Published on Portside (https://portside.org)
Noam Chomsky: On Trump and the State of the Union
George Yancy and Noam Chomsky
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
New York Times
Professor Chomsky is the author of numerous best-selling political
works, translated into scores of languages. Among his most recent books are “Hegemony
or Survival,” “Failed States,” “Hopes and Prospects,” “Masters of Mankind” and
“Who Rules the World?” He has been institute professor emeritus at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1976.
George Yancy: Given our “post-truth” political moment and
the growing authoritarianism we are witnessing under President Trump, what
public role do you think professional philosophy might play in critically
addressing this situation?
Noam Chomsky: We have to be a little cautious about not
trying to kill a gnat with an atom bomb. The performances are so utterly absurd
regarding the “post-truth” moment that the proper response might best be
ridicule. For example, Stephen Colbert’s recent comment is apropos: When the
Republican legislature of North Carolina responded to a scientific study
predicting a threatening rise in sea level by barring state and local agencies
from developing regulations or planning documents to address the problem,
Colbert responded: “This is a brilliant solution. If your science gives you a
result that you don’t like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem
solved.”
Quite generally, that’s how the Trump administration deals with a
truly existential threat to survival of organized human life: ban regulations
and even research and discussion of environmental threats and race to the
precipice as quickly as possible (in the interests of short-term profit and
power).
G.Y.: In this regard, I find Trumpism to be a bit suicidal.
N.C.: Of course, ridicule is not enough. It’s necessary to address
the concerns and beliefs of those who are taken in by the fraud, or who don’t
recognize the nature and significance of the issues for other reasons. If by
philosophy we mean reasoned and thoughtful analysis, then it can address the
moment, though not by confronting the “alternative facts” but by analyzing and
clarifying what is at stake, whatever the issue is. Beyond that, what is needed
is action: urgent and dedicated, in the many ways that are open to us.
G.Y.: When I was an undergraduate philosophy student at the University
of Pittsburgh, where I was trained in the analytic tradition, it wasn’t clear
to me what philosophy meant beyond the clarification of concepts. Yet I have
held onto the Marxian position that philosophy can change the world. Any
thoughts on the capacity of philosophy to change the world?
N.C.: I am not sure just what Marx had in mind when he wrote that
“philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the
point is to change it.” Did he mean that philosophy could change the world, or
that philosophers should turn to the higher priority of changing the world? If
the former, then he presumably meant philosophy in a broad sense of the term,
including analysis of the social order and ideas about why it should be
changed, and how. In that broad sense, philosophy can play a role, indeed an
essential role, in changing the world, and philosophers, including in the
analytic tradition, have undertaken that effort, in their philosophical work as
well as in their activist lives — Bertrand Russell, to mention a prominent
example.
G.Y.: Yes. Russell was a philosopher and a public intellectual. In
those terms, how do you describe yourself?
N.C.: I don’t really think about it, frankly. I engage in the kinds of
work and activities that seem important and challenging to me. Some of it falls
within these categories, as usually understood.
G.Y.: There are times when the sheer magnitude of human suffering
feels unbearable. As someone who speaks to so much suffering in the world, how
do you bear witness to this and yet maintain the strength to go on?
N.C.: Witnessing it is enough to provide the motivation to go on. And
nothing is more inspiring to see how poor and suffering people, living under
conditions incomparably worse than we endure, continue quietly and
unpretentiously with courageous and committed struggle for justice and dignity.
G.Y.: If you had to list two or three forms of political action that
are necessary under the Trump regime, what would they be? I ask because our moment
feels so incredibly hopeless and repressive.
N.C.: I don’t think things are quite that bleak. Take the success of
the Bernie Sanders campaign, the most remarkable feature of the 2016 election.
It is, after all, not all that surprising that a billionaire showman with
extensive media backing (including the liberal media, entranced by his antics
and the advertising revenue it afforded) should win the nomination of the
ultra-reactionary Republican Party.
The Sanders campaign, however, broke dramatically with over a
century of U.S. political history. Extensive political science research,
notably the work of Thomas Ferguson, has shown convincingly that elections are
pretty much bought. For example, campaign spending alone is a remarkably good
predictor of electoral success, and support of corporate power and private
wealth is a virtual prerequisite even for participation in the political arena.
The Sanders campaign showed that a candidate with mildly
progressive (basically New Deal) programs could win the nomination, maybe the
election, even without the backing of the major funders or any media support.
