 of the US population but it won’t happen now just because the “financial and pharmaceutical industries will not tolerate it.” Obama as a senator showed “impassioned support for Israel’s murderous assault on Lebanon. He even went as far as to cosponsor legislation calling for strong action against any country that might impede the assault.” After Trump was elected, gun sales plummeted. However, “US consumer sales of firearms are greater than the rest of the world combined.” Peddling unfounded fears of remote possibilities works: Seventy percent of Oklahoma voters “approved legislation to prevent the courts from applying” Sharia law to the judicial system. Top secret documents from Israel show that only weeks after it takes over the occupied territories that Israel knew all the international laws it was breaking, including violating the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention and boldly violating Security Council orders. Not one person concerned about Russiagate will mention Israeli interference in US elections. Or that in 2015, Netanyahu addresses Congress clearly to sway them on Iran.
Richard Sakwa said, NATO’s prime mission today is to “manage the risks created by its existence.” FOX News ran a poll on who was the most popular US politician: its winner was Bernie Sanders. Look at the Cold War this way: publicly a war on Communism, but privately a war on “radical nationalism”. You can find the CIA up to no good even in Australia when it was disposing the Whitlam Labor government in 1975. Large scale CIA interference in Italian politics is heavily documented since 1948; destroying the US style “freedom and liberty” of Italian voters in 1948 was the first major task of the recently formed CIA. Yum. The CIA later brought back the Mafia by hiring them and in return the Mafia could bring back the heroin drug trade. CIA humor: All those people thrown in jail for drug charges, while the CIA gets a free pass despite being more involved in the drug trade than those who went to prison. US message to the world: “you are free to do what you want, as long as it is what we want you to do.”
Britain’s development depended on “large scale piracy” and it “stole superior technology from India, the Low Countries and Ireland. “The general practice is called ‘kicking away the ladder’ by economic historians: first use the practices to develop, then bar others from following.”
By the time Apartheid died in South Africa, only Reagan was supporting it. By that time, even “Thatcher and Israel had abandoned that sinking ship.” US “New Deal public housing projects were restricted to whites by laws that remained in effect until the late 1960’s.” According to the Public Religion Research institute, in 2011, only 30% of white evangelicals thought “personal immorality was consistent with an ethical performance of official duties.” Now that percentage is up to 72%. Noam doesn’t think Trump is a liar because he says lying requires knowledge of the truth. Is it racism that made it called “Obamacare”? After all, we don’t call Medicare “Johnsoncare” (nor do we call Obamacare “Romneycare”). Why would North Korea want to meet with the US if we keep calling it the greatest threat to world peace? On the world stage the crimes of the US far outweigh the crimes of North Korea. The world sees our “we are American, bitch (actual Noam quote)” posture and rolls its eyes.
Ben Franklin “pondered whether Germans and Swedes should be barred from entering the country because they are ‘too swarthy’.” Walt Whitman wrote “what has miserable, inefficient Mexico …to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?” Said like a true poet, Walt. Henry Stimson in Truman’s cabinet kept having aides reassigned if he thought they were “Hebrew” and he “consistently maintained that Anglo-Saxons were superior to “the lesser breeds”. “The US cast its first Security Council veto in 1970, and quickly gained the lead in doing so. It is the only country to have gone as far as to veto a Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law – mentioning no one, but it was understood that it was a response to Washington’s rejection of World Court orders to end its unlawful use of force (aka international terrorism) against Nicaragua and to pay substantial reparations.”
Best reason for the Right to buy all the guns it wants: Two-thirds of “firearm deaths” are suicides, and half of all US suicides are by firearm. This means today’s conservative gun zealots need no longer worry about the government ever coming to pry their gun from their cold, dead hands; that will probably be the coroner’s job. “Student debt is structured to be a burden for life.” “A return to passivity and obedience.” Present US student loan debt is a whopping $600 billion more than US credit card debt. “The US spends at least 50 percent more on healthcare than other rich countries.” The US media will say the US “withdraws” from an agreement but when Iran does the same it says Iran is now “violating” an agreement. Ford, Kissinger and Reagan betrayed the Iraqi Kurds big time while Clinton, not to be outdone, betrayed the Turkish Kurds big time.
Today’s Republican views of Government: “Government has a serious flaw. It is somewhat responsive to the general public. The flaw can be remedied by transferring policy making to private tyrannies that are completely unaccountable to the public.” The Republican party can’t just simply come out and say, “Look we are the most extreme of the two business parties. So vote for us.” So, the Party goes for cultural issues like abortion bad, guns good, climate change is a commie plot, and always be afraid of them (and we’ll tell you who they are). The Post Office offers the 1% nothing, it just helps ordinary people. Single payer health care is hated because it provides “the greatest relief to lower income households.” Can’t have that, ha ha. The donor class hated Warren and Sander’s critique of wealth. Reagan’s tax gift to the mega wealthy, according to Rand recently, is valued at “almost $50 trillion”. “Medicaid only helps poor people who ‘don’t matter’ and don’t vote Republican anyway.” So why should the Republicans pay to maintain it?
Prescription: The Working Class has to be pried from the present clutches of its own class enemy, the Republican Party since Eisenhower. The only hope for Democrats is to shift back to its New Deal origins “and beyond” and, electoral politics “should not be the prime focus”. I had fund advised for this book’s Haymarket publication, so it was great fun to finally read it; it was very good.
April 20, 2022
A polemic against neoliberalism and Trumpism
This is commentary from mostly Chomsky and also Ha Joon Chang and others that is very recent up till after the Jan 6 insurrection. If you're looking for recent cutting analysis and critique of the US political system and the sway into neofascism, this is it. This book is highly repetitive which I didn't find to be a bad thing as it hammered into my head all the salient points.
The short of it is that neoliberal world order implemented in the 1980s has resulted in a faux populist backlash wherein there is wide distrust of the corporate elites and their collusion with politics. The US is not a liberal democracy, elections are bought and paid and the judicial system heavily favors corporate self interest especially since Citizens United and Shelby V Holder. Trumpism is a fake populist movement where a charlatan has been able to harness and exploits the deep resentment toward elites and use that to gain political power. The huge irony is that this charlatan only benefited the exact same elite class during his 4 years, the same elites that his voter base is supposed to loath. Trump's tax plan has accurately been described as the Donor Class relief fund, providing enormous tax cuts to the ultra wealthy while adding to the deficit and moving the tax burden ultimately to the precariat class. The US no longer functions under parliamentary politics. We have an illiberal right wing insurgency on one hand and a middle right corporate plutocratic technocracy on the left. The US has plunged into right wing fascism at pretty neck breaking speeds.
The main point that Chomsky reiterates over and over again is there are two things that most of American politics ignore: the threat of human extinction from climate catastrophe and nuclear war. And these are Trump's greatest crimes, according to Chomsky, branding the huckster as one of the greatest criminals in human history even surpassing Hitler (Chomsky's words). Is it hyperbole? That's for the reader to think over.
There are many book like this out there but this comes with Chomsky's dry wit, impeccable logic and bottomless experience and expertise.
This is commentary from mostly Chomsky and also Ha Joon Chang and others that is very recent up till after the Jan 6 insurrection. If you're looking for recent cutting analysis and critique of the US political system and the sway into neofascism, this is it. This book is highly repetitive which I didn't find to be a bad thing as it hammered into my head all the salient points.
The short of it is that neoliberal world order implemented in the 1980s has resulted in a faux populist backlash wherein there is wide distrust of the corporate elites and their collusion with politics. The US is not a liberal democracy, elections are bought and paid and the judicial system heavily favors corporate self interest especially since Citizens United and Shelby V Holder. Trumpism is a fake populist movement where a charlatan has been able to harness and exploits the deep resentment toward elites and use that to gain political power. The huge irony is that this charlatan only benefited the exact same elite class during his 4 years, the same elites that his voter base is supposed to loath. Trump's tax plan has accurately been described as the Donor Class relief fund, providing enormous tax cuts to the ultra wealthy while adding to the deficit and moving the tax burden ultimately to the precariat class. The US no longer functions under parliamentary politics. We have an illiberal right wing insurgency on one hand and a middle right corporate plutocratic technocracy on the left. The US has plunged into right wing fascism at pretty neck breaking speeds.
The main point that Chomsky reiterates over and over again is there are two things that most of American politics ignore: the threat of human extinction from climate catastrophe and nuclear war. And these are Trump's greatest crimes, according to Chomsky, branding the huckster as one of the greatest criminals in human history even surpassing Hitler (Chomsky's words). Is it hyperbole? That's for the reader to think over.
