[Peace-discuss] Chomsky: We shouldn't ridicule Tea Party Protesters

[C. G. Estabrook]

You've got it backwards, John, The Silent Majority of your youth was 
called into being by the Nixon administration propaganda ("Don't you 
hate those hippies?") to shore up its increasingly unpopular war policy.

The equivalent today is the "Obama-is-doing-the-best-he-can!" loyalists 
- whose equivalent mantra is "Con't you hate those teabaggers?"


John W. wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 12:04 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> I can't understand this concern with whether political leaders are sincere.
>>  Is that any way to judge their policies?  Was Hitler sincere? Probably. Was
>> Kennedy? Probably not. Would their crimes have lessened if they were, or
>> weren't?
>>
>> You seem much more certain about the Teapartiers' positions (and their
>> sincerity) than Chomsky is; he talks about their grievances, not their
>> program.
>>
>> Also, he doesn't quite say that "the antiwar movement today is far ahead of
>> what it was in the days of Vietnam..."  He's talking about the period
>> between Kennedy's invasion of South Vietnam and the mid-1960s, when it was
>> actually dangerous to have an anti-war demo on the Boston Common. But in a
>> few years - by 1969 - 70% of Americans according to the polls of the Chicago
>> Council of Foreign Relations saw the Vietnam war as immoral - a crime, not a
>> mistake.
>>
>> We obviously haven't reached that level yet. But it suggests how quickly
>> opinions might change.  --CGE
> 
> 
> 
> It doesn't matter.  The Tea Pottiers will still be stupid.  They can't be
> informed or educated in any sense that we might understand, because their
> "thinking" consists entirely of cliched sound bites, and they're incapable
> of any sort of critical analysis.
> 
> Any time you have to wait until 70% of your peers change their minds about
> something before you change your own mind, you're a sheep.  I haven't
> forgotten when blue-collar workers called male college students with long
> hair and beards "faggots", then ten years later all the factory workers were
> wearing long hair and beards.
> 
> I grew up surrounded by Tea Pottiers when they were called the "Silent
> Majority".  They're not quite so silent these days at their precious Tea
> Parties, but they're equally stupid and ovine.   Plus ca change, plus que
> c'est la meme chose.
> 
> Mordantly,
> 
> John
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>  On 4/17/10 11:30 PM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>
>>> So now, Chomsky is defending Palin and Limbaugh as being sincere (if
>>> misinformed?)!
>>>
>>> Someone should have asked him such questions as to why the tea partyers
>>> seem
>>> to have adored Reagan, why they hate any government run health reform,
>>> taxes
>>> of any kind, why in general they haven't taken up cudgels against our wars
>>> (Ron Paul and a few others excepted), but love the military. Not a word
>>> about
>>> military spending have I heard. How about the Patriot Act and terrorists?
>>> Is
>>> it simply because they haven't been addressed by the "left", as Chomsky
>>> says?
>>> Pretty disappointing. Will he next show up on their podium?
>>>
>>> His present notions are consistent with his oft repeated claims that the
>>> antiwar movement(?) today is far ahead of what it was in the days of
>>> Vietnam
>>> at a similar juncture (even if there really isn't a similar juncture). Is
>>> this blind optimism? This was pretty lousy Chomsky, which makes me fear
>>> the
>>> conference to take place in Paris for him, and to which I've bought
>>> tickets.
>>> Maybe he'll praise the Le Pen folks there, the equivalent of our tea
>>> partyers.  If only the left would explain stuff to them…  --mkb
>>>
>>>
>>> On Apr 17, 2010, at 9:55 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWs6g3L3fkU&feature=player_embedded
>>>
> 

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