There’s good reason to suppose that Sanders would have won the nomination had
it not been for shenanigans of the Obama-Clinton party managers. He is now the most
popular political figure in the country by a large margin.
Activism spawned by the campaign is beginning to make inroads into
electoral politics. Under Barack Obama, the Democratic Party pretty much
collapsed at the crucial local and state levels, but it can be rebuilt and
turned into a progressive force. That would mean reviving the New Deal legacy
and moving well beyond, instead of abandoning, the working class and turning
into Clintonite New Democrats, which more or less resemble what used to be called
moderate Republicans, a category that has largely disappeared with the shift of
both parties to the right during the neoliberal period.
Such prospects may not be out of reach, and efforts to attain them
can be combined with direct activism right now, urgently needed, to counter the
legislative and executive actions of the Republican administration, often
concealed behind the bluster of the figure nominally in charge.
There are in fact many ways to combat the Trump project of
creating a tiny America, isolated from the world, cowering in fear behind walls
while pursuing the Paul Ryan-style domestic policies that represent the most
savage wing of the Republican establishment.
G.Y.: What are the weightiest issues facing us?
N.C.: The most important issues to address are the truly existential
threats we face: climate change and nuclear war. On the former, the Republican
leadership, in splendid isolation from the world, is almost unanimously
dedicated to destroying the chances for decent survival; strong words, but no
exaggeration. There is a great deal that can be done at the local and state
level to counter their malign project.
On nuclear war, actions in Syria and at the Russian border raise
very serious threats of confrontation that might trigger war, an unthinkable
prospect. Furthermore, Trump’s pursuit of Obama’s programs of modernization of
the nuclear forces poses extraordinary dangers. As we have recently learned,
the modernized U.S. nuclear force is seriously fraying the slender thread on
which survival is suspended. The matter is discussed in detail in a critically
important article in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in March, which should
have been, and remained, front-page news. The authors, highly respected
analysts, observe that the nuclear weapons modernization program has increased
“the overall killing power of existing U.S. ballistic missile forces by a
factor of roughly three — and it creates exactly what one would expect to see,
if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a
nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.”
The significance is clear. It means that in a moment of crisis, of
which there are all too many, Russian military planners may conclude that
lacking a deterrent, the only hope of survival is a first strike — which means
the end for all of us.
G.Y.: Frightening to the born.
N.C.: In these cases, citizen action can reverse highly dangerous
programs. It can also press Washington to explore diplomatic options — which
are available — instead of the near reflexive resort to force and coercion in
other areas, including North Korea and Iran.
G.Y.: But what is it, Noam, as you continue to engage critically a
broad range of injustices, that motivates this sense of social justice for you?
Are there any religious motivations that frame your social justice work? If
not, why not?
N.C.: No religious motivations, and for sound reasons. One can
contrive a religious motivation for virtually any choice of action, from commitment
to the highest ideals to support for the most horrendous atrocities. In the
sacred texts, we can find uplifting calls for peace, justice and mercy, along
with the most genocidal passages in the literary canon. Conscience is our
guide, whatever trappings we might choose to clothe it in.
G.Y.: Returning to the point about bearing witness to so much
suffering, what do you recommend I share with many of my undergraduate students
such that they develop the capacity to bear witness to forms of suffering that
are worse than we endure? Many of my students are just concerned with
graduating and often seem oblivious to world suffering.
N.C.: My suspicion is that those who seem oblivious to suffering,
whether it is nearby or in remote corners, are for the most part unaware,
perhaps blinded by doctrine and ideology. For them, the answer is to develop a
critical attitude toward articles of faith, secular or religious; to encourage
their capacity to question, to explore, to view the world from the standpoint
of others. And direct exposure is never very far away, wherever we live —
perhaps the homeless person huddling in the cold or asking for a few pennies
for food, or all too many more.
G.Y.: I appreciate and second your point about exposure to the
suffering of others not being far away. Returning to Trump, I take it that you
view him as fundamentally unpredictable. I certainly do. Should we fear a
nuclear exchange of any sort in our contemporary moment?
N.C.: I do, and I’m hardly the only person to have such fears. Perhaps
the most prominent figure to express such concerns is William Perry, one of the
leading contemporary nuclear strategists, with many years of experience at the
highest level of war planning. He is reserved and cautious, not given to
overstatement. He has come out of semi-retirement to declare forcefully and
repeatedly that he is terrified both at the extreme and mounting threats and by
the failure to be concerned about them. In his words, “Today, the danger of
some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War,
and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.”
