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[Zoggy]

Ok I was for giving Chomsky a little criticism but then some people have gone a too far lol.

At his worst, he's become a cult of personality among young liberals and babby's first intellectual.

I was there, right after high school when I discovered him and all my friends and I just took everything he said as gospel (we also annoyingly name dropped into every damn conversation)

But he's not Alex jones, or the most important dissident. Somewhere in between.

 

[Malfunky]

What a weird thread.

you can not 'reject socialism as centralized state ownership and control of the economy'. Socialism is complete government ownership and regulation, libertarianism advocates for an incredibly limited goverment. these are on two seperate ends of the spectrum.

honestly that page is just advocating for libertarianism, there is nothing socialist about it.

No, it's a thing. Libertarian socialism is generally agreed to be an interchangeable term with anarcho-communism, and has been for, what, 150 years? You seem to be inventing your own definition of socialism here to deny this, and evidently due to your lack of familiarity with the concept, which I don't blame you for. Socialism, at its core, is merely worker ownership of the means of production - it isn't required to have anything to do anything with the state or government, and in fact works quite often in opposition to them. Where do you think right-wing capitalist libertarians got their name from in the first place? The anarchists and communists of the 19th century. It's literally in the Wikipedia article you're saying isn't about .. what it's actually about.

You can harangue on Chomsky all you like. I think he's fine. Not worth getting upset over. But to denounce him over a thing you don't think exists that actually very clearly does is weird! There have been and are better libertarian socialist/anarchist theorist and historians out there doing amazing work. I suggest you really look into it. It's fascinating stuff!

 

[Lord Frieza]

I've only read a few of the points so far, but Noam Chomsky's argument about the Russia hacks/election interference is laughable garbage. His argument is the equivalent of New York getting bombed and then saying "Why are people focusing on this? The US bombs other countries every day, illegally. So it's not like we don't do it, and anyway we needed to ease tensions with the country who bombed us so why are we taking issue with direct treasonous collusion with them?"

I haven't read the full article or all the points yet, but that one stuck out to me immediately. Of course countries are going to sometimes do wrong things and then hypocritically get angry when it is done to them, that doesn't mean it's strange or outrageous that the country is, in fact, angry about it and wants something fucking done.

Similarly, the idea that it isn't scandalous that the campaign that won may have colluded with the Russians in some fashions to try to win the election is just sheer bird patty. I'm surprised he didn't vomit all over the interviewer as he said it since it was so dumb.

Noam is very intelligent and often makes good points, but that question was him at his worst.

Yeah I agree. Good stuff in there, but I don't know what the fuck he's smoking with all that

 

[capitalCORN]

Yeah I agree. Good stuff in there, but I don't know what the fuck he's smoking with all that

Arguing moral absolute equivalency is some eye for and eye bullshit.

 

[MisterFalcon]

The matter of fact 'well, this is what US agression causes' way in which Chomsky talks about the death of 10 million people is telling.

I mean, if the U.S. did decide to use force against North Korea, one immediate reaction, according to the military sources available to us, is that Seoul, the city of Seoul, would simply be wiped out by mass North Korean artillery aimed at it.

Note how the US can decide to attack Korea and then, as inevitable as gravity or the sun rising North Korea will destroy a city with 10 million civilians in it. The North Koreans have no agency, no capacity for deciding to kill 10 million people or not, they are bound to react to US decisions and if this were to happen (which it will not, the idea NK can destroy all of Seoul with artillery is a strange fantasy of the pro-NK far left) Chomsky would blame only the US as if they destroyed Seoul themselves. Also note the term 'simply' to describe what would be the largest mass murder in history.

In everything the same thing comes back. The US acts, the rest reacts. It's a weird kind of American exceptionalism where the US is so far ahead of the rest of humanity in their agency no one else can be held responsible for anything they do.

 

[kame-sennin]

Who would you recommend?

David Brooks.

 

[Woorloog]

Note how the US can decide to attack Korea and then, as inevitable as gravity or the sun rising North Korea will destroy a city with 10 million civilians in it. The North Koreans have no agency, no capacity for deciding to kill 10 million people or not, they are bound to react to US decisions and if this were to happen (which it will not, the idea NK can destroy all of Seoul with artillery is a strange fantasy of the pro-NK far left)

Does the NK actually have capability for that? Without nukes that is.
Just going to note that will and intent do not really matter for military strategy and planning, only capability matters and must be taken into account.

 

[jorma]

Chomsky must realize the people benefiting from a rapproachment with Russia are primarily oligarchs? The literal mirror image of what he sees wrong in America, really.

Oligarchs aren't the ones who would be sent to die in a proxy war in lets say vietnam.

So no, they're not the ones who would benefit the most.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

Dan Carlin is making similar arguments. It seems to me that both him and Chomsky are so afraid of nuclear war that they see confronting russia as akin to potential nuclear war.