There are many book like this out there but this comes with Chomsky's dry wit, impeccable logic and bottomless experience and expertise.
July 15, 2022
This is a collection of interviews with America's leading public intellectual from the time of the rise to power of Donald Trump to the end of his presidency.
Noam Chomsky sheds light on how neoliberalism came into effect in the time of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and has increased in intensity since, so that the top 0.1% of the population have now doubled their share of America's wealth to 20%.
Trump has tapped into various currents that run just below the surface of American society including the fear amongst Republicans that their traditional way of life is disappearing so fast that they'll have to use force to save it. Trump has also tapped reservoirs of anger and frustration amongst the working and middle classes who feel they've been robbed. They're not wrong in this because the Rand Corporation recently estimated the transfer of wealth from the lower 90 percent to the very rich during the four neoliberal decades is around $47 trillion.
A fascinating discussion that indicates the world would not survive another four years of Trumpism.
Noam Chomsky sheds light on how neoliberalism came into effect in the time of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and has increased in intensity since, so that the top 0.1% of the population have now doubled their share of America's wealth to 20%.
Trump has tapped into various currents that run just below the surface of American society including the fear amongst Republicans that their traditional way of life is disappearing so fast that they'll have to use force to save it. Trump has also tapped reservoirs of anger and frustration amongst the working and middle classes who feel they've been robbed. They're not wrong in this because the Rand Corporation recently estimated the transfer of wealth from the lower 90 percent to the very rich during the four neoliberal decades is around $47 trillion.
A fascinating discussion that indicates the world would not survive another four years of Trumpism.
September 4, 2022
In this series of interviews conducted by C. J. Polychroniou with responses by Noam Chomsky we get to the bottom of a lot of burning political questions and current situations in America during the period 2017-2020. This format offered a reprieve from the normal dry, repetative and complex text you would normally find on this subject matter. In fact I found it easy to read because of the format, in other words I didn't lose interest half way through and wander off.
Some of the topics included:
Trumps first 100 days are undermining Our prospects for Survival
Trump and the flawed nature of US Democracy
Worship of Markets is Threatening Human Civilisation
The Resurgance of Political Authoritarianism
The Long History of the US meddling in Foreign Policy
Imagining a way beyond Neoliberalism
Coup attempt Hit Closer to centres of power than Hitler's 1923 Putsch
There were a lot of observations which I found quiet disturbing/unsettling in this read, but none queit as frighteneing as this statement by Chomsky!
"I find it psychologically impossible to discuss the 2020 election without emphasising, as stronly as possible, what is at stake - survival, nothing less. Four more years of Trump may spell the end of much of life on Earth, including organised human society in any recogonizable form."
He's referring to the Climate Crisis and the threat of Nuclear annihilation.
Some of the topics included:
Trumps first 100 days are undermining Our prospects for Survival
Trump and the flawed nature of US Democracy
Worship of Markets is Threatening Human Civilisation
The Resurgance of Political Authoritarianism
The Long History of the US meddling in Foreign Policy
Imagining a way beyond Neoliberalism
Coup attempt Hit Closer to centres of power than Hitler's 1923 Putsch
There were a lot of observations which I found quiet disturbing/unsettling in this read, but none queit as frighteneing as this statement by Chomsky!
"I find it psychologically impossible to discuss the 2020 election without emphasising, as stronly as possible, what is at stake - survival, nothing less. Four more years of Trump may spell the end of much of life on Earth, including organised human society in any recogonizable form."
He's referring to the Climate Crisis and the threat of Nuclear annihilation.
June 6, 2022
It was a love-hate relationship. This collection of interviews with Chomsky should not have been a book. Qualifying - if it had wanted to be a great book, more extensive editorial intervention would have been an absolute must. Some of the analyses and Chomsky's quite cringy catchphrases were repeated so frequently, that I might even remember them (hi, Anki). But in 300 hundred pages of back-to-back reading, it becomes rather aggravating. Also, I did not like Chomsky's overt focus on Trump. Especially, given the often reiterated thesis that real political change (namely in a country so undemocratic as the US) does not manifest and materialise itself in the arena of electoral politics, but precisely in the everyday struggle at the grass-roots.
However, I very much enjoyed Chomsky's use of historical examples, which were usually hitherto unknown to me, to demonstrate the main argument of the book: that the US is the biggest farce in the history of organised political life. Internationally, it has been for decades the greatest perpetrator of injustice, managing to overthrow democratically elected governments on an industrial scale and supporting some of the most ruthless regimes - with no impunity. (For example, I did not know that the Bush I administration provided military aid to Saddam in his ventures against Iran, then invited his nuclear specialists to DC to show them how to develop nukes, and then with Bush II invaded Iraq we all know allegedly why, I mean this can't be...) And domestically, a love child of the military/prison-industrial complex, the corporate interest of financial capital and institutionalised racism - the country has become the life-blood of economic and political oppression.
Chomsky urges to action on climate; and even though the current system appears to many "too big to fail," he, with a grain of salt and sugar, sees that Gramsci's famous dictum encapsulates the 2020s Zeitgeist: "the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."
However, I very much enjoyed Chomsky's use of historical examples, which were usually hitherto unknown to me, to demonstrate the main argument of the book: that the US is the biggest farce in the history of organised political life. Internationally, it has been for decades the greatest perpetrator of injustice, managing to overthrow democratically elected governments on an industrial scale and supporting some of the most ruthless regimes - with no impunity. (For example, I did not know that the Bush I administration provided military aid to Saddam in his ventures against Iran, then invited his nuclear specialists to DC to show them how to develop nukes, and then with Bush II invaded Iraq we all know allegedly why, I mean this can't be...) And domestically, a love child of the military/prison-industrial complex, the corporate interest of financial capital and institutionalised racism - the country has become the life-blood of economic and political oppression.
Chomsky urges to action on climate; and even though the current system appears to many "too big to fail," he, with a grain of salt and sugar, sees that Gramsci's famous dictum encapsulates the 2020s Zeitgeist: "the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."
June 30, 2021
My full review is found here.
***
The title for this book is no exaggeration: we are standing at *the* precipice in our time, the tipping point where we decide the fate of humanity.
This book is a collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky, linguist, political dissident, and intellectual extraordinaire. Chomsky has been phenomenally outstanding in each of those fields for decades, and now, in his nineties, he is yet again proving that he is not slowing down in the least.
The most topical subjects discussed in this book are the most urgent ones:
- The climate catastrophe.
- Neoliberalism and Republicans.
- What can be done/optimism.
Chomsky carries so much intellectual heft that he could be regarded as daunting if it weren't for his clear and brief conversation about complex matters. He is expert at unfurling his thoughts by using simply-understood sentences.
Chomsky's method of answering questions should be a lodestar and template for intellectuals: simple and easily understandable sentences that quickly nail down what the speaker means. True to fashion, Chomsky doesn't simply answer questions but makes matters slightly more contextual by providing history and clarity. There is nobody else that I know of, who does this as expertly as Chomsky.
***
The title for this book is no exaggeration: we are standing at *the* precipice in our time, the tipping point where we decide the fate of humanity.
This book is a collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky, linguist, political dissident, and intellectual extraordinaire. Chomsky has been phenomenally outstanding in each of those fields for decades, and now, in his nineties, he is yet again proving that he is not slowing down in the least.
The most topical subjects discussed in this book are the most urgent ones:
- The climate catastrophe.
- Neoliberalism and Republicans.
- What can be done/optimism.
Chomsky carries so much intellectual heft that he could be regarded as daunting if it weren't for his clear and brief conversation about complex matters. He is expert at unfurling his thoughts by using simply-understood sentences.
One of the most appropriate comments I've seen on Trump's foreign policy appeared in an article in the New Republic written by David Roth, the editor of a sports blog: “The spectacle of expert analysts and thought leaders parsing the actions of a man with no expertise or capacity for analysis is the purest acid satire - but less because of how badly that expert analysis has failed than because of how sincerely misplaced it is...there is nothing here to parse, no hidden meanings or tactical elisions or slow-rolled strategic campaign."
Chomsky's method of answering questions should be a lodestar and template for intellectuals: simple and easily understandable sentences that quickly nail down what the speaker means. True to fashion, Chomsky doesn't simply answer questions but makes matters slightly more contextual by providing history and clarity. There is nobody else that I know of, who does this as expertly as Chomsky.
