With elections quickly approaching, what should we know today?
Last month, I made a trip from New York City to Tucson for the rare privilege of sitting down with a very respected, prominent, and outspoken figure in U.S. and world politics. Noam Chomsky is a linguist, philosopher, professor, author, social activist, and as I found out during this interview, a dog-lover. Chomsky has over 6 decades of intellectual work and his points of view have been solicited by Al-Jazeera, Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, and now, by myself. Chomsky is a fierce advocate for free speech so much so that he was barred from Israel — which was significant given his Jewish heritage. I had no doubt that Professor Chomsky would be forthright and hold back nothing.
Where do you get your international news from? There’s so much clutter out there.
Chomsky: First thing I do in the morning is read the New York Times, the Washington Post, Financial Time, Wall Street Journal, and turn to other sources, but there’s nothing to compare with — Well, there’s plenty of flaws with the press. I spent a lot of time criticizing. But nevertheless, that’s the one main source of relatively authentic news. You have to read it critically. Of course.
What’s your biggest criticism?
Chomsky: Biggest criticism is really what they omit. They don’t lie most of the time, but they do omit. You have to see what is it been omitted? It’s often quite significant.
How did you muster the courage to be so outspoken on topics that people are afraid to speak up about?
Chomsky: With all the problems and flaws in the United States, it’s a pretty free society by comparative standard. The state doesn’t have the power to repress that it has in many other countries. So it takes freedom of speech. Pretty important. I think that’s protected more in the United States than any other place I know. Not perfectly plan, by any means. If you’re black panther, you might get killed — Technically a freedom of speech.
I don’t think a lot of people know the Black Panther history.
Chomsky: That’s one of the things that’s omitted. So for example, that a lot of talk these days about Watergate, Watergate was what was the fuss about Watergate. The fuss was that Nexon was attacking powerful people; half the power in the country. He really wasn’t doing very much. It was a break in a bunch of minor thugs in the Democratic Party headquarters, not the greatest crime in the world. But that’s half the power of the country. You don’t get away with it. In fact, we’re seeing it right now. What’s the big crime of Trump when after Democratic Party leaders think of a lot of worst crimes. Going back to Watergate. There were worse crimes. In fact, I wrote about it at the time and nobody could understand. Right at the same time that the Watergate exposures broke through, something else broke through. COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO was a Sunday news that information about it begin surface secret program. It was programmed by the national political police, the FBI, to attempt to rank read through the Liberal Democratic administrations Kennedy and Johnson and early Nixon. It started off with an effort to undermine the usual target, the Communist Party. Move to the American Indian Movement, Puerto Rican move on to the civil rights movement. One of the main targets was Martin Luther King, on to the anti-war move on to the entire new left, entire new left try to disrupt and undermine them that was pretty serious, including even paramilitary organizations set up by the government by the FBI to carry out violent acts which could then be attributed to protesters. But the worst part were the Panthers, the black nationalist movements. They were top of it, Hoover’s agenda. One of them was Fred Hampton who was assassinated, set up by the FBI to be assassinated by the Chicago police. It was one of the best, most effective black organizers. That one act outweighs everything that was done at Watergate. That was under Nixon. Did anyone know about it? That kind of thing that isn’t reported.
What do you think progressivism means today?
Chomsky: Progressivism is it used to be it was called liberal. But liberal became a curse word. So you had to find a new word. Okay, so now it’s progressive. It was mostly a mild new dealer. A mild social democrat in European terminology. In fact, if you take say, Sanders, he’s regarded as revolutionary. But in fact, if you go back to the 1950s, President Eisenhower, couldn’t be much surprised by his programs. The country has moved so far to the right, that what was moderately liberal in the 50s is now considered off the spec.
Out of all the Democratic candidates, do you favor any of them?
Chomsky: My personal choice would be Bernie Sanders. Next would be Elizabeth Warren.
Are there any world leaders that you like today?
Chomsky: There are some, not known. So in the Western Hemisphere there, a couple of pretty impressive figures. One of them is the most important political prisoner in the world. Lula da Silva, who has achieved a great deal for Brazil during the decade of his term he became internationally known, one of the most respected figures in the global scene. There’s a right-wing coup that’s taken place. Soft coup, not a military coup, which had to silence him because he would have won the election pretty easily. So they trumped-up charges, he’s not jail. Right before the election was not allowed to make statements. So yes, he’s one not discussed in the United States. He was, in fact, the US, especially Obama didn’t like him because he was trying to construct a — he was kind of a voice for the global self. It was trying to construct the alliance of including South America, South Africa, and others who would have their own internal currency and trade relations. He described so he had a discussion with Obama. Obama asked him are you going to try to use your own currency and he said, yes, we don’t think that if Brazil had to sell something to Bolivia then we have these dollars. Obama didn’t like that as you can imagine, and they kind of got along, but he was basically disliked by the wealthy and powerful. And in Brazil, they hated the rich, very high level of class-hatred. And they’ve managed to get him into jail. So he’s one. There’s another one right next door, in fact, in Uruguay. Mujica, who’s the one, he’s a former gorilla who was elected the president of Uruguay, a very honest decent person. Maybe the one political leader may be in the hemisphere who wasn’t involved in corruption…He, Valeria, and I went to visit a small farm right, a small cottage. He was an extremely good president and very honest. And there are others here and there, but it’s not easy.
Both supported public healthcare. Why do you think Americans are so against socialized medicine?
