I couldn’t get pass first 30ish pages in the main book (after reading trough the prefaces and skipping here and there reading some other stuff that piqued my interest also). It got me heavily depressed and left me feeling completely powerless and hopeless and it only reinforced the things I noticed and tought about USA myself.
And I just quit…prefering the sanity of ignorance to the madness of reality.
How can anyone hope to have a normal world with THAT…and I live in Eastern Europe…one would say far away from thr main American Influence. Not so far as it felt before. If we tought that the Nazis or the Communists were evil…ohoho boy…this book makes one feel like there is nothing more vile in the world than the United States of America government.
Did you read it? How did it make you feel?
“This book makes me feel like there is nothing more vile in the world than the United States” Well then Chomsky got exactly what he wanted. Chomsky is an extremely smart guy who is a compelling writer and speaker, he makes plenty of reasonable critiques of the American government that by themselves are totally valid, but what he utterly fails to do is offer a balanced and unbiased account of the whole picture. There are plenty of prominent thinkers that have called Chomsky out for this. Again, many specific claims of his are reasonable, but he will cherry-pick examples to fit and support his overall anti liberal and anti American mission, a mission he has had for over 50 years, without ever giving credence to contrary viewpoints. Chomsky somehow continuously makes claims that anything bad that happens in the world is somehow the fault of the US, whether that’s China, North Korea, Iran, the Soviet Union, the Nazis, Cuba, or even the First World War. Somehow Chomsky gives every other nation in the world the benefit of the doubt but absolutely never does to the US, every instance of US foreign policy is malicious people scheming to operate in the most exploitative ways as possible and never even entertains the notion that just sometimes the US is run by people with sincere good intentions. He would attribute the evilness of the feudal Middle Ages to the US if it wasn’t totally delusional to do so.
You obviously know more about him than I do but I always thought he was liberal. Am I completely missing the point of what it means or have I just misinterpreted him?
People can have sincere intentions within a framework that distorts those intentions in manifestly bad ways. If all you have is a hammer… You could try to have sincere intentions, but it’s just going to look like you’re smashing everything for no reason from the outside. “Hey man, I’m just hammering, that’s all I know”
Maybe you don’t need a hammer for everything, or even most things?
Are you an American? This might be a factor in your POV.
Also, I have been to the U.S. (both coasts) when I was working as a Maritime Electrical Officer the common folk that I met, most of the cops and other authority figures were chill and warm people. People on the streets were reaaaly talkative and open compared to the Eastern European archetype , some did display the stereotypical ignorance about the outside world (was a bit shocked when I met some kids that didn’t know abut “Count Dracula and Transilvania”) but they are open to discovery. I met a black woman just outside of the port gates of L.A. (or was it Long Beach) while I was waiting for my ride to the airport , she was working security…we got to share a few words, told her about Europe and my country Romania. I even gave her a few banknotes and coins from Romania, she was visibly excited…especially seeing plastic money :D.
Authorities while doing their job (for example immigration dept) are a bit strict and rigid, they do not take kindly to jokes…nearly got denied permit to go ashore because I made a stupid joke. But once the job is done…it’s like flipping a switch…
And this brings me to doing business…I have friends that work for American Companies here in Romania. They all describe them as being “cut-throat corporate fake zombies with fake smiles visibly hiding sharp claws and teeth”. And I get it …business is business…especially in the US. But we’re talking about work coleagues here…like…they depend on eachother to do the job …yet …
So because you have friends with negative opinions of some random American businesspeople Chomski’s view that America is the sole source of all the world’s evils is valid?
You seem to have skipped some track in your logic chain there. I mean, what does some random kids not being able to identify a certain pop culture figure that until recently wasn’t big in kids media have to do with anything? Kind of self centered to declare them ignorant for not knowing the same characters you know.
And what does any of that have to do with Chomski’s known extreme bias? Dude’s a genocide denier solely on the basis that the genocide was done by a nation opposed to America and thus it had to have been invented by evil Americans forcing refugees to lie.
So because you have friends with negative opinions of some random American businesspeople Chomski’s view that America is the sole source of all the world’s evils is valid?
You seem to have skipped some track in your logic chain there. I mean, what does some random kids not being able to identify a certain pop culture figure that until recently wasn’t big in kids media have to do with anything? Kind of self centered to declare them ignorant for not knowing the same characters you know.
And what does any of that have to do with Chomski’s known extreme bias? Dude’s a genocide denier solely on the basis that the genocide was done by a nation opposed to America and thus it had to have been invented by evil Americans forcing refugees to lie.