January 7, 2023
Noam Chomsky is always a pleasure to read. Some of the main points of the book are:
- How neoliberalism eroded civil society and unions
- How the US is an empire built on racism, genocide and foreign intervention cooperating with authoritarian states
- The US is no real democracy anymore. Only money matters and both parties have become largely detached from the people
- Environmental catastrophe is becoming more and more unavoidable
- Society is becoming like a “sack of potatoes“
- The Republican Party and Trump are the most dangerous party and president in history as they are willing to destroy organised human life by ignoring the climate crisis
Chomsky‘s answer to all of these problems:
Education, strong unions and civil society and protests. In sum: Activism. It is not enough to go out and vote every other year.
My only critique of the book would be that it can be a bit repetitive regarding the main points.
- How neoliberalism eroded civil society and unions
- How the US is an empire built on racism, genocide and foreign intervention cooperating with authoritarian states
- The US is no real democracy anymore. Only money matters and both parties have become largely detached from the people
- Environmental catastrophe is becoming more and more unavoidable
- Society is becoming like a “sack of potatoes“
- The Republican Party and Trump are the most dangerous party and president in history as they are willing to destroy organised human life by ignoring the climate crisis
Chomsky‘s answer to all of these problems:
Education, strong unions and civil society and protests. In sum: Activism. It is not enough to go out and vote every other year.
My only critique of the book would be that it can be a bit repetitive regarding the main points.
April 25, 2023
It is a very (VERY) repetitive and poorly organised book. However, it is always interesting to read Chomsky’s perspective on current affairs, specially USA affairs.
“(…) today, after forty years of the ‘savage capitalism’ unleashed by the neoliberal assault. (…) The effects of the assault are sharp concentration of wealth and power, increasingly in largely predatory financial institutions, stagnation or decline for the majority, deterioration of benefits, astonishing collapse of infrastructure, a form of globalisation designed to pit working people against one another for the benefit of international investors, weakening of institutions to protect worker rights, undermining of functioning democracy, and much else that is all too familiar.”
“(…) today, after forty years of the ‘savage capitalism’ unleashed by the neoliberal assault. (…) The effects of the assault are sharp concentration of wealth and power, increasingly in largely predatory financial institutions, stagnation or decline for the majority, deterioration of benefits, astonishing collapse of infrastructure, a form of globalisation designed to pit working people against one another for the benefit of international investors, weakening of institutions to protect worker rights, undermining of functioning democracy, and much else that is all too familiar.”
August 16, 2021
From review blog: gbthurman.wixsite.com/bookreview/post...
It seems rare today to be able to find one individual or source that consistently spews hard, cold facts. The vast majority of media we view is heavily tainted by bias, an idea that has been coming more and more into the limelight. Ironically, however, we as Americans seem to still have a tendency to believe that everyone would agree with us if they would just listen to "our guy", our news channel, or read what we do, without realizing how much bias pervades all of our own intake as well. I have come to respect Noam Chomsky for his dedication to presenting the facts without reservation or desire to push any agenda other than the development and survival of humankind. With no regard to any concept of political "aisle", he condemns the actions of politicians on all sides of every issue with remarkable clarity and well-sited data. This is true in his latest collection of interviews, "The Precipice", a review of the eruption of political tensions, complete control of corporations, and the speed at which our country is headed for deeply uncertain and concerning times. It'll be hard to pick out too many specific quotes to detail the issues I want to discuss, because I dogeared what felt like every other page, and it is just too much to cover here. The main principle I want to discuss is as follows, however:
"One of the great achievements of the doctrinal system has been to divert anger from the corporate sector to the government that implements the programs the corporate sector designs..."
Chomsky has detailed for decades the impressive ability for money to control nearly all of what goes on in politics. Corporations have come to be seen as the pinnacle of what capitalism can be, a demonstration of the efficiency and resiliency that a free market provides. Being able to divert the public's attention away from what these corporations are doing and just how powerful they have become and onto every action the government takes has been performed with incredible success. Conservatives believe "government is the problem", a common phrase Chomsky quotes from Ronald Reagan. These individuals are so busy decrying any power given to the government and so willing to blame anyone different from themselves, that they have turned a blind eye, if not an admiring eye, to massively wealthy corporations that have pervaded every last reach of our lives with shocking speed and efficiency. If the government tried to interfere with our lives and collect the amount of data that a company like Amazon, Google, or Apple does with every user, there would be huge public outcry. But because these companies do it so smoothly and in way that enables so much convenience, we can't be bothered to care.
What is more is that these corporations, in plain sight, influence so much public policy and interfere with our elections and political parties to such a large degree, that they effectively have their hands in all of the decisions that comes out of Washington. Chomsky details this throughout the book, showing how presidents and congresses on both the left and right (if such designations are even remotely accurate anymore) have served the rich over and over again. Trump's promised tax breaks and tariffs on imported goods simply shift more of the burden over to workers and provide benefits to the rich. Obama is guilty of similar policies. When the great recession began in 2008, Obama bailed out GM. Are Trump and Biden's stimulus checks really intended to help you get through the month, or is another motive in place?
When we are caught up in the near worship of a political candidate, we lose sight of the fact that much of what we view as the "political process" in America is completely irrelevant. Money is what matters, and it decides what will and will not happen. Those living in inescapable poverty are shafted time and time again as workers bear the brunt of economic turmoil. Campaign slogans revolving around "Hope" and making our country great seem to serve only as distractions for what reality has become in a post WWII America. Chomsky sites repeatedly that the Democratic Party has shifted so far right that Eisenhower would have approved of many of their policies, and likewise, the Republican party has basically shifted off of the political spectrum. He talks about the infrastructure deal that Eisenhower put in place to build our country's freeway system. Biden's attempt to put forward an infrastructure bill in 2021 is now seen as far left liberal heresy.
These two slogans represented the same thing to people: a desire for their life to be happier. And yet your heart swelled at one, and turned to fire at another, did it not? You might disagree with someone who likes one of these more than the other, but we all still essentially want the same things in life.
So many people in America live in fear and anger, unsure of who to blame, not realizing that the entire economic and political system has been slowly designed and crafted into a weapon to benefit the 1% that lives on top. These feelings are understandable, and the desperation for a candidate that can truly help them makes it clear how someone like Donald Trump could have been elected. He portrayed himself as a man of the people, someone who understands the "struggle" that Americans have been enduring at the hands of "evil government". The fact that he is able to pull off such a front, belonging in full to the elite upper class that is funding and causing these problems and taking control of governmental policy, convincing Americans that he is helping them, while simultaneously stabbing them in the face, is remarkable, as Chomsky points out over and over again. The fact that someone like Bernie Sanders, who literally stems from an actual grassroots movement, can be construed as the communist devil himself, at the same time a candidate like Trump is elected, is remarkable.
Chomsky also gives a great deal of time to the impending doom that is climate change. These corporations have again, with impressive ability and total knowledge of what they are doing, sped us quickly toward destruction, fully realizing the dangers, in an attempt to pocket as much as they can before being forced to turn to less profitable (at first) greener methods. This has been done while creating a war in America between the people on whether or not climate change is even real, something very beneficial to these companies as they eek out every dollar possible. This is not a debate that exists in most of the world, and yet again, it will be those who live in third world countries and poverty that will bear the full brunt of the awful fate climate change brings.
The point I'd like to make, is that literally no corporation, president, or congressman, cares much about you. The only way that we are going to be able to exact change in this country is by speaking up for what is right, defending those who do not have a voice in addition to our own, and staying involved in activism and politics beyond an election every 4 years. America has become home to a population of blind sheep, convinced that everyone else is the problem, wondering why things aren't like they "used to be". Learn to work together, and we will overcome the difficulties that lie at the top of the economic food chain. Remain passive, and your free will is slowly taken from you day by day. If ANYONE is telling you what to believe, you must take a step back and evaluate it for yourself in a rational, truthful, and unbiased way. It's simply too easy to be caught up the emotional flurry that political candidates and commentators bring with them today. Don't allow yourself to be manipulated by anyone. You have a rational, free-thinking brain for a reason.
This has been a smattering of my own thoughts and those collected in "The Precipice". I'd recommend this book to anyone. You will not agree with every claim, (if any, if you are a conservative-minded individual) but much of it is cited or available for research of your own. Hopefully it will at least prompt you to look up some of the claims yourself, to see just how much of it is true. The world has become a difficult place to navigate, and I think that we ought to be careful that we aren't aligning ourselves with groups that go completely against what we believe at their foundation. If you permit yourself to think outside the box that a two-system political party has trapped us in, you might find that there is much more to reality than you realized. Maybe at the end of the day, we all want the same things, and we don't have to hate everyone who has a different idea of how we can arrive there.
