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

[John W.]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 11:11 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:



> 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.
>

How, pray, do I have it backwards?  I'm quite aware of propaganda.  I'm
referring to no-thinking people who continually allow themselves to be led
around by the nose by propaganda and propagandists.  They are sheep.



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


I don't accept your analogy on its face, though I understand what you're
trying to get it.  You're doing one of those "limits of allowable debate"
things that you always do.   There are many ways in which the Tea Baggers
are EXACTLY like the Silent Majority.  The only difference is that a
different political party is in power, so they're being manipulated for
different purposes.

But if there is anyone out there who blindly supports Obama in everything he
does without questioning anything (I don't know any such people, but they
must exist) - then yes, they are sheep too.




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



>   John W. wrote:
>>
>> 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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