[Peace-discuss] Chomsky on Pushback - best account I've seen

[J.B. Nicholson]

C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1kqgTKf0kw

I think this interview and in 
https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-covid-19-has-exposed-the-us-under-trump-as-a-failed-state/ 
give Chomsky the time to lay out his argument behind voting for Biden (even if only 
in non-safe states). But I think there's a problem with that view as expressed by 
Chomsky.

In both interviews there is no mention of:

- the CARES Act which is a huge wealth transfer to big businesses and nothing of any 
substance for the public (despite AOC's hysterical[1], arm-waving speeches where she 
never calls out the Democratic Party or Nancy Pelosi while both Pelosi and AOC very 
likely vote for every bailout bill without admitting it). This seems remarkable to 
not get into at all and I'm curious how what could end up being the largest wealth 
transfer in human history could merit no mention. If you want serious analysis of the 
economics on this you have to watch the Jimmy Dore show -- whether he's speaking 
alone, speaking with Danny Haiphong, or speaking in his now regular segments with 
Dylan Ratigan, Dore is the go-to place to find the goods on these bailout bills.

- extending Medicare-paid care for COVID-19 treatment. This is hardly Medicare for 
All but it's more generous than Pres. Obama was during the 2008 financial crisis when 
millions were kicked out of their homes (a repeat of which we'll likely see again 
soon as the number of renters who can't afford their rent is expected to increase 
when rent comes due on the first of each month; almost 30% of Americans didn't pay 
their rent through April 5, 2020 according to 
https://www.newsweek.com/one-third-american-renters-impacted-covid-19-did-not-pay-rent-april-report-1497461 
).

Russiagate only came up after Maté mentioned it and Russiagate seems to be reduced to 
"a Democratic talking point" for Chomsky. That's all he had to offer on this 
incredibly important issue that has occupied literally 4 years of Democrat's time, as 
that party tried to explain away HRC's astounding 2nd loss to become POTUS, and 
Russiagate was also used by the Obama/Biden administration as rationale to back 
anti-Russian sanctions (which means promoting war) shortly before that administration 
ended.

[1] What AOC has to say in her objections is right as far as it goes, but it is clear 
that her other choices surrounding these bailout bills that she's not on the side of 
the 99% except in rhetoric. Her unwillingness to even try to get a recorded vote 
strongly indicates she votes with her party and for the business-minded bailouts. 
Hence her speech comes off as emotional theatrics, a lack of control over feelings 
despite being in a position to do better.



Chomsky said Biden has an "ugly history" but maintains that either Biden or the 
Democratic Party "is moving significantly to the left not because it's his choice but 
because of the constant activism and pressure partly from the Sanders campaign, 
partly from other activist campaigns." yet the evidence for this is thin on the 
ground at best.

Nuclear weapons developments are certainly heading in the wrong direction across 
administrations. A previous C.J. Polychroniou Truthout interview with Chomsky 
(https://truthout.org/articles/a-mixed-story-ranging-from-criminal-to-moderate-improvement-noam-chomsky-on-obama-s-legacy/) 
had Chomsky saying "[Obama's] trillion-dollar program for modernizing the nuclear 
weapons system is the opposite of what should be done" with no expansion on that 
claim beyond that. This creates a rather mild impression about spending $1 trillion 
to do whatever constitutes "modernizing the nuclear weapons system". Chomsky's most 
recent Polychroniou Truthout interview showed Chomsky saying far more including 
calling Trump "the supreme con man, who makes P.T. Barnum look like an amateur" and 
later adding:

 > But Trump is in a class by himself. Not just as a con man, but much more
 > significantly as a dedicated enemy of the human race. That much is demonstrated by
 > his policies on accelerating environmental catastrophe and dismantling the arms
 > control regime that has provided some protection from terminal nuclear war, quite
 > aside from a stream of peccadilloes of the kind already mentioned.

I think that this was meant to give the impression that Pres. Trump is a unique 
problem, not merely a symptom of a larger problem where Trump is but the latest to 
escalate horrors in line with choices made by previous administrations, which taken 
as a whole, amount to the two corporate parties building on each other like a ratchet 
of immiseration and death.

This is where I differ with Chomsky in general: I don't see Trump as being uniquely 
bad but merely the result of a one-party system that wears two hats in order to 
deceive us into thinking they are opponents. On all of the biggest issues of the day 
neither Democrat nor Republican administrations are better than the other because 
they essentially agree. Their differences are dwarfed by their similarities. I don't 
think the difference between Trump and Biden is "colossal" as Chomsky said in his 
interview with C.J. Polychroniou in 
https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-covid-19-has-exposed-the-us-under-trump-as-a-failed-state/ 
.

In 
https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-covid-19-has-exposed-the-us-under-trump-as-a-failed-state/ 
Chomsky claimed:

 > There have also been significant shifts in other areas (health care, minimum wage,
 > harsh repression in vulnerable communities, women’s rights, on and on). We can, in
 > fact, see this in Biden’s program, which is well to the left of previous
 > Democratic front-runners.

Let's take a look at these points, since these are some of the few specific points 
Chomsky raises to back his argument:

- health care: Biden has already declared that he would veto any Medicare for All 
bill crossing his desk as President 
(https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/biden-says-he-wouldd-veto-medicare-for-all-as-coronavirus-focuses-attention-on-health.html). 
This one issue is so important that it alone, I believe, could determine the outcome 
of the 2020 US POTUS election -- if Trump extended Medicare to cover every American 
he'd have this election sewn up, particularly now in the midst of a pandemic 
(contrary to the feckless bullshit Sen. Sanders said and wrote as he "paused" his 
campaign, "This is not Medicare for All, we can’t pass that right now." in 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uQV83U5Dk and "Let me be clear: I am not proposing 
that we pass Medicare for All in this moment. That fight continues into the future." 
without saying when the future would be).

- minimum wage: Biden has said favorable things about a $15/hour minimum wage 
(https://www.marketwatch.com/story/biden-calls-for-15-minimum-wage-public-option-health-plan-in-first-campaign-speech-2019-04-29) 
but at the same time Biden also called for letting people buy into Medicare (known as 
a "public option"). And we saw what happened to the public option when the Democrats 
had a majority in both houses of Congress with Biden as Vice President. In the health 
care hearings, the public option was quickly thrown out as a choice and we all saw 
that it was used as a come-on to lure people into supporting what the Obama/Biden 
administration fought for: the ACA ("ObamaCare") even while a Medicare for All bill 
(HR 676) sat ready to bring to the floor of the House. There's also footage of Biden 
speaking favorably about Medicare for All (years ago at a Biden rally speaking to two 
women who were in the audience). Apparently that didn't happen. So there is good 
reason to doubt that Biden would do as he has said, hence good reason to not believe 
that Biden would raise the minimum wage to $15/hr. What we know so far is that the 
'fight for $15' wins where it wins despite endorsement from politicos not because of 
the politicos. And Biden has no history of standing with those who fought for a 
$15/hr minimum wage so far, yet Chomsky would have us believe that Biden would 
somehow support that now.

- women's rights: Biden's history with women and girls is so poor this hardly needs 
to be debunked. There are photos and videos where Biden is visibly groping or touch 
women and girls in ways that the women do not appear to like. There are multiple 
women alleging Biden sexually harmed them. Katie Halper's journalism bringing Tara 
Reade's allegation to light is slowly getting some press but was utterly ignored by 
establishment media for about a month. Now, as establishment media covers it, they 
let commentators (like Stacy Abrams) claimed that the New York Times debunked Reade's 
allegation, but the NYT has said "Our investigation made no conclusion either way". 
Reade said (at the time and now) that Biden pushed Reade against a wall and digitally 
penetrated her without her consent. Reade's story grows more credible as Biden first 
spent about a month insubstantially addressing it (or being silent about it), 
followed by some not too hard-hitting interviews from establishment media on it (the 
least-worst of which is Mika Brzezinski's MSNBC interview which you can see analysis 
of in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEbI8QaoYKo). Jimmy Dore's segments 
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4w8CsFN0yk and 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv0NxAwlS2k and 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AeCnf1EgZo and 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEbI8QaoYKo) point out what establishment media lies 
about: other women with sex harassment or abuse allegations against Biden, the utter 
failure and hypocrisy of the #MeToo group to defend Biden, and the lack of a 
believable narrative allowing anyone to reasonably believe that a Biden 
administration will enact policy to improves women's rights. Medicare for All bears 
mentioning here too: this policy also benefits most women right alongside most other 
Americans but (Biden told us) won't happen in a Pres. Biden administration. Hillary 
Clinton endorsed Biden (and that might well backfire for Biden) and so have other 
women (including actor Alyssa Milano and Congresswomen AOC and Tulsi Gabbard) who 
were associated with ostensibly pushing for women's rights (or so was claimed about 
them). But none of these women are being taken seriously as fighters for women's 
rights after having endorsed Biden. All are examples of turncoats who abandoned 
serious women's rights issues. All are seen as what AOC once described as 
"re-traumatiz[ing women] over and over"[1].

[1] See https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/2020-April/052190.html for 
a transcript of the video where this quote comes from.

- "On and on": Is nothing.

What Chomsky said isn't standing up well for his defense of Biden.

There's no reason to believe Biden is more likely to do what you want. And I'm not 
convinced that the Democrats want to win the 2020 election; I think the Democrats 
would be fine with 4 more years of Trump so there's nothing for them to lose by 
running someone as abhorrent as Biden. Biden is basically an insurance policy for the 
neocons/neolibs -- it's Trump's election to lose and if he loses, the reliable 
neocon/neolib Biden steps in. I think it's possible that Chomsky and others are more 
for Biden winning than the Democratic Party is. Let's not forget that the years-long 
impeachment charade the Democrats were fully behind meant that we'd get Pres. Pence 
if the Democrats had their way; such neocon/neolib insurance plans are hardly new.




It's far better to make politicians come and get your vote, not hand anyone your vote 
and trust that the neolibs/neocons are right in their speculation that Biden is 
somehow (absent any evidence) more malleable *after* making him POTUS. After all, 
once you've given your vote for nothing what reason would a politician have to 
support your issues? You've just proven that the one thing they want is available for 
nothing.

Chomsky's recent interviews, endorsement of HRC in 2012 for non-safe-state voters, 
and that letter he recently co-signed all seem to me to be barely distinguishable 
from "any Blue will do" and not a proper political analysis. I think it would be far 
better to more explicitly and clearly tell people something like what News from 
Neptune and what Jimmy Dore both say: Trump is not the problem, he's a symptom of a 
much larger problem. Democrats are not (contrary to their establishment coverage) an 
opposition party. Dore also adds that the 'next Trump' to come along will be worse. 
None of this is an endorsement for either party or its preferred current 
representative. It's an endorsement for seeking solutions by pressuring whomever is 
in office in order to implement majoritarian ideas (including direct cash payments to 
individuals/UBI, Medicare for All, and homes for the homeless). Therefore people need 
to work on making that pressure consistent year-round and when it comes to the 
relatively minor question of presidential elections, it might not matter if or for 
whom you vote because the policy differences between the candidates are so small.

Jimmy Dore takes on Chomsky's advice in multiple segments. One of them is 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv21BLO-JwI titled "Chomsky Pushes 40 Year Old Failed 
Voting Strategy".

-J