Monday, October 11, 2004
Temporarily Rescued from Oblivion
When I think about the numerous memorial film montages I will surely see this week, there is only one song that I can imagine them being set to, and it makes me think that Christopher Reeve has done Our Lady Peace a big favor.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
I Reject Humor and Originality in Favor of Reprinting the Serious Political Thought of Others
I like to read Noam Chomsky, but it's interesting to me how my reaction to him varies, based entirely on my mood. If I am happy and I read an interview with him, I become depressed and completely disgusted with the people around me.
"Why doesn't anyone care about the Nicaraguans?" I scream, scaring my father, or the cat, or the Barnes and Noble employees trying to eat their soup.
But when I am depressed and I read Noam Chomsky, then for some reason he becomes comforting. I don't know exactly why. It's not the favorable comparison of my problems to those of others; if that sort of comparison was comforting to me then I would be a dick. And it isn't that I get off on a feeling that I'm smarter than everyone else, in spite of what some people might think (ahem, Erin Ryan).
But (actually somewhat along that line of thought) it is possible that Noam Chomsky comforts me because, along with news of the slaughter and starvation of brown people around the world, he gives the assurance that the people around me are still good. Maybe they do give tacit approval to inhuman suffering, but that's the media's fault. To put it another way, it's not that my friend and neighbors like U.S. foreign policy, it's that they're too brainwashed to understand it.
So, keeping that in mind, here's an excerpt from a Noam Chomsky interview that recently cheered me up. If you don't like it that's okay. It doesn't mean you're a bad person; it means that, through no fault of your own, you have been rendered incapable of understanding the world around you.
How far do you believe will the U.S. sacrifice its basic civil liberties for a greater sense of security?
It is doubtful that the current attack on civil liberties has much to do with security. In general, one can expect the state to use any pretext to extend its power and impose obedience on the population. Rights are won, not granted, and power will seek any opportunity to reduce them.
The current incumbents in Washington are at an extreme of reactionary jingoism and contempt for democracy. The question we should ask, I think, is how far citizens will allow them to pursue their agendas. So far, they have been careful to target vulnerable populations, like immigrants, though the laws they have passed have much broader implications...the measures proposed and sometimes implemented generally have only limited relation to "protecting safety." Many of them probably harm safety.
Take the bombing of Afghanistan, for example. Whatever one thinks about it, did it increase security? U.S. Intelligence doesn't think so. They recently reported that by scattering al-Qaeda and spawning new terrorist networks, the bombing may have increased the threat of terror.
Does that matter? Not really, as far as state planners are concerned. When Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia came to the U.S. recently to urge the administration to pay more attention to the effect of his policies in the Arab world, he was told by high officials that "if he thought we were strong in Desert Storm, we're 10 times as strong today." This was to give him some idea of what Afghanistan demonstrated about our capabilities. In brief: Follow orders, or you'll be pulverized. That's what the bombing of Afghanistan was about.
"Why doesn't anyone care about the Nicaraguans?" I scream, scaring my father, or the cat, or the Barnes and Noble employees trying to eat their soup.
But when I am depressed and I read Noam Chomsky, then for some reason he becomes comforting. I don't know exactly why. It's not the favorable comparison of my problems to those of others; if that sort of comparison was comforting to me then I would be a dick. And it isn't that I get off on a feeling that I'm smarter than everyone else, in spite of what some people might think (ahem, Erin Ryan).
But (actually somewhat along that line of thought) it is possible that Noam Chomsky comforts me because, along with news of the slaughter and starvation of brown people around the world, he gives the assurance that the people around me are still good. Maybe they do give tacit approval to inhuman suffering, but that's the media's fault. To put it another way, it's not that my friend and neighbors like U.S. foreign policy, it's that they're too brainwashed to understand it.
So, keeping that in mind, here's an excerpt from a Noam Chomsky interview that recently cheered me up. If you don't like it that's okay. It doesn't mean you're a bad person; it means that, through no fault of your own, you have been rendered incapable of understanding the world around you.
How far do you believe will the U.S. sacrifice its basic civil liberties for a greater sense of security?
It is doubtful that the current attack on civil liberties has much to do with security. In general, one can expect the state to use any pretext to extend its power and impose obedience on the population. Rights are won, not granted, and power will seek any opportunity to reduce them.
The current incumbents in Washington are at an extreme of reactionary jingoism and contempt for democracy. The question we should ask, I think, is how far citizens will allow them to pursue their agendas. So far, they have been careful to target vulnerable populations, like immigrants, though the laws they have passed have much broader implications...the measures proposed and sometimes implemented generally have only limited relation to "protecting safety." Many of them probably harm safety.
Take the bombing of Afghanistan, for example. Whatever one thinks about it, did it increase security? U.S. Intelligence doesn't think so. They recently reported that by scattering al-Qaeda and spawning new terrorist networks, the bombing may have increased the threat of terror.
Does that matter? Not really, as far as state planners are concerned. When Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia came to the U.S. recently to urge the administration to pay more attention to the effect of his policies in the Arab world, he was told by high officials that "if he thought we were strong in Desert Storm, we're 10 times as strong today." This was to give him some idea of what Afghanistan demonstrated about our capabilities. In brief: Follow orders, or you'll be pulverized. That's what the bombing of Afghanistan was about.
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