It seems rare today to be able to find one individual or source that consistently spews hard, cold facts. The vast majority of media we view is heavily tainted by bias, an idea that has been coming more and more into the limelight. Ironically, however, we as Americans seem to still have a tendency to believe that everyone would agree with us if they would just listen to "our guy", our news channel, or read what we do, without realizing how much bias pervades all of our own intake as well. I have come to respect Noam Chomsky for his dedication to presenting the facts without reservation or desire to push any agenda other than the development and survival of humankind. With no regard to any concept of political "aisle", he condemns the actions of politicians on all sides of every issue with remarkable clarity and well-sited data. This is true in his latest collection of interviews, "The Precipice", a review of the eruption of political tensions, complete control of corporations, and the speed at which our country is headed for deeply uncertain and concerning times. It'll be hard to pick out too many specific quotes to detail the issues I want to discuss, because I dogeared what felt like every other page, and it is just too much to cover here. The main principle I want to discuss is as follows, however:
"One of the great achievements of the doctrinal system has been to divert anger from the corporate sector to the government that implements the programs the corporate sector designs..."
Chomsky has detailed for decades the impressive ability for money to control nearly all of what goes on in politics. Corporations have come to be seen as the pinnacle of what capitalism can be, a demonstration of the efficiency and resiliency that a free market provides. Being able to divert the public's attention away from what these corporations are doing and just how powerful they have become and onto every action the government takes has been performed with incredible success. Conservatives believe "government is the problem", a common phrase Chomsky quotes from Ronald Reagan. These individuals are so busy decrying any power given to the government and so willing to blame anyone different from themselves, that they have turned a blind eye, if not an admiring eye, to massively wealthy corporations that have pervaded every last reach of our lives with shocking speed and efficiency. If the government tried to interfere with our lives and collect the amount of data that a company like Amazon, Google, or Apple does with every user, there would be huge public outcry. But because these companies do it so smoothly and in way that enables so much convenience, we can't be bothered to care.
What is more is that these corporations, in plain sight, influence so much public policy and interfere with our elections and political parties to such a large degree, that they effectively have their hands in all of the decisions that comes out of Washington. Chomsky details this throughout the book, showing how presidents and congresses on both the left and right (if such designations are even remotely accurate anymore) have served the rich over and over again. Trump's promised tax breaks and tariffs on imported goods simply shift more of the burden over to workers and provide benefits to the rich. Obama is guilty of similar policies. When the great recession began in 2008, Obama bailed out GM. Are Trump and Biden's stimulus checks really intended to help you get through the month, or is another motive in place?
When we are caught up in the near worship of a political candidate, we lose sight of the fact that much of what we view as the "political process" in America is completely irrelevant. Money is what matters, and it decides what will and will not happen. Those living in inescapable poverty are shafted time and time again as workers bear the brunt of economic turmoil. Campaign slogans revolving around "Hope" and making our country great seem to serve only as distractions for what reality has become in a post WWII America. Chomsky sites repeatedly that the Democratic Party has shifted so far right that Eisenhower would have approved of many of their policies, and likewise, the Republican party has basically shifted off of the political spectrum. He talks about the infrastructure deal that Eisenhower put in place to build our country's freeway system. Biden's attempt to put forward an infrastructure bill in 2021 is now seen as far left liberal heresy.
These two slogans represented the same thing to people: a desire for their life to be happier. And yet your heart swelled at one, and turned to fire at another, did it not? You might disagree with someone who likes one of these more than the other, but we all still essentially want the same things in life.
So many people in America live in fear and anger, unsure of who to blame, not realizing that the entire economic and political system has been slowly designed and crafted into a weapon to benefit the 1% that lives on top. These feelings are understandable, and the desperation for a candidate that can truly help them makes it clear how someone like Donald Trump could have been elected. He portrayed himself as a man of the people, someone who understands the "struggle" that Americans have been enduring at the hands of "evil government". The fact that he is able to pull off such a front, belonging in full to the elite upper class that is funding and causing these problems and taking control of governmental policy, convincing Americans that he is helping them, while simultaneously stabbing them in the face, is remarkable, as Chomsky points out over and over again. The fact that someone like Bernie Sanders, who literally stems from an actual grassroots movement, can be construed as the communist devil himself, at the same time a candidate like Trump is elected, is remarkable.
Chomsky also gives a great deal of time to the impending doom that is climate change. These corporations have again, with impressive ability and total knowledge of what they are doing, sped us quickly toward destruction, fully realizing the dangers, in an attempt to pocket as much as they can before being forced to turn to less profitable (at first) greener methods. This has been done while creating a war in America between the people on whether or not climate change is even real, something very beneficial to these companies as they eek out every dollar possible. This is not a debate that exists in most of the world, and yet again, it will be those who live in third world countries and poverty that will bear the full brunt of the awful fate climate change brings.
The point I'd like to make, is that literally no corporation, president, or congressman, cares much about you. The only way that we are going to be able to exact change in this country is by speaking up for what is right, defending those who do not have a voice in addition to our own, and staying involved in activism and politics beyond an election every 4 years. America has become home to a population of blind sheep, convinced that everyone else is the problem, wondering why things aren't like they "used to be". Learn to work together, and we will overcome the difficulties that lie at the top of the economic food chain. Remain passive, and your free will is slowly taken from you day by day. If ANYONE is telling you what to believe, you must take a step back and evaluate it for yourself in a rational, truthful, and unbiased way. It's simply too easy to be caught up the emotional flurry that political candidates and commentators bring with them today. Don't allow yourself to be manipulated by anyone. You have a rational, free-thinking brain for a reason.
This has been a smattering of my own thoughts and those collected in "The Precipice". I'd recommend this book to anyone. You will not agree with every claim, (if any, if you are a conservative-minded individual) but much of it is cited or available for research of your own. Hopefully it will at least prompt you to look up some of the claims yourself, to see just how much of it is true. The world has become a difficult place to navigate, and I think that we ought to be careful that we aren't aligning ourselves with groups that go completely against what we believe at their foundation. If you permit yourself to think outside the box that a two-system political party has trapped us in, you might find that there is much more to reality than you realized. Maybe at the end of the day, we all want the same things, and we don't have to hate everyone who has a different idea of how we can arrive there.
September 11, 2023
the discussions in this book and the sheer volume of information and thought was very dense, however i very much enjoyed the learning experience this gave me as someone who has previously been very naive to the world of politics, especially current affairs. chomsky’s depth of understanding and knowledge is absolutely magnificent and i absolutely intend to read more of his work in the future. this text centred largely around the Trump regime from the 2016-2021 period and as such the consequences of Trumpism on both the US and the larger world, which are truly terrifying. expert analysis on issues such as climate change and nuclear war as well, my understanding has increased to a higher degree purely because of this book.
August 11, 2022
I think collections like this could be edited to more succinctly convey his message.
What I'll remember is that the Neoliberalism of the last 40 years is to blame for the rise of Trump, America is above international law and is basically a rogue state, the American constitution and Government wouldn't be accepted into the EU if they applied because it's not even close to resembling a democracy at this point, voting for liberal and progressive minded folk is usually a lesser of two evils choice, and when it comes to climate change...we're fucked.
What I'll remember is that the Neoliberalism of the last 40 years is to blame for the rise of Trump, America is above international law and is basically a rogue state, the American constitution and Government wouldn't be accepted into the EU if they applied because it's not even close to resembling a democracy at this point, voting for liberal and progressive minded folk is usually a lesser of two evils choice, and when it comes to climate change...we're fucked.
January 12, 2022
Incredibly insightful but frustratingly repetitive at points due to it being a compilation of interviews over a 4 year period rather than a coherent narrative
October 9, 2024
It's incredible how cogent Chomsky remains now into his 90s.
February 10, 2022
If I were Chomsky, I’d be absolutely exhausted. Fed up. “How many times,” I’d say angrily, “do I need to explain it to you people? The wealth gap, the role and responsibility of the activist and the privileged? How much proof do you need that neoliberalism is killing democracy, that capitalism is destroying the planet? I should be on a beach somewhere playing with my grandchildren. Instead, I’m in another Zoom call with another Haymarket Books author, running through the history of PR and cataloguing the sins of the GOP.”
But Chomsky, in holding power accountable, includes himself in his criticism. I’m reminded of the interview he did on a podcast, the name of which I can’t remember, where he desperately tried to convince two young activists that voting for Biden over Trump was a no brainer and that the real work takes place between elections. In this book, he comments that he was unsuccessful in persuading some people of this line of thinking, so he took it upon himself to try again.
