[Peace-discuss] Chomsky remarks on the election

[Morton K.Brussel]

For those who thought that Chomsky was hiding after the election, here 
are comments from his blog. I think they are overly dismissive 
regarding the election, and hence I recommend that people look at the 
ZNet web site (blogs) for readers' responses. They are equally 
interesting/informative. mkb

Some election comments...
Posted by Noam Chomsky at 03:05 PM

We have a fairly clear idea of what [Bush’s] planners want, but what we 
can expect depends on circumstances, including those we create.  That’s 
what should concern us, not speculating about what we cannot know.

The outcome was a disappointment, but there have been disappointments 
before.  Take 1984, when essentially the same gang of thugs—a little 
less tilted to the extreme reactionary statist side—won by a 2-1 
margin, with about the same percentage of the electoral vote as today. 
And they were engaged in horrendous atrocities abroad and very harsh 
and destructive programs for most of the population at home.  The world 
didn’t come to an end.  In fact, activism proved quite effective.

I don’t think that the Kerry campaign even tried to include the 
opinions of most of the population, including those who voted for 
Kerry.  People will vote their class interests when they see some 
credible political force that might represent those interests.  That’s 
not Kerry or the DLC.  There are urban-rural differences, but even 
greater differences internal to each.  We can reach out to people, 
urban or rural, by taking them and their concerns seriously, trying to 
understand them, and working to find ways to realize legitimate 
concerns, without compromising our own principles.  The same way we 
work in, say, liberal academic communities, where there is also vast 
diversity.

As to fraud, etc. I don’t think it is a major issue, even if true.  The 
election had about the significance of tossing a coin to pick a king.  
If the coin was slightly biased, that’s unfair, but not the main issue. 
  The much more important point is that the opinions of the majority of 
the population were excluded from the political arena on major issues.  
People voted for the imagery concocted by the PR industry.  Exit polls 
reveal that clearly.  But to discover whether the imagery is accurate, 
we have to compare people’s attitudes and beliefs with the actual 
programs.  There’s plenty of interesting and credible evidence on this, 
and when we investigate it, we discover that people were hopelessly 
misled.  Voters for both candidates assumed, overwhelmingly, that the 
candidates held their views, which is demonstrably false.  In fact, 
voters recognized that they could not vote on 
agenda/policies/programs/ideas—about 10% gave that as their reasons—but 
only on imagery.  And in a society based crucially on deceit (what is 
advertising?), it is quite natural that the political managers and the 
PR industry will run elections the same way.  To repeat, there is 
overwhelming evidence that the opinions of the majority of the 
population on major issues were simply off the agenda, either within 
the political parties or in mainstream discussion, with rare 
exceptions.  That democratic deficit seems to me far more important 
than the possibility that the coin that was tossed was biased.


Bush won slightly more than 30% of the electorate, Kerry slightly under 
30%.  I doubt that fraud had much to do with it.  That’s about what I 
personally predicted, if that matters; am collecting some symbolic bets 
from friends, and even wrote about it a bit, on Znet.  It is 
meaningless.  It tells us virtually nothing about the country, just as 
it would tell us nothing if there had been a slight shift in votes and 
Kerry had won with a meaningless slight plurality.  The important 
issues are: the opinions of the majority of the population on major 
issues were off the agenda, people voted for one or another image 
conducted by the PR salesman, and the images have little to do with 
reality.

6) Election Responce pt. 6: 1968, 1972 & 2004

The Vietnam war movements were extremely important, but they didn’t 
displace presidents.  Nixon was elected in 68 and 72, the years when 
the movement finally reached substantial scale.  They did affect the 
war, very significantly, but in other ways.  Finger pointing is a waste 
of time.  Understanding what is happening, organizing and acting, are 
anything but a waste of time.  The tasks now are exactly as they were 
before, and as they would be if a slight shift in votes had shown that 
the other party’s imagery was more effective in the marketing 
campaign—which was run at about the level of selling toothpaste, as one 
would expect in a society where “marketing” is understood to be a 
massive exercise in deceit, for quite substantial and understandable 
reasons.

We shouldn’t have paid much attention to the elections in the first 
place.  They can’t be ignored.  They take place.  But there are much 
more important things to do, before and now.

7) Electoral Responce pt. 7: How do they do it? Why doesn’t the Left?

The religious right has been organizing for years from the local level 
and on up—school boards, state representatives, pressure groups, etc.  
And has done so on a scale that gives some substance to Robertson’s 
threats to form a third party unless the Republican leadership makes 
statements of which he approves (and which they will then probably 
ignore).  The progressive left is very substantial in scale, and could 
be far larger, including the large majority of the population, judging 
by highly credible public opinion studies that the press scarcely 
mentions, presumably because they understand that it is much too 
dangerous to allow people to understand that they are not alone in 
their views.  And it has done important work.  But it has not 
undertaken to create a viable political alternative.  Maybe that’s a 
high priority, maybe not.  But those who think it is (I agree) have to 
work at it every day, not just every four years, at all levels, from 
local on up, fielding candidates for everything from school boards to 
Congress and some day beyond, but also in education, organizing, 
working and acting on issues, etc.  It is no use to show up every four 
years and say “vote for me” in a highly personalized extravaganza, 
which is what elections have become, given the severe democratic 
deficit in the country.

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