Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Hot off the net for you.

Lunch, not bagging on you here, but... to me that Chomsky essay sucks donkey testicles. I would file it under Chomsky's topic heading "I'm a pro-Donkey gatekeeper."

That particular topic heading isn't nearly as good as Chomsky's "I'm analyzing America in a non-partisan manner" topic heading.

ox

i don't follow u
if chomsky
then who isn't a two party gate keeper ??

where is the line of demarcation ??

What sucks in that essay, Ox?

op and Michael --

I want to give the info y'all want, but I have to go work for several hours now. I'll come back to explain. Probably with a link to an entry at my little banana republic/blorgistan.

Seems like a long way to go to say: Why would greedy bastards wanna share?

1) High turnouts in the wealthy suburbs, and low ones in largely Democratic urban areas, helped elect Brown. “Fifty-five percent of Republican voters said they were `very interested’ in the election,” The Wall St. Journal/NBC poll reported, “compared with 38 percent of Democrats.”

Irrelevant to the impact and meaning of Citizens United. Just a way to poke the rattlesnake of the GOP.

2) So the results were indeed an uprising against President Obama’s policies: For the wealthy, he was not doing enough to enrich them further, while for the poorer sectors, he was doing too much to achieve that end.

Case in point: Chomsky loves Donkeys and hates Elephants. There's other ways to assess this development, but Chomsky chooses the paradigm of Elephant BAD, Donkey GOOD. Reason? Is there a reason? Chomsky doesn't say. Therefore we conclude... or I conclude... that the reason is inherent in his overall essay's argument, which focuses on EVIL RETHUGLICAN bad guys and NOBLE DEMOCRAT good guys.

Yep.

Nope.

Lesser evilism with wide open eyes is the most Chomsky has advised and somewhere (where did I put that link?) rationalized.

No one reading Chomsky for any extensive period could believe that he perceives the Democrats as noble.

Chomsky endorses Obama without illusion (e.t. about 11:20).

No one reading Chomsky for any extensive period could believe that he perceives the Democrats as noble.

That's humorous. And wrong.

Remind me, please, of Chomsky's take on the response to 9/11/2001.

Thanks bubba!

"Remind me, please, of Chomsky's take on the response to 9/11/2001."

Not sure I know what your getting at.

I think he wrote a book about it, but I didn't read it. You may be able to find his 'take' on the 'response' there.

Am reminded of Dr. Johnson's bon mot: "Madame, I can provide you with an argument. But an understanding? No." (a paraphrase, alas)

"your getting at."

blush

"you're getting at."

Mr. Oxtrot,

If you go to www.chomsky.info and google search '9-11' you will find plenty of 'takes' (more than 100 hits) maybe even the one you want to be reminded of.

In a number of Chomsky books various Democratic Party presidents have come under Chomsky's severe criticism, including FDR, JFK, LBJ, Truman, Clinton, Carter, and Wilson. Senator Moynihan (D-NY) as Ford's UN Representative gets frequent baths of Chomsky's sarcasm for his actions on behalf of the Indonesian occupation of and genocide in East Timor. What Chomsky may think of unsuccessful Democratic candidates such as Dukakis, Mondale, and Gore, I don't know. Kerry got a kind of lesser evil endorsement like the one that Obama gets in the linked video mentioned above (12:23AM).

Maybe Chomsky thinks Ed Markey is noble. I don't know.

How you come up with your perception of Chomsky as a pony- expecting Democratic Party rooter is a mystery. He calls himself an anarchist sometimes and sometimes a libertarian socialist. Frankly he seems to me a little too optimistic about a lot of issues. But then he has been more active and involved in the issues than have I ... you know, optimism of the will and all that.

Best wishes, Lunch

"Seems like a long way to go to say: Why would greedy bastards wanna share?"

well it certainly was a long way to go
....to not be understood

the points are easy ones

the borg cubes are not in a zero sum struggle with america's prosperity

its not a struggle
between security state and welfare state

despite agitprop to the contrary

it is however
about limiting total domestic effective demand and thus total job and household usury supply

limiting it in fact
to a level compatible with long run
sustained corporate hegemony

the global system allows uncle to use
world reseve currency seigniorage
and an over valued dollar to "distribute"
the burden of the borg cubes

ndeed a chunk remains to be paid by domestic joblings here
but so long as the system operates with production slack
the choice is being made to "hold down"
welfare enhancing programs
for reserve army "optimization" reasons
as suggested above

how the seigniorage works
and how the tilt works and is maintained
might make good posts

i hope we can move off
the gratifying but rather generalized
and subjectivized
ordinary mind philosophy paradigm

dantesque
"don't theese greedy bloody fucks all deserve to get inferno-ed "
type judgements
advance us back to the rear mostly

i must say
chomsky on voting hardly looks like an obstacle
until we have a boycott movement
he obviously would support a progressive anti corporate party alternative
and he has in the past

calling him objectively pro donkey
because he suggests there is a difference
worth casting a vote to effect
seems to me a position that needs to be struggled with not against so to speak

if you have a very clear critique of chomsky's
call in 04 for a vote trading scheme
that maxed green votes while not forida izing
the election
ie sophisticated kindly thanx ralphism
lay it out here in comments

I am amused at Lurch Presumptuous saying I do not understand Chomsky. Lurch, share for us all how it is you have divined my levels of understanding of ANY subject, would you please?