Much in this book is material we have heard from Chomsky before. His account of the wealth gap, the neoliberal assault on voting rights and democracy, American overseas intervention in the lake has been recounted in book after book, including Imperial Ambitions and Hegemony or Survival. But here, he applies his analysis to the pandemic, the Trump phenomenon, and other sadly contemporary issues, the most important of which remains both the threat of nuclear war and climate change related disaster.
When someone like Chomsky says the Republican party, or Trump himself, are the greatest threat to the world in history, he is not indulging in principle hyperbole. He means it, and he has a line of argument to back it up. It never fails to gall me that blowhards like Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi routinely dismiss the machinations of Fox News or Republicans overall these days, in favor of a laserlike focus on the foibles of cancel culture or some such nonsense. Not that these arguments are not necessary, but please. Let’s remember there’s a fire in the room, and let’s try to put that fire out if we can. Chomsky, of course, shares many criticisms of the left and the democratic party, but he does not pull any punches when it comes to the real bad guys or, if you prefer, the baddest of the bad guys. They will make this planet unlivable. Maybe it’s time we did something about that?
But Chomsky, in holding power accountable, includes himself in his criticism. I’m reminded of the interview he did on a podcast, the name of which I can’t remember, where he desperately tried to convince two young activists that voting for Biden over Trump was a no brainer and that the real work takes place between elections. In this book, he comments that he was unsuccessful in persuading some people of this line of thinking, so he took it upon himself to try again.
Much in this book is material we have heard from Chomsky before. His account of the wealth gap, the neoliberal assault on voting rights and democracy, American overseas intervention in the lake has been recounted in book after book, including Imperial Ambitions and Hegemony or Survival. But here, he applies his analysis to the pandemic, the Trump phenomenon, and other sadly contemporary issues, the most important of which remains both the threat of nuclear war and climate change related disaster.
When someone like Chomsky says the Republican party, or Trump himself, are the greatest threat to the world in history, he is not indulging in principle hyperbole. He means it, and he has a line of argument to back it up. It never fails to gall me that blowhards like Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi routinely dismiss the machinations of Fox News or Republicans overall these days, in favor of a laserlike focus on the foibles of cancel culture or some such nonsense. Not that these arguments are not necessary, but please. Let’s remember there’s a fire in the room, and let’s try to put that fire out if we can. Chomsky, of course, shares many criticisms of the left and the democratic party, but he does not pull any punches when it comes to the real bad guys or, if you prefer, the baddest of the bad guys. They will make this planet unlivable. Maybe it’s time we did something about that?
July 25, 2022
My political tastes do diverge from anarcho-syndicalism. But Chomsky interview books are a delight. This one is the best I have read, capturing the period from the election of Trump through to the 'stolen' election of Biden. It incorporates the extraordinary mis-handling of the pandemic.
Chomsky shows the consequences of neoliberalism on working class and middle class people. He acknowledges the anger as righteous, and provides convincing arguments for why conspiracy theories emerge.
There is attention to the environmental 'crisis' (understatement) and neoliberal globalization.
But also, Chomsky confirms the value of education, reading, building connections and communicating.
While I may not agree with some of the arguments - or the epistemology that shapes them - this is a powerful, engaging and intense reading experience.
Chomsky shows the consequences of neoliberalism on working class and middle class people. He acknowledges the anger as righteous, and provides convincing arguments for why conspiracy theories emerge.
There is attention to the environmental 'crisis' (understatement) and neoliberal globalization.
But also, Chomsky confirms the value of education, reading, building connections and communicating.
While I may not agree with some of the arguments - or the epistemology that shapes them - this is a powerful, engaging and intense reading experience.
July 19, 2021
A collection of interviews mostly from the Trump era. Few given after Biden's election. It explains in detail US imperialism in the post-war period, the electoral success of Trump himself and the mechanisms of his authoritarian populism.
People vote just for a change and actually they get it, but the resulted change is always for worse. Majority of people do not understand the rapidly changing modern world and they create conspiracy theories and practice manifesting religiousness. In US 40% of voters believes in second coming of the Savior in the nearest 2 decades, and 40% of the voters dates age of universe to 5200 years. It is so easy to manipulate such societies. Authoritarian leaders employ neofascist, xenophobic and outright racist rhetoric, seeking to gain popular support by using an ideology of extreme nationalism. And actually no candidate ever represents the voters themselves. They always represent wealth and power forces designating them. In the result in neoliberal societies inequalities run deeper and deeper.
The book was issued in 2021, and considering the word 'pandemic' in its title I was counting for more updated professor's comment on the situation following Biden's election, e.g on US – China war prospects. Anyway, great critics of the Trump's reign. To be read not only by those who are aware of the existential threats, but also by those who were mesmerized by and idolized this greatest political con man.
People vote just for a change and actually they get it, but the resulted change is always for worse. Majority of people do not understand the rapidly changing modern world and they create conspiracy theories and practice manifesting religiousness. In US 40% of voters believes in second coming of the Savior in the nearest 2 decades, and 40% of the voters dates age of universe to 5200 years. It is so easy to manipulate such societies. Authoritarian leaders employ neofascist, xenophobic and outright racist rhetoric, seeking to gain popular support by using an ideology of extreme nationalism. And actually no candidate ever represents the voters themselves. They always represent wealth and power forces designating them. In the result in neoliberal societies inequalities run deeper and deeper.
The book was issued in 2021, and considering the word 'pandemic' in its title I was counting for more updated professor's comment on the situation following Biden's election, e.g on US – China war prospects. Anyway, great critics of the Trump's reign. To be read not only by those who are aware of the existential threats, but also by those who were mesmerized by and idolized this greatest political con man.
March 4, 2022
"Any thought of soft power has been pretty much abandoned, but US reserves of hard power are enormous. No other country can impose harsh sanctions at will and compel third parties to honor them at cost of expulsion from the international financial system; and, of course, no one else has hundreds of military bases around the world or anything like Washington's advanced military power and ability to resort to force at will and with impunity."
"One of the great achievements of the doctrinal system has been to divert anger from the corporate sector to the government that implements the programs the corporate sector designs, such as the highly protectionist corporate 'investor rights agreements' that are uniformly misdescribed as 'free trade agreements' in the media and commentary."
Noam Chomsky
"One of the great achievements of the doctrinal system has been to divert anger from the corporate sector to the government that implements the programs the corporate sector designs, such as the highly protectionist corporate 'investor rights agreements' that are uniformly misdescribed as 'free trade agreements' in the media and commentary."
Noam Chomsky
March 26, 2022
The Precipice is the latest book released by Noam Chomsky and to those accustomed to his work should come as no surprise that it is actually a collection of interviews. The book covers roughly the period of 2017 to 2020 especially Donald Trump's presidency and the Coronavirus epidemic.
A few interesting takeaways from the book:
- both parties in America are moving further towards the right. The Democrats are becoming more and more like the Republicans whereas the Republicans are moving so far to the right that they are going off the scale
- the impact of the climate crisis on organised human life is becoming more alarming. The Republican party with its anti-climate policies is endangering human life itself and Donald Trump's policies could lead to more deaths than any other leader in human history
- the threat of nuclear destruction is increasing
- the group with the income between 50k-90k had a massive increase in vote for Republican, they are the losers of the neoliberal order. The Democratic party has abandoned the white lower classes, especially the ones from rural and regional areas which have lost their jobs and prosperity due to neoliberal policies. These people have now switched their vote to the Republican party and are voting against their own interest.
The major issues with the book are exactly the same issues with every Chomsky book. First, due to the fact that the book is just a collection of interviews there is a lot of repetitiveness. There are several paragraphs which are repeated a few times, it appears as if the same excerpts from interviews were used more than once in the book.
The other issue is Chomsky's bad habit of using whataboutism constantly. For example, when asked about the 2021 Capitol attack and whether it can be considered a coup attempt Chomsky starts talking about the US sponsored coup in Chile in 1973. Ok, sure the coup in Chile was a terrible thing but what does have to do with the Capitol attack? Can we stick to the matter at hand?
All in all this is a good book to cover Chomsky's thoughts on the past few years. Even if you may not agree with his views (I certainly don't agree with all his views, for example he seems to be against centrism in the Democratic party and seems to see it as a negative) he is definitely a worthwhile commentator.
A few interesting takeaways from the book:
- both parties in America are moving further towards the right. The Democrats are becoming more and more like the Republicans whereas the Republicans are moving so far to the right that they are going off the scale
- the impact of the climate crisis on organised human life is becoming more alarming. The Republican party with its anti-climate policies is endangering human life itself and Donald Trump's policies could lead to more deaths than any other leader in human history
- the threat of nuclear destruction is increasing
- the group with the income between 50k-90k had a massive increase in vote for Republican, they are the losers of the neoliberal order. The Democratic party has abandoned the white lower classes, especially the ones from rural and regional areas which have lost their jobs and prosperity due to neoliberal policies. These people have now switched their vote to the Republican party and are voting against their own interest.
