Chomsky - After the Election - Democracy ...
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Chomsky - After the Election - Democracy ...
Noam Chomsky: What Next? The Elections, the Economy, and the World World-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky discussed the meaning of President-Elect Barack Obamas victory and the possibilities ahead for real democratic change EXCERPT:(3/4) ... Actually what happened here is understood by elite elements. The public relations industry which runs elections here-quadrennial extravaganzas essentially- makes sure to keep issues in the margins and focus on personalities and character and so onand-so forth. They do that for good reasons. They know- they look at public opinion studies and they know perfectly well that on a host of major issues both parties are well to the right of the population. Thats one good reason to keep issues off the table. And they recognize the success. So, every year, the advertising industry gives a prize to, you know, to the best marketing campaign of the year. This year, Obama won the prize. Question is what is a democracy supposed to be? Thats exactly a debate that goes back to the constitutional convention. But in recent years in the 20th century, its been pretty well articulated by important figures. So at the liberal end the progressive end, the leading public intellectual of the 20th century was Walter Lippman. A Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy progressive. And a lot of his work was on a democratic theory and he was pretty frank about it. If you took a position not all that different from James Madisons. He said that in a democracy, the population has a function. Its function is to be spectators, not participants. He didnt call it the population. He called it the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. The ignorant and meddlesome outsiders have a function and namely to watch whats going on. And to push a lever every once in a while and then go home. But, the participants are us, us privileged, smart guys. Well thats one conception of democracy. And you know essentially weve seen an episode of it. In a functioning democracy like say Bolivia or the United States in earlier stages, they did something about it. Thats why we have the New Deal measures, the Great Society measures. In fact just about any step, you know, womens rights, end of slavery, go back as far as you like, it doesnt happen as a gift. And its not going to happen in the future. The commentators are pretty well aware of this. They dont put it the way Im going to, but if you read the press, it does come out. So take our local newspaper at the liberal end of the spectrum, Boston Globe, you probably saw right after the election, a front page story, the lead front page story was on how Obama developed this wonderful grassroots army but he doesnt have any debts. Which supposed to be a good thing. So hes free to do what he likes. Because he has no debts, the normal democratic constituency, labor, women, minorities and so on, they didnt bring him into office. So he owes them nothing Well, what can we anticipate if the popular army, the grassroots army, decides to accept the function of spectators of action rather than participants? Theres two kinds of evidence. Theres rhetoric and theres action. The rhetoric, you know, is very uplifting: change, hope, and so on. Change was kind of reflective any party manager this year who read the polls, including the ones I cited, would instantly conclude that our theme in the election has to be change. Because people hate whats going on for good reasons. So the theme is change. In fact, both parties put both of them, the theme was change. So the theme is change. In fact both parties, both of them the theme was change. You know, break from the past, none of old politics, new things are going to happen. The Obama campaign did better so they won the marketing award, not the McCain campaign. The goal of advertising is to create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices. Those of you who suffered through an economics course know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. But industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to undermine markets and to ensure, you know, to get uninformed consumers making irrational choices. And when they turn to selling a candidate they do the same thing. They want uninformed consumers, you know, uninformed voters to make irrational choices based on the success of illusion, slander, and effective body language or whatever else is supposed to be significant. So you undermine democracy pretty much the same way you undermine markets. Well, thats the nature of an election when its run by the business world, and youd expect it to be like that. There should be no surprise there.
YouTube | December 7, 2008