I didn't live during the Cuban Missile crisis and the height of the cold war, so the scare- They scare of complete armageddon doesn't ring as hard for me as it does for guys like Carlin and Chomsky. And I think it's very very difficult to consider the hypotehtical.

The chance of nuclear annihilation seems impossible. And that is dangerous when I am angry and disgusted with Russia. I see them as a threat and so angry that I want EU and US forces to escalate this to 11 and station death on their borders until Putin fucks off.
But seeing myself writing this, it's pretty clear that I am emotionally unequipped to have a logical approach to this at all. I'm way to biased, and that keeps me from engaging in the fallout scenarios of going through such escalation.

 

[TheLaughingStock]

Alex Jones offers so much more insight than Chomsky. Would've made for a better interview.

 

[JustenP88]

Eh, I'm with Noam to an extent on the Russia thing. Not looking forward to Democrats dancing in the street and patting themselves on the backs when/if Trump gets popped for treason. It would be decent news, but it won't really change shit for anybody. We'd still be stuck with a Republican-controlled government that they squandered away through their vast incompetence while we wait for the new face of the Democratic party to show up and speak empty platitudes toward crumbling labor unions, tell us that basic services provided by our cultural and economic contemporaries are "pipe dreams" while refusing to entertain ideas like UBI because the aforementioned things aren't palatable to those who matter.

 

[IISANDERII]

Chomsky has been saying the same shit for like 40 years.

You could pull a interview from 1980 and there's basically no difference.

Doesnt make it any less true. The engines which erode democracy have been running for all this time, chipping away liberties bit by bit.

 

[PnCIa]

He makes some interesting points. In a nutshell: "Ya´ll being played like a fiddle".

 

[El_Tiguere]

And further, if attacking Trump on policy was the more effective measure to take he would never have become president. Its ineffective because his base clearly doesn't mind getting fucked over by such policies. Revealing Russian collusion would extend beyond party lines, presumably-although I really am not sure if even that would be enough to shake his base's unwavering support of this man.

You and I live in different worlds. In my world, harping on Russian meddling in our elections entrenches his base further on his side, because Trump/Fox News/Limbaugh and crew have successfully painted the "witch hunt" as the macabre Deep State government lurking in the shadows trying to stand in the way of their hero as he attempts to finally make America Great Again. Too many on the right have fallen for this, and they are terrified of the "Obama Deep State" taking back power in a Soros-like coup fashion. Logic and reasoning has no sway at this point with that narrative. The answer here is to let the investigation (must be unbiased) pan out, and let the evidence help in swaying any of those peeps.

On the other hand, Trump is inept, and the GOP are finally revealing themselves as the party that truly truly doesn't give a shit about people at the bottom. You have to give Trump voters some time to realize that they got sold utter bullshit, and to come to terms that they made a bad bet. Many many are beginning to do this (which is great for us in 2018), and it is ALL based on the anti0poor anti-American anti-worker policies he has pushed so far.

There are daily policy gems that the Democrats can harp on and rally a majority of Americans behind them, but the folly is that Corporate Democrats only want to take leadership in policies that don't rattle their corporate donors... to the detriment of the interests of most Americans (Chomsky cited the 70% of Americans at the bottom who's preferences get IGNORED).

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Does the NK actually have capability for that? Without nukes that is.
Just going to note that will and intent do not really matter for military strategy and planning, only capability matters and must be taken into account.

No they don't. The thing about shelling and bombing is that once the first couple hit, people scramble for cover, and the more buildings you wreck the more cover you create and the harder it becomes to inflict further casualties. Seoul is a positively huge city. It would cause a lot of deaths and injuries, but it wouldn't come remotely close to wiping out all the inhabitants of Seoul, it probably wouldn't come close to wiping out a tenth of the population even if the barrages were allowed to continue unabated (note that this is still a huge number of people, I'm just trying to give a sense of scale). In reality, they won't get a whole day of pounding even with access to unlimited shells (which they definitely don't have), because the ROK armed forces will be doing their best to hit as many artillery sites as possible and will be employing counter-barrages when the North Korean assets open fire. If you imagine a preemptive strike, it becomes even more difficult for the North Koreans as they would only have a fraction of their assets online in the front line ready to go, and civilians will have been warned before the firing starts.

From the SK perspective, attacks on Seoul are their worst nightmare. But from a North Korean perspective, shelling Seoul en masse is an implicit concession of defeat, since the civilian population of the city has no military value; it means they'd wasted massive quantities of munitions on this one punitive action instead of targeting the military assets that are about to return fire on them with far more sophisticated and accurate weapons systems.

The damage that NK could do with strategic weapons is far higher than the damage they could do with conventional weapons. One low-yield nuclear weapon will be far deadlier than conventional artillery barrages on Seoul will because it's effects are near-instantaneous. I would be far more worried about that. Even with patriot systems installed, I'd be concerned that I couldn't tell the difference between short range nuclear weapons and more conventional rocket artillery systems. The North Koreans have plenty of SCUD-B derivatives, more than could ever be intercepted with current systems.