The major issues with the book are exactly the same issues with every Chomsky book. First, due to the fact that the book is just a collection of interviews there is a lot of repetitiveness. There are several paragraphs which are repeated a few times, it appears as if the same excerpts from interviews were used more than once in the book.
The other issue is Chomsky's bad habit of using whataboutism constantly. For example, when asked about the 2021 Capitol attack and whether it can be considered a coup attempt Chomsky starts talking about the US sponsored coup in Chile in 1973. Ok, sure the coup in Chile was a terrible thing but what does have to do with the Capitol attack? Can we stick to the matter at hand?
All in all this is a good book to cover Chomsky's thoughts on the past few years. Even if you may not agree with his views (I certainly don't agree with all his views, for example he seems to be against centrism in the Democratic party and seems to see it as a negative) he is definitely a worthwhile commentator.
May 21, 2023
3.5 Stars!
STARTING THIS FALL...THE BRAND NEW PODCAST SERIES…Chomsky! What I love about America…Can you imagine?...
“The US, the richest country in history with unparalleled advantages, over 40% of the population don’t earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone. And this is happening in what’s called a “booming economy”.”
As regular Chomsky readers will know, his more recent output has largely been reduced to reprinted Q&A sessions with usually little known academics or thinkers. I can see why this has become the go to formula, but the drawback, as seen in here, is that for some reason the quality of the editing takes a back seat, so that you get subjected to the same facts or stories again and again, we’re talking merciless repetition, which seems a tad lazy if not inept on the part of the publishers.
“If the US were to officially acknowledge the existence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, the huge flood of aid to Israel would be illegal under US law, and of course, Israel’s weapons of mass destruction cannot be subject to inspection.”
Chomsky cites many examples of America’s frankly atrocious foreign policy record since WWII and shows without doubt that America remains the most dangerous threat to world peace today. Their government invented the term “rogue state” as a term to justify invading and bombing certain nations, but as Chomsky clearly illustrates his homeland remains a rogue superpower.
“One cannot overemphasize the astonishing fact that the most powerful country in world history refuses to join the world in doing something-in some cases a lot-about this existential threat to organized human life.”
There was a lot in here, and Chomsky’s mind is still incredibly sharp for someone of such an advanced age, but it’s a shame as he is really let down by the lazy to non-existent editing, so that all through this book we are subjected not just to repetition, but repetition of repetition.
STARTING THIS FALL...THE BRAND NEW PODCAST SERIES…Chomsky! What I love about America…Can you imagine?...
“The US, the richest country in history with unparalleled advantages, over 40% of the population don’t earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone. And this is happening in what’s called a “booming economy”.”
As regular Chomsky readers will know, his more recent output has largely been reduced to reprinted Q&A sessions with usually little known academics or thinkers. I can see why this has become the go to formula, but the drawback, as seen in here, is that for some reason the quality of the editing takes a back seat, so that you get subjected to the same facts or stories again and again, we’re talking merciless repetition, which seems a tad lazy if not inept on the part of the publishers.
“If the US were to officially acknowledge the existence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, the huge flood of aid to Israel would be illegal under US law, and of course, Israel’s weapons of mass destruction cannot be subject to inspection.”
Chomsky cites many examples of America’s frankly atrocious foreign policy record since WWII and shows without doubt that America remains the most dangerous threat to world peace today. Their government invented the term “rogue state” as a term to justify invading and bombing certain nations, but as Chomsky clearly illustrates his homeland remains a rogue superpower.
“One cannot overemphasize the astonishing fact that the most powerful country in world history refuses to join the world in doing something-in some cases a lot-about this existential threat to organized human life.”
There was a lot in here, and Chomsky’s mind is still incredibly sharp for someone of such an advanced age, but it’s a shame as he is really let down by the lazy to non-existent editing, so that all through this book we are subjected not just to repetition, but repetition of repetition.
October 22, 2021
Entertaining parts, but: chaotic structure and that one third of the book is about Trump, understandable, since he is a reflection of the shortcomings of the current American society and fundamental infamous icon of the contemporany zeitgeist, however, it does gets repetitive. I left the book 2/3 thirds to the end.
October 2, 2024
Down with intelligence, long live death
October 3, 2022
A bit repetitive.
September 29, 2024
Collection of interviews with Chomsky
the misses: not as well researched or deep as his books, not well edited, and dates with the interviews would have been nice. not sure if this is a miss per se, but it's also what you would call a downer.
the hits: it's Chomsky, so, even his off the cuff material is quality. the discussion of the US two party system as both conservative was a winner for me, and it's impossible to read this in 2024 and not be impressed by how prescient he is. gives me the same feeling Le Guin has given me - an author who deeply understands the issues they're talking about will write a text that feels before its time, because our societal condition evolves, and often, the evolution is predictable.
it's also impossible to read this in 2024 and not get more depressed about seeing Trump run for prez a third time.
I wonder if Chomsky and Sanders have ever hung out.
the misses: not as well researched or deep as his books, not well edited, and dates with the interviews would have been nice. not sure if this is a miss per se, but it's also what you would call a downer.
the hits: it's Chomsky, so, even his off the cuff material is quality. the discussion of the US two party system as both conservative was a winner for me, and it's impossible to read this in 2024 and not be impressed by how prescient he is. gives me the same feeling Le Guin has given me - an author who deeply understands the issues they're talking about will write a text that feels before its time, because our societal condition evolves, and often, the evolution is predictable.
it's also impossible to read this in 2024 and not get more depressed about seeing Trump run for prez a third time.
I wonder if Chomsky and Sanders have ever hung out.
August 31, 2021
Naom chomsky is a true voice on rationality, truth and reasoning. His arguments are based on common sense, research and against the power blocs of the world and America in general. This book is a discussion based on questions posed to Naom about the world in 2020. The majority of the book is about how Trump is the worst leader in the history of America and that he is a threat to humanity and takes his place right beside hitler. Naom is abhorred by the doctrine of Trumpism and calls it the doctrine of "ME!". There are two threats that Trumpism poses even after his departure, the road he set in the dismantling of reduction of Nuclear Arms program with Russia and his view on climate change that has been accepted by the masses and the Republican vote bank, which is mainly white supremacists, far right xenophobes, corporate giants, pressure groups, rich contractors and racists. The vote bank of trumpism is a culmination of frustration of the masses esp lower and middle classes in white families, with whom trump fanned the ideas of Evil Immigrants and islamists. Trump also favored corporate profits and filled the right pockets which boosted his base in the private sector.
Naom is of the view that the World needs to panic in face of an existential crisis in the form of climate change and we are already very late. Little is being done but likes of Trump and his followers are pushing the reverse button and catastrophe is nearby. Majority of americans think Trump lost the election due to fraud, a 77%. 80% of Americans think miracles are real, 0.1 percent american population has over 20 percent of total american wealth. More than 50% believe Trump was sent by God to save Israel from Iran and other figures are just eye opening.
In foreign policy, Naom gives the Americans the title of a rogue nation. From the Reagan doctrine of manipulation, Naom gives a comprehensive account of American war crimes ranging from the kurds, vietnam, Iraq, Afgahnistan, Iran, Cuba, etc, etc. The list is endless.
The Americans openly violate International law and cover oppression of Palestinians by Israel while development of nuclear weapons by Israel.
The pandemic exposed the inadequacies of the capital markets. The far right nations like India under Modi, Brazil under bolsanaro and UK under Boris johnson suffered the worst death tolls. The healthcare systems of developed nations collapse and now the vaccine politics are ugly as ever. The world is not sustainable. The USA as a nation is not sustainable and the most dangerous nation on the planet. Humanity is on the brink and the only hope is relying on common humanity and science but the picture is bleak at best.
Naom is of the view that the World needs to panic in face of an existential crisis in the form of climate change and we are already very late. Little is being done but likes of Trump and his followers are pushing the reverse button and catastrophe is nearby. Majority of americans think Trump lost the election due to fraud, a 77%. 80% of Americans think miracles are real, 0.1 percent american population has over 20 percent of total american wealth. More than 50% believe Trump was sent by God to save Israel from Iran and other figures are just eye opening.
In foreign policy, Naom gives the Americans the title of a rogue nation. From the Reagan doctrine of manipulation, Naom gives a comprehensive account of American war crimes ranging from the kurds, vietnam, Iraq, Afgahnistan, Iran, Cuba, etc, etc. The list is endless.
