> It's not so much "the active desire not to know" as the paucity of
> social institutions on the left serving as archives of popular
> memories of struggles (in which Chomsky's facts, among other things,
> may be stored) that makes for the discourse of perpetually renewed
> "innocence" in the USA.
That is a good point. I think it has a lot to do with the miserable U.S. Left tradition of every little group and interest trashing every other one. The union movement can't stand the radicals, so they ignore their history (IWW, etc.), and vice versa. Each ethnic group ignores all the others.
Makes one nostalgic for the old Popular Front, almost, despite its notorious drawbacks.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt