{"id":6842,"date":"2022-10-27T02:27:13","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T02:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=6842"},"modified":"2022-12-18T11:43:15","modified_gmt":"2022-12-18T11:43:15","slug":"noam-chomsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=6842","title":{"rendered":"MiSC: Noam Chomsky\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Teresa and I are staying in Cardiff for a few days, visiting with relatives. Tonight, \u2018Garden\u2019 Noam Chomsky came up, at one point, in a family conversation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I interviewed him, many, many moons back. \u2018Twas a disaster, in all honesty! Here\u2019s a far better interview<\/a>, from The New Yorker online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s fascinating for so many reasons: in how it illustrates Chomsky\u2019s intelligent and articulate nature\/character; how and why (and this was something I\u2019d wanted to get at in my interview with him), even at his advanced age, he bothers to sign petitions, take part in protests, etc; his concise and eloquent summation of where things are at. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s interesting for me, as over the years I\u2019ve often allowed my lazy nihilistic side to dominate. It\u2019s very invigorating – yea! even life affirming – to hear someone of Chomsky\u2019s international standing put things I hold to be true so pithily<\/em>. Here\u2019s a favourite example from the NY piece:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018\u2026 [S]ince roughly 1980, since the neoliberal regression<\/em> began, there has been a significant decline in the partially functioning democracy that existed before.\u2019 Those are my italics<\/em>. As so often, Chomsky nails it perfectly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A younger Noam. Fab pic\u2019!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is a reminder to me that I really ought to read his more of his books on all this stuff. Not too long after seeing a doc\u2019 on him called Manufacturing Consent<\/em> (also the name of one of his books), when I was around about 18 years old, I bought a \u2018collected works\u2019 paperback by him, from what was the Heffer\u2019s Bookshop, in Cambridge. But, truth be told, I\u2019ve hardly read it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Chomsky says in the New Yorker piece on \u2018cancel culture\u2019 is equally to the point! But, intriguingly, what lead me here, and to making this post at all, was not the mere mention of someone I find inspiring and interesting (Chomsky!). But the attention-grabbing headlines quoting him effectively saying that Trump is\/was worse than the usual bogeymen (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of context that sounds totally insane. But, once unpacked, it actually begins to make sense. Trump\u2019s unbounded egotism, in service, primarily, to himself, but secondarily – and crucially – to his \u2018class\u2019, or his enablers (the fiscal elite), is, very literally, what Chomsky describes as \u2018an existential threat\u2019 to the very future not of any particular portion of humankind, but all of humanity<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, whilst Noam\u2019s view – internationalist though it always is, is also almost always notably Ameri-centric – the current political chaos in the UK is evolving along Trump-esque lines, with the Tories, thus far at any rate, drifting further and further right, ever deeper into that awful neoliberal regression<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Avec le pipe, a la Bertie Russell! <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If, like me, you find Noam Chomsky a fascinating and inspiring person, you might enjoy this link<\/a>, to an illustrated \u2018life in photos\u2019, by the New Scientist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teresa and I are staying in Cardiff for a few days, visiting with relatives. Tonight, \u2018Garden\u2019 Noam Chomsky came up, at one point, in a family conversation. I interviewed him, many, many moons back. \u2018Twas a disaster, in all honesty! Here\u2019s a far better interview, from The New Yorker online. It\u2019s fascinating for so many … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “MiSC: Noam Chomsky\u2026”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-1Mm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6842"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6842"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7557,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6842\/revisions\/7557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}