The Americans openly violate International law and cover oppression of Palestinians by Israel while development of nuclear weapons by Israel.
The pandemic exposed the inadequacies of the capital markets. The far right nations like India under Modi, Brazil under bolsanaro and UK under Boris johnson suffered the worst death tolls. The healthcare systems of developed nations collapse and now the vaccine politics are ugly as ever. The world is not sustainable. The USA as a nation is not sustainable and the most dangerous nation on the planet. Humanity is on the brink and the only hope is relying on common humanity and science but the picture is bleak at best.
Read
July 7, 2022https://canadiandimension.com/article...
It's been awhile since I've shared but I'm reading a book about trumpism being neoliberal and where is democracy?
Where does that put Poilievre.
Saying they want to get rid of the federal reserve currency and go to a crypto currency? If people don't see credit and wealth are the biggest reason why government has power and they don't see the face behind cryptocurrency which there is.
If people knew who were behind cryptocurrency they would say the next leader of the conservative party is corrupt.
If you want a book recommendations check out the American kingpins.
And mob rule having all the credit and wealth for how government has power is.
A cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency has a middle man. And people are being sued for a pyramid scheme. Elon Musk for one. On a Neoliberalism being trumpism, where is democracy.
O'Toole was a way better leader for conservatives.
Poilievre is baiting leadership and making investors and business people to take out of investments to hurt the worker. That's his cabal propaganda agenda. More loss to the worker more to the investor and business people, To diffusion of responsibility in discussion over neuro-markets/economic and neuro-advertising and neurology & propaganda
That is my rant in the book 📚😅 fussing over rationality.
As hamlet says...
What is a man, if his chief good and marketable of his time but be of sleep and feed. A beast no more sure, he who made us for large discourse, looking before and after. Gave us not that capability and guide like reason to fuss in us, unused.
-hamlet
Max Burnie has a better platform than Poilievre conservatives. Better to go back to a gold or silver currency and the sooner is better. The foundating fathers plans for coinage has a better chance of workers buying houses and cars and fuel than investors and businesses taking money from workers in pyramid schemes if cryptocurrency.
https://jacobin.com/2022/05/pierre-po...
Found the convoy 2022 could relate thinking of tranny being vaccinated, a precipice is.
How someone could of killed thousands if not millions over covid planning.
The gift to dare to act to avoid a cataclysm cornucopionism of many opinions or origins is.
Not donor of the neoliberal conservatism Trace failure of Democrats, Trump has a prowess of genius to tapping the further neoliberalism.
The topping of resources of working classes that have been broken by investors and businesses so subjugated to the big bipartisan neoliberalism assault the last 40 years.
If they feel they have been robbed they have good reason. The transfer of wealth from lower 90% to the very rich to the neoliberal bipartisan transfer of wealth of 47 trillion dollars to the very small fractures of rich.
Not the principle of economics but deliberate political decision.
Government is a problem but the public center Reagan solely driven by greed results are not hard to.
On top of the nearest $50 trillion dollar train robbery.
Their global working population is set to competition low wage countries with no working rights while they're very rich are granted protection from market forces by exorbitant patent rights.
To take one example.
The effects of this bipartisan Democrats have not been helpful but neoliberalism of trumptimism is no good he takes extortionistate to the elites, while serving the super rich and corporate sector is the legislate program his executive orders demonstrates.
At the party chipping at environmental he has been a part of the largest tax scam in history in 2017.
A tax decrease so a tax cut and jobs act but tax cut to this of incomes of $70, 000 which if your under 65% of the population will still pay more taxes only the rich gets tax cuts.
Populism with neoliberalism where is democracy?
I think the UCP, CPC has gone to neoliberal in my opinion
It's always said republicans are not conservative!
Conservative are not Republican!
There is to much neoliberalism in politicalics but the UCP are fractured because of it. I don't even think Rona's Ambrose (which would even rather go be a CEO for a vaping company high in controversial issues) than lead in conservative party and many other provincial to federal would feel the leading conservative party is going in the right direction.
I know I never voted conservative for Racheal Harder for a political division in its party chipping more away towards neoliberalism. It's sadly provincially and federally unrecognizable to the wildrose alliance party.
The UCP and CPC is, so unhinged that is.
How far will conservatives go into neoliberalism? Enough for doctors to leave, no pipelines will be built, currency that is having no purpose.
Like in 2014 gas was $1.40 but minimum wage was below $15 til 2016?
How long does it take for divisional and fractured conservatives to take in the resources that are already available for them but unable to purpose the hurleds to implement with out political diffusion of responsibility but are to much enticed with freedom of speech neoliberalism to get anything done, be it clearly UCP and CPC are way to fractured and division besides space jam politics into a cornucopian overshoot that doesn't diversify.
Provincially?
https://lethbridgenewsnow.com/2022/06...
THE CONSERVATIVE HEART BY ARTHUR BROOKS
how conservatives should start helping the poor. Bits not like conservatives don’t care about the poor cause they do care. It’s that they haven’t taken out of aid available to them to help them. That a conservatives usually do want to help them but they don’t understand the hurdles that run to get them out of poverty.
#UCP #NDP
Where is democracy that is?
No doctors, no pipelines, and a currency that's has no plans cause if inflation that's is.
Economic's see more growth in markets when given to people than to business that see no economic growth for markets.
Just more cabal propaganda to take from a worker and give to investors and businesses.
https://jacobin.com/2022/05/pierre-po...
Found the convoy 2022 could relate thinking of tranny being vaccinated, a precipice is.
How someone could of killed thousands if not millions over covid planning.
The gift to dare to act to avoid a cataclysm cornucopionism of many opinions or origins is.
Not donor of the neoliberal conservatism Trace failure of Democrats, Trump has a prowess of genius to tapping the further neoliberalism.
The topping of resources of working classes that have been broken by investors and businesses so subjugated to the big bipartisan neoliberalism assault the last 40 years.
If they feel they have been robbed they have good reason. The transfer of wealth from lower 90% to the very rich to the neoliberal bipartisan transfer of wealth of 47 trillion dollars to the very small fractures of rich.
Not the principle of economics but deliberate political decision.
Government is a problem but the public center Reagan solely driven by greed results are not hard to.
On top of the nearest $50 trillion dollar train robbery.
Their global working population is set to competition low wage countries with no working rights while they're very rich are granted protection from market forces by exorbitant patent rights.
To take one example.
The effects of this bipartisan Democrats have not been helpful but neoliberalism of trumptimism is no good he takes extortionistate to the elites, while serving the super rich and corporate sector is the legislate program his executive orders demonstrates.
At the party chipping at environmental he has been a part of the largest tax scam in history in 2017.
A tax decrease so a tax cut and jobs act but tax cut to this of incomes of $70, 000 which if your under 65% of the population will still pay more taxes only the rich gets tax cuts.
https://www.thestar.com/politics/fede...
Populism with neoliberalism where is democracy?
It's been awhile since I've shared but I'm reading a book about trumpism being neoliberal and where is democracy?
Where does that put Poilievre.
Saying they want to get rid of the federal reserve currency and go to a crypto currency? If people don't see credit and wealth are the biggest reason why government has power and they don't see the face behind cryptocurrency which there is.
If people knew who were behind cryptocurrency they would say the next leader of the conservative party is corrupt.
If you want a book recommendations check out the American kingpins.
And mob rule having all the credit and wealth for how government has power is.
A cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency has a middle man. And people are being sued for a pyramid scheme. Elon Musk for one. On a Neoliberalism being trumpism, where is democracy.
O'Toole was a way better leader for conservatives.
Poilievre is baiting leadership and making investors and business people to take out of investments to hurt the worker. That's his cabal propaganda agenda. More loss to the worker more to the investor and business people, To diffusion of responsibility in discussion over neuro-markets/economic and neuro-advertising and neurology & propaganda
That is my rant in the book 📚😅 fussing over rationality.
As hamlet says...
What is a man, if his chief good and marketable of his time but be of sleep and feed. A beast no more sure, he who made us for large discourse, looking before and after. Gave us not that capability and guide like reason to fuss in us, unused.
-hamlet
Max Burnie has a better platform than Poilievre conservatives. Better to go back to a gold or silver currency and the sooner is better. The foundating fathers plans for coinage has a better chance of workers buying houses and cars and fuel than investors and businesses taking money from workers in pyramid schemes if cryptocurrency.
https://jacobin.com/2022/05/pierre-po...
Found the convoy 2022 could relate thinking of tranny being vaccinated, a precipice is.
