Noam Chomsky, the Gadfly and public nuisance, is captured in a spider hole after being accused by the regime of using WMD (words of mass dissidence).
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Democracy's in the Rearview Mirror on the Lost Highway
by John Kendall Hawkins
It's been said often, to the point where it is probably trite, Socrates died in vain trying to 'woke' people into making sense of their own democracy. They just didn't want to; they couldn't be bothered arguing over the fine points, when broad strokes of cudgeling and cajoling would do. People pestered by the Gadfly purportedly wanted to punch him in the face; they didn't give a sh*t if he was a Peloponnesian war vet and had shown his purple heart at the Battle of Delium. All his dialectics wanted to know was: Why do you believe what you believe? Can we get to the bottom of it? Accountability for mouthing off. Socrates knew that he knew nothing. But the plebs all around him were know-it-alls; they'd been filled with the wind of introjected hubris. Elites saw Socrates 'woking' the kids and whispered to each other, "f*ck him" (malaka). And they did.
Because we modernists are basically stupid, we look back at the Ancient Greek model of democracy as the Ideal that we inherited; the decorative night light up on the hill; the raison d'etre of our exceptionalism; the how-come of why we fly fighter jets over ball games during that bombastic anthem of ours. Human kine. Grass is always greener on the other side . Seven Year Itch as planned obsolescence (or ringworm). Ancient Greek Democracy was a failed democracy -- by Socratic standards. It was a road to Hemlock for thinkers and dissidents and counterpunchers of the regime. And everybody laughs at the Progressives!
Okay, so I'm releasing steam from my valve, like one of those old housing project radiators that would whistle shrilly and maybe bubble over a bit and it got so fuckin hot in the apartment that you had to open the window and let the snow blow in, if necessary, and while you had your head out there in the frigid air you'd yell out why have you forsaken me? And someone would call the Calvary cops. Releasing the pent-up. That's the way I felt the other day watching Noam Chomsky get interviewed by the academic head of his department at his new digs at the University of Arizona, where Chomsky presumably went in his old age to get some sun and release from stress after 66 years at MIT -- or because he needed to get away as quickly as possible from the Frank Gehry architecture they housed him in at the end of his career at MIT in a building that looked like someone had punched it in the fuckin mouf.
"MIT Building 32, a.k.a. Stata Center" by mava is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
It was like some 9/11 Truther had assigned his new office as payback for his 'indifference' to the Inside Job.
Whatever the reason is that Noam Chomsky moved to Arizona, if the YouTube interview I watched the other day from the desert is any indication, he's now slummin it. Probably for money. Doesn't mean he's a sell-out; just old; needs that sense of security. It was a move to Arizona -- or Florida. Right? I lived in Florida once. The whole time there was like that scene on the bus from Midnight Cowboy when all the rubberneck geezers are turned around and eyeballing Cowboy who's holding his dead buddy, Ratso, while the soundtrack theme plays the mouth harp blues.
The Q/A exchange from Wonder House was titled, "What does the future hold?" It was hosted by Lori Poloni-Staudinger, Dean in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS) at the University of Arizona, where Chomsky has set up shop since 2017. I own that I'm a cynical olds gizz and thought the premise of the interview, embodied in that question, was about as stupid as it could get. Old Man River held his own though; he wasn't rattled by the question; he's always pointing out how important getting educated is and he knows that that requires patience if concept attainment is to ever be anything more than a house guest eating up all the onion dip to your consternation. Still, Lori asks:
So, our first question: Much has been in the news lately about shifting centers of world power, unipolar power, bipolar, multipolar. How do you think the future of the world is going to be shaped by the current crises that are rattling the system?
Presumptuous. Comfortable. Bourgeois. No problem. Noam points out the fuckin obvious:
There are two crises that will determine whether it's even worth talking about these issues. One of them is the growing threat of nuclear war. The other is the. Climate crisis, environmental crisis, which has to be dealt with in the next few years or else human society is essentially finished
What a gloomy prick. And here the U. of A. is trying to attract new applicants for a future. You can see why they sent troops in to get him and trophy-photoed him captured in the spider hole. The little reductive regime-changer was his own smoking mushroom cloud. One word: PNAC.
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