In 1947, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists established its famous
Doomsday Clock, estimating how far we are from midnight: termination. In 1947,
the analysts set the clock at seven minutes to midnight. In 1953, they moved
the hand to two minutes to midnight after the U.S. and U.S.S.R. exploded
hydrogen bombs. Since then it has oscillated, never again reaching this danger
point. In January, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the hand was moved to
two and a half minutes to midnight, the closest to terminal disaster since
1953. By this time analysts were considering not only the rising threat of
nuclear war but also the firm dedication of the Republican organization to
accelerate the race to environmental catastrophe.
Perry is right to be terrified. And so should we all be, not least
because of the person with his finger on the button and his surreal associates.
G.Y.: Yet despite his unpredictability, Trump has a strong base. What
makes for this kind of servile deference?
N.C.: I’m not sure that “servile deference” is the right phrase, for a
number of reasons. For example, who is the base? Most are relatively affluent.
Three-quarters had incomes above the median. About one-third had incomes of
over $100,000 a year, and thus were in the top 15 percent of personal income,
in the top 6 percent of those with only a high school education. They are
overwhelmingly white, mostly older, hence from historically more privileged sectors.
As Anthony DiMaggio reports in a careful study of the wealth of
information now available, Trump voters tend to be typical Republicans, with
“elitist, pro-corporate and reactionary social agendas,” and “an affluent,
privileged segment of the country in terms of their income, but one that is
relatively less privileged than it was in the past, before the 2008 economic
collapse,” hence feeling some economic distress. Median income has dropped
almost 10 percent since 2007. That’s apart from the large evangelical segment
and putting aside the factors of white supremacy — deeply rooted in the United
States — racism and sexism.
For the majority of the base, Trump and the more savage wing of
the Republican establishment are not far from their standard attitudes, though
when we turn to specific policy preferences, more complex questions arise.
A segment of the Trump base comes from the industrial sector that
has been cast aside for decades by both parties, often from rural areas where
industry and stable jobs have collapsed. Many voted for Obama, believing his
message of hope and change, but were quickly disillusioned and have turned in
desperation to their bitter class enemy, clinging to the hope that somehow its
formal leader will come to their rescue.
Another consideration is the current information system, if one
can even use the phrase. For much of the base, the sources of information are
Fox News, talk radio and other practitioners of alternative facts. Exposures of
Trump’s misdeeds and absurdities that arouse liberal opinion are easily
interpreted as attacks by the corrupt elite on the defender of the little man,
in fact his cynical enemy.
G.Y.: How does the lack of critical intelligence operate here, that
is, the sort that philosopher John Dewey saw as essential for a democratic
citizenry?
N.C.: We might ask other questions about critical intelligence. For
liberal opinion, the political crime of the century, as it is sometimes called,
is Russian interference in American elections. The effects of the crime are
undetectable, unlike the massive effects of interference by corporate power and
private wealth, not considered a crime but the normal workings of democracy.
That’s even putting aside the record of U.S. “interference” in foreign
elections, Russia included; the word “interference” in quotes because it is so
laughably inadequate, as anyone with the slightest familiarity with recent
history must be aware.
G.Y.: That certainly speaks to our nation’s contradictions.
N.C.: Is Russian hacking really more significant than what we have
discussed — for example, the Republican campaign to destroy the conditions for
organized social existence, in defiance of the entire world? Or to enhance the
already dire threat of terminal nuclear war? Or even such real but lesser crimes
such as the Republican initiative to deprive tens of millions of health care
and to drive helpless people out of nursing homes in order to enrich their
actual constituency of corporate power and wealth even further? Or to dismantle
the limited regulatory system set up to mitigate the impact of the financial
crisis that their favorites are likely to bring about once again? And on, and
on.
It’s easy to condemn those we place on the other side of some
divide, but more important, commonly, to explore what we take to be nearby.
Correction: July 5, 2017
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of an
organization that monitors nuclear weapons and disarmament. It is Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists, not The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
George Yancy, a professor of philosophy at Emory University, is
the author of “Black Bodies, White Gazes” and “On Race: 34 Conversations in a
Time of Crisis,” and a co-editor of “Pursuing Trayvon Martin” and “Our Black
Sons Matter.”
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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