That Chomsky has swallowed the lesser evil non-sequiter only measures the extent of the rot and state of denial that the American political culture has fallen into. It is very deep and wide and in my view, now irredeemable. But Chomsky was always a Jeffersonian at heart, a believer in the "Old Republic" restorationist utopia, from whence emanates the rhetoric of "moral outrage" at her violation. But the Old Republic will never be restored to a pristine state it hever possessed to begin with.
Of course there is a difference, but the question is, a difference for whom? Does anyone really believe that the Democratic Party is not also "very deeply committed to dismantling the achievements of popular struggle through the past century"?
The weak argument that actively assisting the Democrats into the Presidency will "buy us time" is also quite dubious on two scores: buy time for what? It can only be to organize a breakaway from the Democrats, which, though never seems to happen, exposing the bad faith behind this argument. And, given that the Democrats share identical strategic goals with the Republicans - as most recently revealed by Kerry with respect to Spain - a craftier, more diplomatic, less "ugly" approach to unilateral world domination can just as easily be seen as _worse_, not "better", in that it brings the US closer to attainment of this goal. And we do want the USA to fail in this goal, do we?
Chomsky is also wrong in beleiving that the Bush Admin represents a break from past US policy (both foriegn or domestic). It does not. Rather, it represents the most _extreme_ expression of the dominant reactionary trend in Anglo-American politics, a trend that has been in place for some 25 years now. As such, Bush only represents more quantitative progress down this road - but the road remains the same. The fact is, the USA has been occupying the "extreme" pole of world politics for some time now, and the convergent protofascistic tendencies that Bush - perhaps "prematurely" - has brought further to the forefront have been latent for some time, and will contine their convergence under Kerry, who will do nothing to slow the progress of a crystallizing American fascism.
So long as even someone like Dean was in the running, one could reasonably "hope" the Dems could win the Presidency without having to actively support them - putting aside that leftwing support is actually poison to the Dems chances, and therefore undesireable. But once the Clinton clique made the Democratic Party safe for itself and Kerry, even hope was to be abandoned.
Kerry will no more reverse the course set by GWB any more than Clinton reversed the one set by Reagan and Pappy Bush.
-Brad
Chomsky makes the point in his recent Guardian interview:
"...when it comes to the choice between the two factions of the business party, it does sometimes, in this case as in 2000, make a difference. A fraction.
"That's not only true for international affairs, it's maybe even more dramatically true domestically. The people around Bush are very deeply committed to dismantling the achievements of popular struggle through the past century. The prospect of a government which serves popular interests is being dismantled here. It's an administration that works, that is devoted, to a narrow sector of wealth and power, no matter what the cost to the general population. And that could be extremely dangerous in the not very long run." --CGE
On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 uvj at vsnl.com wrote:
> Issues like the state of the US economy, global warming, proliferation
> of WMDs etc. -don't seem to bother the US Left? It's always Iraq, Iraq
> and Iraq. There are no other issues in the coming US election?