I understand The Noam as well as one can understand him without being him. Don't let me piss on your altar established in worship of him, please. Sometimes I forget he's a god. It's easy to do. He looks awfully like a human being to me.

.........

op, your logy take on life and utter acceptance of all the shit that rolls down onto you is both what I like about you, and what frustrates me about you.

I'm not prepared to accept Chomsky's flaws. You are. We differ there. I get along fine without any Chomsky in my life. He's never shown me something I didn't know already. Your mileage obviously varies from mine. My truck won't start on a tank of Chomsky.

You ask me to criticize Chomsky's '04 vote trading scheme, yet I don't see the point of even considering the scheme. I don't engage in criticism of something I don't find worthwhile.

I'm not with you on this one Ox, not at all. I don't see anything apologetic about noticing that Donk voters stayed home in Massachusetts last month. Quite the contrary. Seems to me he's observing that Donk voters are voting with their feet against the Donks.

As to the importance of voting in the Chomskean landscape, I think you're way over-stating it. He always insists it's all about organizing and agitating and self-educating.

Meanwhile, FWIW, while you are busy knowing everything Chomsky writes before he writes it, I myself find pretty much every syllable he publishes to be of massive help.

Mr. Oxtrot,

You appear to read things that aren't there. I provided you with a superficial argument based on published material that Chomsky was not "a pro-Donkey gatekeeper." Understand that however you like.

You may have inside knowledge about what Chomsky is REALLY doing with all his books and speeches, etc. A lot of people have this kind of info.

Chomsky's work has had the effect of reassuring me that I wasn't the only person noticing that much of what was in the MSM was propaganda and, indeed, often poor quality propaganda.

An acquaintance told me that he knew enough about Chomsky to know that Chomsky was dishonest what with all that left wing stuff he was always spouting. Later it turned out that what he knew was a profile in the "New Yorker" and a feature in the "NY Times." I hope that you, most esteemed animator, are not similarly informed.

Best wishes, Lunch

I'm sure this post is profoundly informative but since it's written in the excruciatingly cryptic, overeducated, "look, I know how to torture language to death so it must be good writing", SMBIVA style I'm unable to discern clarity.

As always, I'll implore in vain that you folks write with prose intended to share information rather than disguise it.

Regardless, it is relatively easy to infer that SMBIVA generally appears to believe that modern, Western, human life is not wholly dependent on Earth (which is the perverse, delusional mindset of your average infinite-growth-on-a-finite-planet economist).

Unfortunately, reality knows better.

In short: We're not going to grow, consume and indebt our way out of the problems of growth, consumption and debt.

theautomaticearth.blogspot.com is doing a much better job of analyzing--and most important, communicating in clear and simple language--economic reality.

monkeymuffins
if you find insight in the finite earth model
god's speed

point
mountain's of debt have no resource content at all eh ??

we borrowing toilers
consuming our way anywhere
is likely burdened and slowed
by the exactions of job class household aimed usury

btw
it's my prose that gets briary
not father smiffs

pay a little attention here
monkey marbles
i'll look into your limkenstein's monster however

automatcearth is a ssplendid site name

http://www.counterpunch.org/martin02052010.html

glimpse this for gnomic nattering

Lunch,

What Chomsky does for you -- reassurance -- I have no quarrel with. I don't think it's your place, nor anyone else's save my own, to determine what value Chomsky holds for me.

I guess a person is expected to have heroes, and I guess when a person doesn't have them, he is subjected to snark. Forgive me for not considering Chomsky a personal hero. I happen to prefer William Gaddis, or Erich Fromm, or Alice Miller. Chomsky? Nifty sort of Beefeater at 10 Downing. TO ME. Good on you and on Chomsky too if he's doing the magic for you.

I think you are still reading too much into the fact that I linked a Chomsky essay to this comment thread.

Just because I disputed your assertion that Chomsky was a 'pro-Donkey gatekeeper', you imagine that I am enthralled with Chomsky. There is no evidence of that in my comments.

To give the man his due, as I see it, I acknowledged subsequently that I took reassurance from Chomsky's analysis of mainstream media (neglecting however to credit Edward S. Hermann for his role in that).

That is it, on the record here, at least so far. I started reading Chomsky about 25 years ago before electronic communication was available to the general public. And media criticism where encountered was not much beyond the ombud stage. Chomsky's analysis opened a window for me. My last word on this.

I leave the field to you.

Best wishes, Lunch