Sunday, November 01, 2020
Election 2020
New Yorker: Noam Chomsky Believes Trump Is “the Worst Criminal in Human History”
"...The other major threat to human survival in any recognizable form is environmental catastrophe, and, there, Trump is alone in the world. Most countries are doing at least something about it—not as much as they should be, but some of them rather significant, some less so. The United States has pulled out of the Paris Agreement; is refusing to do any of the actions that might help poorer countries deal with the problem; is racing toward maximizing the use of fossil fuels; and, at the same time, just opened the last major nature reserve in the United States for drilling. He has to make sure that we maximize the use of fossil fuels, race to the precipice as quickly as possible, and eliminate the regulations, which not only limit the dangerous effects but also protect Americans. Step by step, eliminate everything that might protect Americans or that will preserve the possibility of overcoming the very serious threat of environmental catastrophe. There is nothing like this in history. It’s not breaking with the American tradition. Can you think of anyone in human history who has dedicated his efforts to undermining the prospects for survival of organized human life on earth? In fact, some of the productions of the Trump Administration are just mind-boggling..."
"...It’s kind of striking when you see the great and powerful get together. Take a look at the last Davos conference, in January. There were three keynote speakers. The first, of course, was Trump. They don’t like him. They don’t like him at all because they like to put forward an image of humanism, civilized behavior, decency, “put your trust in us,” that sort of thing. But when he spoke, they gave him rousing applause. They couldn’t stand anything he was saying. There’s this braggart up there ranting about how wonderful he is. They were probably cringing in their seats, but they gave him rousing applause because there’s one line that he said that they understand, which is meaningful: I’m going to put plenty of money in your pockets, so therefore you better tolerate me. That’s the way he’s regarded by the powerful élites here. Yeah, we can’t stand him, he’s a disgusting creature, but he knows which side the bread is buttered: ours..."
"...Stalin’s intentions were to maintain power and control. He didn’t purposely want to kill people. He had to kill people as a means toward this end. Take, say, Henry Kissinger. When he sends a directive to the American Air Force saying, about a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia, “anything that flies on anything that moves,” does he have the intention of committing genocide? Do I care? No. I just care that that’s what he said..."
"...I think [American] democracy, first of all, was never much to write home about. Do you really want to talk about it? The Founding Fathers, let’s go back to them. They were committed to reducing democracy. The major scholarly work on the Constitutional Convention, the gold standard for today, is Michael Klarman’s book, and it’s called “The Framers’ Coup”—their coup against democracy. The general population wanted more democracy. The Framers wanted to restrict that; they didn’t like the idea of democracy. Their picture was more or less that of John Jay: the people who own the country ought to rule it. James Madison explained that one of the prime goals of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority, and the Constitution was designed to try to prevent what is called the tyranny of the majority, meaning democracy. You’ve got to protect the minority; the opulent have to be protected.
There are all sorts of ways in which this was done. There’s been a battle about that over the centuries. But since roughly 1980, since the neoliberal regression began, there has been a significant decline in the partially functioning democracy that existed before. That’s an immediate reflection of the policies that were chosen. You recall Reagan’s [first] Inaugural Address: government is the problem. What does that mean? Decisions are being made somewhere. If they’re not made in government, which is under at least partial influence of the population, they are being made in the private sector by unaccountable private institutions.
You take a look more closely, and 0.1 per cent of the population now hold twenty per cent of the wealth of the country. It’s had a major effect on the political system for perfectly obvious reasons. You have somebody elected to Congress. The first thing they have to do is get on the telephone, call the donors to make sure they’re going to be funded in the next electoral campaign. That’s the kind of democracy we had before Trump. He’s hit it with a wrecking ball and made it much worse..."
"...The other major threat to human survival in any recognizable form is environmental catastrophe, and, there, Trump is alone in the world. Most countries are doing at least something about it—not as much as they should be, but some of them rather significant, some less so. The United States has pulled out of the Paris Agreement; is refusing to do any of the actions that might help poorer countries deal with the problem; is racing toward maximizing the use of fossil fuels; and, at the same time, just opened the last major nature reserve in the United States for drilling. He has to make sure that we maximize the use of fossil fuels, race to the precipice as quickly as possible, and eliminate the regulations, which not only limit the dangerous effects but also protect Americans. Step by step, eliminate everything that might protect Americans or that will preserve the possibility of overcoming the very serious threat of environmental catastrophe. There is nothing like this in history. It’s not breaking with the American tradition. Can you think of anyone in human history who has dedicated his efforts to undermining the prospects for survival of organized human life on earth? In fact, some of the productions of the Trump Administration are just mind-boggling..."
"...It’s kind of striking when you see the great and powerful get together. Take a look at the last Davos conference, in January. There were three keynote speakers. The first, of course, was Trump. They don’t like him. They don’t like him at all because they like to put forward an image of humanism, civilized behavior, decency, “put your trust in us,” that sort of thing. But when he spoke, they gave him rousing applause. They couldn’t stand anything he was saying. There’s this braggart up there ranting about how wonderful he is. They were probably cringing in their seats, but they gave him rousing applause because there’s one line that he said that they understand, which is meaningful: I’m going to put plenty of money in your pockets, so therefore you better tolerate me. That’s the way he’s regarded by the powerful élites here. Yeah, we can’t stand him, he’s a disgusting creature, but he knows which side the bread is buttered: ours..."
"...Stalin’s intentions were to maintain power and control. He didn’t purposely want to kill people. He had to kill people as a means toward this end. Take, say, Henry Kissinger. When he sends a directive to the American Air Force saying, about a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia, “anything that flies on anything that moves,” does he have the intention of committing genocide? Do I care? No. I just care that that’s what he said..."
"...I think [American] democracy, first of all, was never much to write home about. Do you really want to talk about it? The Founding Fathers, let’s go back to them. They were committed to reducing democracy. The major scholarly work on the Constitutional Convention, the gold standard for today, is Michael Klarman’s book, and it’s called “The Framers’ Coup”—their coup against democracy. The general population wanted more democracy. The Framers wanted to restrict that; they didn’t like the idea of democracy. Their picture was more or less that of John Jay: the people who own the country ought to rule it. James Madison explained that one of the prime goals of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority, and the Constitution was designed to try to prevent what is called the tyranny of the majority, meaning democracy. You’ve got to protect the minority; the opulent have to be protected.
There are all sorts of ways in which this was done. There’s been a battle about that over the centuries. But since roughly 1980, since the neoliberal regression began, there has been a significant decline in the partially functioning democracy that existed before. That’s an immediate reflection of the policies that were chosen. You recall Reagan’s [first] Inaugural Address: government is the problem. What does that mean? Decisions are being made somewhere. If they’re not made in government, which is under at least partial influence of the population, they are being made in the private sector by unaccountable private institutions.
You take a look more closely, and 0.1 per cent of the population now hold twenty per cent of the wealth of the country. It’s had a major effect on the political system for perfectly obvious reasons. You have somebody elected to Congress. The first thing they have to do is get on the telephone, call the donors to make sure they’re going to be funded in the next electoral campaign. That’s the kind of democracy we had before Trump. He’s hit it with a wrecking ball and made it much worse..."
