[lbo-talk] Prose Style, was Time to Get Religion

[ravi]

At around 7/12/06 1:49 pm, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Dec 7, 2006, at 12:17 PM, ravi wrote:
> 
>> What I do find troublesome is the criticism of say Chomsky on the
>> grounds that his analysis is superficial, inadequate, incomplete,
>> useless, etc in comparison to an alternative. In such a case, especially
>> in human matters (e.g: politics), I think it is not disingenuous for me
>> to claim a non-partisan role and look for knowledge and reasoning that I
>> can use to understand the issues and act. It is (I claim) a matter of
>> coincidence that Chomsky chooses the language of the non-expert
>> non-partisan: common sense.
> 
> But almost everything Chomsky writes runs against the "common sense" of
> Americans. The USG is violently imperialist on behalf of capital - the
> common sense is that the government means well, sometimes fucks up, and
> is often misunderstood or irrationally hated. The NY Times is a tool of
> power - the common sense is that it's subversive and "far left." Etc.
> And you can't fight that ingrained common sense through repeated
> factchecking. It's great for the base, but beyond that, you might as
> well be speaking Frisian.
> 

I would say that's not the common sense, but the common prejudice or
opinion (or I can clarify my use of the term "common sense" to mean a
language or method not a conclusion or "conventional wisdom"). Which is
why over and over again when you take the biasing factor out (perhaps
the names "Noam Chomsky" or USA") and present the same argument, most
people find it quite common-sensical. I keep going back to my example of
the web quiz that did not ask you to vote for a POTUS but instead asked
you about your issues and ranking and then gave you the name of the
person who matched your views and hopes the most, and also gave their
positions and how they correlate to yours, and most people chose the
socialist candidate.

Assume what you write about the USG is true. Also assume what people
think of the USG is quite different: they are ignorant of who runs the
USG and identify the USG with themselves and transfer their (perhaps
unexamined) good intentions to the USG. So the task at hand is to
disabuse the people (and also inform ourselves) of these received bits
or prejudices or ignorance. I claim that you have a good shot at it
through Chomsky's words, and it is not true that Chomsky's analysis is
superficial and hence will not enlighten the readers enough to truly fix
the problem. I also make a bolder claim: that Chomsky's language is the
closest to common sense language (let's call it "rationality") and hence
is most likely to be not just a _good shot_ but perhaps the _best shot_.

Unlike my more ambitious friends, I do not think one can then conclude
that more "esoteric" work on the same subject can be dispensed with.

	--ravi