Wednesday, February 21, 2007

IN PRAISE OF AN OLD FASHIONED LEFTIE

Noam Chomsky was born in 1928 and born into the awful depressions of yet another mis-economy. Most suffered again and again as the majestic few profited again and again. ( Sorry Bob the times have not changed at all ! ) Chomsky is a also a Janus faced being. He is a fairly formal professor not given to dancing with the romance of the soul and preferring reasonable historical knowledge through disciplined traditions. Yet Chomsky is also a soul that demands the Romance of human being in search of a better future. Chomsky is the voice that politicians and business leaders work so hard to suppress and distort. His recent book " Power and Terror " was given to me recently by a kindred spirit after a spell in Canada. Some snippits :-

" Another interesting thing about the Vietnam war is we have no idea what the costs were to the Vietnamese. I mean, for the United States, we know down to the last person. And the big postwar issue is finding the bones of American pilots. But nobody has any idea how manyVietnamese died or are still dying, for that matter. The guesses literally vary within millions. Because, who cares, you don't consider it when you slaughter other people. " ( page 27 )

" Everyone's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a real easy way : STOP PARTICIPATING IN IT. " ( page 141 ).

Maybe a few bells ring here for many. For sure such bells ring not for those in power today and this includes the Arms Industry and the Culture Industry etc, etc.

Chomsky is labelled as a bad leftie by so many that many believe that. But really this Noam Chomsky is an old fashioned activist liberal as a floating intellectual.
But he was born in 1928 !!!
Who will continue this tradition after being born in the 1970s or after?

15 comments:

Jose said...

"I mean, for the United States, we know down to the last person."

I personally think that the "actual" costs for the US of that war have not been published.

"Who will continue this tradition after being born in the 1970s or after?"

Is that the 1-million-pound question?

I won't see it but I venture to say that Chomsky will become a myth eventually.

zola a social thing said...

I agree.
The costs for everyday USA folk were never considered yet alone published. I am not one that is against all Americans.

But Chomsky a myth? That i do not quite understand. A "Social bandit" yes but a myth? No.

zola a social thing said...

BTW Jose : You may be right in that many will make Chomsky a myth.
Your words demand thought.
Like that i do.

Jose said...

It's easier to fabricate myths than pushing for betterment of life.

Orwell has become kind of a myth, too. Everybody reads him but I cannot see real reactions.

zola a social thing said...

You are yourself the false-ification of that claim.
I too as I read your words seriously and happily.
Orwell is no myth unless one loses that critical faculty and worships the god of capitalism.
Popper-Corns all around today... bit of an old leftie was Popper you know.

Anonymous said...

I'm trying to get as much Chomsky in as I can now, before they start burning his books. His and Carl Sagan's.

Jose said...

The reactions I'm talking of, Zola, is positive reactions to their thoughts.

Like Marx, what has been left of him but his books?

There was something sometime known as Marxism.

anticant said...

Anticant is an old fashioned activist liberal as a floating intellectual.
And he was born in 1927!!!!

zola a social thing said...

I see what you mean Jose. Indeed. But what is there today even if we all had quite enough of those damned "isms" in the end.
Are we simply amusing ourselves to death? Or...?

1927? Anticant born. A very good year for us. But a bad year for Trotsky as he was exiled. Oh what might have happened differently if only .... ?

anticant said...

Trotsky would probably have ended up much the same as Lenin and Stalin did. I don't trust any of these people who cry "Power to the People through the Party".

The people who shout "Power to the People" want power for the people shouting "power to the people".....

zola a social thing said...

Oh yes Anticant : such is history and such is awful lessons. I agree.
But not always.
There are and have been many little moments of honest to good stuff by a few lefties.
Let us not fall into that trap which we wish to avoid. let us not tar all with the same brush.
You know this yourself anyway.
Chomsky has not been a thorn in any participative democracy ( of course he has a professorial salary !!) but he has supported many that needed such support.

Anonymous said...

Maybe one of the sad things about idealists who have spent half their lives as impoverished exiles, and then find themselves catapulted into power by a turn of fortune's wheel, is that are in such a hurry to bestow the benefits of their superior wisdom that they lose sight of common humanity.

Marx's imperious behaviour towards those who refused to be adoring disciples indicates that he would have been a pretty ruthless dictator too, given the chance - curious parallels with Freud, another lapsed Son of the Synagogue.

anticant said...

I don't know why that previous comment is tagged 'anonymous' - all my own work, in fact.

zola a social thing said...

Indeed marx was ruthless especially towards the later years. yet he carried on with a very humanistic streak which surfaced when faced with hubris from experts.

Anticant has found his wicked humour again.
Best be careful methinks.

anticant said...

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - EMERSON

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes). - WHITMAN

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