I was thinking last night about Noam Chomsky and wondering if he has realized yet that the American Left is going through a dumbing down phase to the point where it won't appreciate the work that he and other leftist thinkers have been doing over the last 40 years.
It doesn't help things when those of us who still have some smarts in us are absorbed in debates over obscure leftist trivia, instead of engaging the people who are looking for answers and are opting for the magical thinking promoted by Art Bell and his ilk.
Chuck
MICHAEL YATES wrote:
> The drive from Denver to Santa Fe seemed interminable, but the beauty of
> the New Mexican landscape, from the Raton Pass just across the border
> with Colorado to the open cattle country after that—helped make up for
> the long distance. You know you are in a Latin land as you hit more and
> more Spanish language radio stations. As we approached the state’s
> capitol city, we listened to the Art Bell show. Art Bell is all over
> the radio dial, especially late and night and has attracted a huge
> audience, most of whom are obsessed with space aliens, alien abductions,
> “shadow” people, conspiracies of all kinds, and all other “para”
> phenomena. Most leftists have never heard of Art Bell, but they should
> know him (and all the other large-audience talk show hosts) because the
> many callers give important insights into what all too many people in
> the United States think is important. This is a land tailor-made for
> conspiracy theories and strange beliefs. These serve as a a substitute
> for thinking clearly, yet give their adherents the feeling that they
> have an inside track on things. Karen and I have concluded that we live
> in a nation of “bar talk;” everyone is an expert on everything, like the
> guy who won’t shut up on the barstool next to yours. There is no
> respect for real learning or an appreciation of the effort it takes to
> understand things. No doubt diehard fundamentalist religious beliefs
> function in a similar manner. As substitutes for thinking. I know from
> my many years of teaching undergraduates that the typical U.S. college
> graduate must certainly be the least knowledgeable in the world. The
> right-wingers rail against all the left-wingers on campus, but they have
> little to worry about. In the United States thoughtlessness rules, and
> bar talk is king. And in the meantime, the rich keep getting rich, with
> wealth that would have put john D. Rockefeller to shame. They flaunt
> their riches like the robber barons of yore. We met a man at my book
> talk in Santa Fe (at Garcia Street Books, where we drew a good crowd,
> thanks to the good pr done by owner Ed Borins—a real gentleman—and
> Monthly Review intern Scott Borchert) from Johnstown. He knew all the
> old streets, bars, and names I knew so well from my thirty-two years at
> the college there. He had been a teacher, but he eventually got into
> financial planning. He and a friend generously took us to dinner, and
> he told us some interesting things about money. He travels to
> Washington DC each year and stays in a hotel there. He has noticed over
> the past couple of years that hotel prices have skyrocketed throughout
> the city. He began to ask hotel managers why. He was told that the
> huge sums of money being devoted to anti-terrorism are the main
> culprit. National security firms and consultants are on the public
> dole, scamming the government, no doubt in collusion with public
> officials who will probably soon be on their payrolls, and they go about
> their thefts, staying in fine hotel accommodations in such numbers that
> hotels, wanting to get in on the action, jack up their prices. Then the
> contractors submit a cost plus 20 percent bill to the taxpayers. Makes
> you feel more secure, doesn’t it? Our new friend also told us about
> some of the extravagances of the rich he had discovered. It is very
> difficult to buy the most luxurious automobiles (Certain models of
> Ferrari and Mercedes Benz, for example) unless you are prepared for a
> two or more year wait. Their order books are overflowing. The
> super-rich are buying enormous private jets, and their less wealthy
> class-mates are leasing planes, often in club-like arrangements, with
> yearly fees just to belong running into the hundreds of thousands of
> dollars. I suppose the jets are badly needed, since I read recently
> that the rich now send their kids to summer camp in them; bus rides are
> just too traumatic. There is a growing market for truly gigantic ships
> as well, sometimes complete with “shadow” boats, refitted tugs in which
> the larger ships crew can bunk down. You can’t have the help sleep in
> the same boat as the hired hands. Meanwhile the U.S. labor movement
> won’t get out front in a campaign for national healthcare. And parents
> keep saying that their kids who died in Iraq were “doing what they
> loved.” I’ll bet the contractors staying in hotel penthouses cry
> themselves to sleep every night. Let’s all just work our crappy jobs,
> come home, flip on the TV, drink and medicate ourselves to sleep, and
> tune in the bedside radio to Art Bell.
>
> Michael Yates