Friday, May 13, 2011

Chomsky

People are getting exercised this week because of Chomsky's comments in the magazine Guernica. (Wonderfully ironic title, recalling an event of real terror by fascists that was nonetheless exaggerated by leftists and has enormous symbolic meaning for them, as opposed to, say, their own execution of 20% of the priests and nuns.) Because people take him seriously, I should probably get more worked up about Chomsky myself. Yet I consider him disturbed, as if something organic might be wrong with him, and attacking him seems rather like pushing the guy in the wheelchair down the steps. We have spoken recently about anosognosia, and he exhibits something like that. Whatever happens, it is the West, especially America, especially capitalism that is at fault. There is never even a 1% deviation from this line, and as I have noted, an inability to see even a 1% reasonableness in another POV is itself pathological.

If there is a rape, then America was wearing short skirts, unless they were the active party, in which case they were violent and conscienceless rapists. If America is trading with a country and it does something evil, it was because of their contact with America, but if we don't trade with them, that is the cause. If we are on good terms with a government, then we are complicit in any of its evil acts. If we do not support it, then it is still not at fault, because we have driven them to extremism in opposition. It's just silly and predictable, and I would see no need to even mention it, except that folks take him seriously, and he does seem to be only a more intense version of other leftists who find can no good in us, nor any moral agency in others. It's a rather fun position to take, of course, for whenever others take the slightest bit of credit for good action or self-congratulate in any way, you can shoot them down and be morally superior, pointing out that they are in fact quite evil. Tastes great. Less filling.

It is also ultimately a self-defeating argument, if one sticks to logic. If we are to blame for everything, then we are to blame for nothing. There becomes no standard of measurement, no comparison of good and evil. I have little interest in how he got this way, whether it is some self-hatred, or a genuine compassion for the downtrodden that went off the rails, or a tribal loyalty to a narrow group; these things perpetuate for different reasons than they start, I think, for the neurology takes over and they become unable to even see another POV.

9 comments:

Gringo said...

AVI, there appear to be problems with blogger. When I go to AVI, I get a pop-up that says "Bad Account at AVI(your URL)." I have tried to post this here. It shows as having been posted, but when I look later at your website, my posting is not there. I will try this time without a link, to see if that works.

Bin Laden on Chomsky:
The war was entirely unnecessary, as testified to by your own reports. And among the most capable of those from your own side who speak to you on this topic and on the manufacturing of public opinion is Noam Chomsky, who spoke sober words of advice prior to the war.

Gringo said...

Will my previous posting show up. Will this show up?

Sam L. said...

Everything bad is because of us, the USA. The USA is Bad because of Bush!!!!! Global Warming is because of us. And since we are all Bad, and Chomsky is one of us, he's bad, too, because he hasn't changed us to not be bad.

So I ask, why has his brain not exploded? AVI knows, and he's told us--anosognosia.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I get the "bad account" box as well. I got the email telling me your comment, and never checked here. Glad you followed up.

I think I had better check all recent comments. The problem is, I delete the emails rather quickly.

Anonymous said...

Lots of us have been getting "bad account" pop-up windows on Blogger since the weekend downtime.

Turns out that, for at least some of us, it's caused by a gadget we added called "FreeStats." Try deleting the HTML in your template for this gadget and that pop-up should disappear. Good luck.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Worked. Thanks, anonymous

Larry Sheldon said...

Making changes to operational software with the advice and consent of the people who depend on it should be a felony, nay, a capital offense.

And I have believed that since long before this was a personal statement:

Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators:

Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes.

(Adapted from Stephen Pinker)

(just realized that there is a connection of sorts between Chomsky and Pinker that makes interesting reading.

Larry Sheldon said...

If you find things like interesting, of course.

Larry Sheldon said...

"Making changes to operational software with the advice and consent of the people who depend on it should be a felony, nay, a capital offense."

makes marginally more sense if it says "Making changes to operational software withOUT the advice and consent of the people who depend on it should be a felony, nay, a capital offense."

Larry is rired.