Chomsky: Like every other country has, at about half the cost of the United States. It varies sometimes in some countries like say Switzerland, there, it actually is private insurers, but under very tight state regulation. So you don’t have the monstrous waste and costs of the privatized U.S. system. By comparative standards, the US system, while the worst in the world has about twice the cost of other rich countries and pretty poor outcomes. And the main reason which is another thing, you’re not supposed to talk about is it’s privatized. So you go to a hospital here in any city, you come in, maybe broke your leg or something. First thing you have to do is fill out a pile of forms, to make sure that the insurance coverages are going to cover things. Go into a big hospital like say Mass General, because Main Hospital in Boston, go to any ward, there’s a central desk with about 20 people sitting with computers, trying to work out the insurance payments. Just the administrative costs along are probably 20% of the health budget. Then you have profits. Insurance companies as big profits. CEO has to make a million dollars. That’s a waste, you know. And there’s pressures actually, there’s very little preventive medicine in the United State, which we mostly with the hospitals really want is not a meeting with a doctor will prevent what’s going to happen. They want you to have a heart attack and then go through an expensive procedure and they’re very good at that, the high technology is great. There’s actually pressure on our surgeons to have more complicated procedures. The ones who try to use lifestyle approaches to prevent it are often even kicked out of the hospitals. They don’t make enough money. There’s a lot of things like that. Socialized medicine as a scare word. It just means a national health service which guarantees to everybody reasonable health. Most countries, even poor countries have it — like Valeria’s [Chomsky’s wife]Brazillian — when we go to Brazil, everybody has access to a public hospital. It’s not great. The private hospitals are much better. But at least it’s available. Actually the United States has universal health care. It’s called emergency rooms. That’s not a joke. You go to say Boston, again, rich city. Go to the main hospital, Mass General. Take a look at the emergency room. Full of poor people, somebody has a bad cold. Somebody has a terrible headache. The kind of things that in a sensible country, you go to a small clinic, here you go to the emergency. And you get, first of all, you sit there for sometimes even a couple of days. But if you finally see somebody, you get very good care — extremely expensive, harmful to the people. I happened to visit Cuba once, spent a week. There was a conference. Walk around Havana, every place, there’s little clinics around. There’s mostly young women doctors. I stopped there and talk to them. There’s people who come in just from the neighborhood. They know everybody. There’s a lot of prenatal care. The doctor visits the mother for six months or so after the baby’s born to see that everything is OK. But they have a tiny fraction of U.S. medical expenses with about the same outcomes. When I was a kid, in fact, even when my children were little, the pediatrician used to come to the house. That unheard of today. You’re lucky if you can get on the phone.
ACA was the first step in universal healthcare and it seems like the Republicans were trying to take it away. Actually, what do you think are the worst things that the Trump administration is doing right now?
Chomsky: Well, the worst thing they’re doing by far, nothing else even comes close, is the climate policy. They are racing towards the destruction of organized human life. Not just Trump. The Republican Party. That’s interesting to see how it happened. You go back 10 years, and the Republican Party was just beginning to start introducing some programs to deal with the climate crisis. In fact, John McCain when he ran in 2008, had a climate program was not very much but something What happened? The Koch brothers, this huge Energy Corporation, which started a massive campaign to try to prevent the Republican Party from moving towards dealing with the climate even a mild way, bribing senators, intimidation, huge lobbying campaign setting up fake popular organizations that have been held outdoors, a lot of Tea Party comes out of that. But since most of them are totally spineless, they turned on a dime. Then it became the party of denialism. It’s shocking, and that’s, you know, that’s the worst crime in human history. Nothing even — the only thing that begins to compare is nuclear weapons and his policy on nuclear weapons is also horrendous. Notice that these are things you know, say these don’t come up in indictments or criticisms. What comes up is — did he try to get dirt on Joe Biden. Like Watergate.
Do you think this impeachment will actually happen?
Chomsky: I think he’ll probably be impeached by the House but it’ll probably be overturned by the Senate. He’ll declare a trial.
How can he get away with so much?
Chomsky: He’s a very clever politician. The idea with the strategy that they’re pursuing to whoever invented it, just to invert the whole thing and to turn it into an attack on, you know, the man of the people who’s actually the enemy of the people by the Deep State and the traders and the real problem is Biden and Ukraine. And, he’s got an echo chamber, you know, talk radio, and Fox News, and a lot of people believe it.
You mentioned that a lot of things are omitted. What are the things we should know right now?
Chomsky: Well, the main thing we should know is that if we don’t take pretty serious action within the next 10 years or so, and make major moves to get to net-zero carbon emissions sold over, we have a certain period of time to do it. Can be done. If it’s not done games over. There’s another thing. We have lived for 75 years under the threat of nuclear war. If you look at the record, we have come very close to war which means terminal war repeatedly, often through just accident. The mistakes are the automated detection systems. Sometimes through reckless behavior of leaders. It’s worse now than it’s ever been. Not my judgment, but judgment of the main items. Trump just made it worse. How do we not do something about that? Again, it’s done. Those are the major questions by far. There are plenty of others.
As the old adage goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Being aware, and even critical, of our journey is not only a liberty, but also a right that we have long fought for. I took the 10-hour trip to meet with the great Noam Chomsky for a 45-minute lesson in history outside of our curriculums — and politics minus the agenda of a conglomerate. So that I don’t make any omissions like the media tends to do, as aforementioned, I asked Chomsky about something we don’t know about him. He has two dogs, a Maltese and a Border Collie, who love to play Frisbee.
