From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Dec 10 2002 - 09:28:35 MST
Ron writes
> I just finished reading several articles on
> that Chomsky page and I am still where I started --
> the man has no substance.
Well, to me (in my manner of discourse, that is), you overstate
things so baldly. "No substance"? Now I will grant the logical
possibility that you are right; it may be that upon enough
investigation that there will be so many areas of *nonsense*
---as you wrote before---that I'll be forced to concede it.
But although practically no one on this list seems to agree
with me, I AM SURE that it's only a difference in fundamental
values that separates people who occupy different positions
on the political spectrum. I wager that Chomsky makes perfect
sense to those who share his fundamental, basic, hidden, and
perhaps even unconscious assumptions. Why, they even say as
much.
Given time to investigate, I would try to find out what those
assumptions are. (I do not have such time.) But here is a
typical one that I think you would find:
Living in the same world with the U.S., as a Canadian prime
minister put it, is like being in bed with an elephant. You
just never see the end of references direct or indirect to
American culture or policy (the world's big question right
now is whether or when the U.S. is gonna hit Iraq --- it's
just like kids standing around at high school sort of hoping
there is going to be a fight).
So you end up rather early on liking or disliking America,
and that basic emotion then for years filters all you see
and hear, and your underlying feelings are hardened to the
point of solidification. (This does not apply to strictly
*everyone*, but then practically no characterizations do.)
So just *one* of Chomsky's assumptions is that America is
the bad guy, and that a great deal can be explained from
this "fact". To those who have this same perception, a
lot of what he says makes perfect sense. To others, it
makes complete nonsense.
I stress that this is only *one* of Chomsky's assumptions,
and perhaps the least defensible one of the lot.
> Well, there is one thing. The folks in General Semantics
> say the map is not the territory. After Chomsky we can
> add a charge is not proof of guilt or anything else.
Yeah, in the little excerpt I found, there was an implicit
charge that the U.S. is responsible for everything bad that
ever happens in the Western hemisphere. Chomsky spoke of
the U.S.'s "domain". That's probably another assumption,
but one that goes much deeper, and has all sorts of ramifications.
Who can really draw the line between influence and control in
an airtight logical way? To me---well, I hold a precisely
opposite view to the conspiracy theorists: the world is
a complex mess in which many stupid things occur, and no
agency is half as smart as to be able to control anything.
(Well, okay, almost anything.)
Lee
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