How someone could of killed thousands if not millions over covid planning.
The gift to dare to act to avoid a cataclysm cornucopionism of many opinions or origins is.
Not donor of the neoliberal conservatism Trace failure of Democrats, Trump has a prowess of genius to tapping the further neoliberalism.
The topping of resources of working classes that have been broken by investors and businesses so subjugated to the big bipartisan neoliberalism assault the last 40 years.
If they feel they have been robbed they have good reason. The transfer of wealth from lower 90% to the very rich to the neoliberal bipartisan transfer of wealth of 47 trillion dollars to the very small fractures of rich.
Not the principle of economics but deliberate political decision.
Government is a problem but the public center Reagan solely driven by greed results are not hard to.
On top of the nearest $50 trillion dollar train robbery.
Their global working population is set to competition low wage countries with no working rights while they're very rich are granted protection from market forces by exorbitant patent rights.
To take one example.
The effects of this bipartisan Democrats have not been helpful but neoliberalism of trumptimism is no good he takes extortionistate to the elites, while serving the super rich and corporate sector is the legislate program his executive orders demonstrates.
At the party chipping at environmental he has been a part of the largest tax scam in history in 2017.
A tax decrease so a tax cut and jobs act but tax cut to this of incomes of $70, 000 which if your under 65% of the population will still pay more taxes only the rich gets tax cuts.
Populism with neoliberalism where is democracy?
I think the UCP, CPC has gone to neoliberal in my opinion
It's always said republicans are not conservative!
Conservative are not Republican!
There is to much neoliberalism in politicalics but the UCP are fractured because of it. I don't even think Rona's Ambrose (which would even rather go be a CEO for a vaping company high in controversial issues) than lead in conservative party and many other provincial to federal would feel the leading conservative party is going in the right direction.
I know I never voted conservative for Racheal Harder for a political division in its party chipping more away towards neoliberalism. It's sadly provincially and federally unrecognizable to the wildrose alliance party.
The UCP and CPC is, so unhinged that is.
How far will conservatives go into neoliberalism? Enough for doctors to leave, no pipelines will be built, currency that is having no purpose.
Like in 2014 gas was $1.40 but minimum wage was below $15 til 2016?
How long does it take for divisional and fractured conservatives to take in the resources that are already available for them but unable to purpose the hurleds to implement with out political diffusion of responsibility but are to much enticed with freedom of speech neoliberalism to get anything done, be it clearly UCP and CPC are way to fractured and division besides space jam politics into a cornucopian overshoot that doesn't diversify.
Provincially?
https://lethbridgenewsnow.com/2022/06...
THE CONSERVATIVE HEART BY ARTHUR BROOKS
how conservatives should start helping the poor. Bits not like conservatives don’t care about the poor cause they do care. It’s that they haven’t taken out of aid available to them to help them. That a conservatives usually do want to help them but they don’t understand the hurdles that run to get them out of poverty.
#UCP #NDP
Where is democracy that is?
No doctors, no pipelines, and a currency that's has no plans cause if inflation that's is.
Economic's see more growth in markets when given to people than to business that see no economic growth for markets.
Just more cabal propaganda to take from a worker and give to investors and businesses.
https://jacobin.com/2022/05/pierre-po...
Found the convoy 2022 could relate thinking of tranny being vaccinated, a precipice is.
How someone could of killed thousands if not millions over covid planning.
The gift to dare to act to avoid a cataclysm cornucopionism of many opinions or origins is.
Not donor of the neoliberal conservatism Trace failure of Democrats, Trump has a prowess of genius to tapping the further neoliberalism.
The topping of resources of working classes that have been broken by investors and businesses so subjugated to the big bipartisan neoliberalism assault the last 40 years.
If they feel they have been robbed they have good reason. The transfer of wealth from lower 90% to the very rich to the neoliberal bipartisan transfer of wealth of 47 trillion dollars to the very small fractures of rich.
Not the principle of economics but deliberate political decision.
Government is a problem but the public center Reagan solely driven by greed results are not hard to.
On top of the nearest $50 trillion dollar train robbery.
Their global working population is set to competition low wage countries with no working rights while they're very rich are granted protection from market forces by exorbitant patent rights.
To take one example.
The effects of this bipartisan Democrats have not been helpful but neoliberalism of trumptimism is no good he takes extortionistate to the elites, while serving the super rich and corporate sector is the legislate program his executive orders demonstrates.
At the party chipping at environmental he has been a part of the largest tax scam in history in 2017.
A tax decrease so a tax cut and jobs act but tax cut to this of incomes of $70, 000 which if your under 65% of the population will still pay more taxes only the rich gets tax cuts.
https://www.thestar.com/politics/fede...
Populism with neoliberalism where is democracy?
September 11, 2021
Compelling insights by Chomsky on the last couple of years, with particular focus on the Trump administration and it's disasterous consequences to the United States and the world.
His thoroughly detailed anysis on urgent affairs, such as: the threat of nuclear annihilation and irreversible climate catastrophe (by far the two biggest existential threats to organised human existence), as well as disasterous foreign and domestic policies, state-sanctioned terrorism and international crimes, and imperial hegemony - are essential reading.
At the heart of the book is a call to acknowledge that power lies in our own hands, and that if we choose to can enact change - it is fundamental, an obligation, to hold (what are supposed to be our) elected representatives to account so they serve the demands and interests of the masses - not to corporate power, or private wealth. Our future, and that of future generations, is at stake. We are at a "precipice" in human history.
Can be repetitive, and at times depressing - but we cannot sugar-coat the oncoming train-wreck that can still be prevented. But we are running dangerously low on time. 4/5.
His thoroughly detailed anysis on urgent affairs, such as: the threat of nuclear annihilation and irreversible climate catastrophe (by far the two biggest existential threats to organised human existence), as well as disasterous foreign and domestic policies, state-sanctioned terrorism and international crimes, and imperial hegemony - are essential reading.
At the heart of the book is a call to acknowledge that power lies in our own hands, and that if we choose to can enact change - it is fundamental, an obligation, to hold (what are supposed to be our) elected representatives to account so they serve the demands and interests of the masses - not to corporate power, or private wealth. Our future, and that of future generations, is at stake. We are at a "precipice" in human history.
Can be repetitive, and at times depressing - but we cannot sugar-coat the oncoming train-wreck that can still be prevented. But we are running dangerously low on time. 4/5.
January 6, 2024
Holy hell. The message and takeaway points were obviously illuminating but BOY was that a painful read. The interview format - chapters broken into individual interviews with their own questions - paved the way for extremely repetitive responses. When I say repetitive, I mean full specific sentences essentially copy pasted from one interview to another. That said, I did enjoy getting Chomsky’s perspective on the banes of neoliberalism and how they’ve manifested in recent years in the political climate of the USA. In purchasing the book, I was not aware to what degree the book would be American-centric. If I had known, I may have sought something a bit more internationally inclusive. Not to say there was no mention of global impacts and entanglements, but I would certainly have cared to know about more than the countries that had direct run-ins with the States. Oh well! Don’t regret the read but not sure I can whole-heartedly recommend it. There has got to be a more concise text on the topic that is similarly informative.
February 17, 2022
Through a series of interviews, Noam Chomsky relates how the former president of the US aided by the Republican party, though not the sole creators of the problems in the US, made those problems worse; through cruel economic policies, and ongoing lies and propaganda. Chomsky also talks about how the Democratic party contributed to the problems by ignoring large swaths of people, as well as popular candidates like Bernie Sanders. And both parties failed repeatedly to curb unwanted policies and infighting that seemed to care nothing about the population at large.
Chomsky advocates for education and engagement as being a way forward while simultaneously admitting how difficult both those roads are.
I found the book fascinating especially in how well it detailed, through the interviews, the significant change in the politics of the US over the last forty years.
Chomsky advocates for education and engagement as being a way forward while simultaneously admitting how difficult both those roads are.
I found the book fascinating especially in how well it detailed, through the interviews, the significant change in the politics of the US over the last forty years.
July 10, 2021
Given this is a series of interviews from the past few years, some of Chomsky’s answers can get a little repetitive but it ends up helping to emphasise the reality of outcomes of decades of neoliberal policy and corporate influence.
Chomsky’s ability to cut through overemphasised media narratives is second to none. This collection of interviews serves as a really great summary of the past four or so years and a much more accurate assessment than pretty much all of the books covering the term of 45.
Chomsky’s ability to cut through overemphasised media narratives is second to none. This collection of interviews serves as a really great summary of the past four or so years and a much more accurate assessment than pretty much all of the books covering the term of 45.
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