> Michael Smith said: An analogous question is, what would US policy
> toward Cuba be if
>
> there were no gusanos in Florida?
>
> Michael, you can't be serious.
But I am. Admittedly the question is unanswerable. But sometimes unanswerable questions are worth pondering because the pondering helps you get your thoughts in order.
> And in reference to your previous question (I believe), here's a
> couple of characteristic quotes from Blankfort:
Well, thanks. I find myself in an interesting predicament here. Noam Chomsky is a great hero of mine, but I don't really see the Israel situation quite the way he does. Blankfort is too hard on him for my taste. Perhaps he overstates the case a bit. That's the polemicist's perennial temptation. But from what I've read of Blankfort, I think he's onto something that Chomsky doesn't get.
Strange to say, since Chomsky, to my way of thinking, is The Smartest Living Human. But we all have our blind spots. Chomsky is matchless among our contemporaries on the fundamental laws of motion, but there are lots of second-order effects, some of them fairly consequential, that you have to overlook in order to get the big picture clear.
There's a critique to be made of Chomsky on the Middle East. Maybe Blankfort isn't the best guy to make it. Maybe it takes finer instruments than Blankfort has in his toolkit.
But returning to the topic...
The Blankfort excerpts you kindly provided seem far from damning. There are bits one might agree with, others one might disagree with, but nothing to make one throw up one's hands in horror, as far as I can tell. Which was pretty much the claim that set this whole steeplechase off, if memory serves.
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Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com http://cars-suck.org